I should have posted a lot more but let me summarize. Yes, I finished my first story submission and was quite proud even though it took most of my allotted time for two stories and a lot of advice from beta readers. Then while I waited for feedback from that I started work on the next story with only ten days to completely finish it - and for a competition no less. You can probably see where this is going.
When I got feedback for the first story, they wanted more revisions, which I'm totally fine with. I expected it but I then made a new connection in my synapses, which was this: if I can't write a story in 3 weeks that doesn't need revisions, how am I supposed to write a story that will win a completion in ten days?
Yeah, I couldn't see a way past that wall. I stopped. Took a breather. Ignored writing for a while. Got back into X-Com 2 with some story characters as soldiers, which was fun, and lost confidence in my writing completely due to lack of exposure, started whining on Twitter, which is always a good thing.
Then one day, I started listening to The Damsel's music playlist which I made for research purposes obviously. And I started thinking of all those cool scenes again. Even had some new ideas and started writing those down to improve some scenes and update my music video plans for them. And then I started editing the story again.
All this is a long way of saying I'm back in the saddle, making progress, feeling good about my writing again. I am going to publish this year! Current target is to revise and get it to betas by mid Feb. Any volunteers?