Today I saw a call out for submissions of romance. - an erotic publisher wants short stories. Parameters read that a maximum of 3,000 words may be used per story. I have an old short story - the third of ten volumes I submitted a couple years ago. The first two volumes were purchased. The third remains with me. Volumes four through ten are only outlined. The piece is approximately 10K words. I looked it over today and considered paring it down or splitting it into three for submission - I finally sent it in its entirety with a message about negotiating the content and word count if wanted for publication. -- The result, I received a positive email in return reading that it passed the first layer of acceptance and it was being submitted to others for critique.

This evening, I found a message in my inbox requesting submission for a halloween-ish flash fiction of approximately 1000 words. I thought I had a story that was perfect. (A submission for an anthology of pizza themed stories that was rejected.) However, the word count is around 5K. So, I go to work, trying to pare it down to meet the parameters. I can't do it. I eliminated all the extra parts and changed wording to shorten the count. I'm still hovering around 3K.

And then the last time (I think) I posted in here, my work was a solid 50K words for my haunted mirrors with the first draft. The client wanted elimination of key parts and a word count of 80K. I changed everything and my word count kept shrinking with all the requested changes. Today I'm glad that contract was canceled and I have my story back. (At the time, I was fuming.)

So, I'm sitting tonight knowing the best thing to do is leave my old work intact and consider other stories to write for this flash fiction.

It's a good writing day for me, even though I really have not done any writing.