Well, happy day!
I've had another short-story accepted for publication. I wrote a book, a little more than a year ago, that I called Bobby. To be honest, it wasn't very good and, at the time, I was pretty disappointed that no one saw the sheer genius in the work. As it turns out, 16 or 17 months of writing later, I've actually gotten a little better at putting together a story. (Funny how practice works.) The original Bobby got turned down by agents galore. Early this year, I pulled a single story out and rewrote it. That tale, to my surprise, was received well by my readers. I thought about it for a while, a tad gun-shy about submitting a military story again, and, finally, sent the story to "Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors." To my even greater surprise, it was pretty quickly accepted .
Now that I've finished the heavy lifting on Jack and the Mountain, I've gone back to peeling stories out of Bobby and rewriting them. Each time that I open the original Bobby text, the errors smack me right in the face. Not enough description, awkward sentence structure, useless exposition, etc. That was a little sobering, to be honest, but rewriting the stories, rather than being an exercise in humiliation, has become a fun activity and a validation that I'm learning. It usually takes me a day to rewrite a section that beat my head in last year and, the tales come out better than they were before. There's a lesson here, I suppose. (Doubtless, that I'm too impatient.)
So far, I have taken four stories out of "Bobby." The first two that I submitted for publication were snapped up pretty quickly. As mentioned above, "Two kinds of people" was accepted by "Proud to be: Writing by American Warriors" and, two-weeks ago, "Gourmet" was accepted by "Military Experience & the Arts." Both stories should publish this fall. I have since begun (last week) to submit a third story that I'm calling "Gear" and just finished the fourth, "Red, red blood," today. I'm getting good feedback from my readers. Maybe I should take my time in the future? Yes?
Anyway, many more stories to rescue from the crashed Bobby. Let's hope that they find a home as well.
The picture is from San Diego. My wife and I took it last year about two weeks before I finished writing the original Bobby. The statue is called "Unconditional Surrender" and, yes, it's Navy. My stories are Army. So what. I like it. Unconditional surrender means a lot of things to a lot of people. Sometimes it means giving up. Sometimes, it means just waiting for the right time, place, or experience. For me, it means both of those things but it also means giving up on the idea that I know what's best for me. Sure, I can kick and fight, scratch my way to success but, really, will I enjoy that? Will I have any peace? Not based upon prior experience. Frankly, peace is hard to come by and if bulling my way to what I want costs me the little serenity that I've achieved; it's too expensive. Whatever, unconditional surrender seems to be the only reasonable life-style for me lately and, when I remember to do it, everything goes much smoother.
Bueno!
Chris