Haaaaaave you met Ted?

I started rewriting chapter 4 yesterday. It cost me about ten pages and a week of work, but now 4 pages in to the new draft I'm feeling like I've got a better handle on getting Jack away from home, introducing his first friend, Al Keeder, and entertaining the existence of giants. The first draft was problematic because it did it in an order that's a little ballsy in that it throws all this metaphysical stuff at you too quickly. The first 2 chapters are more or less down to earth mundane life in middle america, and then chapter 3 goes careening into the realm of fantasy. I'll finish chapter 3 tonight and start my way into the rewrite of chapter 4.

I didn't watch the Oscars last night. Instead I marathoned How I Met Your Mother. It takes a good storytelling technique and makes it fresh and interesting. By the way, Haaaaaave you met Ted?

The first draft of my first of two short stories for Fantasy Writing was due last week, with a promise of comments and suggestions from the teacher. The nice thing was that she wasn't planning on giving us the typical Columbia-College Story-Workshop sugar-coated "I like this," or "can we see this more?" She was planning a more direct and editorial approach, to help us prepare a manuscript that can and will be submitted.

I sent her a draft of a story I wrote in science fiction writing first called "The Eternal," but now called "I Am Prometheus." I think it fits better with this genre. A little more mystical and far less quantifiable. Her comments started with:

This is one of the best-written stories I received! You have a marvelous way with words. It was a real joy to read. That’s the good news.

The bad news is, because your writing is so much more advanced, I’m going to challenge you at a higher level than most of your classmates with this round of critique.

So, if you find yourself feeling beat up and worked over by my comments, remember it’s because I truly liked your story so much!

I thought that was a pretty successful response for a first draft. The big thing she railed on was the need for a sense of urgency. So it's back to the drawing board for draft two.

Alrighty, I'm on the desk at work, so I need to go make like a good worker bee and put books in dewey order back on shelves.