A while ago I promised David Cranmer, publisher of the fabulous short mystery fiction site, Beat to a Pulp that sometime around/before the First of May I would submit a story for his consideration. Now the thing I love about Beat to A Pulp is that the submission policy gives authors room to stretch. I know the name of the site sounds like you would really have to submit major hardboiled or noir to be considered, but the publication’s submission flexibility gives even folks like me who shy away from blood, gore and bad language, a chance to write a story that fits!
So I spent some time writing a yarn to match a title that had popped into my head a while back. I was clearly making progress when, BAM! It was time to fold up my tent and move back to New York from Florida. Chaos, as always, ensued. Still, I finally settled in and went right back to finishing the story. Things were going well, then, SHAZAM! I got sick. Annoying but not life threatening, which is always a good thing.
So here I sat with a story that was 98% complete and all I could do was feel sorry for myself because my fingers and my keyboard refused to work well together and I kept falling asleep. After three or four days I felt closer to normal, so I spent Sunday polishing the story and set it aside for the requisite twenty four hours before the final read through.
Monday, I decided I was healthy and so far from contagion that I could go spend an hour or so with my two youngest grandkids. And that is when it happened. I was a half mile from my house and close to a mile from my son’s house when the glitch in the story hit me right between the eyes. (I hate when that happens while I’m actually driving.) So I pulled over, made a note on the back of my STAPLES rewards envelope (because I still haven’t learned to carry the notebook every writer supposedly carries) and then I wandered off to play with the kids. Of course I couldn’t relax because there was a problem with my story and I knew how to fix it but I wasn’t home.
Well, the good news is that I came home, removed the offending sentence and now when my protagonist drags her thoughts out of the distant past before she enters the Senior Center, there is not a WHAT THE HECK? moment for the reader. It’s all reasonably seamless.
And that, dear reader is why the picture of the Senior Center adorns this post, not because, as you might easily suspect, I am giving up my glorious career as a literary genius and settling in for a lifetime of bingo and chair aerobics, but because my protagonist can now walk up those stairs with her readers striding alongside.
And all of you writers out there, isn’t it a grand feeling when you find the glitch BEFORE you send the story out?
Terrie