Getting Tense and confused.

If you've been following my adventures in time and space - otherwise known as Twitter - you'll know I've been working on yet another masterpiece to inflict on the world. Very vaguely influenced by horror writer HP Lovecraft, it was meant to be a novel but has somehow ended up a short story. That doesn't matter. I see that as an admirable exercise in trimming off fat.

More importantly, you'll also know I've been having trouble with it.

Although I had the story completely worked out before I sat down to write it, I couldn't actually get into the telling of it. Consequently, some sections have ended up being written in the First Person, some in the Third; some in the Present Tense and some in the Past. Some sections have had no internal monologue. Some have had no dialogue. From this I think we can say it's been a rough and rocky road.

The odd thing is that, today, having re-written the first thousand words from scratch, I've stuck all the bits together and converted them all to Third Person, Past Tense and, by some miracle, it all fits together seamlessly. I'm not sure what the moral of all this is but it's a great relief to discover that all that effort wasn't wasted, and I suppose it shows that, when it comes to writing a story, it doesn't matter how you get there just as long as you do get there.

I still haven't written the climactic scene yet and there's a section I need to add in the middle but at least I'm in a better mood about it all now.

But what to call that story when it's done? That's always the question.