Crap

I completed the final revisions.  I read through the story, aloud (easier to catch some awkward passages that way), and determined, considering the imminent deadline, that it was as good as it was going to get.  I reviewed the submission guidelines, formatted the story appropriately, and logged into the site to submit my story.  Before I went forward with the upload, I decided to look under "My Submissions" to see if I had ever sent anything to this journal before (I can never remember these things). 

Oh, well hell.  I had sent this same story in 2005.  My knee-jerk reaction was to just forget about it and move on.  Then I thought, "I'll submit it anyway."  I retracted that thought, and here I am now.  I don't regret the time I spent on the story this month.  I had fun revisiting old work and making it new.  I hope it will provide motivation to craft new pieces. 

In the meantime, I'll take a leap and post a link to the story here.  And while I really want to make excuses or qualifying statements about some choices I made for the story, I won't.  I just...whatever.

Create

First drafts are like seeds, amounting to very little until they are given care.  Then they grow and change shape, and as time passes, that seed of an idea blooms into something bright and strong, but only with the right combination of skill and persistence. 

            
As far as similes go, I won’t claim it as the best ever, but you get the general idea.  Revision is an essential part of writing.  The time that goes into smoothing the edges, fleshing out the characters, enhancing description, tightening up loose prose, that is the creative process.  It’s also my favorite part.

        
See, I love charging in to that first draft.  I write fast, anxious to just get it all down on paper, heedless of whether or not it’s any good.  And, it rarely is, although there are a few nuggets of brilliance.  It’s madness, that first draft, and there is excitement in that.  But it’s the sitting back, taking a breath, reaching for a little objectivity that is the most satisfying for me.  Especially if I’ve put a manuscript away for a while, because when I bring it out, I start questioning some decisions I made, and it becomes a little mystery to solve.  And when that manuscript has been in a drawer or on a flash drive for ten years, that mystery is trickier yet. 

            
The way I think, in fact, the way of the world, has changed in the past decade.  What might have worked in 2001 may make little sense in 2011.  Or, at the very least, is terribly out-of-date.  I don’t write period pieces, so a big part of revision is updating.  That was the first thing I did with the story I dug up for the competition.  It wasn’t altogether easy, because updating meant that certain passages would either have to go or lose all recognition, and those were the passages that might have had the most strength.  So, as I scrolled through the story, I would sometimes leave those passages alone, changed only by the notes in red font at the end of the sentence.  The notes gave me something to think about when I went through the manuscript a second time, because the first revision is never the last.

             
The first revision was the most entertaining, because it was the first I looked at it in a long time.  I laughed as much at the intended humor (I do find myself funny, but you may not.  Whatever.), as at some of the terrible prose scattered throughout the pages.  During the second run-through I was all seriousness (well, mostly) and printed the pages so I could arm myself with my red pen and actually make it look like an edited piece instead of some polished computer-generated copy.  I like handwritten notes in margins.  It’s just how I roll.

           
This was the point where I tried to recall all of my teachers’/professors’ lessons from high school and college.  High school English taught me the beauty of a good transition.  What I took away from college are parallel sentence structure (it just sounds good when read aloud) and varying the length of sentences, with which I continue to struggle because that requires the occasional short and concise sentence, and I just don’t know when to shut up.  This second draft also gave me an opportunity to use all of the fancy symbols I learned when I tried to teach myself copy editing years ago when I was determined to get a job in the publishing industry (very short-lived determination). 

            
The third revision is the rewriting stage for me.  I’m typing it from scratch, making changes as I go.  This is a longer process, because I know it will be the last time I can make adjustments, so I’m being super careful.  The deadline is looming, and then I have to let it go.  That need to let it go is a good thing; otherwise, I’d be revising one story indefinitely.  That’s how much I like the process. 

            
Revision is where the work comes in.  It might seem like creativity is beaten into submission during this time, but I don’t think it is.  I think it’s given a leg up, an opportunity to show off its best side.  No one wants to be caught just rolling out of bed, after all.

             
Am I coming up with even worse metaphors?  (Or, is it simile?  Anyone interested in a grammar lesson?  No?)

Criticism

Whenever I mention my writing, my older sister gets an attitude (yes you do).  She’d quip, “You never let any of us read it,” as if it was a mythical creature that couldn’t possibly exist without her seeing it with her own eyes.  Well, she’s not wrong.  Not that my writing is akin to Sasquatch, but that it wasn’t until my fourth year in college that I let anyone read my stuff (with the exception of a really bad, really dark poem in high school that made the rounds among my friends that I now wish I could reach back 15 years and snatch out of their hands). 

As a creative writing major, I was required to share my work, or I was in the wrong program.  I would have gotten an incomplete, never graduated, and still have had to pay back student loans that I am less than six months away from paying off (graduate loans do not apply).  To read aloud and participate in a critical discussion of a string of words sprung from my imagination (I can bring up the whole writing is like giving birth metaphor, but that’s been done, and what the hell do I know about giving birth, anyway?) was/is actually quite terrifying.  I fully expected my professor to ball up my story or play or poem and toss it into the trash can behind her.  That never happened, of course.  There was criticism, because if you praised every piece on the table, you weren’t properly analyzing the work.  And no matter how “constructive” the criticism, you lost a little bit of your soul every time someone suggested a change. 

Putting your work out there cannot be that dramatic.  Nothing would ever get published, because there would be nothing to publish.  Every piece of prose or poetry would be locked in a writer’s hard drive, where it would stay until he or she deleted it, frightened of dying and the next of kin discovering it.  And I’ll admit it: I’m a little bit that person. 

I’ve heard it before, but in light of my recent decision to revisit my writing, it seemed so timely and sage, but Tina Fey in her book BossyPants (our book club selection for May!), discusses the need to let your writing out, to not over-think it, to let it go. 

You have to let people see what you wrote.  It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated.

What’s interesting is that I can take that advice for every job application I send out, but I cannot for my writing.  I’ve been inundated with rejections on the job front.  I shake it off and keep on applying.  Why does it have to be different for story and novel submissions?

I’ve submitted work before.  I submitted a (in retrospect, very bad) novel proposal to a popular publisher, and a poem to the same journal to which I plan to submit a short story later this month.  And I’m still here to talk about it.  I’ve even been on the other side, as the editor for my undergraduate university’s arts journal.  I had plenty of help weeding out the selections that would go into the issue, but I was the one who signed the rejection letter to those who didn’t make the cut.  It really isn’t personal.

Does this mean I’m going to suddenly share my old work for all to see?  Oh, probably not.    

Now I need to go and start revising.  Where is that red pen?

Craft

While trying to track down a copy of this month’s book club selection, and for the first time since its launch, I wished I had a Kindle.  I don’t know enough about e-readers to know if having one would have made accessing the book easier or cheaper, but I assumed it did.  With that being said, I’m over it, and glad to still have shelves cluttered with books. 

             

Thinking about books and reading inevitably leads me to think about writing.  Journaling and blogging aside, I used to write.  I wrote short stories, attempted novels, and even penned some pretty pitiful poetry.  It wasn’t just something to do as an expressive teenager; I majored in it as an undergrad.  I invested money in books and magazines about the craft, went to a writer’s conference, submitted a few pieces to various publications, and thought for a time that this was my true path.  Then, right around the time I entered grad school, I stopped following that path.  I even wrote about it (of course):

…Today I opened a bound notebook and read writing exercises I completed, short story and novel ideas, and journal entries proclaiming my life’s goal to be a published novelist.  …[T]hey reflected ideas and ambitions from 2000 and 2001.  When I look back over the past eight years, I am convinced that I have not changed in all that time, because I define who I am by what I do.  I go to work, I work out, and I read.  Broken down that simply, I have been stagnant for almost a decade. 

However, that’s not true.  This notebook proves that an essential part of me is different.  I no longer yearn to be a published novelist or short story writer.  For twenty years this had been my direction.  I wrote off and on for years, but even during the off periods, I still believed in what I wanted to do.  Well, I haven’t written fiction in about three years, but this is not an off period.  I’ve consciously let the dream go…and I’m okay with that. 

That was in 2009, and I’ve been busy enough with grad school and the job search that I haven’t thought much on the fact that I don’t write stories anymore.  I did think about writing, and was pleased when I discovered that the information profession has a need for, and even an expectation of, its members to publish.  And those essays that are so requisite in classroom learning?  I was most definitely in my own strange little heaven there. 

            

Expository writing, however, isn’t what I had hung my hat on all those years, and in the past week, I’ve rediscovered a yen for fiction and fancy craft.  I want to revisit some of my old work and try my hand at new ideas.  Years ago I subscribed to an electronic newsletter of a journal that publishes short stories and since I have never unsubscribed, I got an email this week announcing a new writer’s contest that I’m seriously considering entering (deadline is May 31, so some polished old work might have to do).

So May just may become a theme month in terms of blog posts, like “The Writer’s Spirit” or some such nonsense.  With that in mind, I struggled with how to craft this first post.  I thought about stand-out moments in my writing past, evidence that it was something important to me, and I thought of Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury.  I remember sitting in study hall, gripping those pages tightly, in awe at how he could so accurately echo everything I had felt at the time.  I still have the book, a little worn around the edges, whole passages highlighted or underlined.  In my hands, the book almost feels supple, like worn leather.  One look and I see a book well-used and well-loved.  I’m not sure a Kindle can do that.