The first draft of the short story is officially completed! It still doesn’t have an official title…I’m still kicking a few things around. My betas have read it and made suggestions and notes. Now it’s time to let it sit for a while. In a couple of weeks, I’ll look at it again with fresh eyes, make a few more tweaks, edits, and revisions, and then we’ll see.
The funny thing is, I was way over the word limit and I had to go about chopping things. Now, this has never really happened to me before. It was actually an interesting experience. I had to really think about my word choices. I had to cut out erroneous words. I realized that, in this one, I overused the word little a lot. If it didn’t need to be there, it got deleted. I even cut out an entire scene that I loved. But it wasn’t necessary to the narrative, just a fun bit of information. So it had to go. It was hard to do. I agonized over it. I highlighted and copied into another document so I didn’t lose the words. And then I sat there for quite a while before I could make myself hit the delete button. And even then, I had to have a little hand holding and for someone to say to me, “okay, yeah, cut it.” before I could do it. More learning experiences for me as I try to get better as a writer.
It’s not quite where I want it yet, but it’ll get there.
In the meantime, it’s back to work on Beholden. My current WIP. It’s quite a world building experience. Even though it’s contemporary, it’s also paranormal. Magic exists, people. And that always mucks up the works. In the best possible way. I’m loving the world and it’s a fun, if also frustrating, experience. In trying to make it all make sense, I’m running into lots of problems. The good thing about that is that the process of figuring out the problems is really helping the world building as a whole. When a scene pops into my head, and there’s a bit of magic involved, i have to figure out the why of it. And how that fits into the magic system as a whole. I have so many notes, it’s sort of ridiculous. But I’m loving it all the same.
Kris T. Bethke--Author of M/M Romance 