1,000

My writing career took another small step forward this morning.

I sent in a 1,000-word story to a Dutch competition. Alright, I hear you thinking, not another one of those competitions like NaNoWriMo where you write whatever you want just to make the total amount of words.

This one is different. It has to be a tense story, and from the examples on the website I gathered they prefer something with a limited number of characters and locations, like a cheap horror movie.

My story isn't horror, but it's creepy. It's very loosely inspired by Patricia Highsmith's 'Strangers on a Train,' even though there are no trains involved. It's a story written in the first person, about a man who visits a certain location and does something really terrible which he thinks is not terrible at all. Through short flashbacks we learn that this is not his first exploit. I can't tell you more, but I'll let you know once the awards are handed out.

The awards? Well, only one story can win. It will be published at www.duizendwoorden.nl and will be read on a national Dutch radio station. There's also a possibility, but not a guarantee, that the story will be published in one of the Netherlands' main national daily newspapers, the NRC Handelsblad. I will let you know how I fare, but it might take another two months before I know. In the meantime, I'll continue work on a 100,000-word thriller and on two stories for another competition, a British one this time.