Thanks to all of you for the feedback on the short story excerpt I posted here yesterday. All of you treat yourselves to a nice ice cream cone. You deserve it.
Those of you who are just reading this today, it’s not too late to give me your $.02 (I accept checks and credit cards as well as cash). I have taken all these comments to heart and am open to any suggestions.
What I have learned is that I have a pretty decent opening for my story that seems to do its’ job in hooking the majority of you all. I’m also pretty confident that my “story idea” and concept are interesting. This was good to hear but now I’m feeling a great deal of pressure. You all spent a good amount of time helping me here and I don’t want to let you down. The due date for the project is Saturday and sitting at roughly 1600 words I’m close to my target word count of 2000. However, I’m not sure if the words I have written keep the suspense of the story going. Honestly, I’m not sure if my story is interesting.
From the opening paragraphs we have Sarah at her party, mere hours away from either great relief or death. Add to that a strange ticking sound that seems to be growing in intensity and you would think I would be able to keep the tension going for a measly 2000 words and the story would just write itself. Well, it’s just not happening.
This can easily be accomplished. I’m just not sure if I’m a good enough writer yet to pull it off. I keep on holding out hope that some great idea will pop into my head and the day will be saved.
Sorry for all the rambling and the whining. I had to get those frustrations off my chest. To make up for it, here is a link to an article by a writer and former editor about what they look for when combing through their “slush piles” (link via John Scalzi at the Ficlets blog):
What I Learned from Reading Slush
******************************************UPDATE**********************************************
I have an idea! All might not be lost! I was making things too easy on poor Sarah, and therefore I have stripped away her friends and family and put her alone in the house with only the ticking noise to keep her company. I have had to cut 50% of my story, but I like this better.
The rewrite is now a race against time, much like my story.
The Struggling Writer 
The tension should be quit fun to maintain. Ticking is a nice motif. I’d just have a brief phrase repeated throughout the story…like the Nevermore of Poe’s Raven.
Tension I find more fun than action. Lots of stuff is harder that fear of stuff happening (especially if it’s not happening).
Still…I’m sure you can come up with something good.
Good luck.