A good writing day

Confession: I'm afraid something's going to happen to take this away.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint
• The Last Command, by Timothy Zahn

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

As you can see, I've taken "Ferian Fetlock" off the list. That's right, the first draft of "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" is finished. It needs work, of course, but that's only to be expected.

The ending surprised me a little. Oh sure, I knew how I wanted to the story to end, and that's how it ended. The events that transpired are the same as I had planned. But I wasn't able to make that ending be an ending with closure. It was an ending with a hook for the next chapter. In other words, Ferian is refusing to shut up and be a short story. He wants to be a book.

As you can see, though, I didn't immediately put the next story, "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," as my new writing project. Nor did I put up Dairhenien's Library, although that had been my original plan. You see, in two weeks I'm going to participate once more in the 24 Hour Short Story Contest, and I want to be in the right frame of mind for that.

My next major task is to actually start working on the "Cora and the Sea" revision, since my reading on August 11th is coming up fast. I don't know if that will take two whole weeks or not--hopefully not. So I need to decide on another project to fill in with in the mean time. Dairhenien might be a good bet, if nothing else to organize further the world building notes I've written. Or characters... yes, I should probably start working on characterization a bit more. I know many of the broad strokes, but none of the flavor.

Of course, any time I work on Dairhenien, there won't be an immediate payoff. I need to get "Illuminated" resubmitted, and perhaps another story too. Should I work on "The Revenant" some more? Do some more magazine research too?

It's doubly important to get more stories out because of the other thing that happened today: our girl "Dolly Hobbles" was accepted for publication by The Storyteller magazine. It is slated for the Jan/Feb/March 2009 issue of that publication.

As you can imagine, I'm thrilled. I immediately called my parents and a few others, and emailed everyone who has ever helped me in my writing. Now I'm going to have to put an Accepted counter down here too!

Publication Status:

• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1