Greetings, friends! Y’all doing all right? I sure hope so.
So, 2024 is off to a solid start, I’d say. January left me pretty busy, between work, the usual writing antics, a short story writing contest, and my first concert of the year. Lots to digest, but I’ll keep it as brief as possible.
First and foremost, I’m so grateful to have participated in the first round of NYC Midnight’s Short Story Challenge for 2024. This is now my second year partaking in the contest, and I’m happy to report that it was just about as enjoyable as it was last year. To refresh everyone on how their challenges work: all of the contestants are bundled into groups, and each group is given a specific writing prompt to work with. Each prompt then has specific elements that the writers have to incorporate into their stories, including a genre, character, and subject. All stories, then, have to be written in under 2,500 words. Fun stuff.
This year, my first round prompt fell under the “Suspense” genre, with my character being “a florist” and my subject being “a bad investment.” For contest anonymity purposes, I can’t divulge any specific details of what I wrote, but similar to last year, I’m proud of what I was able to come up with. I’m also willing to admit that this probably wasn’t my best work, but I’m still proud of it. I think I wasn’t sold on my initial idea, but thankfully, I got some very useful notes and feedback that helped me shape it into a story I was happy with. Ultimately, the final version turned out well enough. Here’s hoping it’s enough to get me into the next round.
Otherwise, I’ve been slowly digging into my novel. Following NaNoWriMo, I knew I needed to do some proper outlining. That, coupled with picking away at specific story beats during my regular writing group meetups, and the thing is starting to take proper shape. Though there is still so, so much work to do. Honestly, right now, I’m having trouble nailing down the conflict for the characters. Like, I know the basic idea of why the two lead characters are in conflict, but I can’t figure out how to move it forward in a natural way. Not yet, at least. I’ll get there.
There’s also the ongoing struggle of getting “Soul Survivor” published. Not much to report on this front, aside from that I’m still finding magazines to submit to. Obviously, I haven’t had any bites yet, but I’m hopeful something will catch soon. Although, interesting point regarding this story: I was compelled to dive back into this one recently and give it another round of quick edits, which actually proved quite fruitful. Cleaned up a lot of phrasing and details, and I even managed to chop off 300 words, getting it to just under a clean 6,000 words total. I’ve just been learning a lot lately from my writing pals, so I felt inspired to give the story another review.
The typical writing and work shenanigans for January were accented by my first show for the year. Beartooth headlined an epic concert, with support from The Plot in You and Invent, Animate. Invent have steadily grown to be one of my favorite modern metalcore acts, and The Plot in You never fail to impress live. But Beartooth…man oh man. Rarely do I ever feel as energetic as I do during a Beartooth set. Those guys just really know how to get a crowd to come alive.
This show also reminded me that there’s something to be said for musicians putting on speeches and making them actually sound good. Usually, I feel like this stuff goes one of two ways. On the one hand, they might come up with something that seems rehearsed and feels kind of soulless. On the other, they might just improvise, sounding like they have no clear idea in mind as they just ramble to fill time. Beartooth’s lead vocalist Caleb Shomo will usually offer up a speech nowadays at their shows, but every time, he somehow maintains the right balance between telling us something sincere and deeply heartfelt while also having put a lot of thought into it beforehand.
So, following a moving speech from Caleb, the band played their song “Look The Other Way,” off their latest record, The Surface, and… Well, I’m not afraid to admit that I was in tears—literal tears. I’m sure anyone who saw would say it was an ugly cry, but goddamn did I need it. I want to say it was cathartic, in a way. So, thank you, Beartooth, for making me cry for the first time at a concert. If you want to understand why this happened, just go listen to the song. I imagine it will speak for itself.
That night’s sleep was heavenly. It’s not often I’m left emotionally drained after a show. But again, I think I needed it. Not to say I’ve been unhealthily bottling shit up lately, but it’s definitely been a while since I last had a good cry. And maybe choosing to do it in public wasn’t a great choice, but hey, if a guy can’t cry with his friends and fellow metalheads, then the world is truly a much darker place than I take it to be.
Anywho, my silly sob story aside, I’m very grateful for the past month. It felt like the right way to kick off 2024—what I’m hoping will be another fantastic year. And I hope all of you reading this post were able to get the same level of satisfaction out of January. We keep moving forward. One month down, eleven more to go.
So, until the next one, peace!