Not being the most patient person around I haven't been able to spot any general thoughts about how long a person should wait after writing a first draft of a short story before a review. I have seen a few comments about waiting many weeks before reviewing your first draft of a novel to get a fresh look at it, but is this much time necessary for a short story as well? I ultimately hope to write a sci-fi novel, but many have suggested trying a short story first to get the hang of the process, etc. so I have been working on that. Now that I have a short story in its first draft condition should I be doing other things for a significant time before doing the next review and revamp? With a short story it just seems that there isn't as much to need modification in terms of continuity, etc. so maybe no pause is really needed. BTW, my short story is 4070 words long in the first draft, if that makes any difference in anyone's replies. I am anxious to post it on the sci-fi workshop threads, have to figure out how to do that of course, but I also want to be sure I have given it my best effort as well. The critiques offered on this forum seem to be very useful since self critique is not really a strong suite for me.
It's hard to say with a short. I'm impatient so I don't let a lot of time pass. A few days, maybe a week. It all depends. If you want to speed things up and get the most out of your rewrite. Read the first draft out loud. That will reveal more snags than reading it in your head. Because you can't skim over what you meant to say when you read it out loud.
Peachalulu thanks for the 'read out loud' suggestion, it really does make you "see" your story differently. Now I have touched up that first draft and will ask a couple of people to read it to get an outside opinion.
If you're planning to post to the workshop, make sure you meet the requirements, and I recommend you post an excerpt, some 1000-2000 words. There're longer pieces, but shorter ones tend to get more reviews. Before you post it, put on your editor's hat and comb through the excerpt. If you leave in grammar mistakes and such, the reviewers will easily latch onto them and you might get less feedback on the story itself. Give us as effortless a reading experience as possible. When I wrote the short story for the WF sci-fi contest last year, I let it sit for a day or two before getting back to it again. I also read through the whole thing, like 50 times before submitting, and by that time I was sick of it. Figured it was a good sign.
