Another journal

It was a bit of a lot of a week, hence the weekly blogpost coming on a Sunday rather than in the week. February was itself a bit much, as doing Flash Fiction February often does–even when I’m writing some every day otherwise I’m not writing a complete thing and setting aside an hour to write it then share first lines and, new this year, share with the Storytelling Collective discord and read other people’s flash.

I do a weekly accounting of what is done on which projects over on Patreon and Comradery, so I’m trying not to do the same here but like, more thoughtfully examine how this year’s Flash Fiction February went. But, yeah, first some stats.

Average wordcount was 598, which is very solidly flash fiction, goldilocks zone for me here. Three works were in the 300 word range and three were in the 800 word range, but none dipped to 200 or up to 900. Lol, it looks like I even got one *exactly* at 500 words, amazing.

Total wordcount 16,747, which is just an nice big number to look at. Like, check that out! That’s like a fourth? Of how long a novel is. Wild.

Of course, I track genres and whatnot, have every year (parly it’s to make sure I’m getting a nice assortment in the inevitable collection. Here’s the genre count:

More fantasy than anything this year, but with “Normal World” close behind?! I did a lot of everyday types of vignettes this go-round. I also hit up some genres/story worlds I have build in previous Flash Fiction February challenges. I’ve already got one gathered as an eventual fix-up story, sitting on ice for now, but I think I’m going to end up with another, based on the sub-genre stats.

This is the fifth year I’ve done Flash Fiction February, and it’s neat to look at the work I’ve made with it (here’s a link to the pieces I’ve shared here) and the work I’ve done beyond it and see the growth in storytelling but also to feel how it has helped keep the muscle flexible to write when I can and if I need to. What I realised it also has done, something I hadn’t realised until I was in a group of other people doing it, was teaching useful brevity. A lot of folks seemed to have trouble reigning it in to the standard flash fiction word count of under 1,000 words. Not to say short is better, but it’s a cool strength to build, to learn when to accept a vignette or a scene as a whole and valuable thing.

I mean, I also thrive in writing under restrictions, so this is kind of where I live.

Not to say I am amazing at it all, at the start of the month I was *certain* I’d be able to keep working on my longer writing project while also doing FFF, which immediately proved itself untrue. That is fine! I almost didn’t get the monthly newsletter done in time but I did, hooray. I ended up only being one day behind, which might be the best I’ve done as far as skipping days? And I did stuff this month, went out to museums and worked on other projects.

I think, it’s just nice to find ways to prove to yourself you can do a thing. I have done a thing! Hooray for the fifth FFF completed to me.