First story sale, Ooning third draft is go

I sold a story. Canadian magazine Ficta Fabula will publish Mouse in July. This is my first acceptance. Someone will give me money for my fiction. I’m extremely happy.

The Ooning’s rattling along. I’ve completed a third draft and finished all the rewriting I planned after reading the second version, some 15,000 words in the last month. There were other areas I’d noted for extension, but I need to recap; I found myself staring at brief character sections with dumb-brain, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. I’ll rework the final bits (they really are “bits” now) on the next edit. Either way, the worst of the revision’s complete. The last draft will be about 60,000 words.

With the structure completely overworked, draft three should be a near-final shape. I’m finding this stage stressful. I’m building the final vision, and I can’t help thinking I’m about to fuck the entire thing up. Confidence is paramount, tricky when it’s your first time out. I can format it however I wish. I deliberately wrote The Ooning in a modular style so it’d be easy to reconfigure everything, an admirable plan with the unfortunate side effect of affording a terrifying array of options. Indecision’s a disease, I suppose. It’ll be a relief to get some feedback, positive or not, just to see whether any of it actually makes any sense to anyone.

Wobbles aside, selling Mouse has enlightened every aspect of my fiction writing. It’s validation of skill and a great relief. Everything I’ve had published up to now has either been tech-related or an opinion piece. This is different. Now I know I’m not wasting my time. Fiona took a photo of me in the middle of my happy-clappy freak-out. Don’t think I’ll post it.

I’ll write a note when I know for definite when the magazine’s releasing.