Writing You On The Sly

Guess what?  I’m actually posting this blog while in the middle of a writing contest!  That’s right; I’m writing you surreptitiously!  I am one of about 20 contestants participating in the Las Vegas Book Festival Flash Fiction Contest.  We were given 90 minutes to write a story based on a Super Sekrit prompt that was given to us right when it was time to start.  The theme?  Las Vegas: City of Second Chances.  So what did I do? I pretty much wrote a Stilettos and Shirley Temples installment where I gave up the life. Ha, like that would ever happen!  I finished early and now I’m typing one-handed because I’m holding Mason and billie the girl’s super cute, 2 1/2 week old baby while they finish their stories.  I LOVE life, sometimes!

I’ll let you know how the contest ends up.  We won’t find out for at least a week, so I hear.  But Mason and I are going to have a dance-off in the parking lot JUST BEAUSE WE CAN.

8 Comments on “Writing You On The Sly”

  1. Thank you for holding our child. She is actually a clever robot replica designed to study your potential dance moves based on skeletal structure scans and swaying skilss. Anything to give me the edge in a DanceBattle!

    BTW, had fun beating your pants off in the contest. But as I mentioned before, you can keep your pants ON during the non-literal pantsing.

    I was tempted to deliberately write something trite about a California earthquake that makes Las Vegas beachfront, and the MC who is from CA, can’t go back for some reason, and misses the beach, says to himself at the end: “Gee, I love second chances!”

    But I ended up taking the contest seriously at the last second.

    So I wrote about 7 year old chain smoking pimp-dressing angels ressurecting people out in the desert.

    m

  2. I’d’ve been all, City of Second Chances TO DIE! Y’know, cuz that’s how I roll.

    Actually, it’d probably have been some kind of noir-ish dude trying to go straight and get out of the underworld by taking a chance on a nice churchgoing girl (not the kind that wears fishnets to church) but loses his second chance when one last hit goes wrong and his girl gets caught in the crossfire.

    I think I need help.

    And I’m anxiously awaiting both the results of the contest, and the video of the dance-off. 🙂

  3. Be sure to have the skype on when you do the dance off 🙂 Oh, that sounds like fun.

    Its cool that you had a handy flash fiction already in mind for this. We always did a 15 minute writing prompt at the beginning of all our writers group meetings (haven’t had one in over 2 months) and I liked it very much when something inspirational happened on the way to group. A radio song; working something out in my WIP. Or even just something another member said to spark the first line of the prompt.

    Almost feels like cheating – but what the hay, its all fair, right?

    You guys got me pondering what I’d write for a Second Chance city. 90 minutes? eeek. I think I like Mason’s beach front idea. Oh wait – I live in CA.

    Have to have scuba gear in that one. Hmm.

    …….dhole

  4. Thanks, Amie! I’ll let you guys know as soon as we find out. It may take a while.

    Mason: I shook with jealousy while you were telling me YOUR SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME IDEA! It sounds very cool! And holding Cinnabun is just a pleasure. 🙂

    Simon: Oh, you don’t want to see me dance. Trust me on this.

    Donna: Oh no, I didn’t have something already in mind for it beforehand. When we sat down and he said, “Las Vegas: City of Second Chances” I thought and THOUGHT of different ways to use it. But since I was already working on a series that features Vegas, it was difficult for me to shift to a different story based in the same place. I was effectively hamstrung. So I wrote a completely new piece using the S&ST characters, since they were already in my head. It won’t go into the serial. It’s just a random aside.

    Ooh, scuba gear! Now THAT sounds like a lot of fun! 😀

  5. You know, Merc, with all this talk… we’ll have to have a real dance battle now. We’d get a ridiculous number of youtube hits when it’s filed under #dancefail

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *