Three sentences off…
March 9th, 2008Hey writers.
Do you ever write a story, and have it ALMOST working–but it’s three sentences off?
Approximately three sentences, of course. Might be a few more or less. Might be sentences you need to add, delete, change, or some combination of the above. But those tiny changes make all the difference.
This happens to me a lot. Probably with half of the stories I write. I get them 99% polished, but they’re just not quite right. I know they’re off but I can’t see how. And the only way to see it is to put it away for a few weeks or months–which matters a great deal when I have a deadline to meet.
Few critiquers can identify the problem. They can usually point out why the story isn’t working, but rarely a solution. And if they do propose a solution, it’s often major, like, “chop off the ending and do this instead.” But it’s rare that I need such extreme measures. If I’m patient, I can often solve the problem more efficiently.
Is this a common experience? Is this a result of my attention to detail and my efforts to make every word count? Am I a hopeless perfectionist who’s making this harder than it needs to be?
I consider attention to detail a good thing, but I wonder, are you still selling the stories at the 99% point, or not until you get them to 99.999%?
Personally, I look forward to the day when my stories are ONLY three sentences off.
Sometimes I can sell them at 99%. I even get great reviews and so forth. But more often I get what’s become my most common rejection–the “so close but not quite, please send us something else.” This is why I really want to see those last few changes before I submit.
[...] 13, 2008 at 6:31 am (1) Vylar Kaftan wrote an interesting post about stories that are three sentences off. I was going to leave her a nice comment, but the server she’s hosted on ate one comment, and [...]
Hmm. I’ve been having spam trouble and this might be more. Sorry!
Didn’t seem like spam trouble to me, unless it’s such severe spam trouble that your server is horked. Ah, well. At least the pingback went through.