The Masochism Tango

Over the last few days I think I’ve established beyond all doubt that I have a definite masochistic streak. Let’s consider the evidence:

1. I’m currently taking part in the Whittaker Prize. This consists of a series of nine writing tasks, spread over eighteen weeks. Each task involves picking one of three given prompts and writing a story (up to 2500 words) over the next two weeks.
2. I also try to take part every week in the Cafe Doom Flash Challenge. A mere 350 words, this, based on a given one-word prompt.
3. I also seemed to have signed up for this thing. I have no idea why I have done this. Last time I entered one of their competitions, I was assigned to a heat where the chosen genre was Historical Fiction and the subject was Sewing. Seriously. I regard the fact that I managed to scrape into fifth place in my heat as a major achievement.
4. I’ll probably also be taking part in the monthly 1000-word Phil’s Challenge at SlingInk.

This gives a total planned word count of 8400 words for the month already, quite apart from the fact that I also quite fancy putting in an entry for Necrotic Tissue’s Malpractice Anthology (at least another 2000 words).

So when I got an e-mail from Alex Keegan on Thursday inviting me to join the Bootcamp August Blast, why in God’s name did I say that I would? I guess the answer is that last time I got involved in something with Bootcamp (the Children-in-Need thing), it proved to be massively creative. And despite some curious experiences last time, I find the place endlessly fascinating. However, writing a flash a day is going to be a daunting challenge.

And if I happen to mention that I really fancy doing NanoWriMo this year, somebody stop me. Please.