I’m laughing at myself because my writing history is as an English major focused on British works, newspaper reporter and copy desk editor, TV and radio reporter and producer, digital media producer, business strategist, paid media and consumer strategy marketer, and brand strategist. Simplifying down a lot of moves and transitions.
But ultimately, after my major, I was mainly focused and trained to write short and direct, and catchy. So when I went to write my first novel, writing long-form fiction was a kind of mind explosion. It was a whole other ballgame to keep a reader through 60k words, and then when I wrote it over again, 85K plus words, without losing pace, etc.
But now, I’m working on a short story that has to be under 15K words, and all my scenes keep going too long! It’s like I can’t help myself. I keep collapsing scenes in the hopes of cutting the ultimate word count by not showing everything or dragging everything out–but we’ll see how it nets out. You gotta make two people believably fall in love fast–and make it all make sense and be interesting.
So here I was all complaining about writing long, and now I’m struggling to write short. Snort!
But I can’t complain. As mentioned, my deadline is Halloween, I’m at about 62% complete, and I’ve got about 6000 words to go to get through the rest of the story, as far as I’ve plotted it. Let’s hope I can keep it to that! ?
At this rate, I should finish with enough time to give it a solid edit before sending it to my editor, so that makes me happy. And then, while I wait for edits, it’s time to get after my book again that has been resting and edit it! Sooooo a lot of editing in my future. And I’ve told y’all before how much I love editing. ?
Alrighty then, so that’s the update on my progress! Also I’m hoping to “dabble” in painting again. If you want to check out my site for that or follow that Instagram account, you’ll find them here: