A Tale of Two Dragons

In the last week I've faced two dragons in my writing journey. They are Cocoa the AO3 Chocolate Box dragon, and Sparkle the Twitter snow dragon. I'm still attempting to befriend both of them.

Cocoa is a version of a dragon I've met before. This is my fourth year participating in the AO3 Chocolate Box exchange. Each year has been fun, and yet there's still a nagging little voice in the back of my mind. It's a holdover from the voice I heard at the start of each school year, the one that suggested this year would be too hard, and everyone would find out my stellar grades from prior years were a fluke.

For the last week Cocoa has been whispering that this is the year I won't find inspiration. My stories will be dull and insipid and I won't be able to write as many treats as I did in prior years. I've countered with research, a.k.a. having fun catching up on the fandoms for my assignments, and pushing through to write scenes with the knowledge that I can always start over. Now that I'm nearly done with my assignments, I'm indulging in a review of the prompts from other participants. I'll admit that Cocoa almost had a victory, because at first I wasn't inspired by the prompts, but now I've hit the mother lode. Slowly but surely I'm winning Cocoa over with fun ideas for stories. If all goes well, Cocoa will join me for a cup of celebratory hot chocolate in the next week or two.

Sparkle emerged during a rare snow event, when I stayed inside on a series of snow days and played around with my new Twitter account. This snow dragon dazzled me with so many options for writers: auctions, contests, pitches, accountability hashtags... What's a writer to do with so many choices? I was in danger of freezing, unable to decide.

Turnabout is fair play, and I've tried to dazzle Sparkle with my organizational skills. I've made a list of the options and the due dates, and selected a handful to try. One of those is the Author Mentor Match (AMM) with a handful of related tags like #AMMParty and #AMMConnect. Another is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Pitch event #SFFPit. I'm going to give those a try, and then see if I want to try similar options later.

I'll admit, Sparkle isn't convinced yet and keeps pointing out that #SFFPit happens when I'll be attending an all-day class for my job and can't check Twitter frequently. Stay tuned to see if I can win over the snow dragon. My goal is to convince this dragon to make snow angels with me.

If you're interested in participating in either of the events, here are the links for more information:
Author Mentor Match: http://authormentormatch.com/how-it-works/
SFFPit: http://dankoboldt.com/sffpit/