One of the oddities of short-story writing . . . .

[swan_tower]

. . . is that as I'm sitting here trying to whack another hundred words out of this piece, something in the back of my brain is pointing out that by doing so, I am in fact reducing my income.

Because I am, after all, paid by the word.

Of course, it's a tradeoff. If that hundred words makes the difference between an editor buying or not buying, then I should go ahead. But does it?

Don't ask these questions. That way madness lies.

Off to chop out some more words . . . .

Comments

[daobear.livejournal.com]

Good work. I always find that my essays are improved when I chop away at them and widdle the word count as low as I can without losing anything of value. But then, I have a tendency to be verbose sometimes.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Same here (not the verbosity, per se, but the winnowing). Especially once I learned to write flash -- stories under 500 words -- that really taught me how to tighten things up.