I'm not even bummed out about it. It's like I'm one of the boys now. Let me tell you how it went...
A little over a month ago, I stumbled upon a web site called Everyday Fiction. They are an amazing crew of people that publish first timers and low key writers on a daily basis (as implied in the title of their site). Being the impulsive bastard that I am, I decide to writer a story on the spot. There were two warning signs I completely disregarded before writing my piece.
First of all, it's only a thousand words. There is not much deep storytelling you can get going in there (here I am, bitching about word-count restrictions, when I used to be all about them, oh sweet irony). Segundo, I ain't sure why, but for the last few months, I've been obsessed by the idea of publishing short stories that would foreshadow Solace. Come to think about it, it's pretty stupid. Because 1) No one gives a shit about a story they haven't read yet and 2) There's a lot of details to include if you don't want to lose your reader. Here's a link to it. I still think it's well written, but it's way too short and confusing. I'm not sure you can access it because I need to login to see it, but it's worth a try.
So instead of getting one form rejection I got...TWO form rejections, from two editors. Here they are (I scratched the names though. No names on my blog)
This feels like a condensed version of a much longer story. The reader is left with questions: Why Thanksgiving night? Why did the murderer take her whole family, when it seemed that Ashley was the target? Was she a prostitute? How does the narrator intend to "wash your memory from those who put you to a violent end"?
This is a riveting little piece, but it simply doesn't say enough.
and...
There are some nice moments in this story but I wasn't quite sure what exactly was going on. I had a sense of the relationship between the two characters, that the MC was kind of a stop-gap, broken wing mender/lover to Ashley, but not quite sure what happened to her and her family except they were murdered and why the character says "It was one of us". Meaning men in general or one of her lovers?
Another confusion point:
"Every time Ashley abandoned herself to a new prince, she hit the pavement hard."
"Abandoned herself to a new prince" to me means she loses herself in some new guy, but what follows sounds more like the aftermath of a breakup.
Needless to say, both missives were right and informative. In Seeking Solace, I have used a lot of pretty sentences and evocative vocabulary, but I left my reader out. To tell the truth, I felt a bit stupid to send a story I wrote in twenty minutes. I should have let the text cool off and give it another day of consideration. Oh well. I'm glad that a text I wrote in twenty minutes got some positive comment like being called "A riveting little piece". Thank you Everyday Fiction! I will try my luck and submit better stories to you.
