Saturday, August 8, 2009

When Stories Attack

I've been working on this story that I plan to submit to a magazine that was nice enough to ask me to send them something.

It's a fairly new story, pretty short, about 1000 words, rejected a couple of times previously. I did some more work on it and thought I had it.

Then the past week I worked on it some more (a "final look" before submitting) and realized I didn't have it after all. The story has been kicking my ass on a nightly basis. That horrible revising and tweaking and tinkering that erodes confidence and makes you question why the hell you've been spending all this time on this really sucky story.

Then today, in between diaper changes and dancing with Henry and Celia to the Big Night soundtrack, something clicked, the story fell into place, I made a few more edits, and I think I have it again.

The past week of hair pulling was worth it and made the story better. I hope. We'll see.

2 comments:

Ethel Rohan said...

That "click" is sweet, isn't it? The best of luck with the story.

Andrew Roe said...

Thanks, Ethel. That "click" is indeed sweet; and the "something" is so mysterious...