I finally finished my novel, Summer Secrets. I entered it into the Summer 2015: Summer Vacation Getaway! story contest at BigCloset. I'll post it on this blog once the contest is finished.
I want to thank Gandar for his post on the FictionMania forum back on 2/8/2014. It is what inspired me to write the story. His post was in response to another and, unfortunately, I did not write down that person's name. Here is what Gandar wrote:
"You have good taste. I keep waiting for someone to write a 60's or 70's style story where a woman who owns a salon has a hippie-type son in that age group (13-18) who won't cut his long hair for a summer job and ends up keeping his long hair, but forced to work as a shampoo girl working for his mom in a skirted uniform and finds he loves it."
After reading the post I remembered that I'd worked in a salon as a teenager in the 1970s. I didn't wash hair or crossdress, but I did sweep up and clean the break room for a couple of weeks.
I started writing the story on 2/11/2014 and wrote the bulk of the it over the next five weeks. It was 56,000 words long at that point. I knew that it was seriously flawed, but I had no idea how to fix it. I was very frustrated. I shelved the story and wrote another story.
In late July I decided to take another crack at the story. I found that taking the long break is exactly what the story needed. I was able to fix a lot of the problems that had been bothering me on the first draft. The story grew to 67,000 words and I now liked it. I decided to shelve it again. I could tell that it still needed work and hoped that another break would be help again.
As the months passed my desire to tackle another draft plummeted. I knew that a third revision would likely take weeks and I did not want to dedicate that much time to it. I had too many other stories I wanted to write.
In April I noticed that the BigCloset was holding a contest that fit my story perfectly. I finally started revising on May 7th. Amid a myriad of distractions I was able to finish the story to my satisfaction and I posted it on 5/21/2015, a little over 15 months after I started it.
It sounds like writing this specific story has had your mind boggled for a while! This is a perfect example of the dilemmas I have had in the past too, with specific stories. From experience, I can say there is no satisfaction in posting a story which you aren't fully content with, and it proves that patience is a virtue.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the contest itself....and I will be adding Summer Secrets to my reading list.