Honestly, this was an incredibly fun book to write, especially as a participant in ONC. This was my first time doing ONC and I didn't know what to fully expect except that this was going to be a) a lot of fun to jump back into another short story/novella because I love writing them dearly, and b) extremely tiring because the last thing I needed was to add another story to my plate. But, as we said at the beginning, here we are. Here being that sexy checkmark. (Yeet yeet.) I honestly often forgot this is technically supposed to be a contest, as it's truly been a blast seeing every get so excited about their stories. It's a completely different experience than participating in something like the Wattys, so I would recommend everyone give this a try in the future if they can! Even if you don't "win" anything, you'll still have a completed story in your hands at the end of a few weeks. And who knows? Maybe something more on the horizon.

Also, yay me for writing something with absolutely no romance! Nora is a whole lesbian. Porter is hella gay. Don't ship them. Thanks.

As I mentioned in the prelude, this idea came about after getting back into Daisy Jones and the Six, which I have since finished (yay for productivity) and subsequently fallen in love with (all hail the women of djats.) And, in case it wasn't obvious, there was some heavy Bon Iver inspiration here as well. One look at my page and you'll realize I have a thing for writing about musicians, as a music lover myself, so it was unsurprising that this prompt spoke to me. It's also my life's mission now to include Stevie (and her favorite bozo Maverick) in every cameo possible. So, if you liked hearing about these spoons and aren't already familiar with their stories, please feel free to check out my book Adrenaline and her soulmate Fly With Me by thaliagrace-  

This is definitely not the strongest narrative I've written, but that has a lot to do with the format. I wanted it to focus on one day only and follow a particular interview without copying the same interview style of djats. And since I had some time/word count restraints, that also meant I was limited with the story I wanted to tell. While it's a fun challenge to write within those limitations, it sometimes means sacrificing ideas you might have had. Some things were done on purpose, like jumping around in conversations, keeping them relatively fast-paced, and being imprecise about certain elements. Keeping all of the reasons for the "break up" somewhat vague, for the most part, being one of those examples of adapting the story I had in mind for the limitations. (It also wasn't quite the purpose of the story either, to know certain things, but that might be my all-knowing bias as the writer talking.)

That being said, I have a few ideas of how to expand this into a full-length (read: unnecessarily long) novel in the future, one of which would include a dual timeline aspect that I think could be entertaining. Will I ever get around to it? Maybe. Maybe not. Will that version see the light of the internet? Who knows! But that idea is there.

If you made it this far, thank you again for supporting me on my writing journey. And the biggest congratulations to anyone who participated in ONC this year. You all deserve a round of applause.

Until next time,
Steph