It's a bit of an old-fashioned name, isn't it? I did think on it some as I didn't care for the name, but then I decided not to worry about it and not write to the name at all. My Harriet is young and sexy. Maybe it will play as a fun juxtaposition. Or it's not something readers will think about much. I'm not sure ! The first thing that came to mind when I read the name "Harriet" was Harriet Winslow, from Family Matters. She was an elevator operator in earlier episodes before she got laid off, because the times, they were a-changin'.
That's a terrible name. No offense to any really Harriets but it conjures, well, Ozzie and Harriet. I didn't understand until I saw that the first line was set in stone (duh, thread title) but can't you kill Harriet in the second sentence and be done with her? I know y'all have written your stories already, and that's not a viable suggestion, but damn. As soon as Harriet entered the building, she headed to the seventh floor. As soon as she reached the seventh floor, Bob stabbed her in the eye. "I hate your name Harriet!" he said, wiping the blood from his face and calmly hitting the down button for the elevator.
An accountant and a copy-editor from the sixth floor stepped over Harriet's body. Her fingers were still twitching a little. "About time someone killed her ass." "No doubt. " the accountant said.
Well, I got about 800 words down last night. It's pretty, uh, irreverent, even by my standards. Tequila might have been a factor. No promises, but I'm going to give it a whirl. Guidelines look simple, but I'm wondering if they frown upon mindless sex and insensitive violence. Not that I care that much.
I've suddenly lost interest in the idea of sharing my story for critique before submitting. I won't be sharing it. But I'll continue editing for a bit and will send it in before the Aug. 1 deadline. Here's hoping for a positive result !
Forgot to mention that I submitted my story last week. After several rounds of editing, the word total ended up a little below 2K. I think it's fairly original, not too derivative. Will be interested to see what the editors think. If they don't accept it, which is highly likely, I think it's still decent enough to submit it for the October short story contest, which is an open theme contest (after rewriting the introduction of course). Hope you will both be submitting soon as well, if you haven't already. Fingers crossed !
I sent something in, too. I don't know if it's just me, but that was a bit challenging. Maybe it's because I haven't written off a prompt in a long time. Maybe because I knew I needed to get it in by the deadline. Maybe because my main character was named Harriet. Probably it was all of the above. There's not a lot of pending submissions listed on Duotrope for this place. But who knows how fierce the competition really is. I think my story is pretty original, maybe. That's probably what every writer thinks. But I'm guessing originality is really going to matter here. I really did put a lot of time and revision into my piece. If I were to add up all the time I spent writing and revising, this one took me more time than usual to get where I considered it ready to submit. For a while there, I really wasn't sure I would get to that point in time. I am glad I did it, but I will never use the name Harriet again in a story! Anyway, I'm planning to subscribe to this journal so I can read all the stories. And I do want to try it again already. The next first line is "It was the farthest north they had ever been." And The deadline to submit for that one is Nov. 1. I have no idea where I will go with that one, but I'm going to give it a shot. @Homer Potvin -- Did you end up finishing your story and submitting it? If so, I wish you and @Set2Stun good luck. Anyone up for the next one?
Yep, I'm in for this one. Much easier than the freakin' Harriet prompt, I feel. Got a few ideas already. Probably a lot of submitters will be going for a post-apoc thing, maybe climate-related. I like that kind of thing, so I need to resist temptation and take a different tack. November 1st? Heck of a lot of time. I do regret not getting to learn more about the violent demise of Harriet on account of her truly awful name
Maybe it's time for me to start making submissions and maybe this is a good place to start. "It was the farthest north they had ever been." gives me visions of Americans visiting Canada, lol. I'm going to give it a try.
I've got a start, just a page so far. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with it yet, but it feels good to get something down.
See, I'd be a wiseass like I was with the last story. It was the furthest north they'd ever been. They they remembered the Starbucks was on the southern side of the mall.
Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind from time to time. If my son and his family move to Alaska in a few years, I might move north yet.
