She talks to wolves...

I did a first-pass edit on half of Green Dream tonight. It gave me a headache. There are parts which I actually feel are good and like I know what I'm doing. And then there are the parts where I can't even tell if I know what I am doing and then the whole house of cards starts to tremble.

Is this any good? Would anyone care about this story? Do I care about this story? Is this getting across what I wanted to evoke? Who uses those words? Do I usually use that word? What the hell is up with that contortion act of a sentence? Am I ever going to get this right? Does this even have a chance of being good enough for submission in a week? Are my amateur panties showing?

Then: headache.

With my relative level of self-confidence, it's probably miraculous that I manage to get anything done.

I should draw solace from that and use it to build up self-confidence. ;)

Anyway, the current plan is to finish the first-over pass (tonight? hah! tomorrow, at best). I suppose I will then mail out the first-pass edit for beta-ing while independently continuing to tinker. At my discretion.

I would put this story in a drawer for a while, to gain some distance, but I'm working under a deadline.

The current word-count is 6942, and I'm willing to edit it down to approximately 6k, which I feel is pretty solid for a short story of this type. I compared it to a few anthologies I have encompassing a similar genre and my notion was borne out. It looks like my story would end up being about 12 pages.

Now, I am going to read something for pleasure and something for school. And take some advil.