Seems no matter how hard I try to edit my work down, it just gets bigger. "The Lyons' Den" is now up to 53,500 words. I may be able to eradicate some duplications in the last 2/3 of the story, but as of now I can't figure out what. Charles Dickens got paid by the word when he was writing, as did most authors back then; that supposedly is why they were so verbose. I ain't got that excuse. I ain't been paid royalties, yet, for one of my books, and the sale of my novella was a one-off payment.
Still...I'm having fun doing it. And I'm looking into ways to get it published by a more mainstream publisher. I've also begun looking into writing grants from various foundations and such. I'm not so sure about writing contests; I submitted "Desert Land" to the one held by "Writers' Digest" and this bleak dark story got judged by a lady who writes honey-sweet books about redemption. Needless to say, I didn't even get into the top 100.
I know that means I think the story was good enough to win. Fact is, I KNOW it was. I'm proud of it. And I was shocked at its complete dismissal...until I learned just one person decided which stories were acceptable. That just pissed me off. So I'm being more careful about those.
If I can, I'm going to see about using grants to pay for a 6 month stay in Derry...but that's just a preliminary goal, right now. I haven't researched this enough to see if that's even feasible.
So for now I work 3 hours a night on LD and push closer and closer to the end. And work my brain on how to achieve my dreams. This may be a fun period.
Still...I'm having fun doing it. And I'm looking into ways to get it published by a more mainstream publisher. I've also begun looking into writing grants from various foundations and such. I'm not so sure about writing contests; I submitted "Desert Land" to the one held by "Writers' Digest" and this bleak dark story got judged by a lady who writes honey-sweet books about redemption. Needless to say, I didn't even get into the top 100.
I know that means I think the story was good enough to win. Fact is, I KNOW it was. I'm proud of it. And I was shocked at its complete dismissal...until I learned just one person decided which stories were acceptable. That just pissed me off. So I'm being more careful about those.
If I can, I'm going to see about using grants to pay for a 6 month stay in Derry...but that's just a preliminary goal, right now. I haven't researched this enough to see if that's even feasible.
So for now I work 3 hours a night on LD and push closer and closer to the end. And work my brain on how to achieve my dreams. This may be a fun period.
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