November Writing Contest Results

Now that I'm done with graduate school for the semester, I can post about the results from my November writing contest with my friend Lauren.

My most important accomplishment this month was taking THE THING IN THE WOODS from 36,294 to 40,579 words. That's over 4,000 words. All that's left to do is write the climactic confrontation with the titular Eldritch Abomination and I'll be done with the first draft. My plan is to bring the remaining chapters before one of my writing groups in December and then the whole thing before my other writing group in early January. Then comes the search for agents, publishers, etc. THING will probably be rather short, which could be tricky.

I also managed to cut BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS down from 99,631 (100,000 as far as publishers are concerned, since one always rounds) to 97,427 words. This I accomplished through lots of little cuts, like replacing "looked to the left" with "looked left." Many small cuts, added up, equal lots of cut words. All this was done without affecting the macro plot any.

I also worked on some old short stories that might be Kindle fodder. I brought one before my writing group this morning and got some advice that could lead to two versions, one a supernatural horror tale and the other a purely natural "animal story" that could be sent to a pricier market.