Feeling worn...

So today I turned in my first creative writing submission at grad school. Twenty-five pages. Two full days of editing and revising, my red pen playing harbinger of dead words. I started banging out copy not long after the new year. I wrote probably the first 8-10 pages over the course of two weeks, finding myself hammering out details, characters, plot lines and all that other crap.

I actually kept coming back and editing everything I wrote in an attempt to act like I was still being productive. Sad truth, the damn thing got shorter and shorter. I walked away for a while. Did some crazy shit, like go see some relatives, piddle around with other crap, deal with unemployment bullshit. Hell, I even went to church. (It's still standing; neither of us burst into flames, yet.)

Whatever the cause, I sat down one Sunday and started typing. It turned into an all-nighter. Before I knew it, the craft part was done.

I moved my story into the desired format and typesetting, and I'll be damned if that sonofabitch wasn't 32 pages long. I had to hold it to 25, so I got to work. All said, 24 1/2. I'm happy, enough anyway.

So what's it about? Some poor bastard who took one too many chances and wound up paying a few prices because of them. It's hardly the ending of fairy tales, but it ain't one. Let's just say, the old boy does walk away with a little better peace of mind than he started. I may actually share pieces of it here someday.

We'll see how it fares in the underbelly of criticism...