Confronting the Red Lines and Self-Doubt

I read through my story twice after letting it simmer and stew for a good week. And it was AWFUL!!! I sat on the couch, red pencil in hand, scratching though lines and paragraphs, wondering how on Earth I ever came up with that. The 22 pages now look like they lost a battle, suffering hundreds of nasty red wounds in the process. (Much like one of the characters in the story itself.) And yet it was good for me to do this. Re-reading gave me the chance to figure out what worked and what didn't, maybe re-arrange the placement of certain actions within the timeframe of the story or even to re-write and flesh out specific scenes, and I found myself getting into the process.

Then, Jef's email arrived with a long list of questions. My heart sank. Was the story really that bad? Was is unbelievable? Did I fool myself into thinking that I actually had a shot at trying to write something anyone would want to read?

I tend to be very good at self-defeat and wanted then and there to burn the pages and erase the files from my Flash drive. It would have been so easy, too!! But I thought back to all those New Years resolutions and promises made and neglected about getting something published. No one but me was saying that this would never pass for a story so why all the Debbie Downer nonsense?

Jef thought it a good take on zombies, that it just needed some parts to be expanded, others shortened, and he posed questions that made me think about what the characters would really do. And, you know what? The questions made sense. And I feel energized, that this story -- once the re-hashing and re-writing are over -- has as good a chance as any to be included in the anthology.

Now, I just need to get it done!