I finished “Ten-Year Reunion” Monday night. It stopped at 5300 words. Tuesday night was the last night of agility class for Ms. Athena so I got nothing done, but tonight I broke out the hammer and tongs and started whittling away at TYR. And the result?

Some of it is good. A lot of it is not. Does the story go where it needs to? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. Is it salvageable? I think so. It’s certainly not the best thing I’ve written, nor is it anything complex or deep really. This is at the point where I need to polish it up one more time and have a couple people look at it. On the first read, it dragged. I think I’ll be cutting it down by at least 1500 words and trying to make it a bit more punchy.

The first 1000 words is pretty good. I think it sets the tone I’m looking for but I can’t let too much of it be just about a woman wandering around an empty house thinking. Actually, about 90% of this story is a woman wandering around an empty house thinking but that’s not very exciting, now is it? It’s funny how much first drafts are about getting to know the characters and their histories. It’s also funny how almost all of it can be whacked down to a key phrase or two if you do it right.

I spent two hours on the editing of this tonight and got about 1/3 of the way through a 5300-word story that’s taken a couple weeks to write. This is not a fast process.