Short Stories to Build a Writer Platform

I have thirty-five pages left to edit. They are thirty-five of the newest, and roughest, pages in the entire manuscript, but still, it’s only thirty-five pages, which is pretty exciting.

I’ve made a list of things I need to do once I’ve finally finished the draft. While my lovely readers are compiling their thoughts, I will be working on the following:

• My synopsis (ug)
• A list of thirty agents who have represented work like mine
• A query letter to send to said agents, and
• A few short works to send off to journals to see if I can’t bolster my platform a bit before sending out the query letter.

I was talking with my writing group about that last one, wondering what pieces I should polish up for submissions to journals, and they suggested I try to pull an excerpt from my manuscript. At first I thought it was impossible. They whole thing seems so interwoven that I couldn’t figure out what section could stand on it’s own, but in the pages I worked on last weekend I think I found a chunk that could suffice.

It would likely need some editing, to lay some basic story background, especially since the chunk I’m thinking of using comes late in the story, but it could be done. And actually, they are some of my favorite pages.

I also have three other short stories that have been languishing on my hard drive for years. I’m not sure how much work they would need, and in fact, I’m very curious to re-read them now that I’ve learned so much about writing as a craft. I’m hoping the holes that made them unsatisfying when I abandoned them will seem less daunting now that I have more experience. That would be great.

Then there’s the Writer’s Digest writing competition. I received a flyer for it in the mail last week. I usually toss the flyer, because I never have anything that’s polished enough (because I’ve been working on the novel FOREVER), but this might be the year I submit. The early-bird deadline isn’t until May 6th. I bet I could put something together for that. I know the odds of winning are slim, because they get a brazillion entries, but if I don’t enter I definitely won’t win, right?

It’s time to start putting my work out there.