Words of the Barely-Published

I handed BRAWL the first three chapters of Iron Debt and said, "What's wrong with this?" I couldn't see anything wrong with it, but I knew there was. There always is, and with River's Wrath stuck in slush-pile purgatory, I have tremendous room for improvement here.

Well, they told me. Little devil boy up there is pretty much exactly how I feel about it. Ooo, scorchy! Yay, scorchy!! I'm probably going to have to sit down and assault using red pen. They don't want to see it again until it's done, but if I can whip the first three chapters, I am pretty sure I can *get* it done, because then, I'll have this *very* solid foundation to work on.

The Fabulous Margaret apologized afterward. She told me that she was sorry she'd been so harsh. I told her that was silly, and she should stop apologizing. It needed it, after all. :) And then we spent about an hour walking around, talking shop, and coming up with neat ideas for where I could go with it. I probably won't use all of them in Iron Debt, but I suspect that some of them will make it into Zytomancy.

Now, I just need to figure out where Ben Franklin is buried...

$payingJob is eating my life. Getting any sort of progress on my writing right now is a major accomplishment. Therefore, successfully getting about 400 words written this evening on a short story I'm noodling around with? Makes me very happy. The trick will be to see if I can keep doing it.