Sticking To It, Staying On It

I don't know about any of you other writers, but the hardest part of my "writing day" is 1. getting to that ending, that END OF STORY, and 2. rummaging back through the final piece and editing/proofreading it, trying to polish it to the best of my biased ability.

I finished up a little over 19k word Fantasy short story end of June. The publisher I was submitting it to, well, their deadline was June 30th. As I wasn't going to JUST SEND it to the publisher without doing a re-read and some polishing first, I humbled requested from the publisher a little more time. I would not typically do this. This is not a good practice, and I am sure most publishers when they say THAT'S IT, that's it. But as everyone is human (hopefully LOL), sometimes you just have to go a little crazy and ASK. The worst they can say is NO, right? The best thing they can say is YES...NOW GETTER DONE!!

I was lucky enough to already have worked with this particular editor/publisher, asked nicely for a bit more time, and fortunately they granted me an extension to get my work piece into them.

As the 4th of July holiday came into play, and I did things with the family (a mini-vacation time), and then had to go out on the road the following week (back to work), it took me about two weeks to complete the re-reading and editing/proofing of my short story. I finally sent the publisher the piece, stating again I know I was behind the eight ball, and if they took it this late in the submission deadline game, I am thankful, and if not, again, I thanked them for the opportunity.

As I have recently submitted the work piece, I have not gotten a response yet either YAY or NAY to submitting it late, or if it just won't work for their publication.

I am not the best editor when it comes to my own work. The story is in my head. I can see it, feel it, smell it, taste it...and I put all that hopefully successfully down on paper I get a pretty good idea by its ending on what might have to be gone back to and smoothed out, what kinks might have to be worked out. Being perfectly grammatically correct, yeah, I try to smooth out all that as much as possible also before I consider the piece submittable. As mentioned, I do as much as I can to make it a polished piece, but a set of fresh eyes (normally an editor outside my meager self) always help as I admit to not sleeping with my Strunck & White religiously.

What I am saying here is, when you are GETTING IT DONE, stay positive, stay focused. If you need to have a bit more time to complete your masterpiece, sometimes, if you are really committed to getting something to that particular publisher, communicate, correspond with them. Like I said, the worst they can say is NOPE. SORRY. You should also give them a solid target date if you are going to be late.

Get through that final polishing stage. Stick to it. Get it done, even if you have to read bits and pieces throughout your busy day. (I will read through and edit my material, then highlight with red font the last paragraph I left off on so it is easy to come back to later.)

Feel free to give me your comments on FINISHING THE JOB and the EDITING PROCESS.

If anyone ever tells me writing doesn't take work...