#IWSG October: Holy Pants, I’m a co-host!!

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again when

…founded by Alex J Cavanaugh, blog about their hopes, dreams and fears. If you want to join this merry band of writers Click here to add your name to the list…
The awesome co-hosts for the October 5 posting of the IWSG are Beverly Stowe McClure, Megan Morgan, Viola Fury, Madeline Mora-Summonte, Susan Gourley! and ME!!!

Yes, I threw caution to the winds last month and volunteered. As you can probably tell, I’m a co-hosting virgin, so please bear with 😉

This month’s discussion prompt is When do you know your story is ready?

Now, this is where I have to confess to being a bit of a story-floozie. That next sparkly idea is always sooo attractive, so I try to rein back and consider these points:

• Have I managed to cram in the correct word count?
• Did I just press send too soon?

Oh – sorry – those are replies to When do you know your story is NOT ready?

Let’s start again:

• Have I gotten rid of the first paragraph? (Yeah, that bit where she wakes up, or he walks up the garden path. You knew you didn’t really need that bit, didn’t you.)
• Have I let someone else point out the spots that I’m blind to?
• Have I hidden it in a drawer and pretended it isn’t there for anywhere between a couple of days to a couple of years?
• Have I read it out loud? (In fact, I find that if you can read it out to a room full of people, it’s almost like sonar – the depth of their silence can ping back whole reams of info dump and misunderstanding).

Once you’re happy that you have finished, don’t forget that there’s still time for any authors of speculative fiction to join the Halloween Story Time Blog Hop
Pop on over to Juneta Key’s blog for further info and examples of previous hops if you’re interested.

If you’d rather just read all those scrummy stories then don’t forget to drop by on 27th October.

And last, but not least; if there’s any ink in your printer after all that and your muse is buzzing from all that excitement, there’s still time to enter the IWSG Anthology Contest. 5,000 – 6,000 words, deadline 1st November, with the fantasy theme of ‘Hero lost’.

Whoosh! Thank you for visiting, I’m looking forward to dropping by your blog at some point in the next day or so.

Happy Writing!