I have a story that may or may not be dead. You'd think the author would know this, but in this case I don't. I finished the piece nearly two months ago, set it aside, and have been unmotivated to go back to it -- in itself a bad sign. I usually start a rewrite as soon as the first draft is finished, and this time I don't want to. The story has ending problems, the main character is not a nice person, and I just don't want to work on it. So it's probably dead. But...I could be wrong. The idea is still nifty.
The logical answer would be to write a different story with the same idea, but I don't want to do that, either. What I really want is to not have written the story in the first place so that I don't have to think about it now, but that's not possible, either. So it hangs around me, a decaying albatross, with no Coleridge redemption in sight.
On the other hand, today I sold another story, one that I do like, to Lou Anders of Pyr for the anthology FAST FORWARD 2. The story is called "The Kindness of Strangers," and while it does not have Blanche DuBois, it does have beautiful, megaterrorist aliens. They're not nice peole, either, but I like them. Go figure.
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3 comments:
I'm having precisely the same problem with a story I wrote a few months ago; I submitted it to JBU, got some really great comments from the Sluch Reader and fellow contributors on how to make it better, but I haven't had the motivation to do the rewrite.
Why? I don't know; to be perfectly honest, I feel the way you do -- I wish I had never written it. The story needs to be totally reconstructed, and with the awesome comments I got, I have everything I need to do it. But, I just don't have the motivation...
I keep working on other stories instead. :)
Anyway, I know how you feel.
And congratulations on the sale to Fast Forward 2. It's looking like Lou Anders is going to put out another great collection.
That's supposed to say Slush Reader. :)
Sincerely,
John-Mark
Maybe it's a slip for Slouch Reader? Nah, couldn't be!
Congrats on the sale :). Yeah, I know those ugly duckling stories. I have a whole ugly duckling novel. Could be a swan, but the beta reader said it showed how much I hated writing it. Probably not a swan!
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