Ah! Lofty goals for the day. My daughter is at her mother’s house until this evening so I’m going to attempt to conquer the known writing world in the next twelve hours. I should be able to finish the first draft of the tattoo story. Really, this thing is only about 8k, I have no idea why it has taken so long to write. Then it’s off to the 1.4k short for a local contest. I’ll probably try to get that one plotted this morning in the shower. I’m already thinking it’s going to be a character coming to grips with some inward problem while facing an outside and related problem. Short-short stories are difficult to plot, but there are a few tricks to make it easy. Generally, I focus on a character having some sort of revelation—sometimes it’s about another character and sometimes it’s about the POV character. Or you can focus on one very odd profession set in a fantasy world, and the inherent problems that come with such a profession. This is a trope, of course, but one that I think still works if you focus on the human elements.