I don’t like being afraid of things. I’m that idiot who goes outside to investigate the weird noise in the middle of the night, or looks inside the ancient, mysterious box even when the scary music is playing. So, I opened the work-in-progress to see if it was as bad as I remembered...
It kind of was. I had point of view slips and inconsistent characterisation. Really rookie stuff. It also felt like a bunch of 500-word attempts mashed together, which, in fairness, it was. My world building was almost non-existent and there was a lot of going from one place to another -hot tip; travel is rarely interesting in a story unless SOMETHING HAPPENS!
Taking a few months break really helped me to see the faults of story, which is why you should always let your first drafts sit for a while before you show them to anyone else. I don’t normally like to edit a story until I’ve finished it, but this one needed fixing before I could continue. Now, it is pushing 3,000 words and reads like it was written in one sitting. More importantly, the reader in me wants to know what happens next.
I still need to finish it and add some more setting, but it’s not the big scary monster it was before. The end feels achievable now and I am keen to open the file and move the story along. My goal is to have it finished by the end of the coming weekend. There we go; accountability, the whole purpose of this blog. I’ll check back in on Sunday night and let you know how I get on.
I also have something to confess… The next story is breathing down my neck and I really want to see where it goes! But one project at a time, that’s the rules. And by “the” rules, I mean my nonsensical, superstitious, can’t-justify-them-at-all rules. I think all writers have those.
Update: I finally finished the short story. Just over 5,000 words in total and I shed a tear when I wrote "The End" (which is normally a good sign). Now it just needs to stew for a month or two and then I can give it an edit.
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