Boston Cupcakes: according to the cookbook, mace gives them a special New England twist.
Um, yeah. But everyone liked them.
I am happy to say I don't hate the dolphin story so much anymore. Sick to death of it, yes, but not hatred. This is an improvement.
A couple of days ago on 43folders.com there was a suggestion about taking things from conception to completion (shut up, despite having posted a link, I'm writing this from memory rather) in the shortest time possible. With the dolphin story, I have not done this. For some reason a few weeks ago in editing, I dumped like four pages of exposition into the first act of the story. It's a short story. It can't take that sort of weighing down. In the last couple of evenings, I've taken most of that back out.
What I think I can improve:
1. Write a better first draft (probably less with the endless exposition).
2. Edit more efficiently.
Maybe if I practice editing things I've written recently, I will start to write things with an eye to editing them? At my day-job I try to always keep a manual in a reasonably "close to finished" state. It reads logically from start to finish, doesn't have huge chunks of half-written crap, so that I can always fire off a draft to someone who needs it for QA purposes, or who just wants to find out what the product does. And yet my story-editing system is completely destructive of the first draft. Often it takes three or four more drafts before I am able to read a story through again, after a somewhat readable but exposition-heavy first draft.
Maybe the next story will go smoother.
But at least I have cupcakes.
Um, yeah. But everyone liked them.
I am happy to say I don't hate the dolphin story so much anymore. Sick to death of it, yes, but not hatred. This is an improvement.
A couple of days ago on 43folders.com there was a suggestion about taking things from conception to completion (shut up, despite having posted a link, I'm writing this from memory rather) in the shortest time possible. With the dolphin story, I have not done this. For some reason a few weeks ago in editing, I dumped like four pages of exposition into the first act of the story. It's a short story. It can't take that sort of weighing down. In the last couple of evenings, I've taken most of that back out.
What I think I can improve:
1. Write a better first draft (probably less with the endless exposition).
2. Edit more efficiently.
Maybe if I practice editing things I've written recently, I will start to write things with an eye to editing them? At my day-job I try to always keep a manual in a reasonably "close to finished" state. It reads logically from start to finish, doesn't have huge chunks of half-written crap, so that I can always fire off a draft to someone who needs it for QA purposes, or who just wants to find out what the product does. And yet my story-editing system is completely destructive of the first draft. Often it takes three or four more drafts before I am able to read a story through again, after a somewhat readable but exposition-heavy first draft.
Maybe the next story will go smoother.
But at least I have cupcakes.