I got up this morning and dressed for work and drove all the way into Knoxville and got out of my car and went up to the office doors--and they were locked, because the office was closed today. No one tells the temp anything. So I went to Starbucks and bought an overpriced hot chocolate, and wrote for about an hour before going home.
I'm working on the story that reached the semi-finals of the Writers of the Future contest this past fall. When I entered the contest, it was 10,100 words. After my excellent critique from K.D. Wentworth, I revised and added another 600 words. Then I sent it off, and I'm waiting to hear back--but this week I realized the story badly needs a chase scene in the middle. (Apparently the bulk of my revision thinking is done subconsciously, and I'm not being facetious.) Ordinarily I'd wait until the story came back to do another revision, but without that chase scene no one's going to buy it, so I've been working on that the last few days. Problem is, the story is now 13,000 words and I'm not even done.
13,000 words isn't technically even a short story anymore. It's more of a novelette, approaching novella range. And the longer it gets, the shorter the list of markets that will even look at it. And yet I absolutely do not see a way to cut even 1,000 words out of this behemoth. It needs all that room to develop, and there's stuff going on, and of course there's a chase scene now.
No comments:
Post a Comment