Writing Journal: 5/19/11 Update

My slow process of evolving from a "wanna-be writer" to a "writer" continues, and I thought I'd give you an update of how the writing is going:

• The work on my first novel is inching along, although I am still only around 45,000 words on my first-draft.  A big reason for this was the writing-and-scrapping of some of the latest chapters.  Yes it's only a first-draft, so maybe I should just write and move on, but I'd reached a point in the story where the original structure I'd been working on was bogging down.  The bulk of the chapters so far have been a split between the son's current PoV and the father's back-story, flash-back police-work PoV, but I was beginning to feel like I was treading water with the son -- he was starting to do nothing but low-drama filler stuff to essentially kill time for the father's stories to get told.  So I've done some restructuring and some additional planning, and now I think I'm on track to make some good progress moving ahead using a slightly modified structure to get the father's back-story in there.

• After 41 days, my first-ever submitted story ("Waiting Backstage") is still in the queue over at Every Day Fiction, and it's at least made it out of the slush pile.  I'm going to take that as a small victory: Whoo-hoo! My work isn't total crap!  Now it's listed as "in process," meaning it's been passed on to an editor for evaluation.  We'll see how this goes...

• I never heard back from the host of the 50-Word Story web-site from the submission I sent ("She Left") over a month ago.  But he's posted an opportunity on his blog to submit some stories to the website "Geeking Out About..." for a 50-word story contest.  I've put up six 50-word stories on my blog, and I think I might throw them all into the hat over there to see what happens (multiple submissions are acceptable).  Why not?

• I'm about 2/3 done with another flash story that I might submit to EDF -- it's a tongue-in-cheek piece tentatively called "Nightmare at Ground Level," based on the famous old "Nightmare at 10,000 Feet" Twilight Zone story by Richard Matheson (remember William Shatner and the gremlin on the wing?).

• I'm still working through my Creative-Copy Challenge series, "The Look of Murder," posted every Monday and Thursday (I posted part one HERE also).  I've posted Part 17 and will put up part 18 today.  I have it plotted out to end at part 24, so only six more episodes.

So that's where my writing efforts are being spent these days, just in case you're interested...