Story #2 is in the can! At first contact, the mirror never made it into the story, but it turned into a very interesting story called “Teddy Bear Man.”
Story #3 is going to take an old idea that I want to revisit, non-werewolf weres and mash it into the prompt, Mayday.
It took a lot of effort to get this far, to feel like I could do one story a week for a year. It was scary when I signed up for it–costs money, so it’s a really commitment.
The last two times I tried something like this, it didn’t last more than a few weeks because of my day job. I’m a knowledge worker, and the industry hasn’t figured out how to handle work.
Most of the time, it was about putting out fires, so I was staying on reactive mode all day. That’s very exhausting. I fell of the other two challenges because the day job left my energy too low to muster any creativity.
Oddly, COVID-19 forced work to slow down, and that allowed me to figure out how to balance my time better so I’m not putting out fires non-stop.
I still have other things to learn on this, so we’ll see what happens!
Linda Maye Adams 
Congratulations on making this horrid year work for you!
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It took a while! When everything started shutting down initially, I knew the media was going into full Chicken Little mode. I shut down as much media access as I could–and was shocked at how many sites and subscriptions I’d accumulated. I also dropped off Facebook, except for the Superstars group, because everyone was making the situation worse by sharing articles on COVID-19. It was like being in Desert Storm where we were in the constant state of being ready to react. That’s exhausting, energy-draining, and very wearing. People start fighting about dumb things, and it brings out the worst in people. All I could do was circle the wagons as much as possible to protect myself.
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