Sigh...

I'm going over my story "The Mind's Retreat." I'd planned on giving it a quick-once over, shortening it down to about 10,000 words. Well, what started out as a quick editing process has turned into a full-blown new draft of the story. I realized that the narrative is rather wobbly in some places, and other parts that I didn't explain properly.

I got rid of one whole section that I thought was extraneous, and then I realized that another part, integral to the story, makes no sense without some of the background from the deleted section. So now I've got to work out some compromise that'll make everything clear without resorting to a long flashback that sends the plot to a screeching halt and really has no place in a short story.

Of course, if this results in a product superior to what it's replacing, then it's worth the effort. It's just I was hoping to send "The Mind's Retreat" out to a magazine today, and now I see it might be another day or two before I'm satisfied with it. In the meantime, I'm totally stuck on the story I was working on before, which is real annoying because I'm about 3/4 of the way through. I know where I want the story to go, just not how to get there.

Well, I'll keep slogging it out, and hopefully I'll have something worth sending out for publication soon. Keeping my fingers crossed.

-E. Maxfield Moen