Eye Opener

I have just finished reading through some of my earlier work. "An Ill Wind" and "Confused Love". The first was originally written in July 2007, the second in August 2007. The premise for both is pretty good although "Ill Wind" (as in "ill wind" - might need to come up with another title that looks better in electronic print) is a stronger, more disturbing piece (or at least could be). "Confused Love" has been sent out to market once and came back with the comment of the reader not being able to really get into the story. "Ill Wind" has been critiqued by one individual some time ago with comments such as "All in all, a pretty good concept and certainly a tale that could be extremely riveting. I just think you have a lot of polishing to do on it."

After rereading them tonight, I'm left shaking my head and wondering whatever convinced me to let others see this work. I have been working hard on "Drinkers" and Too Late the Rain" recently and have done a number of revisions before releasing them to others. I up loaded the latest version of "Too Late the Rain" to Critters earlier today, even though it was originally posted on the queue nearly six weeks ago. It's due for crit next week and although I'd made changes, I didn't want others to see work of mine that I felt to be inferior.

Now the self doubt kicks in. If "Confused love" and "An Ill Wind" need huge amounts of work and I now realise that nearly 12 months down the track - what will I think of "Too Late the Rain" and "Drinkers" 12 months from now? Are they really as good as I think they are. I once thought the earlier two stories were pretty good too.

In the end, those I ask to critique my work and the market will be the true judge. As writers we continue to learn and to grow in our craft. The down side of that is when we look at old works, we instantly see the bad points, the silly structure we employed, the strange use of words.

I banished my self doubts by resolving to rewrite "An Ill Wind" and submit it to it's target competition before April 15th 2008. I have a month to seriously improve it. So be it. "Confused Love" will be turned into the script that it was originally thought up as.

"Drinkers" will be critiqued again next week as will "Too Late the Rain", then both of those will be going out the door. "Drinkers" to Midnight Echo and "Too Late the Rain" to the latest AHWA competition.

I will get additional writing credits from paying markets this year.

I hope you manage the same.

Good luck with your submissions.

BT