#frictionlit#writing#contest#writingcontest#shortstory#sciencefiction#scifi
Below is a story that I submitted to the “friction” literary magazine earlier this year. It's a beautiful magazine that is put out three times per year. Personally, I'm subscribed to it myself, otherwise I wouldn't have tried submitting a piece for their consideration. They hold a Spring and a Winter contest... The Winter deadline is still over a month away. We'll see how prolific I am in the next four weeks, maybe I'll have something that I think might fit the readership.
Getting back to this story though. This is one of the longer short stories that I've written, coming in around ~6k words. It's still considerably much smaller than a novella, but I've written it with the possibly expanding the story and the chapters more with additional prose in mind. So it is broken into ten “chapters” and an Epilogue.
The Pitch?
It's sort of like if Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind had a baby with Total Recall. It's not quite as Philip K. Dick as I would like it to be, but I didn't think f®iction would want to publish hard pyschadelic sci-fi... Maybe I was wrong.
The story was rejected, but honestly, I would rather just post it as-is for people to read while I work on other stories. I would love to know your comments. What do you like? What do you hate? Any feedback is welcome.
Back at the beginning of the year I mentioned how I had a good experience with NYC Midnight's microfiction challenge, and so I decided to enter their short story competition as well. I got an honorable mention this time!
I've actually been sitting on this for about two weeks or more. They updated their rules, and they request that entrants refrain from publishing their stories online until at least ten days after the results have been disseminated. Thankfully I was able to tell my Dad about it, even if he didn't get to read the story, but his passing last week has definitely delayed me getting this put up online.
I'm doing this slightly different than I did with Palpable Gravity. The revised short story based on the feedback that I received from the judges will be first, then you can read the feedback I received, after that will be the the original version of the story, finally I'll end this with the lessons that I've learned.
Well, I didn't even get an honorable mention, but I'm grateful for the feedback they gave me!
However, I believe my friends and I re-worked the story to be far more compelling, and we did so before I got any official feedback. So, I'll break it down and talk about what I've learned through this experience. Also, below will be the revised story. I'm curious and eager to hear from all of you whether you think we were able to come up with a story that would have addressed the judges' criticisms before even knowing what those criticisms were?
Below is a story that I submitted to the “friction” literary magazine earlier this year. It's a beautiful magazine that is put out three times per year. Personally, I'm subscribed to it myself, otherwise I wouldn't have tried submitting a piece for their consideration. They hold a Spring and a Winter contest... The Winter deadline is still over a month away. We'll see how prolific I am in the next four weeks, maybe I'll have something that I think might fit the readership.
