The walls have ears

“The walls have ears” is now finished and passed over to Zoë for editing. This story has, along with “Bringing home the stars” been an exercise in doing something different and keeping up some kind of writing momentum after finishing the first draft of “The Atlantic connection”. Editing my own stuff is something I always find hard, and it was something I found with “Syndicate Dawn” that when I came back to that manuscript after a seven or so year hiatus, it was a lot easier to chop and change it than it would have been straight after writing the first draft of it.

It is something I always hear Zoë saying about Stephen King that he puts his manuscripts to one side for around six weeks before contemplating editing them. So that’s what I aimed to do, using the time away to try my hand at short stories again and see about getting some published to raise my profile for the big sell of the book. I have to admit that I still do not like writing short stories. They really are the banana republics of literature. “The walls have ears” is something that I am particularly dissatisfied with, so we will see what Zoë makes of it. Personally I don’t think it is good enough to be published, but I’ll respect her judgement. It may be something which just goes straight in the portfolio section of the website, or even just gets binned if she doesn’t find it all that good either. However, I must admit that I didn’t think that much of “Bringing home the stars” either, but Zoë really liked the style. It was, however, more fun to write than this last one. Ultimately I had thought about developing it further into a book if I could get some success with a magazine with it. It has been sent to the first for consideration, but I don’t expect to get a reply too quickly, as last time they took something like two months. The waits can be quite infuriating.

Right now I have finally returned to editing “The Atlantic connection”. I have decided to do a second draft, because as a book rather than a short story there is an awful lot more to this, and it isn’t fair to lay a first draft straight on Zoë and have her try to decipher what I might have meant. Hopefully though the resultant second draft will be ready to go to her for editing.

I’ve got Moloko’s “Statues” playing in my headphones, and it is time to get back to work on the keyboard that never sleeps.