First Draft ~ Cripple

I spent much of the past week writing the first draft of my contribution to the anthology. So much for stating I'd try to knock it out in one writing session that would render me zombie-like.
I started at pace, knocking out a third in about five hours before the dawn approached and I had somewhere to be.
When I returned to it, the same blood wasn't flowing through my creative juices so instead of trying to hinder progress, I left it until I had time to turn things over in my mind. The story was the better for it. I paced myself, took time to think about what I was writing. Structurally, I adhered to what I had prepped for myself. Structure is nothing unless you fill in the gaps in between, and I was glad it took the week, wrote in leisure at my own pace, in times of my choosing and to me, that's important and I'm lucky to have that freedom.

I came up 500 words short than my target. That's fine, I've plenty of re-writing to do. From the first draft I now have a blue print to work from. Given it's only 15 pages in length in it's current state, I'll print it out next week and save some of the sight I have left. I'll work from a print out as I set about fine tuning it. There's plenty of time to return to it a few more times and I intend to. I'm excited I've tried something new, I've wrote short stories but they were all filed away completed in first draft form never to be re-visited.

I'm happy with what I've wrote. I wrote it in the first person. I find it easier when writing a character to step into their shoes. I can still step in more but that will require more work. It's possible I'll do it but that won't become apparent until I've read it a number of times again. If it's anything like the process of writing a book I'm sure it will change quite a bit. This time though, I won't have the battle of deciding which words to delete.

This time I need a few more...

Beginnings.

All the Intercontinental Ink writers were asked to write a short story loosely based around the theme 'If there was one day from life you could erase'.

In mid-July all writers were asked to submit a short synopsis of the story they wanted to explore and a genre in which they wanted to write in.

The writers then embarked on writing their first drafts within a word count that was not to exceed 10,000 words.

The writers have set themselves a goal of finishing the completed anthology by the middle of November and intend to explore self publishing routes available on the Internet, though we will listen to all fantastical publishing offers by those in the mainstream of that world.

:)