I won!

March 2, 2006

I won! I won my first contest at NoteBored. We just finished our Polished Stories Challenge #2, which I actually run, yesterday. I polished a story titled “The Time Magazine.” It was a story I had wrote for a short story challenge with the trigger “Time Magazine.” When I first saw the trigger, I was like, “Yeah, right. How do I write a story about that?” I then went back to house work and what not and then it hit me. Guns have magazines! Why not have a story where people travel in time and the time travel is caused by a gun magazine. I thought it was a splendid idea—I don’t get too many of those. I would have the gun start in the now and have an old man find it and travel in the past. Then the gun would fall into the hands of the girl he meet there and she would travel to the now. The teenager she found would find the gun and travel to the future. The guy in the future would find that gun and... (insert cliff hanger here)

The first step was to find a gun with a magazine, a hand gun with one. So, I zipped off an email to a Marine Captain friend to get guns that would use a magazine. He very graciously sent me a nice long list, but I didn’t know what any of the guns were. So, I went searching on Yahoo for pictures. After I found my gun, I still had research to do.

I had to research some history. I had the idea of using newspapers to show the time period, so I looked up newspapers which would be around in 1845 and then looked for a headline. I found a good one—Florida becoming a state.

Since I’m not a Sci-Fi reader (ok, I have read a couple because my husband wanted me to and they weren’t that bad), I had to try to figure out my future screen. I ended up telling Dan about my story idea, which he liked, and asked him for some pointers for the future. After getting some, I had to picture the future in my head and then write about it.

Anyway, I wrote my story and posted it in the challenge. Everyone thought it was a teriffic take on the trigger and enjoyed my little adventure. What was more fun was everyone’s reaction when they found out it was me! I had never written a piece like that it before; and since really.

Well, I wasn’t going to polish anything up for this challenge, but with so many people entering, I wanted to enter as well. After picking this story, I re-read everyone’s comments and then re-read my story. I fixed the major things and then reprinted the story for another polish. I edit better when I have paper in my hands that I can write on. After another little brush up, I posted it for the challenge.

Once again, I surprised people when they found out that I was the author of the “gun” story. They hadn’t seen it before, being new; and being around long enough to know my stuff—well, it surprised them.

What surprises me is that the lady that owns the writing site says that it is my best story. Go figure! I mean me not being into Sci-Fi and all.

I’ll let it set for a little bit, take another look, and send it out later. So, you won’t be seeing it here on my site. But if you want to join The NoteBored, you can read it there as I’ll be leaving the stories up for another week or two. If you are interested please see my blog post, “By Invitation Only.”