Greetings!
In typical fashion, allow me to share some belated news (my tardy excuse is that I have been reading *so much* lately and haven’t been online):
The much acclaimed Omega Sci-Fi Awards chose my little story as an honorable mention.
WOW!
(For anyone wondering, the Omega Sci-Fi Awards is an international short science fiction story competition that provides an opportunity for writers to imagine the future of humanity through excellence in storytelling.)
For 2021, over 500 stories were submitted from around the world including South Africa, Germany, the UK, Russia, Tanzania, the US of A, and more.
My submission was a science fiction story (duh) set in a future when online bots begin to catfish people, but told in the fashion of Little Red Riding Hood. It was fun to write!
The awards show was online of course and was really cool – they brought in voice actors to read the winning stories, which is a lovely crossing of art forms (voice and writing). I have actually won another honorable mention, way back in the pre-covid times of 2017.
Neat huh?
I do actually aim to win this contest, but until then, I’m pleased.
I am working to write better, to improve on my craft.
And part of that requires a great deal of reading, which I’ve been doing like never before.
For those curious, I attribute my accomplishment to simply this: just do it.
Write it now.
Submit it now.
No, it will never be perfect – but even published, it will never be perfect, because stories aren’t supposed to be perfect.
Yes, a lot of it will be rejected – but a lot of it should be, because it needs time to grow, to figure out how this story needs to be told, to acquire the skills to tell it well.
But keep at it, and see what happens.
Keep learning, practicing, observing, reflecting and sharpening.
Keep writing, keep submitting, and see what comes.
The winds can change and after all, stranger things have happened.
But I’ll take my own advice and get back to it.
As always, keep writing and thanks for reading.
archie
archie writes 