Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Another Draft Bites the Dust

I finished the first round of revisions to Carson's Learning last night. I think I kept only 20% of the original version. And all but 500 words of the 10,700 I wrote this past week (GO ME!!!) were brand new. I had planned to finish the new draft of this project last Monday when I was taking care of all the errands we missed while we were out of town, but I only got 5,500 words (yes, I know, "only") before I realized that I had no gas left and a decent amount of territory left to cover. So I put Soz aside so I could crank CL out, and I wrote the last word last night. Now I'm going to let that bad boy sit in the dark for at least two weeks before I head back in for revisions. And I have some decisions to make. Technically, the anthology for which I intended this piece didn't put a word limit on submissions, but they did say 4,000 to 10,000 words was the preferred range. Um, even with some stellar revisions and tightening of transitions and phrases and so on, I'll be hard-pressed to bring the word count down to 14,000, let alone 10,000. I'll still give it a try as I think CL would be a great fit for this project, but I'm not sure they're going to read my cover letter beyond the word count.

That's been the focus of my life in between handling major stress at work, getting sick (feaver and chills = fun!), getting Andrew all checked out and immunized, introducing him to solid foods (after three tries, he's a pro), and acting as a personal driving service for Mark and a colleague while the bus drivers are on strike. Wheeeeeeee.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Almost every market states that, for a good story, they'll waive word count restrictions. I don't think they'll put it down just at the word count; they won't know if it's any good based solely on that.

Confidence, Kellie. *-*