Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Short stories and instant gratification

I came away from the LTUE writer's conference in February with one goal: write a short story and use the smaller scale project to figure out my process for revision. It was probably the best stroke of genius that ever hit me and I have to thank that author who volunteered his time to teach the class I attended when I had my epiphany, even though I only remember his first name... Thanks Brad!

I wrote a short story, got feedback from my writer's group, and successfully revised it to the point that I'm confident to submit it to an anthology. And the best part is it didn't take me years to do - which is how long I've been working on my novel-length projects. I wrote it in about a month, revisions took another. BAM! In the world of a writer, that is instant gratification. And we all know how much I like that since I have no patience...

With this little success under my belt, I'm excited to get back to work on my novel. My next deadline is to have my first round of revisions done and out to my writing group by the end of the summer. I feel like the years up to this point have been spent learning the craft of writing in the disguise of writing. Now I am getting down to the business of actually doing it. It's been fun the whole time, but now we are entering the realm of thrilling.

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