I’ve been working on a particular short story for a little over a year[1]. The generative draft, written last June, was in response to a prompt to create a flash work[2] centered around a haunting without mentioning the haunting itself. The haunting was not to be an entity but a manifestation of a pain.
My first draft was 449 words. I was delighted with it, despite a threatening tension, a shadow I could feel but not quite understand. The story was, and continues to be, set on a cold beach point where a stranger died by suicide (the haunting, a driver who launched his car into the winter lake), and where, two days later, a couple stand. It’s the couple’s anniversary yet the wife decides it’s the time and place to end their strained marriage. The story’s initial title was Eagle-Eyed[3].
Before I launch into the exploration of the most recent feedback for this evolving short story, I thought it might be interesting to provide a breakdown of the various iterations it has moved through since[4]. This, I hope, will provide readers (and remind myself!) a sense of how a story might be shaped and reshaped towards a state where it may enter the world of publications[5]. It also serves as a pathway I’m following into self-confidence with my own writing. I won’t share the actual work in progress here because it negates publication elsewhere…hopefully this won’t stultify this post; I’d loath to be thought of as boring.
The most recent draft of this story was completed earlier this month, July 2nd. It has lengthened to 741-words. I felt good about the piece. What I mean when I say this is that I felt my way through understanding what the story was trying to tell me it was about, waiting for meaning to reveal itself instead of shoehorning it into “an idea”. I also worked (and played) to apply technical devices to illuminate the layers of meaning as I came to understand them. More often than not, the writing already held these hints, I just hadn’t “seen” it…it really has been a process of feeling my way as opposed to knowing or thinking my way through the crafting. I’m following instinct more than anything else.
I shared the story with a dear writer friend of mine, B, requesting she let me know what feelings came up for her when she read the piece. Also, whether there were any points in the story she found confusing or made her lift out of reading. The same morning, I submitted the story for formal post-workshop feedback with a writer/editor, Matt, in the UK.
I received generous feedback from both writers. Both indulged line by line attention and considerations. Both suggested places to cut (B, always sharp, pinpoints my rococo tendencies and gently asks whether they are needed). Both were encouraging. But here’s the thing…each interpreted the story differently: B understood the story as I had intended, reading the layered resonance in the piece, and most importantly, feeling it (she described the story as a bomb about to go off); Matt responded to the surface level of the piece.
A few observations upon receiving discordant feedback. Instead of descending into the pits of despair and not knowing what steps to take next (a year ago, I would have crumpled), I received the feedback with genuine curiosity. This alone is massive progress in my own creative development. I’m confident in this particular story and I’m comfortable knowing it isn’t quite there yet[6]. Also, I’m better at accepting the idea that I don’t have control about how others read my work. It’s likely a good thing there are multiple interpretations. It keeps it interesting. I know my writing won’t appeal to everybody. Nor should it. It’s enough to know it succeeds touching even just one person.
All feedback is helpful for stretching the brain and provoking multiplicities. It’s probably best to remove my pretension: words like inveiglement, my grammar gaffs, my chicken-livered metaphors[7].
I respect honesty above all else. Even when it confirms one’s greatest fears about character (or any other aspects of story: dialogue, silent spaces, conflict, emotional resonance, imagery, setting, sensory elements…the list is endless. Magical-fantasy-surrealistic-dream. Endless!). And, you know, for one who reads me so deeply, intimately, I’d jump into the burning lava throat of a volcano[8]. I’ll take what I can get.
[1] I’m sure these posts confirm my shambolic writing practice, but in case they don’t, I admit I’m usually working on several pieces in parallel, flip flopping between them the way a hook landed fish jumps to stay alive.
[2] A fiction or nonfiction narrative under 1000 words.
[3] Sometimes I feel like marching up to my past self, gripping her by the shoulders and shaking her violently to wake up! For the benefit of readers who don’t know details of my personal life, I left my own marriage last October, the week of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary (note: this story was written 4-5 months before then). Instead of being angry with my past self, I’m learning to be kinder, gentler. Learning takes so many forms, and I don’t know how to read them all. All I can be is committed to learning, operating from the point I am, in any moment, with the limited toolbox I carry and an open heart. I’m stunned to discover my body’s prescient talents …and how long it takes my mind to catch up…this is only one instance of many. I think about this a lot…
[4] May 2023-May 2024 I participated in the SmokeLong community workshop, generating 64 unique flash pieces. I’ve attempted to revise only a few of the pieces due to lack of time and yes, personal resistance-to-revision issues I continue to wrestle with. I made the difficult decision to withdraw from the community because I need to focus time on the writings I’ve already created, the works awaiting my attention (and devotion).
[5] And the state of publication is simply one point in time, catching a flying fluttering work and nailing the specimen to a velvety spot to keep it still (or dead)…I’m beginning to sense that all works continue in dynamic states and might be changed or altered or built upon over and over and over again…interpretation alone splinters the smashed glass casing of any publication and the work travels on and on through the hearts and minds of others…wow, a little too artsy Biro, reel it in.
[6] In answer to my request for points of confusion, B was curious about this question and hadn’t considered it before, but once posed she entered the work with this lens. And yes, she pointed out the story was quite confusing with time, shifting back and forth (through 5 shifts in time!). In a 750-word work this demands (taxes?) a lot of cognitive effort for the reader. So, the questions I’m now working through: is this expectation for the reader to follow the complex time shifts worth it? Does the time shift add another level of meaning to the story? If yes, what is that meaning? I don’t know…still thinking. If no, I need to rework the piece and remove some time shifts and support a smoother reading.
[7] Almost resisted the urge to write chicken liveried, but, alas, there it is, coddled in a footnote because the image of chickens dressed up in royal red and gold uniforms makes me laugh. I’m a cheap thrill.
[8] As long as I have a Mai Tai in my hand.
| Date and a few details | Number of reviewers providing feedback with flavour of feedback | My own thoughts and feelings at the time | Focus of revision as a result |
| June 25, 2023 449 words Title: Eagle-Eyed | • 5 reviewers •Consensus on excellent use of dialogue to depict tension-filled relationship between husband and wife characters. •Confusion about the setting and story as a crime scene – readers interpret the story as a wife preparing to murder her husband by the lake | I actually thought the piece was pretty clever and then when I got the feedback I realised I had almost completely buried the suicide so the story was confusing to readers. Readers are picking up on some buried anger which is…interesting. | Need to layer the suicide aspects in with less subtlety. Need to layer in the wife character’s contemplation about marital relationship with more clarity. |
| August 8, 2023 495 words Title changed to Point of Departure – this remains the working title in subsequent iterations | • 2 reviewers •Unsubstantial feedback (i.e., it’s great!) | huh – send it out and see what happens, crapshoot but whatevs Submitted to two publications: Vestal Review and Had Most writers in the flash community carpet bomb submissions, sending a single work to thirty or even fifty publications at once, praying for a hit and fluffing their bylines along the way…for me, this defeats the purpose and makes me feel like the whole publication enterprise is a waste of time (I mean, are these writers reading all those literary publications? Not possible). Feeling demoralised. And yet, when I read others’ works in publications I respect, I’m inspired and awed in a way I would love my work to be counted among them. | Submissions rejected – not at publishing level (that matters to me). Yet. Shelved. Then, in the ensuing months, thinking about the story tucked safely in the back of my mind, I come to realise what it was trying to tell me. The blunt life events I’m moving through illuminate this of course. I start to piece the concepts of suicide and marriage together…but nascent, vague, shadowy and disorganised thoughts… I don’t get it. Revisions attempt to tease these thoughts apart and layer them in the story somehow. |
| January 16, 2024 587 words | •7 reviewers •Consensus on beauty of language, along with the need to rearrange sentence structures (shorten them). •Readers agree about the reason for tension in relationship (this was added in this revision), they interpret this as valid and feels real •Readers understand the wife character intends to end her marriage, but reviewers concerned it is too subtle and might be mistaken for her character contemplating her own suicide…lots of suggestions for how to fix this. •Suggestion to remove a jarring image of car sex between husband and wife • | I’m really committed to keeping the subtlety in the piece ….I like its feeling of ambiguity…I’m pleased most reviewers (6 of the 7) “get” what I’m trying to communicate: the wife decides to leave the marriage (as opposed to thinking about taking her own life). I have to think more about this…I’m also really attached to the last line that I feel resonates: ”a good place to end a life.” Agree about removing the sex image. Makes me contemplate what deeper aspect the story is trying to tell me …I don’t know. | Came back to revising this piece in June 2024…thinking more deliberately about the “ending a life” pattern in the story. Redrafted with intention to submit for formal feedback from Matt Kendrick following a workshop with him. Worked at the sentence level to play with tempo and insert rhythmic variation. |
Process Peace 