Hi all, once again I would like to give a little back story to my most recent contest story, Hazel.
Isn’t it funny how what you are currently reading influences what you write or your mind set? I have been reading the Ghostgirl series by Tonya Hurley (very enjoyable by the way), so my proclivity was towards ghosts. Well the first 900 words of this story wrote itself, the only problem is I never had a conclusion (and 100 words is tight to get a decent conclusion in. So the ending went through quite a few changes. I finally came up with something that I didn’t particularly like but it worked. I started in on the edit and review process (I was 100 words or so over). I went back to the contest page to double check the theme and guess what? I had thought the theme was no trespassing, NOT No Solicitors. Well, that put a wrinkle in things. So I went back and started making changes. Since there was whole sale changes to be made anyways why not delete the ending and do something I like better there too. After rewriting and changing I had a completed story, unfortunately it was over 1200 words. Next came the long arduous task of editing (as many of you know getting down to 1000 words can be tough and requires some creativity, like well placed hyphens LOL). I finally got it down to 995, was able to go in and correct a few things to end up right at 1000 words.
I want to thank my editor and Starlight Tree co-author Angel for all her help and hard work ( www.starlighttree.com ). I also want to thank webbie for all his hard work, and everything he does for this site, without him we wouldn’t all get to come here and read so many great stories and share. So thank you.
I hope you all enjoy.
Eric Zimmerman