I wrote a story for young children a couple of years ago and sent it to two publishers. Both of them wrote back and said that they liked the premise of the story but that it was too long for the age group that it was aimed at. I'd filled the story with lots of magical things ( lemonade ponds and gingerbread cottages not wizards and warlocks) which I thought made my story special. The publishers had suggested that these things didn't add anything to the story and if I'm honest I was a bit miffed by that. So I put the story away to forget about it until the day arrived that the world of literature decided that stories for the under 5's need to be twice as long as they are at the moment. A day that I don't think I'll live to see. Anyway, in a nutshell I had completely forgotten that I had ever written that story.
The other day when I was just floating around the computer doing nothing at all I came across it again and set myself the challange of knocking it down to size. I've had a lot of time to fill in the last few days and this was how I filled them.
My story which last week was 1470 words long is now 732. The fripparies have all been deleted and all that is left is the premise so maybe after a polish I'll send it out again.
Of course I've still got the original just in case the literary world does turn itself on it's head in my lifetime.
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