Moving Home

Since it did­n’t get accept­ed for the AE Sci­ence Fic­tion micro chal­lenge, I’m revamp­ing my short sto­ry “Mov­ing Home”, expand­ing it a bit, and plan­ning to sub­mit it to some mar­kets when it’s polished.

The “micro” in micro fic­tion was def­i­nite­ly a chal­lenge; the sto­ry had to be less than 200 words, includ­ing the title.  When I fin­ished the first draft, it was about 300 words, which meant I had to trim it by a third.

If I’d been smart, I’d have saved the orig­i­nal 300-word ver­sion, but I just start­ed to hack and slash, remov­ing colour and com­bin­ing thoughts.  It was a good exer­cise — it forced me to choose my words very wise­ly — but I think I had a bet­ter sto­ry before the slicing.

Now, though — now I’m try­ing to recov­er what I sub­tract­ed, and it’s not there any­more. Well, it is, but it’s not exact­ly the same.  I’m chas­ing les mots justes and they’re elud­ing me.

Just one of those things, I guess. At least, with­out the 200-word lim­it, I can tell the full sto­ry. I’m not sure how long it’ll end up; I guess I’ll know that when I’m done.