Mythos mayhem

About a month ago, I saw an anthology looking for Mythos tales revisiting the classic "At the Mountains of Madness" by Lovecraft.  They were looking for stories set in the past, present and future.  I have always wanted to write exactly such a tale, so it put this idea in my head.

The guidelines gave a limit of 6000 words, which I hope is not firm.  After having the idea in my head for a week or two, I felt it would come out to 7500 words.  In fact, the first draft had an opening scene, then a flashback to an expedition, then back to the main story, and ended at 7200 words.  But every time I thought it was done, especially while trying to sleep, I would think of some other detail to add or remove.  Two characters had to be added to the first expedition to make the final conflict more tragic and crazy.

Of course, I reread the original book, which is one of my favorites of all time, even if it had no proper characters or dialog by modern standards.  It was about atmosphere and mystery.  I hope my tale is a worthy recollection to the setting. 

Then I did a serious round of word refinement, removing "that" and "seems like" and "feels like" and "that".  These are such weak and dead words.  They had to go, along with most of the "-ing" words where verbs pretend to be adjectives, and most of the extra adverbial fluff.

Then I did a round of research, finding old survey maps and scanning Google maps for mountains with the right shapes, so that when I mentioned a place of the coordinates of a place, the reader can go to that real location and explore for themselves.  I knew the basic geography of Antarctica and most of the modern research going on there.  But I didn't want to be caught saying something that wasn't accurate.

Then I did a round of research on exactly the type of ship involved in that first expedition, and what gear was on board and what the conditions would be like living there for months.

What bugged the most about doing so many revisions?  Finding lines in the middle that refer to things that were removed a week ago.  No, that scene never happened, sure can't talk about it later in the story. 

I almost never edit a piece as much as this one.  It's the most complex thing I have written in 20 years, and really felt like practice for a novel.

The last few times I looked at it, I only went back to review the head count (literally) and change a few words in the big finale.  It ended up at 8300 words.  It could easily be 10K if I went back and flooded it with more detail, but I went for a sleek action story.

I sent it to my beta reader.  With luck, there are no more dangling bits to fix.  I want to get it out to the anthology soon ...