Desperately seeking a final story

Yesterday was the last day of NaNoWriMo

desperately-gif-500

Apart from one day of panic, when I thought I might have sucked my brain dry of inspiration, I’ve done pretty well during this NaNo month.

30 short stories in 30 days is no mean feat.

Yesterday, it was time to come up with my final story and I turned to a wisp of an idea that’s been gentle wafting through my mind for some time.

It involved a woman searching for her tortoise. And finding love instead.

Anyway, that’s it. #30days30shorts over and done with. Now follows the most important part of any writing spree: the dreaded editing!


Illustrating the stories

Somebody asked me where I found the illustrations I used in this series of NaNo posts.

  1. I searched for Creative Commons Zero images (CC0) on sites such as Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels,
  2. opened them in my Corel PaintShop Pro programme,
  3. modified them with line drawings on my Wacom pad,
  4. and experimented with various photo manipulation tricks.

It’s been great fun finding suitable images and converting them for each piece.

Creating the illustrations took almost as much effort as writing the stories themselves. Should have really called this project #30days30shorts30pics Anyway, here’s a gallery of them all:


Marrow wars – day 28

Bill and Alf are neighbours, but not friends.

bill-and-alf-gif-500Bill was convinced his marrow would win the prize for best vegetable, but Alf had pipped him to the post and then crowed – positively crowed – about his achievements in the Ruddy Duck.

So Bill decided it was time for a bit of sabotage.

(Yes, these things really do happen.)

That was the starting point for my 28th NaNoWriMo short story. It was one of those funny little plots that’s been worming through my mind for some time. Good to get it out at last.

Today’s story is also done. I’ll post a summary tomorrow. Only one more day to go… can’t believe I’ve nearly finished #30days30shorts