Activity Report and Announcements

Foreword

Hello everyone.

This is Otogawa, who spent yesterday afternoon cleaning my room until it was spotless.

I vacuumed, dusted, scrubbed the toilet, cleared the clutter off my desk, put away my short-sleeved shirts, and neatly organized my books and notes on the shelves.

Why did I suddenly start doing all that?

Perhaps it goes without saying.

That's right.

Because today was the deadline for the open call for submissions.

The open call has ended

The reason I was experiencing that psychological state common before an exam was because I was participating in this open call.▼

It seems you can enter with a short story of 4,000 characters, so it's not too late to start now. Probably.

I just finished submitting a 10,000-character piece a little while ago, but if I hadn't started cleaning my room, maybe I could have finished a more polished work.

However, this time, my writing hand stopped and started more than it has in a long time.

The reason for that was probably a mix of enthusiasm like "Alright, I'm going to write a submission for the open call!", admiration like "It's Yohei Sadojima's Cork!", strange confidence like "Digital novels, yeah, yeah, I get it, I get it", and excitement like "I get to participate in the very first open call!".

Even so, I managed to write it in about two weeks, so I suppose that's pretty good for me.

I might post this on note eventually.

Actually, I still don't really know to what extent it's okay to publish works submitted to public competitions online.

Since some application guidelines explicitly state 'unpublished works,' I wonder if that aspect is surprisingly lenient.

Public competitions are starting

And the 'announcement' is that, although tomorrow is Saturday, I have decided to take a break from the comment relay novel project for one week.

No, no, it's definitely not because I want to watch Shohei Ohtani in the World Series or anything like that.

I know that the first game against the New York Yankees is 10/26 (Sat) NHK BS from 9:30 AM, but that has absolutely nothing to do with it.

What was I talking about?

Ah, public competitions, right, public competitions.

The deadlines that are usually in June or July have been significantly extended this year.

I wonder if it's due to book publication schedules or something like that.

Speaking of horror, it is summer after all.

Anyway, I'm not satisfied with this work for the competition yet, so I want to commit to it next week.

Therefore, please allow me to continue the current Little Red Riding Hood (or rather, Demon Slayer featuring Tamo-san) arc for another week.

So that I won't have any excuses even if I clean my room every day next week.

And if anyone participating in the [Jump Horror Novel Awards] is reading this, I just hope you won't escape into reality like I am, and will get to work on finishing your piece immediately.

▼ Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba featuring Tamo-san.

▼ I might work harder on this than on the public submission.