I’m so glad I was crazy enough to jump into Writer In Motion, even though I wasn’t one of the original participants. I’m so thankful I was welcomed and included, and I feel very fortunate to have found such a tremendous circle of inspiring, amazing writers and editors.

I come away from this experience more confident in my own process, with an appreciation of the diversity of methods by which we writers work our madness. Imposter syndrome is real and I’ll probably always wrestle with it, but now I know I’m not the only one who writes like I do. I’m not the only one who thinks my first drafts suck- even though I would argue with the others that their first drafts certainly were not bad at all! Learning how others handle CP feedback was a treat, as you never know what you don’t know until you find out. And the editor’s feedback! Working with that and watching how small shifts could make such big impact really makes me determined to hire an editor as soon as I can afford one.

It was so cool watching all the stories- including my own- grow and transform in the process of this project, and to watch the Writer In Motion project itself grow as well, with all these amazing ideas we’re throwing at it. It was hard, and I challenged myself, and I think I’m a better writer because of this.

This wild ride may have ended, but I have a bunch of amazing new writer friends that I can’t wait to watch as their writing careers take off!

Check out the other Writer In Motion participants!

– K. J. Harrowick http://blog.halon-chronicles.com & http://kjharrowick.wordpress.com

– Jen Karner http://www.SyllablesandSass.com

– H.M. Braverman http://hmbraverman.com

– J.M. Jinks www.authorjmjinks.com

– Melissa Bergum (will be posting via KJ’s site)

– Thuy Nguyen http://www.tmnstories.com

– Kristen Howe https://kristenswritingendeavors.wordpress.com/

– Kathryn Hewitt https://spinningmyyarns.wordpress.com/

– Sean Willson https://www.seanwillson.com/blog/

– Paulette Wiles http://www.paulettewiles.com

– Talynn Lynn inkinthebook.blogspot.com

– Ellen Mulholland www.ellenmulholland.com

– Steph Whitaker stephwhitaker80.wixsite.com/swhitakerwrites/

– Sheri MacIntyre https://sherimacintyre.wordpress.com

– Jessica Lewis https://jessicalewis2227.wixsite.com/authorjessicalewis/writer-in-motion

– Susan Burdorf https://writingnotes.home.blog

– Dawn Currie https://dawncurrie.wordpress.com

– Megan Van Dyke http://www.meganrvandyke.com

– Ari Augustine https://bookishvalhalla.com

– Fariha Khayyam http://www.farihakhayyam.com

– M. Dalto https://authormdalto.wordpress.com/blog/

– Sheryl Stein http://www.wrekehavoc.com

– Belinda Grant https://belindagrantwrites.wordpress.com

– Coffee Quills https://coffeequills.com

The amazing editors:

Jeni Chappelle https://www.jenichappelleeditorial.com

Carly Hayward https://booklighteditorial.com

Maria Tureaud https://twitter.com/Maria_Tureaud

Justine Manzano https://www.craftquest.org/

Don’t forget to check out the other stories from other Writer In Motion writers! And take a look through the previous Writer In Motion posts to see the development of this story from first draft to final!

After collecting comments on my copy of the story, it was time to dig in.

The first thing I did was address huddle, for not only was my CP right that cows don’t really huddle, but huddle often implies company, and my Space Cow is all by its lonesome. Then I addressed “howls”, changing it to “shouts” and “roars”, the latter because I wanted to keep the monster idea. The former I’m not in love with, but I disliked the way “roars rose” sounded.

I decided to keep “derelict” despite the confusion because I like the rhythm it gives the sentence and didn’t want to break it by adding another word. I changed the first “feet” to “hooves” to dive right into the strange anatomy of the MC, and then nixed the next instance of “hooves”, smoothing the sentence. I found an extra “howls” and fixed that, too.

Then I decided I really didn’t like “shouts” and changed the whole ending of the sentence.  I bounce around a lot in editing.

Most of my feedback concerned word choice, so I went through them, searching for the best word choice. Sometimes I liked what I had better, and sometimes their suggestions. Sometimes, neither, but I found a better word choice anyway, which is what it’s all about.  Some word choices meant other words which had been fine now needed changing: like  because I changed “howls” to “roars”, I needed to change “they roared out from the brush”.

I took out the “Matt” explanation as I think it’d be cooler if the reader made that connection on their own, between “Matt” and mat. Besides, as one of my CPs pointed out, cow fur is generally too short to mat most of the time.

I needed to shine up that the abandoned boat was not of Space Cow design, but instead, just where the Drop Site and Matt were located. I also needed to clean up some sentences, consult with some grammarians I am lucky enough to know, and to consider the Space Cow’s atheism. I like how it adds some to its character, but it’s not really used in the character arc or story arc at all. So I need to consider whether it’s worth the words simply from a characterization stand point.

Finally, after I addressed every concern or not as I pondered, I went through with one last read through in a funky font to force my brain to read more critically. I’m becoming extremely familiar with this story to the point where my brain may not register small things, and I want to make sure that I haven’t messed anything up with my changes.

The semi-final result, the story I will send on to my editor, is below:

You lay among the scraggly brush, your rasping breath loud in your ears. Around you, the roars sounded, closing in around you. A sandy stretch of barren land lay between your meager cover and the Drop Site. It waited, concealed in the rusting remains of a small ship which listed to starboard on a sandbank. Nothing the monsters could understand.

You lunged for the derelict, breaking cover. The packed sand crumbled beneath your hooves as if plotting with your pursuers to slow you down. You stumbled, pattering a staccato beat. The scent of your own fear clogged your flaring nostrils. It was a wonder the monsters didn’t smell it too.

Or maybe they did.

They swarmed out from the brush, and a strangled squeal ripped from your throat. It seemed to drive them ever faster, their huge splayed feet grabbing the sand you struggled on, throwing them forward with ease. The primitive creatures never stopped, never needed to rest, and their eyesight was better than yours. They’d seen you watching them, and they hadn’t taken kindly to observation. That moment was frozen in your mind: the flapping hides of dead creatures they’d tied around themselves, their swinging limbs, and their eyes gleaming in the dark. Fodder for nightmares, should you be lucky enough to have them later.

You galloped across the sands and through the tide which tugged at your hooves, as if the water too conspired to drag you down. Did the monsters compel all of nature to do their bidding? You shivered, your hide twitching and jumping. It couldn’t be. Such a thing would be magic, and everyone knew magic was for children. Just silly superstitions, is all. Believing in magic would be as likely as you hunting and killing some poor creature. Ridiculous.

You flung yourself into the derelict. It had no door to slam in the monsters’ faces. You lunged across the small ship to grab the crate the Wolves had sent down for your return, the crate which held the Matt and made this rusting boat the Drop Site. It banged against your knees as you hauled it back to the entryway, then pushed it into place. It was too small to block the opening, but there was nothing else. Only a few planks peeling away from the interior wall. The ship screamed, too loud in your sensitive ears, when you cannibalized the ship, pulling the planks away and slotting them into place. The planks rattled and shivered when you shoved the crate against them. There was no way they would hold.

Hoping you’d at least bought yourself enough time, you opened the crate, scanning the instructions. The Wolves had set up the Matter Teleportation Device, but they hadn’t told you how to use it.

This was supposed to be an easy mission. Drop down, catalogue the natives, and Matt up. No one was supposed to get hurt. But the Wolves, likely thinking it a prank, had not set the Matt up with a verbal or physical passcode. The crate held a sensor, along with a hoof-hand-friendly lighter, kindling, and two slabs of raw meat. You recoiled, even as you read the Wolves’ instructions: the Matt would initiate automatically when the sensor detected cooking meat.

You stared in horror. Who was this? Surely not another Cow? Could you live with yourself if you cooked another Cow?

You cursed the Wolves and their set up. Some prank, forcing a vegetarian to cook meat in order to return to the ship. To safety.

But whoever this was, they were already dead. You dying too would not bring them back. Bile rose, and tears flowed from your eyes and down your sensitive muzzle, but you weren’t ready yet to die. Fumbling, you grabbed the lighter, dropped it, and grabbed it again. Your hoof-hands trembled as you struggled to work the simple tool.

Something slammed against the planks and they jumped, but you lunged to hold them up. You muttered prayers under your breath. Of course, there was nothing in the starry expanse to pray to, but desperation drove out reason.

You were going to give the Wolves an earful if you saw them again.

Finally, a flame lit, just as the barricade slammed against your back under the weight of the monsters. Screaming in wordless terror, you scrambled with your hooves on the slick metal flooring, but there was no good footing. Maybe if you had massive flat feet like the monsters did. The lighter dropped from your grasp onto the kindling.

The kindling caught, lucky for you. Hairy arms snaked in through the holes in your barricade, scratching at you with blunt nails as the fire flared brighter. Another weight bounced against your back, and roars echoed all around the derelict. Fortunately, the metal wasn’t rusted all the way through.

Shallow, quick breaths puffing out of your mouth, you dropped the meat on the flames and wafted the smoke toward the sensors. Your stomach turned, nausea rising. The things you were willing to do to survive were horrifying. You were disgusting.

As the stench of cooking meat filled the cabin, the monsters outside paused, snuffling around the edges of the planks. And then, they threw themselves like a wave at the barricade. At you.

Your eyes widened and you shrieked…

…and disappeared, safely Matted up to the ship.

The Wolves considered the mission a success. After all, you survived. Even more, in one single exposure to the concept, you taught the humans how to harness fire.

You taught them to cook their meat.

Check out the other Writer In Motion participants!

– K. J. Harrowick http://blog.halon-chronicles.com & http://kjharrowick.wordpress.com

– Jen Karner http://www.SyllablesandSass.com

– H.M. Braverman http://hmbraverman.com

– J.M. Jinks www.authorjmjinks.com

– Melissa Bergum (will be posting via KJ’s site)

– Thuy Nguyen http://www.tmnstories.com

– Kristen Howe https://kristenswritingendeavors.wordpress.com/

– Kathryn Hewitt https://spinningmyyarns.wordpress.com/

– Sean Willson https://www.seanwillson.com/blog/

– Paulette Wiles http://www.paulettewiles.com

– Talynn Lynn inkinthebook.blogspot.com

– Ellen Mulholland www.ellenmulholland.com

– Steph Whitaker stephwhitaker80.wixsite.com/swhitakerwrites/

– Sheri MacIntyre https://sherimacintyre.wordpress.com

– Jessica Lewis https://jessicalewis2227.wixsite.com/authorjessicalewis/writer-in-motion

– Susan Burdorf https://writingnotes.home.blog

– Dawn Currie https://dawncurrie.wordpress.com

– Megan Van Dyke http://www.meganrvandyke.com

– Ari Augustine https://bookishvalhalla.com

– Fariha Khayyam http://www.farihakhayyam.com

– M. Dalto https://authormdalto.wordpress.com/blog/

– Sheryl Stein http://www.wrekehavoc.com

– Belinda Grant https://belindagrantwrites.wordpress.com

– Coffee Quills https://coffeequills.com

The amazing editors:

Jeni Chappelle https://www.jenichappelleeditorial.com

Carly Hayward https://booklighteditorial.com

Maria Tureaud https://twitter.com/Maria_Tureaud

Justine Manzano https://www.craftquest.org/

Hopefully you’ve been following along with the Writer In Motion saga! Check out the prompt and my process, as well as my first draft, and don’t forget to check out the works of all the other participants: they are seriously amazing.

So I wrote my first draft in 2nd person which very very quickly morphed to 1st person. I had to think long and hard about this, because I really wanted it to be in 2nd person. I only ever write in 3rd person, so this is experimental for me. To stick the landing, so to speak, I knew the end needed to go, which would also help shorten the story from 1140 to closer to 500, and I need to strengthen the ending.

My scrapping of the ending and rewriting started at “Drop the meat on!”

I needed to add more character to the “monsters” at the beginning too, so I took some from the original ending and patched it in earlier in the story. 

That got the word count down to 963. Now to go through and really strengthen the 2nd person PoV. The thing is, I can’t be in 2nd person if there’s also an I/me because by nature, I’ll be in “my” own head, so “I” can’t also be in “yours”. I went back and re-read Rebecca Roanhorse’s 2nd person short story to stick myself in that PoV, and then went to work, correcting present tense mistakes to past tense as I went. That got the word count to 916, by cutting a character. Another thing I firmly decided was that I didn’t want to have any names, so a single Space Cow it was. You are a Space Cow. Congratulations. 

I also needed to look at character arcs- I have a clear external arc, but I really wanted to pack an internal arc in here too. In talking through the plot as-it-was, I realized there’s a potential arc already set up in the cow’s atheism, and also in the cow’s vegetarianism. I went with “Who am I cooking” since I already have the sensory disgust from the act of cooking the meat to launch the reader into that conflict without adding too many more words. That brought me to 982 for a word count. 

Next, I checked for characterization, trying to pack as much character and voice in as I could into the story, as well as making sure motivations come through for all the characters. Also, removing idea repetition- this is something I have issues with, and sometimes it’s stylistic, but not here. I cut it out.

Then to check for smoothing the telling of the story, once the story itself is stronger. This meant reading it aloud, and looking for and fixing filtering, telling, and passive voice, as well as any repeated words. After all was said and done, AutoCrit gave a score of about 79 (which is pretty good, though I usually score higher) and my word count was 936.

Here’s my second draft (and a handy link backward if you want to compare it to the first draft):

You huddled among the scraggly brush, your rasping breath loud in your ears. Around you the howls rose. Only a sandy stretch of barren land lay between your meager cover and the Drop Site. It waited, concealed in the rusting remains of a small ship which listed to starboard on a sandbank. Nothing the monsters could understand.

The howls closed in around you. You lunged for the derelict, breaking cover. The packed sand crumbled beneath your feet as if plotting with your pursuers to slow you down.

You stumbled, your hooves pattering a staccato beat. The scent of your own fear clogged your nostrils. It was a wonder the monsters didn’t smell it too.

Or maybe they did.

They roared out from the brush and a strangled squeal ripped from your throat. It seemed to call them on, to drive them ever faster, their huge splayed feet grabbing the sand you struggled on, throwing them forward with ease. Primitive creatures, they never stopped, never needed to rest. But they were intelligent, too, and their eyesight was better than yours. They’d seen you watching them, and they hadn’t taken kindly to that. That moment was frozen in your mind, the flapping hides, swinging limbs, and eyes gleaming in the dark. Fodder for nightmares, should you be lucky enough to have them later.

You galloped across the sands and through the tide which licked at your hooves, as if the water too conspired to drag you down. Did the monsters compel all of nature to do their bidding? You shivered, your hide twitching and jumping. It couldn’t be. Such a thing would be magic, and everyone knew magic was for children. Just silly superstitions, is all. Believing in magic would be as likely for you as hunting and killing some poor creature. Ridiculous.

You flung yourself into the derelict. No door to slam in the monsters’ faces. You lunged across the small ship to grab the crate the Wolves had sent down for your return, banging it against your knees as you hauled it back to the doorway. It was too small to block the opening, but there was nothing else. Only a few planks peeling away from the interior wall. The ship screamed, too loud in your sensitive ears, when you pulled them away and slotted them in the doorway, cannibalizing the ship. The planks rattled and shivered when you shoved the crate against them. There was no way they would hold.

Hoping you’d at least bought yourself enough time, you opened the crate, scanning the instructions. The Wolves had set up the Matter Teleportation Device, but they hadn’t told you how to use it. The “Matt” now felt like a mat in the fur, tangling and irritating, growing into something that could injure.

This was supposed to be an easy mission. Drop down, catalogue the natives, and Matt up. No one was supposed to get hurt. But the Wolves, likely thinking it a prank, had not set the Matt up with a verbal or physical passcode. The crate held a sensor along with matches, kindling, and two slabs of raw meat. You recoiled, even as you read the Wolves’ instructions: the Matt would initiate automatically when the sensor detected cooking meat.

You stared in horror. Who was this? Surely not another Cow? Could you live with yourself if you cooked another Cow?

You cursed the Wolves and their set up. You were sorry for it immediately, but you weren’t in your right mind. Some prank, forcing a vegetarian to cook meat in order to return to the ship. To safety.

But whoever this was, they were already dead. You dying too would not bring them back. Bile rose, and tears flowed from your eyes and down your sensitive muzzle. But you weren’t ready yet to die. Fumbling, you grabbed the matches, dropped them, and grabbed them again. You trembled as you tried to light the kindling in the crate.

Something slammed against the planks and they jumped, but you lunged to hold them up. You muttered prayers under your breath. Of course there was nothing in the starry expanse to pray to, but desperation drove out reason.

You were going to give the Wolves an earful, if you saw them again.

Finally, the match lit, just as a weight slammed against your back. Screaming with wordless terror, you scrambled with your hooves on the slick metal flooring, but there was no good footing. Maybe if you had massive flat feet like the monsters did. The match dropped from your grasp onto the kindling.

The kindling caught, lucky for you. Hairy arms snaked in through the holes in your barricade, scratching at you with blunt nails as the fire flared brighter. Another weight bounced against your back, and howls rose up all around the derelict. Fortunately the metal wasn’t rusted all the way through.

Shallow, quick breaths puffing out of your mouth, you dropped the meat on the flames and wafted the smoke toward the sensors. Your stomach turned, nausea rising. The things you were willing to do to survive were horrifying. You were disgusting.

As the stench of cooking meat filled the cabin, the monsters outside paused, snuffling around the edges of the planks. And then, they threw themselves like a wave at the barricade. At you.

Your eyes widened and you shrieked,… and disappeared, safely Matted up to the ship.

The Wolves considered the mission a success. After all, you survived. Even more, in one single exposure to the concept, you taught the humans how to harness fire.

You taught them to cook their meat.

I’m not 100% sure about the ending, and I’d like to cut more as I think we’re supposed to get to 500, but at least I’m under the 1000 word cutoff for CPs. And I don’t know what else to do with it, which means it’s ready for the next step: sending it off to CPs so they can give me critiques and suggestions on improving the story.

Check out the other Writer In Motion participants!

– K. J. Harrowick http://blog.halon-chronicles.com & http://kjharrowick.wordpress.com

– Jen Karner http://www.SyllablesandSass.com

– H.M. Braverman http://hmbraverman.com

– J.M. Jinks www.authorjmjinks.com

– Melissa Bergum (will be posting via KJ’s site)

– Thuy Nguyen http://www.tmnstories.com

– Kristen Howe https://kristenswritingendeavors.wordpress.com/

– Kathryn Hewitt https://spinningmyyarns.wordpress.com/

– Sean Willson https://www.seanwillson.com/blog/

– Paulette Wiles http://www.paulettewiles.com

– Talynn Lynn inkinthebook.blogspot.com

– Ellen Mulholland www.ellenmulholland.com

– Steph Whitaker stephwhitaker80.wixsite.com/swhitakerwrites/

– Sheri MacIntyre https://sherimacintyre.wordpress.com

– Jessica Lewis https://jessicalewis2227.wixsite.com/authorjessicalewis/writer-in-motion

– Susan Burdorf https://writingnotes.home.blog

– Dawn Currie https://dawncurrie.wordpress.com

– Megan Van Dyke http://www.meganrvandyke.com

– Ari Augustine https://bookishvalhalla.com

– Fariha Khayyam http://www.farihakhayyam.com

– M. Dalto https://authormdalto.wordpress.com/blog/

– Sheryl Stein http://www.wrekehavoc.com

– Belinda Grant https://belindagrantwrites.wordpress.com

– Coffee Quills https://coffeequills.com

The amazing editors:

Jeni Chappelle https://www.jenichappelleeditorial.com

Carly Hayward https://booklighteditorial.com

Maria Tureaud https://twitter.com/Maria_Tureaud

Justine Manzano https://www.craftquest.org/

So I looked at the prompt yesterday and I mentioned I had my subconscious thinking on it. I could feel the wheels spinning, but I had no clue what was going to come out. I thought about using a character I already have, maybe combining a storyline with the setting of the prompt. Or maybe I’d go abstract and use the feel, or a message. Maybe the old and rusty, underneath the bright clear sky? I could do something about sea, or abandonment, or ghosts, maybe zombies. Zombie pirates? Sea ghosts? Who knows! I’d made an earlier quip yesterday “My 5 year old has decided today is a great day to be a cannibal”. That would make a great opening sentence, right? Maybe I could tie it in with the ship.

Then I went to sleep. And I woke up with a story. No zombies, no ghosts. Space Cows.

Yeah, I have no idea either!

Oh yeah, and because that’s not crazy enough, let’s write it in 2nd person past tense, because that makes sense.

I’ve never written in 2nd person past tense. I dislike 1st person, and I stick to 3rd person past, either limited or omniscient as a rule.

As you can see, I have no idea what I’m doing when I write. Things just come out. I wrote my draft of 1140 words (yeah, with a cap of 500, I know, I know) in about 30 minutes. I use the term word puke, and it’s accurate.

During the 30 minutes, 2nd person past switched to 1st person past, and then I kept finding myself drifting to 1st person present and correcting my verbiage back to past tense. I may not have caught them all, fair warning. This is an unedited first draft. I haven’t even read over it again yet.

Oh yes, and I have no names. Not even in my head. This thing is weird. Normally, if I get stuck on a name I’ll leave a marker (AAName) and move on, but there’s not even any of that in this thing.

I think back on what I wrote, and I’m just like… where did this come from? What does this say about the mind of the author who wrote it? Perhaps that I’m raging mad? 😂

I wish I had something more helpful to write about my process, but this is really it. I plant myself in a chair or in front of my writing desk (which is a wooden crate on top of the table with a cloth over top, and my laptop sitting on the cloth) and I just… write. I don’t know what’s going to come out, I don’t know what’s going to happen next except for possibly some few plot points. In this case, I sat down intending to write in 2nd person past and a story about a Space Cow being chased by monsters that turn out to be cave people. There was a notion of having to cook meat to get up to the spaceship (cuz Space Cow) and the humans learning to cook from that.

Then, while writing, things evolved and I went with the flow. Would the narrator survive? Maybe not! What details happened? Who knows? I saw the 500 mark approaching and I zoomed right past without waving goodbye because there was no time for pleasantries. I had to keep going. It just sort of flows through me like a conduit. Yes, my writing speed was in the vicinity of 42 wpm, which is pretty normal for me. I have to try to keep up with the next bit of thing my brain has decided on for the plot.

I’m pretty happy with the story. Mostly, I’m incredibly amused. Such a blast to write!

Now the real trick: Editing.

Check out the other Writer In Motion participants!

– K. J. Harrowick http://blog.halon-chronicles.com & http://kjharrowick.wordpress.com

– Jen Karner http://www.SyllablesandSass.com

– H.M. Braverman http://hmbraverman.com

– J.M. Jinks www.authorjmjinks.com

– Melissa Bergum (will be posting via KJ’s site)

– Thuy Nguyen http://www.tmnstories.com

– Kristen Howe https://kristenswritingendeavors.wordpress.com/

– Kathryn Hewitt https://spinningmyyarns.wordpress.com/

– Sean Willson https://www.seanwillson.com/blog/

– Paulette Wiles http://www.paulettewiles.com

– Talynn Lynn inkinthebook.blogspot.com

– Ellen Mulholland www.ellenmulholland.com

– Steph Whitaker stephwhitaker80.wixsite.com/swhitakerwrites/

– Sheri MacIntyre https://sherimacintyre.wordpress.com

– Jessica Lewis https://jessicalewis2227.wixsite.com/authorjessicalewis/writer-in-motion

– Susan Burdorf https://writingnotes.home.blog

– Dawn Currie https://dawncurrie.wordpress.com

– Megan Van Dyke http://www.meganrvandyke.com

– Ari Augustine https://bookishvalhalla.com

– Fariha Khayyam http://www.farihakhayyam.com

– M. Dalto https://authormdalto.wordpress.com/blog/

– Sheryl Stein http://www.wrekehavoc.com

– Belinda Grant https://belindagrantwrites.wordpress.com

– Coffee Quills https://coffeequills.com

The amazing editors:

Jeni Chappelle https://www.jenichappelleeditorial.com

Carly Hayward https://booklighteditorial.com

Maria Tureaud https://twitter.com/Maria_Tureaud

Justine Manzano https://www.craftquest.org/