Every morning I read through the short story I recently finished (or thought I finished) to see if there is somthing I want to revise. Inevitably, there is. It's very odd how the writing process works. You think you've finished something, made it as smooth and streamlined as it can be, but then you go back to it after a few hours or a day and find some godawful passage of clunky prose. I know I'm getting close to really finishing the story now, because the awkward passages are getting fewer and smaller every day. I've heard that when you get to the point where you're changing individual words and then thinking better of it and changing them back again, then you're finally finished with a story. I'm about at that point now. Soon I can send it off and not have to think about it for a few months (which is the amount of time most literary magazines/websites take to consider a piece). Then I can start on the next one, which will be much shorter and lighter, I think. Yes, it's all madness . . . .