Writing tight.

With only a couple of weeks remaining until the Let Your Imagination Take Flight RWA conference, I was rushing to submit the first five pages of my my short story, A Necessary Romance, before the deadline.  In my haste, I deleted the entire story! All I had was a hard copy, so I had to type it in all over again.  When I got to the end of the fifth page I realized that it was in the middle of a sentence. I couldn't really stop there, so I had to start cutting. But, cut what? What words could I possibly throw away? I"d sweated over every one of them! Alas, one-by-one, I killed my darlings. Killed them until I had five pages that would leave you wanting more, but not leave you frustrated.

I didn't think it was possible; the story is so short, but it was. I know about writing tight, and I thought that's what I'd done, but when I was able to cut so many words and make my story more meaningful at the same time, it was a revelation. You KNOW I'm now going to have to go through all my short stories and start cutting!

Latah'