Alison O. Bender

Last night, my family went to bed early and I was about to do the same, but as I was lying in bed, I had an epiphany for how to end a short short story I’d written two years ago. I hadn’t thought about it in forever—and I have no idea what made me think of it last night—but I got out of bed and went to find it on my computer. As I was searching for it, I stumbled across a different short story I’d written three years ago. I barely remembered it, but I opened it up and thought it was surprisingly good! Anyway, it was only 2,000 words, so I opened up a new side-by-side window and rewrote it, changing the tenses and adding here and there. It still need some polishing, but hopefully I can work on it and then maybe try to submit it to a journal or for competition. It was so strange that I randomly found it, and a very happy surprise that my earlier works (even the ones I have almost no memory of!) are salvageable. I opened the one that I had been thinking of, and it’s not as good, but again, short and probably worth it to polish it up and see if I can make something of it. The lesson here—as I’ve heard over and over in any author interviews—is to write all the time. After all, as my favorite quote goes, you can’t edit a blank page.

To speak the lingo, my work-in-progress (or WIP) is actually progressing! About a month ago, I made the decision to really focus on the most complete of my projects, which is forcing me to finally finish one of my many WIPs. For this one (title still undecided—that seems to be the hardest part!), there were a lot of scenes that needed cleaned up and clarified, and it’s been great to actually deal with all the incomplete areas versus brushing them off. I started by taking a couple of hours and re-outlining the entire novel scene-by-scene, adding in notes about where things needed smoothed or reworked or if there were events or people or props that popped up out of the blue in one place and would need introduced somewhere else. It’s also allowed me to add scenes and add depth that I hadn’t realized was necessary in the half-assed, skim-through revisions I was doing earlier.

Anyway, I’m in the final chapters, though there are some pretty messy scenes that need some reworking. However, once I finish, then I think I’ll be onto my final revision—a read-through for grammar, sentence structure, word choices and tense consistency. With my toddler asleep and my 3-year-old occupied watching Care Bears, I think I’m going to pour a glass of wine and see how much I can get done. On a side note, my definition of a wild Friday night has definitely changed.