Writing and spring break

Seems it has been a while since I updated my poor lj! I started this mainly to keep track of my writing, which has been somewhat stalled lately. However, I am getting back into the swing of things, if a bit more slowly than I might like.I've rewritten the first chapter of my novel and am almost done with a first draft of a complete overhaul of my story, "For the Love of Trees." I submitted the first version of this as my pre-workshop story for Odyssey, when I had a lot of trouble getting it down to the 5,000 word limit. Jeanne pointed out lots of problems, among them, there was too much plot for the length, or it needed to be at least twice as long. (Yeah, I figured this when I had so much trouble editing it down). So I did a rewrite which fixed some of the issues and had a private critique with Laurie Marks. She gave me some good feedback, but basically, I still had some of the same problems.So I left Odyssey determined I was going to scale down the plot and make this thing into an honest to goodness short story. Well, after compressing the time frame from an entire generation to about a month, getting rid of characters and subplots, strengthening the protagonist, adding more detail, and giving it a more vibrant setting, the darn thing still wants to be a novelette or novella.That's ok with me. I think it is a much stronger piece now, and I am very reluctant to cut the plot down further because I hit on some things that make the Dryad's motivation much stronger.I've often maintained that the way I have set up the mythology of my Dryads, they could live or have lived at any time and place in history, interacting (or not) with any human culture. This gives me a lot of freedom to use them in other ways besides the novel. My as yet uncompleted story, "The Dreaming Tree," takes place in modern day, in a town based on Hot Springs, Arkansas, which I visited last year. It just seemed like a place that would attract Dryads, with the water coming steaming from the ground. Dryads would want to live in places of natural beauty and interesting features."For the Love of Trees" now takes place, in all places, in Southern Indiana around 1800. Why Indiana? First, I live here, and it is easy to do research. Second, in the early 1800s, Indiana was quite an interesting place, with communities of French and English speakers, various Indian tribes, and immigrants arriving from many places to claim a piece of the new Territory. Could there have been Dryads in the mix as well? Well, why not?I'm currently on a short spring break trip to Spring Mill State Park in Indiana, which has a restored pioneer village founded in 1812 when a naval officer found a likely location for a mill. Though the story isn't set in this town, but further south, close to Louisville, I'm finding this a great spot for inspiration. The park also has caves, waterfalls, and great trails. I'm at the Inn for a second night before returning to Indianapolis tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm going on a walk learning how to identify trees by their bark.It's been a very busy semester so far and I've got lots of students, music to learn, etc. so it is nice to get away for a short while. "For the Love of Trees" in its current form is about 10,000 words and I hope to finish a draft of it under 15,000 words so I can divide it into three parts and bring it to TNEO ("The Never Ending Odyssey") - a workshop for Odyssey graduates this summer. If it needs to be even longer than that (as it well may), getting feedback can help me decide what needs expanding or what scenes to add.Well, I really did want to make it into a short story. But sometimes stories have minds of their own. ;)