It's only Wednesday but I'm way excited about this coming weekend.

Round 2 of the NYC Midnight Creative Writing Championship runs from -- duh -- midnight on Friday until midnight on Sunday. The contest directors email out a Setting, Genre and Object and contestants have the next 48 hours to whip up a 1000-or-less-word story. Last month's story for Round 1 got skewered in critique. My story idea was good -- more on this later -- but I think it was a bit more than 1000 words could handle.

Live and learn, right. With last weekend's Writer's Weekly short story in which we only had 24 hours to come up with a similar-lengthed story I think I may have found the right groove for coming up with the right scope of ideas.

My good fortune is that everyone in the competition gets to Round 2. It's the combined ranking of Rounds 1 and 2 that earns us a place in Round 3. We are assigned a group of 15 writers. Each writer in my group got the same Setting, Genre and Object. So let's say I really messed up in Round 1 and I came in dead last. If I whip out the best story in Round 2, my total is 16: 1 point for last place in Round 1 and 15 points for first place in Round 2. That would beat someone who came in 8th one week and 9th another.

That's not to say I think I got last place, but it's possible. Regardless, I learned a lot from Round 1 and I'll be surrounded by fellow writers for much of Round 2 so I can bounce ideas off them if necessary.

And that brings me to the second reason I'm pumped about this coming weekend. It's another San Antonio Writers Guild write-in at Bethany Congregational Church. I'm normally pumped about the write-ins but this weekend, with the NYC contest, I don't have to make a decision about what to write. I'll already have been stewing on the idea by the time I arrive.

The event starts at 9am, but I always arrive early, around 8ish. There are always too many breakfast tacos, nice folks, scheduled breaks and quiet during writing blocks. It's a perfect atmosphere for writing and it couldn't come at a more perfect time.

This will be the second weekend in a row that is dominated by my writing. In an effort not to come off too selfish, I'll probably need to be ultra-present for a couple weeks.

Wish me luck.