Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Too Hasty Publishing

Do you ever publish something and then later wish that you could take it back?

I wrote a story a few years ago, "Counting to Ten". I think I originally was futzing around with it as some sort of play -- it's very short, just a conversation between two sisters. And then one of the Catamaran editors contacted me and asked if I had anything, and I had this, so I sent it along and they published it. Today I finally got around to adding it to my site, so you can read it. It's about dating white boys and dealing with sisters and getting married and not getting married and such:


"Why is it that when your own life is totally fucked up that you try to fix other peoples' lives?"
"I don't know. You're the big sister, you're supposed to know the answers to these things."
"I don't know anything. That's about all I know."


It's sort of autobiographical, only not really -- it's more like an alternate history of my life. And there's a lot I like about it, but there are some fuzzy bits in the middle, and I really, really don't like the ending. The last line is weak, and it needs to be a lot punchier. I think this story really suffered from my being still mopey about the novel fiasco or something, because I didn't go through my normal workshop process with it -- was just so relieved to be finally writing again that I wrote it and just sent it out. And yesterday I finally picked up the issue of Catamaran that it appeared in, and read through it, and found that I really liked the issue (am going to subscribe). That's all good.

Here's the bad part: I thought my story was probably the weakest thing in there. Which pisses me off. I should've done better by this poor story.

Ah well. It's still worth reading, I think, even if it could've been better. I'd be interested to know what you think. And at least the next thing they're publishing of mine, "The Arrival," is something that a) has been workshopped thoroughly, and b) I'm really happy with.

1 Comments:

Blogger momsue84 said...

I thought this blog was about yarn and fiber and knitting and crocheting by romance authors who shared an interest? Why is is necessary to use foul language? I'm out of here!

2:11 PM  

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