Sent a story to a friend for evaluation before I send it to magazines and literary journals. I really need to cut about 1000 words of its current 6000 words before I would feel comfortable sending it off. That tends to be the problem with a lot of things I write—a thousand words too long, every time.

The deadline for a local fiction contest is coming up. I’ve entered this particular contest twice, both times with stories that felt like rough drafts. Story 1, written in 2002, had not a plot or a point in sight. Story 2, written in 2005, was, of course, 1000 words too long. I had a rough time cutting those words to meet the word limit (3000 words) and still keeping the plot intact. I remember finishing it and printing it out around 6:30 on a Wednesday morning, then rushing it down to the main regional post office before work. It needed to be to the newspaper’s office by Friday of that same week. I’ll never know if it was rejected because it didn’t make it in time, or if was just plain old rejected. I never got a notice either way. I read it just last night for the first time in a long time, and I still think it’s an okay story. The ending, which I was so happy to conceive last year, struck me as weak this time around. Maybe I can revise it and make something of it.

Anyway, the deadline for said contest is this Friday, though at least I won’t have to worry about the post office this year. There’s an online submission option—hurrah! Now all I have to worry about is actually finishing my story before the deadline. Oy. I already had one false start. I started a new story with a title and theme I’ve been wanting to use for a long time, but, yet again, I’m having trouble getting a plot and a point to gel. This lovely entry here at 43T is a warm-up for tonight’s work on that story, so let me post this thing and see how far I can get.