Revisions & Editing

I finally (after months of off-and-on, mostly off, hacking at it) got one of my longest stories, "Junker Tommy", whittled down from close to 37,000 words to almost 29,000.

I've sent out the longer version a few times, but there are few markets willing to look at something as long as 37,000 words. So it was either try and pad it out to a length where it might be marketable as a short novel, or try and cut it down to where it could be sent to more short-fiction markets.

I opted for the latter approach. I think the resulting version takes an already strong story and makes it leaner, trimmer and more effective.

Yeh, I'm prejudiced about my own writing. But JT is one of those "important" stories writers have more than the usual hopes for. It's about a young boy whose parents trade him in at a Used Kid Lot, and what happens to him afterwards... and it deals with some pretty disturbing stuff. I want this story to be published someday.

At 29,000 words, it will still be a bitch to market. But it won't be quite as vicious a bitch.

And maybe now I can start writing something new.