Where once I was concerned with keeping my stories short, I have spent the weekend battling with this anthology submission in order to get it to the minimum word count. In two very long days, I took the story from ~1,200 words to ~4,300 words. And I’m stopping there.
For me, this is another nuance in the lesson on giving up. There are times were you just have to stop. I also apply this concept to my sketching; there is a certain point in the process where you start to screw up the work while trying to fix it. At that point, it’s best to put the pen or pencil (or keyboard) down and step the hell away before you ruin it. I would rather be 700 words short and have a good story (that may be accepted on its own merit despite the word count) than make the word count and have a crappy story (that will either be rejected outright or the editor will ask me to cut it down).
After a final typo crawl, I will be sending this one in, hopefully tonight. As always, I will return to share my triumph or my crushing defeat. 😉
However, there is no rest for the wicked. I have already brainstormed my next submission and I’m back to working with my steampunk gals, who I have missed terribly. No, I have not been editing the next First Brood book. You can yell at me if you want. I kinda deserve it. :p
As a fellow writer, I can sympathize with you. I recently completed a book (Drasmyr, a vampire novel)–actually, I finished it a couple years ago. But I wanted to give it a few extra read throughs looking for typos and making last minute changes. I kept finding stuff. Finally, I decided I couldn’t look at it anymore and took the plunge and published it. It was a relief in the end.
I felt the exact same way with my novel; Dreamhunter. I just couldn’t take it anymore and it was a huge weight off my shoulders. 🙂