WEEKLY STATUS REPORT # 12

The countdown for completion of my anthology of Flash Fiction is continuing to my goal of 100 Flash Fictions with the addition of 1 more item bringing the total needing to be completed down to only FOUR. I’ve kept a chronological order to the Flash Fictions I’ve written. Up till now I’ve kept an alphabetical listing in a spreadsheet of the Flash Fictions I’ve written according to the prompt word they’d been written for. As soon as I write these four items have been written, as well as the Preface and Acknowledgement pages, I’ll start self-editing the entire anthology manuscript before passing it on to my next set of eyes.

The Secret of the Well, the sequel to my first YA Paranormal romance novel I Kissed a Ghost. In the past week I’ve written a very important, almost pivotal-like, chapter of the book, consisting of 7 pages and approximately 2,275 words.


For my adult Contemporary, His Darkest Secret, with the headers/page numbers back in place, and with its completion being placed as I move two of my other endeavors up in their to be self-published, I’ve begun the long, arduous process of self-editing my entire manuscript which had 248 pages and approximately 76,350 words when I started.

The way I go about self-editing is to search for certain “DEMON” words which have an impact in what has been written and the way it reads. Right now I doing a SEARCH for the word “HAD.” This word can easily form a contraction with a pronoun which increases the readability of a sentence or a phrase. This word at times is not needed many times in formatting a past tense as it tends to make the past tense sound somewhat awkward. I’d started this process on Friday, by Saturday, the end of the week, I’d completed 48 pages. This resulted in a decrease of 44 “HADs” but by the time you count the editing around each change the total word count increased by about 120 words. Hopefully by this coming Saturday I’ll have completed working on “HAD” and will start on my next search/change.

At the present time I’m still awaiting to receive word about the release date of a new literary review e-zine a Flash Fiction I’ve written is supposed to be published in. The same holds true for the fund raising anthology of short stories with HIV/AIDS as one of its themes where I’ve got seven Flash Fictions scheduled to be published in.