Where Am I Now?

I mentioned in the first post that my journey had begun a little while back. If you followed the chain of events, February marked my first story that was aimed at professional publication. That story is named Daughter-Debt and is being judged by the Writers of the Future (WotF) contest. I have submitted a few other stories to magazines which were entered in some contests although never published. I have two rejection notices so far with Daughter-Debt and two other stories out on the market currently (a children's story and a short science fiction piece.)

After mailing Daughter-Debt, I began working on a submission for the next quarter (3rd quarter, April - June) of the WotF contest, but this story has grown to over 20,000 words with at least another 10,000 more words to go. WotF requires stories to be under 15k words. Oops! I have decided to start a new story for this quarter of the WotF contest and expand this story into a novel in the 70k-100k word range.

Writing a novel which is over 70k words seemed huge to me in January, but I have had so much fun writing the first 20k words, that I don't expect any trouble with the other 50k. I have to flesh out the story points a bit for the additional length, but I don't expect that to take much effort. I have placed the project on the back burner so that I have an entry ready for the WotF contest by the end of June.

What am I entering in the WotF contest then? Well, I have three ideas at this point. I don't have titles for these yet and don't want to give the story plots away, so I will not give more information right now. Suffice to say, I expect to finish one or two of these in the next seven to ten days. Then I will begin the editting process.

What do I do to edit? The first thing I do is hand the manuscript (fancy term for story) to my wife. She is not an editor, but she reads science fiction and fantasy. She does a great job of letting me know when I leave her stranded or suddenly pull an item out of the air. This gives me some great feedback about what is essential for my reader.

After her review, I sit down to 'fix' the things she points out. This is usually my first time reading the entire work in one sitting. This allows me to have a few days separation and then to read it for effect. I have gotten some interesting surprises already in some of these readings. On one such reading of Daughter-Debt, I discovered that my writing edits on a section resulted in my inadvertent cutting of over a paragraph which was key to understanding the scene.

I make the changes and get my wife to reread it to see if she feels her problem(s) were solved. Once she feels comfortable with it, I send the story to either a workshop or a group of friends who I trust for honest and blunt feedback. This was as far as I got on Daughter-Debt.

In theory, my next step would be to set the story aside for a month and then do a final edit before mailing it. So far, deadlines have prevented me from hitting this last stage. It bothers me a little, but I'd rather have a slightly less than perfect manuscript out there than NO manuscripts out there. I figure that a rejection will allow me to revise it again then. And if it is not rejected...

Keep 'em coming!