The Writerly Update: The Wee Beastie Edition

[babarnett]

A month and a half after I started the damn thing, and the de-crapified second draft of my novel-prequel-ish short story (now titled Demon Dreams) is finally done. The wee beastie beefed up to 6,700 words in the second draft. That's what a hearty diet of more detail and description will do for one's fictional figure. Now I just need to give the beastie a final go over, and then it's into the critiquing pile while I start something else. 

I'll be doing The Never-Ending Odyssey (aka TNEO) again this summer, so it's that weird time of year where I have to wait several months after finishing a story to get critiques on it.  (Well, I'll probably throw the story at my lovely local group, the Awesome Ladies of Awesomeness, for our next meeting, but I'll wait until I have the TNEO crits as well before making any major revisions.)  Being forced to wait is probably a good thing for me.  Even though I take forever to write stories sometimes (or maybe because I take forever to write them), I tend toward impatience, wanting to get them out the door in speedy fashion as soon as they're done. So it's probably healthy for me to have to sit on a few of them for a spell and see how they age. 

And speaking of TNEO, I get to take on the roll of moderator this year, which I'm sure will keep me super busy on top of all the critiquing and writing to be done for it.  But I'm looking forward to it.

Comments

[jakobdrud.livejournal.com]

Congrats on finishing the second draft.

Having to wait can sometimes be a good thing. After drafting the novel, I returned to a handful of half-finished short stories, and I find it's a good thing I waited this long to look at them. Some of them had been revised to death, but now I may be able to resurrect them in some form. Hopefully yours turns out to be in much better condition when your workshops read them :-)

[babarnett.livejournal.com]

So if you resurrect them, does that make them zombie stories? ;)

[jakobdrud.livejournal.com]

LOL! Not exactly, though I often feel like hitting them with a bat ;-)

[hildebabble.livejournal.com]

Very cool.

Are you going to market it independently? Are you feeling protective of it because it's linked to your novel?

This is relevant to my interests.

[babarnett.livejournal.com]

It's definitely meant to stand on its own, and I think (hope) I've succeeded in doing that. Actually, at TNEO last year Scott Andrews said I should write a story set in my novel's world and submit it to him, so it's all his fault I wrote this. It's about time I sent him something new to reject. :)

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Wow! All sorts of


-age

[babarnett.livejournal.com]

And all sorts of sparklage too!

[jennygordon.livejournal.com]

De-crapified! I love it! 'Demon Dreams' is a great title too, btw. Glad you've got in in a shape you're happier with.

[babarnett.livejournal.com]

I'm relieved someone likes the title. If a title doesn't strike me during the first draft, I usually end up having a hell of a time coming up with one, so this story had me nervous in that regard. But then I actually came up with "Demon Dreams" during the second draft and it seemed a good fit, so yay!