Cranking out a rewrite on a story I wrote five years ago. Close-but-no-prize on getting it published, but I'd send it out, wait, get a rejection, forget about it, send it out again, get another rejection then start on another story and abandon all efforts in favor of the new shiny thing. Now I'm committed to selling this sucker. (Or getting it published for free - number two on my list but it opens so many more markets.)Actually, I'm not rewriting so much as laying in elements to add tension and underscore the theme of destructive self-absortion - something that has gotten me everything I lack today. Not bad as writing goes, but tricky since I don't want to scuttle the old stuff that still works.
From a neat 5k, I suspect the new version will top out in the novelette range of 7500 words. This reduces my shot at free, online placements, but does leave me well-situated for the prestigious, ill-paying, anthology route.
Every story needs so much space to be told. I've got four sub-3k pieces that should place easier than a mini-whale like my current assignment. But I like this mini-whale. I think all it lacked before was a theme, change in perspective, and a higher body count. I believe it was Dickens who once said, "Good Heavens, if a story doesn't sell kill a character with a wasting disease. Kill several and make them good ones. Then beat a begger with a cane. But not in print. Do it for real and your problems will evaporate while his will increase exponentially."
I may not do all of that, but its good to know what the masters thought.
2 comments:
If that beating a beggar with a cane advise held water, the gang in "A Clockwork Orange" would have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
True, though they did win a Caldecott Award for Best Children's Picture Book.
Perhaps they needed to put more oomph into it.
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