Wait, I wrote this?

After enjoying Saturday as the first day off I've had in two weeks, I spent Sunday running Welcome Home through a rewrite, trying to get it ready to submit before I called it a night. According to my spreadsheet (yes, I keep track of these things. Don't you?) the last time I sent this story out was three months ago. Shame on me for letting it sit idle that long.

This was an annoying rewrite for a couple of reasons. First, this is one of the older stories that I have. I worked on this thing when I lived up in the panhandle, and part of the reason it sticks in my head so well is because I busted my butt researching it. It takes place in North Carolina, an area that I have a passing acquaintance with from my days of being stationed at Camp Lejeune. But it covers a lot of past history of a fictional small town, and I wanted to do such a place, and the state it sits in, justice. So I checked out books from the library and dug into online databases for information on everything from the logging and tobacco industries to what kind of birds might be found in such a place. Now imagine how I felt when I gave this story, which I think is damn good, a read-through Sunday and noticed how all that liberally applied knowledge was dragging the tale down like a lead weight tied around a sprinter's big toe. I chopped the history and wildlife down a bit and saved three hundred words. It's still a large story, but the smaller size makes a wee bit more sellable. That'll help ease the grousing over the feeling, maybe justified, maybe not, of so much time going to waste.

Second? Well, as I just mentioned, I like this one. When I finally put the last comma on the last rewrite, I got one of those rare highs that you sometimes feel when you can look at something you've made and you can't help but channel your inner Keanu Reeves and just say, 'Whoa.' Maybe it's vain, but I sometimes read my own stuff after enough time has passed from writing it. I know the story, but the little details get lost in day to day life, and that's a good thing. It keeps me from obsessing over something I've put the 'finished' stamp on, and it lets me write something else. Only this time when I went back, all those really cool details were there, but so were a hell of a lot of things that quickly earned the label of 'What is this crap?' There were descriptives and ramblings that sounded like a fourth grader wrote them after discovering Edgar Allan Poe. If they were in published books, they would be the books you shove under the couch when company dropped by. What made it so damn annoying is that I have submitted 'Welcome Home' to more than one publication, and proofread it. This story has gone out with my name on it and with me singing its praises in my own head each time. Either my doppelganger crept up here and screwed with the file, or my viewpoint has changed in the years since I wrote it. Now that could be a good thing, sure. Hell, I can't think of any circumstance that would keep it from being a great thing. But looking at the story as it was, I have got to admit that the editors were right to reject it. If I was in their shoes, I would have rejected it too. That makes me a bit less confident that all the other stuff that I've sent out is up to par.

But enough reflecting. Time to get back to writing.