Wednesday's Writing Update: When to Stop Writing a Short Story

Happy Wednesday!

If you look at last week’s post, I had two short stories I wanted to write before the end of July. Now it is just one, but I didn’t finish the other one. Yeah, yeah, I know as writers we should always finish what we start. I loved the idea of the story, but after doing the research and beginning to write it, it fell flat. My enthusiasm for it was gone. I wrote about 600 words in it in three days. It was pathetic. I had two options: struggle along and do my best to finish it before July 31^st (the deadline) or stop writing it and work on story two.

I decided to work on story two. The anthology I planned to send story one is a yearly anthology. If the idea sparks up again, then I’ll take the short story back out and write it. Until then, it’ll be shelved.

I am working on the new short story. It’s awesome so far! I’m so excited about it. I’ve written over 1200 words in two days on it, and I hope to get more written today. My only fear is that it’ll be too long (can’t be over 7,000 words), but if it is, I’ll find something else to do with it. I’m glad I made the decision to move on.

In other writing news, I’m editing Virtuoso again. I won a first chapter critique, and the feedback made me excited to work on it again. My goal is to finish editing chapters 1-10 before August 1^st. Then I’ll take a chapter every two days (rewrite/edit time). If I keep with the schedule, it’ll be query-ready in early October. I need it to be query ready by then. I’ll be attending a query letter workshop and an agent pitching workshop on Thursday, October 6^th at the James River Writers Conference, and I’ll pitch an agent either on the 7^th or 8^th there. Also, it’s time to have Virtuoso polished and ready to go. I wrote the manuscript back during NaNoWriMo 2009. I’m ready to work on new things, and I need to use October to plan NaNoWriMo 2011 and my YA Contemporary novel, Starred.

So how is everyone? Have you stopped working on a story before for something else? How did you feel about it? Anyone planning to do NaNoWriMo 2011 with me in November?