Well I got Stanley and Julep out of their frozen place and managed to briefly tie up and tie in the story and bring it in under 1200 words. This one’s a bit longer than the previous, but I’m finding that I am more automatically editing the needless words that are usually over half the length of story and don’t even type them. Okay, so maybe I do but then they’re deleted within minutes rather than agonizingly painfully cut over days. I’m becoming quite good at knowing when the story’s over too, and not tempted to keep running it out till it fizzles and dies.
This is the third story I’ve written this week and it’s a tie for best with the second. The first is no longer a contender; it’s an old lady story, one with a moral and lessons and boring as hell–though of course, well written. The second story, called When the Moon Crosses the Orbit of Earth Around the Sun, has a pretty clear theme of decision-making, and again I surprised myself with some of the metaphors that slipped in there such as her black hair on the white pillow. The story has a nice simple arc, an interesting quirky protagonist, and a definite resolution.
This last story, A Missionary’s Position, is a bit more vague, though it does feature a prevalent human failing of trying to please, putting oneself last in the flow of things because of low self esteem. And there are a couple things going on with the two characters of husband and wife as they both are thrown into an alien situation and each comes out changed. A lot more humor in this one too; this is the one that had me giggling.
Unfortunately, with many of the upper echelon literary journals closing their reading periods in April and May, I’ve made the mistake of sending out Story #1 when I really shouldn’t have but didn’t know or admit it until the next two stories came along. And that’s how ten years go by of missing deadlines and trying to force something out of your mind last minute and telling yourself it’s okay to submit, or worse, sending out nothing.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology