Tuesday, 15 January 2002

I haven't worked on any stories for the past couple of days.

Karina volunteered to read the latest draft of my rewrite and sent me some great comments. I knew there was something wrong, but I was just working around the edges--it was too much exposition where things should be dramatized, the scenes were out of order, stuff like that.

But Karina pointed out that the real problem was that the super-happy ending was impossible. So, it's back to something of a downer ending. Not as black as it was, but still not happy. The girl will be saved, at least a bit. But the boy won't get her. Sigh.

Steven won't like it. Maybe I'll send him both versions. He can choose to read only the happy one. Maybe he'll like it okay.

I realized the past couple of days that I've been focusing too much on selling my stories. I've begun to feel that my stories are this close to selling (imagine a finger and thumb just a half-inch apart), and I've been trying really hard to close that gap. But that's a pointless exercise. All I can really do--and the only thing that will help anyway--is to tell the best stories I can.

Part of that is knowing when I've done all I can with a story, and then moving on. I'm pretty close to that with this one.

Then I'll start on something new, I think. Not something that tries to close the gap, a half-inch better than this story; something that zooms on past by a mile. It's the only strategy that really makes sense.