A killer walked the streets of Marseille, but all Adeline cared about was having a smoke.

It’s time to show the raw and rough edges, friends. Here is the unedited version of my short story for Writer in Motion. After Jeni revealed the prompt last week, I got to work and I’ve been sitting on this ever since. It’s been so hard not to share or revise.

I love the ocean and anything with a maritime theme, so I was super stoked that this prompt would work well with ideas I had been lightly brainstorming in anticipation. A soon as I saw the prompt, I immediately started working on the outline for my short story.

How many times have you read a work of polished and perfected fiction and wondered what the first draft of that piece looked like? I know I have! With Writer In Motion, you’ll see the complete process twelve writers go through to create an original piece of short fiction from beginning to end.

After agonizing over my second draft, rewriting my final two acts, and going through page after page of revisions, I knew it was time to do the thing I was dreading most. It was time to show my manuscript to other people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the things that hold us back most as writers and creative people. We tend to get stuck in our heads, alone in small rooms, coffee shops, or libraries — ear buds in our ears, trying to drown out the noise while we attempt to create something that resonates with the human condition. Almost all of us are wondering if we’re good enough.

I’m in the process of doing a line edit revision on my new novel these days, and I’m focusing on dialogue. Dialogue has always been a unique struggle for me.

Actually, the title to this post should be, “What it’s really like to finish your first draft.” I’m nowhere near being finished with my novel. Right now, it’s sitting in the bottom drawer of my desk, gathering the omnipresent dust we have here in Southern California, waiting to be revised.