When it’s rubbish …
What do you do?
One of the most difficult things to decide is when a story is rubbish and when it just hasn’t arrived on the right desk yet. If you listen to the myths, you’ll hear that many an award-winning story was almost relegated to the back of the drawer, or actually did get retired for a while, before some last opportunity dragged the pages into the light again, only to become a gold medal winner, an Oscar-winning screenplay or whatever. So how do you know whether your much returned short fiction is rubbish, or ready to publish?
There is no clear answer to this, and in my editorial role I see some stories that were clearly written six or seven years ago, still doing the rounds and still – to be honest – not publishable.
Of course you can’t say that to a submitter, but if, after half a dozen outings, your piece has not be snapped up, it may be time to revise it. Try taking out a sixth of the words; more good is often done by tightening than wholesale editing if the story is close but not quite there. If it doesn’t place after another half-dozen submissions, it’s time to read your story into a tape recorder or use voice software to ‘hear’ your words read aloud. Listen right through, then make notes as you pause the tape to pick up all the tiny glitches, slips and piddling annoyances that you can hear better than you can see. And if it’s still doing the rounds after another six submissions, and you’re not getting any encouraging ink from editors, put the story away (in a drawer or file, not the bin) for six months and look at it with fresh eyes. Often you can see the problem straight away, when you’ve had a good long rest from finicking with it.
8 Comments
TitaniaWrites
10th August 2007Very good point, Kay. I have had some success turning “old” stories that weren’t working into Flash pieces, chopping more than a 6th of the words, slashing them by 90%, or just taking the first line or paragraph and then seeing where it takes me.
Nik's Blog
10th August 2007Sensible advice again Key – especially the reading aloud into a tape recorder. Very few of my stories don’t go through that process now; aside from it helping tighten the rhythm it forces you to read every word and see what’s actually there rather than what you thought you’d written.
Nik.
Nik's Blog
11th August 2007Um, maybe I should have read that last comment aloud. If I had then I’d probably have noticed I’d called you Key. Apologies.
Kay Sexton
11th August 2007Good ideas, Tanya, and Nik, I never even noticed … 😉
Vanessa G
12th August 2007I had a decent publication last year in an ezine. It led to a paid commission from a hotel chain from which I earned $400.
But to get the intial publication, I had to really believe in the story. Prior to this publication, it was rejected sixteen times .
V
Kay Sexton
15th August 2007That’s it exactly Vanessa – sometimes the story is right but the time or place isn’t and we just have to be tough about hanging on to what our intuition tells us. But intuition is a muscle developed over time and in response to the weird world of publishing, so sending stuff out, and trying to understand why some things get accepted and others rejected is essential, otherwise we never learn when to give up and when to persevere.
Louise
26th August 2007A story changes its meaning by time … For me it takes a very long time to accept any criticism and to make changes to what I’ve written. It can take up to a year before I’m ready to revise something! But when I do get round to it, it’s usually very good. Thanks so much for all your useful feed back. I’m also impressed about your knowledge of Word and making it very easy to follow.
Kay Sexton
26th August 2007That’s a very cogent point, Louise. We all assimilate commentary at different rates, and that can depend on many things: the scale of the work, its importance to us, the sensitivity of the critique, what else we’re working on etc. It’s much harder to revise a novel than a flash, and it’s much more difficult to accept commentary on autobiographical material than on, say, science fiction.
And, of course, you need to be able to reject proposed revisions too – but that’s another story!