Mar 06 2008
Another story, another chance to collect rejection slips
A week later, and my previously mentioned reviewer did call it on the drafts, as the story has gone through two more drafts since I first sent it out to readers. Every sentence examined, more often than not torn apart and reworded, sometimes more than once. I am so thoroughly sick of staring at this story, it’s moved into the “hate it” phase.
From what I’ve observed, the “I hate this story” phase comes at different times for different writers, though it seems to come up at least at some point for most of the writers I’ve met. For me, it usually means it’s time to quit fiddling with it and send it out, and so I shall.
Thanks this time go to Will Shetterly and Voluptuary members Kiki Christie, Nolan Darilek, Jennifer Evans, and C.C. Major for reading and great feedback, and super-huge thanks to my sweeties Steve and Kit for helping with the tear-down-build-again phase of the line editing. This was hard work but a lot of fun (well, except for the hating the story bit, but that’ll pass).
Now to either work more on the novel, or come up with a shiny new short story. Preferably both.
The process has been a lot of fun to work with you on — we really got deep into the story, analyzing word choice and the fine details of character action and voice. I am really pleased with how the story turned out.