Lately I’ve been writing a lot of short fiction, just entering as many competitions as I can keep up with. Right now I’ve got three I’m working on, each at different stages. Two Writing Battles (one I’m peer judging in, the other I’m just waiting for results), and a competition from Twisted Tournament that I’m still finishing my story for. It’s a been a lot of fun writing short stories. I get more practice developing structure than in the longer pieces I work on because I just get more repetitions in. I do wonder if them all being prompt based has any affect on my ability to come up with new stuff though. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything just for myself besides Jeffries, and that’s almost nine months in the making now. Speaking of …

I’m still rounding out Jeffries and trying to tie it all together. I’m finding it so difficult to make something so big feel cohesive, and it’s not even a full length novel. I want to have it ready by mid March, when I’ll be attending a writer’s conference and pitching my material to some writing agents for the first time. That won’t be nerve wracking at all.

And finally, I’ll be chipping away at my new blog site probably for the foreseeable future. It’s got several things missing that I’m still working on. At least it looks nicer, and you can see posts all the way back to the beginning of the blog. It’s getting there!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley