Rejection Made Me Kill The Aunt

I received a very nice rejection letter just before Christmas for a story I'd written just over a month ago. Because of it I killed an aunt.

First things first.  What made the letter so nice?  Three things.  1) It was a personal letter.  2) It stated the reason the story wasn't accepted and 3) The editor was right.

I didn't see the problem when I wrote the story and sent it off.  Basically, the editor said the story didn't get started quickly enough.  The opening paragraph caught her attention, and then it stalled.  Eventually the story picks up, but by that point too many readers will have dropped out.

I follow Heinlein's Rules as much as possible.  Horribly paraphrased, Rule 3 is to not continue rewriting a piece except to editorial demand.  Now, this was a rejection so I can't resubmit the piece to this publisher.  But rather than just sending it elsewhere, I took a closer look.

I spent a good portion of the beginning writing about a character that I really liked.  She's the aunt of the protagonist with a kleptomania problem (but don't worry, she's taking something for it.)  She hates her nephew's uncle and I thought this would add tension to the story.

But she doesn't really do anything.  She's there.  She bickers.  She starts to steal something but is stopped.  Finally, I have her leave the scene she's in so the story can progress.

And that should have had bells going off in my head.  My klepto was stealing story time from everybody else.

This wasn't all that had to be fixed, but the delete key fixed the biggest issue.  And you know what?  I didn't have to write a single word to to explain anything.  Every reference to her, every line of dialogue, all of it worked without her being in it.

And I really liked her.  Maybe Stephen King was right.  "Kill your darlings."

Reminders to myself

1) Reading about writing is easier than writing.  Don't forget what to do the real thing.
2) Sometimes the writing flows.  Often it doesn't.  Writing when it's hard is what real writers do.
3) Write the rough draft.  Don't worry if it's not perfect.  That's what rewrites are for.  If there's nothing on the page there's nothing to fix later.

Reading out loud

I've given up, and believe me, it's about time.  I've given up on mediocrity and on sending off manuscripts that feel "good enough."  Good enough rarely is.

Reading the story out loud helped make this a reality.

Before I'd write a story.  Then I'd rewrite it, or at least give it a good editing, because that's what you're supposed to do.  Maybe I'd touch it up when I formatted the document to match the particular editor's submission guidelines.  Most likely though I'd send it off and just hope for the best.

That's probably one of the reasons the rejection letters far outweighed the acceptance ones.

It finally occurred to me that if I'm really going to pursue writing, I need to do it correctly.  And that means properly rewriting my work.

I finished my latest short story about an hour ago.  To date it may be the one I'm most proud of.  In the past I'd finish one and send it off when I could say, "That's not too bad."  This time I reworked it until I could say "I like this."

Here's what happened.  I wrote it.  Then I wrote reworked it into a second, more polished draft.  That's where I've usually stopped in the past.  I read through it again and improved it, and almost fell to the temptation of thinking it was finished.

I just wasn't that happy with it, and wasn't sure why though.  So I tried something that I've heard some writers do.  I read the story out loud.

Immediately, the parts that weren't working jumped out.  They practically attacked me.  What was hidden before now seemed obvious.  Some of the mistakes were with repeated words.  Some were clumsy sentences, which I'd already trimmed but still didn't work.  Some were embarrassing errors that likely would have sent my story to the rejected pile.  That's where it would have belonged.

I've never been able to bother with reading my work out loud before.  At least this time it made a world of difference.  Hopefully enough to garner a sale.