Short Stories, pt. IV & Beta Critique

I woke up this morning and finished the next draft of one of the two short stories I've been working on for the last month. The one I'm going to be submitting to Writers of the Future. I was finally able to power through my hesitation and although I'm not 100% sold on it, I have time for another pass through before submitting it for critique and getting a final draft out of it.

The other short story is still in outline form. I've got to do another pass through of the plot points, scene list, and characters before sitting down and pumping that one out. With the deadline for Writers of the Future looming (March 31) and my beta critique tomorrow, time is going to be messy.

See how I transitioned there?

Tomorrow, I am meeting with my writing group to get critique notes for my novel. It's been a few months in the making and it's finally here.

Holy shit, I'm anxious.

I've gotten some notes back already, but reading written notes and sitting for an hour while people give you notes are two very differently colored horses. I'm trying not to panic too much. I don't know if the anxiety of getting live notes is better or worse than all the work I'm going to have to do in the coming weeks to get a final draft of the novel done.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to focus on my short story until I submit it, after which I'll dive into the final revision of my novel. That means the second short story is going to be put on the back burner, unfortunately. I'll pull it up when I need a break from my novel, I guess, but I really want to power through the next few weeks and have a final draft of my novel finished by April 30. I think at that point I'm going to do another round of beta readers and by the end of June, I'll be ready to start querying.

Ha, right. We'll see.