THERAPY WORKS: And a Series of Colossally Dumb Events

Last week I competed in my eighth or ninth NYCMidnight writing contest. I really enjoy them and have learned a lot over the years writing short stories and screenplays under their timed model. You get a certain number of days to write a certain length piece with provided genre and prompts. It’s always a challenge- I’ve had to write horror and romantic comedy, ghost stories, political satire, and more.

This last week was the first round of the BIG event- the short story contest that draws thousands of people from all over the world. We had 8 days to write a 2500 word short story and my my prompts were: Historical Fiction, An Anniversary, and A lawbreaker. I landed on the real-life 16th century Irish pirate queen, Grace O’Malley. I’ve been wanting to research and write about her since I read about her in the Rebel Girls books with my kids. In her 50s she was imprisoned for…being a pirate and causing troubles for the Crown, and she and Queen Elizabeth 1 met and became political allies. My story suggests that they also became lovers in the night. It was super fun to write but took a lot of time and research for accurate references and language and stuff. I had several friends edit it for me, it was a whole thing.

So on day seven of the contest, I started getting weird, like I do every time, and was obsessively tweaking the piece…