So I threw another story into the Crapometer and am getting some good feedback from them. It’s a second person pov and the only one I’ve written this way for the same reason it bothers other readers: I don’t like reading second person pov.
But this particular story seemed to call for it and it works all right–though I think it will work better after incorporating some of the suggestions made. It’s funny, you can spend almost every waking minute with a piece of work and not see something that you’ll cringe at six months later. Most of the short stories I’ve written over the past five years will no longer even be considered for serious overhauls; they’re just not worth the effort. The reading, the writing, the very act of living every day since a story was written would have made it so much better. My best story is always the latest one. Every element improved by the absorption of life.
On the other hand, you can’t write and never put something out for critique or even submission for publication. What you’ve (or at least in my case) sent is never going to be the best you’ll do. Novels may work differently, since sometimes the story itself is one that can’t be topped. But the writing, unless an author gets sloppy and cocky (and I’ve seen this in many cases), almost always improves.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology