It's Progress...

My rewriting of the short story is going well.

I've finished the first rewrite now and just need to go back through it, as I'm a couple of hundred words short of the minimum word count for my target magazine.

I did have to jiggle the dialogue around between characters as I had to lose one- they were surplus to requirements.

Though the narrative and description changed slightly, the dialogue didn't, it just fitted into place. I suppose it was because the characters hadn't changed...character.

Admittedly dialogue has always been a strong point, and I can hear the different characters as they speak - I just have to hope that readers can too, and it's not just me because I'm writing them!

I want to get this story done and out of the way so I can get back to Serena's Nottinghamshire story.

There's been no progress on the chapter two rewrite because the scene needs a few additions, and I have to bring in one of the minor missing (from draft one) characters, and get to know them.

My word count for the month has gone up because I'm now recording any writing I do, be it my blog posts, non-fiction, judging, information pieces for the writers' club magazine as well as fiction.

So I've discovered that I write more than I think- considering I can't touch type.

I'm making progress and that's the important thing...

Before winter and the
Blackbirds arrived...

Changing Voice...

As I've been attempting to revise a short story that has been sitting on my computer for a while - it won one of the writers club short story competitions a couple of years ago - I've been struggling a little.

It's not that I can't sort out the edits that are needed, it's just that I've not got the same voice as I had then.

For the past eighteen months to two years I've been concentrating on my longer stories, and now have two first drafts.

Slipping into Serena Lake mode isn't that difficult, because writing a story set over 200 years ago requires a different mind-set and style of expression, as speech patterns and the meanings of many words and phrases used are very different to modern life.

Coming back to the first draft of my Nottinghamshire short novel I was back into that voice within an hour.

But now with the short story I can hear the differences in my current voice, to the one two years ago, and it's quite disconcerting.

I suppose it's part of developing as a writer, learning, and being open to trying different things.

So at the end of my unsatisfactory short story editing session I considered my choices.

a) Abandon the story completely and forget about it.

b) Carry on with the editing and hope it sorts itself out.

c) Rewrite the whole thing, keeping the good bits and taking out or adapting the bits I needed to edit anyway - and it will all be the current voice.

Obviously I chose c).

I know b) won't work, and the story deserves another chance before I resort to a).

While I'm rewriting it, I may actually lose the 300 odd words to get it down to the 1,000 word length...

Changes...!

Changing sky...