Writing and re-writing

For the past few days I have been going through old pieces that I have written and worked at re-writing and editing them. I find it both fun and rewarding to go through old things that I had written. The fun part is just reading some creative piece that might be six or seven years old, or perhaps older. The rewarding part is improving what I had written in the past.

At some point in 2016-2018 I had started writing some short stories that were both distinct pieces, yet connected to the others. I find it both challenging and interesting to take a character or theme from one story and slide them into another seemingly unrelated story. Anyway, this got me to thinking about writing on my recent trip to Mexico. During the air flights and before going to sleep on some nights I wrote. Ultimately I came away with two stories and ideas and pieces of several more.

For me a good short story has to quickly catch your attention build to a dilemma and resolve it, all within perhaps 8-10 pages. When I get into pieces that are 20-30 pages I start to think of them as approaching novellas. Regardless they are fun exercises for me.

I have four books on the shelf next to where I sit in Ann Arbor. All four are filled with stories. Granted a bunch of them as pure junk, but some have promise.

So today while Susan made and canned tomato sauce and diced tomatoes, I worked on editing a rather long story written in 2016. I did take time out to pick cherry tomatoes and watch a football game. But in between those times I managed to re-write 6-8 pages, which doesn’t sound like much, but was a lot of work.

Now it’s time to call it a day.

More tomorrow…