Thoughts on a Thursday

I can't believe I only have 2 days left in my current job - it's quite weird to think next week I will be starting a new one. Looking forward to next week! Although I'm excited about starting a new job, I always dislike the first week as you usually don't *do* anything...! It's all setting up computers & email and reading employee handbooks and meeting people (and forgetting their names) and so on.

So, because we had girls' night last night, I had my writing night on Tuesday instead. I sat down with that 'Escaping Fish' short story and hammered out the rest of the first draft. All that's missing are the last few lines. But I've been thinking about the story and will probably rearrange some of the structure. I think I made an amateur approach to it in that I withheld some info from the reader until the end. I've decided I don't need to hide it; actually it will have more impact if I reveal the info before the end, so the reader will be fully informed of what the characters are doing in the last moments and what the implications are.

After I finished that draft, I tried to write more on In Finding, but found it hard to switch brains. So I'll probably pick that up again in the weekend. I'm still a little under 40 k words on that - I wrote quite a lot last weekend, but I also removed an entire scene! Argh, I hate going backwards! Although I did put together a list of 'things that need to happen' / scenes for the story, and I'm not sure in which order they should go. I guess I need to think more about how one thing could affect another thing, etc.

I also made a list of the short stories I want to complete:

- Escaping Fish
- Dancing at the Lilac Orchid (already done, needs rewrite)
- A Slice of Soul (already done, also needs rewrite, have to find the tension)

I think once I have those 3 to a point where I am mostly happy, I will rejoin the OWW (sci-fi & fantasy online writing workshop) and post them for review. And of course, start reviewing other people's work too. I have been a member of the OWW on-and-off since 2002 and think it has been invaluable for improving my writing. Learning how to crit another person's story will always help your own.