849 words down! Of a 3000-5000 word short story. That went pretty quick. Well, I’ve spent days researching such fun things like ‘where is it likely to flood during global warming in the US?’ and ‘where are there dams that are likely to break’ and ‘what are the most common problems horses have’ and ‘can horses swim’? As well as the culture for my international global warming refugees and coming up with names, ages and relationships for all the characters in my story. May need to prune some back already. 3000-5000 words after all.

I am a project manager in my day job. So I did some quick backwards scheduling. Due date, 2 days to revise, 3 days to review, leaving me with 8 days to write about 4000 words. So 500 words a day. Sounds completely reasonable. Of course, I missed yesterday. So needed to make that up a bit today. Hence, 849 words.

Basic premise of the short story contest is a Solarpunk/Hopepunk story showing people working together to overcome adversity due to climate change. Love the idea. I hate zombie movies because it drives me crazy that people can’t ever work together in them. I believe we would. We’ve shown in disasters time and time again that we will come together as a community.

My biggest struggle is to not use stereotypes. But at this short a length, in some ways, I kind of need to. It helps with setting things up. Hopefully I can turn it on it’s ear just enough. The other thing is to make sure I treat my climate refugees from Central America with respect for their culture, and I don’t have a lot of time to do deep research. Hopefully by treating them as real people with real fears and concerns, I don’t fall down a well on that one.

So way to go me! Putting those fingers to keyboard for the first words was surprisingly difficult. Easier to not even try. That inner voice can just shut up.