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No more writing yet...

...but I've done some more unwriting.   Two more stories cut down to 1000 words, one from 1100, one from 1350.   So I have a set of things to hit flash markets with; that will do, for now (actually, I think there's one more that might stand the cutting).   Oh, and in trimming one of these which is "story-within-a-story" structure (yes, in 1000 words) I think I came up with a fix for the long-outstanding slightly-broken "Carpet of Dreams".

I feel weary from the multiple passes through, though.   Probably took longer than actually writing the original stories.   Unwriting is hard. 


Real life continues to be unconducive to finishing off the various oddments lying around.   But hopefully soon.

Posted on May. 14th, 2008 at 09:53 am | | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

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[info]safewrite

Flash markets?
Posted on May. 14th, 2008 09:03 am (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]tchernabyelo

Flash Fiction Online, Flash Me, Every Day Fiction.

Oh, and I'm given to understand Abyss and Apex take flash as well, but I already have a story waiting on an answer there, and they're closed at the moment. :)
Posted on May. 14th, 2008 09:26 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]juudes

So is there such a thing as Slash Flash (or Flash Slash)?
Posted on May. 14th, 2008 11:54 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]tchernabyelo

There may well be, but I neither know, nor desire to know...

Go use your Google-fu.
Posted on May. 14th, 2008 12:22 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]gabriel_writes

If one writes a flash story involving cookwear, does one have to find a Flash-in-the-pan market. Or will ordinary Calaphalon do?


Posted on May. 14th, 2008 03:36 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]peadarog

Cutting is definitely a challenge, but more like doing a crossword puzzle than being creative.
Posted on May. 14th, 2008 12:36 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]gabriel_writes

Real life for me here too. Tonight we are having dinner guests, so I suspect no writing will get done...

I find too, that my edits take much longer than what was written initially. Sometimes I just have to get the flavor of the story down and see it in type or handwriting before what needs to be cut becomes apparent...
Posted on May. 14th, 2008 03:39 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]justin_pilon

Anything over a 10% cut usually makes me sweat, especially for Flash Fiction. My habit is to go through the story cutting stuff out, but then I find a place that I am unsatisfied with and add words. By the time I get through the whole story I end up with the same amount of words I started out with... and the cycle repeats!
Posted on May. 15th, 2008 04:15 am (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]tchernabyelo

I think this is the first time I've managed to resist that tendency, though with some difficulty.

Some of the cutting is finding ways to make two words do what five or six were doing (though in places this can damage the cadence of the prose, so has to be done in context), smoe of it is trying to find which elements of a scene arn't necessary, occasionally.

I didn't actually cut any scenes in these stories, though. I know I need to do that on the prune of "The Vulkodlaki" when I finally knuckle down to it, because I want to cut that from 12k to 8k. That's going to be achieved more through a rewrite from the bottom up than a cut from the top down.
Posted on May. 15th, 2008 08:52 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply