@ricardosalarich Oh, that makes sense. When I short listed in the ONC last year, I had a very loose outline and ended up straying from my plan and writing something I hadn't expected. I nearly went over the word count limit and had to rush the end. So I have been tempted to flesh out my ending and write another 1k words or so, but I keep it the way that it is so people who read it can see the exact version that was short listed. But making the 2k 8k and 20k word cut offs really have great endings makes a lot of sense. I think paying more attention to that is a great idea.
I'm going to try and do the contest next year. I hope I can find a good prompt that relates to a book I already want to write. I think that is a strategy that some writers use. They work on a novella early and polish it and then when the prompts come out, they find one that loosely fits and revise the novella to fit the prompt better as they post it. I've seen people chatting about that on discord, so I thought that might have been what you meant by preparing for next year. I was contemplating it... 40 k is perfect for kids, so I am contemplating entering a novella that fits my fantasy world of Ciridia. I will probably write the book for NaNoWriMo next year. Anyways, it has been nice chatting with you!
