Rewrite: Day 13. A short break.

No rewriting today. I'm taking a short break to regain critical distance.
It is a short break in another sense, too.
The closing date for the Bath Short Story Award is rushing up. To quote Rule 3:

Closing date for receipt of entries is Saturday, March 30th, 2013 at Midnight GMT.

'Midnight GMT' and then the clocks go forward and we are in British Summer Time. We hope. It's like something out of a fairy story.

I had hoped to do some work on a short story during my writer retreat but that didn't happen so now I have to crack on with it. I had done some work on a story before I went away and I had been thinking about it in terms of structure. I don't really understand short fiction. It leaves me feeling inadequate. Although whether that is the fault of the fiction or something I'm missing, I'm not sure. My wife suggested I should dig out a story I had half written once before, several years ago, but I didn't feel convinced. I didn't know how to finish it. Then, this morning, inspiration came, in the form of a facebook post by my daughter, and I knew how to finish the story. I saw, in my memory, my daughter, aged four or five, playing at shops under the stairs in our house in the hills in Mid-Wales. We don't live there now but, in memory, it is an important place for us all. We lived there for eight years and the children did their growing up there.
 
This afternoon, I dug out the half written story. It's not bad, as far as it goes. It stands at 1,170 words or so. Perhaps, if I develop my new ending, it will come up to scratch. It's worth a try. It falls within the word count range required. To quote Rule 2:

Maximum length is 2,200 words.

The other story, the one with structural problems - I'll try and work on that too during this little Sabbath. That story stands at 4,400 words at present and it needs a good pruning. Something for tomorrow. On Monday, I get back to the day job and The Rewrite. The Rewrite will go forward into Part 2 and Chapter Eight. The temptation is to go back and re-rewrite Chapter One but I must push on. Chapter One needs fixing but it can wait. 
I'll fix it later.

• The Bath Short Story Award:
• The rules
• My daughter's facebook page:
• Crafty Bella by Rosie

Ends