{"id":2865,"date":"2021-12-22T23:56:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T07:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shirscribe.com\/?p=2865"},"modified":"2021-12-23T20:46:09","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T04:46:09","slug":"the-beauty-of-rediscovering-an-old-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shirscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/22\/the-beauty-of-rediscovering-an-old-short-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beauty of Rediscovering an Old Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u00a0I wrote a short story over 20 years ago, well, I started it over twenty years ago, and finished it about a year later. It was so long ago that I don\u2019t even remember my writing process. All I remember is that it was so incredibly hard for me to write. I remember being so frustrated because what ended up on the page was never as good as what was in my head. Something was always lost in translation which is part of the reason why it took me so long to complete. My battle was trying to extract every bit of the story as I saw it in my head, as I heard it in my head, and transfer it onto the page. But no matter how hard I tried, there was something always left behind, until finally I gave up and just let it be. Eventually I came to realize that the part that was left behind wasn\u2019t for you, the reader, it was for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the beauty of a story. That\u2019s the beauty of words on a page (or nowadays on a screen). It\u2019s that while the words belong to all those who encounter them, to interpret and imagine as necessary, the images in my head are just for me, as yours are only for you to keep. Some things aren\u2019t meant to be shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Yorker used to publish an issue where they featured short stories by new writers. It came out in the summer if I\u2019m not mistaken. Once I found out about it, my goal was to get my story in that issue. \u00a0That\u2019s when writing my story went from an aimless challenge I\u2019d put to myself on a boring bus ride<\/a> to something I was doing with intention and purpose. Not that it changed what I wrote, but it did change why I wrote. I was no longer writing just because. At that point, I wanted to get published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After painstaking efforts to battle feelings of not being good enough, I finally produced something that, though I wasn’t necessarily pleased with, I was at least willing to put it out there and give it a try. I shipped it off to New York in a large manila envelope along with another self-addressed stamped envelope also inside, a standard practice back in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I dropped it off at the post office and pictured angels guarding it on a plane as it made its way East. This was it. This was going to be the beginning of my career as a published author. However, no sooner had I sent it off did I receive that self-addressed stamped envelope back with my story and a generic rejection slip inside. I swear it was like five days later. It literally went from California to New York and back in around five days (looking back now, what a blessing to get such a quick rejection). I was devastated. I\u2019d worked up the nerve against all my I\u2019m-not-good-enough-to-be-in-the-New-Yorker odds, only for my insecurities to get a win.\u00a0 Receiving my story back, especially so quickly, felt like the end of the world. I didn\u2019t know what to do, so I did nothing. I just put that story away. Bad as I thought it was, I still wasn\u2019t going to throw it away because I worked too hard on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until recently, maybe about two years or so ago, when I came across it again and decided to give it a read. And what do you know? I loved it! I thought the writing was pretty good, sure it could use some editing, but I marveled at the detail of the storyline, the detail period. I thought it was so good, in fact, that it felt like at some point God must have taken over and started writing for me, through me. I was so talented back then and I didn\u2019t even realize it. I was so talented and I let rejection from a magazine, albeit a highly-regarded magazine, stop me from pursuing my dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How beautiful it is to be able to look back and discover that I was a much better writer than I thought. That\u2019s part of the power of words. They make it possible for the writer in me of my early twenties to reach out to the writer in me now in my early forties, and let me know, like Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz<\/a><\/em> says, that I always had it in me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, my short story is inspired by that movie. That and The Neverending Story<\/em><\/a> were my two biggest influences. I wanted to write a fairytale for adults even though the main character is a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know how to describe this story without giving it away. All I can say is that it\u2019s a story about beauty and how it\u2019s interpreted even with that I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ve said too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I will say is that I\u2019ve renewed my desire to publish this story. I\u2019m going to edit it myself. I\u2019m going to hire an editor too, and then I\u2019m going to self-publish it as a novella. So something to look out for, perhaps next year. In the meantime, here\u2019s an excerpt from a printed copy I found:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
I’ve already started editing. Right now, this printed copy is all I have, all though I believe it’s saved on an old computer and I hope I find it, otherwise I’ll have to retype the whole thing. Oh and by the way, I don’t think this page gives away anything. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0I wrote a short story over 20 years ago, well, I started it over twenty years ago, and finished it about a year later. It was so long ago that I don\u2019t even remember my writing process. All I remember…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,216],"tags":[131,99,466,221,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-2865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-career-and-goals","7":"category-how-i-write","8":"tag-beauty","9":"tag-rejection","10":"tag-self-publishing","11":"tag-short-stories","12":"tag-writing","13":"entry","14":"has-post-thumbnail"},"yoast_head":"\nThe Beauty of Rediscovering an Old Short Story - Shirscribe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/shirscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/22\/the-beauty-of-rediscovering-an-old-short-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Beauty of Rediscovering an Old Short Story - Shirscribe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0I wrote a short story over 20 years ago, well, I started it over twenty years ago, and finished it about a year later. 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