I’ve been submitting a brief short story to several magazines over the past few months without a sale. It’s been a good learning experience for me on several levels. I am proud to say that I have not at any point been particularly hurt by a rejection (although I do coincidentally seem to have a bit of a grumpy day after getting one), and that I’ve received several rather valuable and complimentary reviews and pieces of feedback from very generous magazine editors.
The story, Freedom, was written as an atmospheric piece, something that captured a mood and environment. All of my editors (the wonderful and amazing family members who read my stories!) mentioned that they wanted more from the piece. More story, more plot, more details, just more. So I’m faced with the idea that it might be worth it to reinvigorate the piece with, I guess, “more.”
The thing is, that I have a really difficult time doing rewrites. I hear the piece in my head, I type it out on the computer and that’s it. I very rarely totally restructure any story, because then it wouldn’t be the story that I set out to write. In fact, I’ve got at least 4 other short stories sitting in limbo right now because I know they need to be reworked, but I just can’t figure out how to bring myself to do it.
So I’m going to use Freedom as a learning experience for this as well. I’m going to try to dissect the piece down to it’s elements, and then do a little day dreaming about the environment and the characters. I know there’s another great story in there somewhere. I just need to find it, I suppose…
