Hello

And a Happy Prosperous New Year to you all especially in the writing department.
I was offered a space in an on-line magazine to place a flash fiction story and the guy was generous to offer one of my stories a spot and I am of course thrilled, but get this, he was so great he told me to just write up the story and send it along for him to take a look. On the one hand I thought it was terrific but on the other, it was, boy he has a lot of confidence in me because the thought of just sending off a story a second after I write it makes me cringe because “Hi, I’m Lori and I am a re-writeaholic.”

I know this is suppose to be a good thing, even a great thing because no story is ever written once ( maybe some of those by Ernest Hemingway) but the other ninety-nine percent of them are re-written stories and mine are no exception, they may even be in the re-written-to-be-re-written-and-beyond category. My writing system goes along like this: I write the first draft in a spiral notebook and this seems to take forever but I cannot write any other way. After the spiral notebook I move on to clearing the story out on yellow legal pads. After the legal’s I move to the computer, get the story in there so that I can sit in front of it for a long time: turning, twisting, tweaking the story, ripping out parts (sounds so bloody doesn’t it but sometimes you have to be brutal) starting a chapter over or adding a new one, tossing out a character and growing another; I’m talking reams of time working to get one project just perfect which never happens but this is the way I write. So when told to “just write it up and send it in” I panicked then thought it over and to my surprise, wrote it up. Did I do it in one try? No way; I can't go without tossing it through a couple of re-writes but what got me to do it immediately was having an almost fully formed story idea; seeing the characters doing their thing and not peppering the story with too many of them in the first place and also knowing the story is bounded by a certain word length because it’s a flash-fiction piece; this was a kind of freedom.

I've written the story, I’m going to give it one more going over then submit it. Regardless if it’s accepted by the magazine or not, I’ll send it along to you and you tell me what you think.

Another holiday is upon us, enjoy it with those you love and if you can write up a couple of stories or is that re-write up a few. Best Wishes.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me at:matwrite1@aol.com, I’ll love to hear from you.

Until next time God willing,

Lori