I finally declared my first story finished, determined not to go over it again. I started my next one, certain it would never be as good as the first, but knew I must move on. It took time to get involved with the new story. My first version bombed. So did the second. So I totally changed it but kept my basic storyline. My first story became the past. This surprised me as my new project began to read much better than my first. Once again, I was enjoying reading my latest project and watching it grow.

I didn't agonize over it like I the first one either, though it still took longer than I liked to write. It's now in rest mode while I tackled my third project. It started out great, but then I didn't know where to go with it. So I just kept writing, hoping I was going in the right way. I kept thinking in the back of my mind, "Get the story down and don't worry if it doesn't sound right. You can fix it later."

Project two's file keeps staring at me from my computer's desktop icon, but I really don't care about that now. I'm too involved with my third story. I'm still not sure where it's going and have to push myself to keep writing it. I finished the rough draft this morning... 64 pages worth. There's a lot of fat that needs trimmed off before I'll find the meat, but the story is there... finally.

Now I'm thinking about story two. I'll probably dig it out next week, dust it off and send it out for readers. But I'm not that concerned about it. I know it's a good story and ready to be finished. Unlike the first story, I don't even feel like going over and over it again. I'm ready to go to work on story three.

Nice and good for you Crystal. That sounds like a good stage. Keep it up and you will soon have hundreds of stories.

Some will be published too.

And with all that I wouldn't mind reading that second story when you decide you want a reader. Of course I don't have any special insight but I more than likely won't tear it to bits either.

Maybe a little tearing though.

The trick is to keep moving forward, keep writing new stuff, and keep focusing on what makes your writing YOURS. I definitely think there's a point at which all writers master technique to some acceptable standard, and after that it's all choices in style, voice, plotting, direction. All artistic choices, no more black and white right and wrong ones.

Now it's one draft straight through, then another draft straight through, then pasting that draft into another file and doing a bunch of revision that's getting more-and-more nitpickety, like searching for and removing all "ly" adverbs, or changing the tenses of verbs.

Sometimes it's more elaborate than that, like one story where I deleted all the flashbacks from the first draft, or one where I wrote alternate scenes and had to choose between them.

I keep thinking, "Yes, on this one, I'm gonna scale back on that sort of thing," cut out a draft, or just revise the rough draft...yet, at a minimum, first-draft-second-draft-revision still goes on...