Present and accounted for

I finished the first draft of a short story yesterday. Short in name, but it came in at 6000 words. A little longer than I anticipated when I took on the project. I’ve done a fairly thorough job of editing-as-I-go during the writing process. However…

…I’m not a huge fan of present-tense narratives for anything except short-short stories. Flash fiction. Yet, when I was starting a read-through yesterday morning prior to tackling the end of the story, the first few sentences seemed awkward to me in the past tense. I can’t put a finger on exactly what it was about them, but I read them in my mind as present tense, and I decided to revise the entire thing into present-tense narrative. Not exactly brain surgery as far as revision goes, but a time-consuming task all the same, and one that requires a lot of attention to detail. When I was finished, I believed the decision to be the correct one for the tale. We’ll see if I still think the same way once I tackle revision. Or if the editor agrees when I send it to him.

One thing present-tense has in its favor—had-less-ness. You can use simple past for backstory and not have to worry about transitioning into it with past-perfect (“had”) verbs and then figuring out when you can drop them.

Another rainy day. My wife and I sat outside under the awning at the local cafe this morning having breakfast, entertained by thunder and lightning and rain dancing off the sidewalk. One crash of thunder was so loud that I almost spilled my tea, and one flash of lightning seemed so close that I felt the hair standing up on my arms. Nature. Gotta love her.

I read half of Robert B. Parker’s latest Spenser novel at the bookstore during my lunch hour today. That’s not right.