The Waiting Game

The NYC Midnight first round of judging is officially under way. I turned in my story with about 12 hours to spare. Not exactly last minute so I'm kind of proud of myself. The short story that I submitted was the favorite among my readers, and I had decided the best option was to just let the story sit for a day without me looking at it seeing as I had the time. Sometimes the best thing for a story is a set of fresh eyes. I came back to the story after my day was up and got working on rewrites. I added some small but essential details based on feedback I had gotten and included a small scene that surprisingly made a world of difference. I re-read my story a few times and kept making small changes until I felt pretty happy with the end result. By the end of the day I had what felt like a strong contender for this first round. I clicked on the link to submit and filled out the form. One of the boxes was a drop down menu wherein you selected what prompt you had received. I scrolled through the list to take in some of the possible other prompts. There were a wide range from seemingly easy prompts to seemingly difficult prompts. One thing I realized however was that my opinions on difficulty were pretty subjective. I like certain genres more than other genres and I have story ideas for certain worlds more than other worlds. Really any of those prompts could have been incredibly easy or difficult for a specific person. In the end we'll all still have to play the waiting game.