My competition entry targeted for the ‘surreal’ genre must be posted by the end of the month.  Surreal is an area that I’m not totally comfortable with, because although I like to think I’ve got a vivid imagination I find it difficult to totally lose track of reality. 

Strangely, at one stage I found myself for once with a complete short story in less than 1500 words.  The competition word allowance is 2000.  I’ve been working on my entry for weeks now so I toyed with the idea of leaving it alone.  After a coffee and some consideration it sounded like the soft option. 

After serious editing I left my story alone for four days, finally believing I had the task done.  I went back to it yesterday morning and introduced a slightly different ending.  The story blossomed into 2000 words.  Today I’ll edit severely again then leave it until tomorrow. 

Tomorrow it gets posted as an entry.  I have to move on.  It’s exciting to send in something that’s taken a lot of work but for some reason it’s even more exciting when you’re not totally sure of your direction.  I’ve managed to avoid reading any other work in the surreal genre.  I don’t want to lose the little confidence I’ve gained and I want to avoid outside influence.

Whatever happens I’ll be honest enough to come back and report here.  I will say now that if I don’t get anywhere with this one I will be trying again.