October Update: 2026

As an Alice of Old, I often go down deep and winding rabbit holes. For those that know me, you're used to it. This particular October rabbit hole began at the Tennessee Mountain Writer's fall workshop.

The speaker, Amy Wright, is a part of the Creative Writing faculty at ETSU. She's a fabulous teacher. She hit on the subject of Flash Fiction and Flash Non-Fiction. I knew immediately I wanted to explore this field.

I watched YouTube videos about Flash Fiction. There is a guy who gave himself a 30 day challenge to write one Flash Fiction piece daily. Wordsmith that I am, I decided to join him. Flash pieces are between 700-1500 words, roughly 3-6 pages. Surely my attention span can last through that. So I began on October 1st and so far, have managed to meet the challenge.

I ran across a short story contest that pays 1500.00 to the winner. This short story must be 2000-5000 words in length and be based on the prompt, "Write about a character who is haunted by someone or something." I love a good prompt. It's fun to take one sentence and build on it.

This story must be submitted by October 31st. It will be a sprint, but I'm game.

A story can be built like a house. First, I must determine the foundation and set it. Once the foundation is established, I build from there, one paragraph after another. Sometimes I write in scenes. I will write scene one and then scene two and onward. I plan to link and complete transitions from one scene to another once the story is in the second draft stage.

Keep in mind that I work full time, have a family, and a zillion other things on my agenda that I have to wrap my writing around. I'm thankful to the great Christopher Columbus for a three day weekend so that I can get more writing done.

I created a cocktail in his honor.

If you don't hear from me, don't worry. I've taken on two mammoth challenges and must apply all my time wizardry toward this short story.