Short Story Writing Challenge

[1,838 words, 10 min estimated read time]

Why I Gave Myself This Challenge

The catalyst for making the writing challenge came from watching this video by Reads with Rachel. In it she talks about some drama around the release of a book- honestly I didn’t care so much about the whole controversy, what I found interesting was another book Rachel brings up in this discussion.

Rachel talks about the way the book Little Thieves by Margaret Owen succeeds compared to the book she covers in this video, particularly when it comes to including illustrations in a book. Rachel said she was introduced to Maragret Owen’s work through a post on instagram, where the author drew excerpts from her book, Little Thieves. She said it made her more interested in the book- the scenes were funny, the art was good, and she was able to get a grasp of the characters very quickly.

And when looking at these drawings, my first thought had been “This author is so good at drawing, why didn’t she illustrate this story as a graphic novel instead?” And the longer I sat with that question, the more I started to think about some of the expectations I had about myself when it came to storytelling.

I’d always sort of assumed that, because “The Thing I Do” is draw, I must tell a story through drawings. I figured I would make comics and graphic novels, and I never really considered a written prose book. And it was such a simple thing, but to see an author who was also really good at drawing, tell their story through written prose, was a fantastic wake up call to the fact that, yeah, just because someone can use drawings to tell their story, doesn’t mean they have to.

Which. Yeah, duh.

I get it was just one of those things that I sort of realized but wasn’t actually applying that to myself. In a weird way it felt like just by seeing another visual artist choose written prose to tell their story, I could give myself permission to do the same.

For about two years now, I’ve been sitting on written drafts of six short stories that I intended to tell as comics. I wrote the drafts describing the visuals of each panel and the dialogue. And then I sat on them for two years. Every time I’ve tried to start the actual page art for the comic, it’s fallen through. Comparatively, I think I wrote all of those drafts in about a month and a half?

I’ve known for a while now that there was some mental block keeping me from working on the page artwork. But I didn’t really know a way around it. And, kinda stubbornly and stupidly, I didn’t consider that I could just. Write it. I had to let go of the idea that these stories would be told as a comic.

I’d never felt very confident in my writing. But, because of how quickly I wrote those initial drafts, I knew whatever block was keeping me from making comics just wasn’t there when it came to writing. And even though I wasn’t confident in my skills with writing, I was confident that I could get better at it.

Another thing that came up in Rachel’s video was how important it is to be willing to get feedback on your work and make edits to improve the story. One thing that immediately made me feel better was the fact that I’m more than willing to ask other people for help to improve my story. For me, I feel much more confident tossing a story out to the world to read after I’ve had other people look over it and give feedback first.

So, armed with my new-found permission to just let myself write the damn stories I’d been sitting on instead of making them into a comic, I got really excited to write.

And all this came to a head when I had a conversation about the writing challenge NaNoWriMo. I had never participated before, I just knew about some of the controversy around it and how it crashed and burned. But I knew about the basic rules of it, and thought to myself that, well, maybe I could do something similar. Just make my own rules, make my own challenge. This was on January 31st. And I started thinking, well. What if I made this challenge for next month?

The Writing Challenge Rules

And so I made my own February Writing Challenge.

Frantically, the night before February, I was scrambling to make some rules for myself and come up with a plan for a writing challenge for February. This is what I wrote down for myself (gratefully, I’m in an art server with an ‘Accountability Buddies’ channel to help hold myself accountable to keep up with it, and this is where I wrote out the guidelines for myself)

Reason’s I’ve picked February 2026 to do this challenge for myself (So I can remind future me when I go ‘oh but I can put this off and just do this another month!’)

• I’m unemployed right now, so I have time for this right now. I don’t want to put it off till November and then be in a full time job trying to squeeze this in.
• February is a shorter month, so it takes up less of my life.
• I decided to do this Jan 31st, the night before, so I don’t have time to overthink and/or overplan this. Just jump straight into it.
• I’ve already got six written drafts of an anthology series I’d intended to be comics, so I’ve already got a really solid outline.
• February is one of the most meh months and you know it. There’s nothing going on anyway and you’re stuck inside cause it’s still winter.

The Rules I’m giving myself

• It needs to be focused on my Bloodborne anthology series. I’d like a written draft done for all six of the stories by the end.
• It needs to be written between Feb 1st and Feb 28th.
• While I won’t be strict about the word count, 50k words total sounds fitting. I’m estimating each story will be between 5k and 10k words. But focus less on the word count, and more on just getting it done. Don’t write more than the story needs, but don’t cut corners and shorten the length to save time.
• (less of a rule, more of a guideline) Start by writing with the story I’m most excited for. After February, make it the last story to edit. (that way I start with what I’m most excited for, but save it for last to make the most out of the skills I’ve developed)

Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’

Along with writing, I decided to start reading Stephen King’s book ‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’ after it was recommended to me. Funnily enough, I haven’t really read Stephen King’s writing before. When I was a kid I read one short story by him, ‘The Boogeyman’. I don’t remember much of the actual story, but I remember the impact of it. While reading I thought it wasn’t very scary at all. Even when I finished it, I thought it was alright enough, but not scary.

Obviously that changed when it was time to go to bed that night. For at least four nights after that, I slept with the lamp light on, terrified to go to sleep, staring at my closet door.

So other than that, I haven’t read anything by him until this book. And I gotta say, ‘On Writing’ was pretty fantastic! There’s some points I disagree with here and there, but it really helped me in both a practical sense and a more mental state-of-mind sense. I keep a quote from it on a little post-it-note above my desk.

The Results

So, I got writing. And I realized very early on I had underestimated just how much writing I was going to be doing.

I finished written drafts for all the anthology short stories within the first week. The total word count came out to 18,557 words across the five stories (I ended up cutting one of the original six stories), around 37 pages single spaced.

When I finished the five short stories that first week, I just kept thinking to myself, ‘I didn’t know I had that in me.’ It was both a little ridiculous, and a little silly, that it took me making a whole monthly challenge to get these stories written, only to finish them all in a week. I hadn’t realized I could write so much. And I hadn’t realized I was actually capable of keeping up with it, after that first week passed.

And I decided to keep writing. I’ve had so many story ideas just sitting around. And I just knew I wanted to keep writing. I dusted off an old story about a witch, princess, and knight all trying to live in an old decrepit castle together. I had fragmented scenes in mind, a fairly good grasp on the characters, but not much else. But I felt like I had something strong there, so I grabbed that one by the scruff and set it on the desk.

I kept up with my progress in the accountability buddy channel of the art server I’m in, watching the numbers tick up as I updated each time I wrote. By February 18th I had written 10k+ words for the bonus story.

During February, across the five anthology stories and the bonus story I started from scratch, I wrote over 30k words. The total word count came out to 30,393 words, about 60 pages single spaced. It’s still hard for me to believe I made so much progress in just one month.

Going Forward

Right now I’m in the middle of edits for the first story. First I went back over it myself to clean it up, then sent it out to friends to look over. The feedback I’ve gotten so far has been really good, and I’m so excited to get back to editing the story.

Since the first five short stories have to do with the videogame Bloodborne I’ll plan to post them to Archive of Our Own. I’ve got an account on there if you wanna keep an eye out for when I post those, here’s the link. Once I get a few done I’ll make a section on my website to add them to.

So, yeah! I’m excited to edit the stories I’ve got written already, and I’m excited to keep writing for that bonus story I’m working on. I’ve already written out all the scenes I had in mind so far, so I’m not sure where to go with it from here. Maybe it’ll just be something I have in the background to come back to, something easy to pick up and put down when I’m in the mood to write for it.