First, some blog business: I’ve decided that I’m going to try an experiment . . . regular blog posts! Like on a schedule, and things! My plan is to put together a post on my writing on Tuesdays, a post on some non-writing topic on Thursdays (expect lots of posts about TV, because i’m an asocial dork!), and to post a book review on Saturdays. The recent kerfuffle about reviewing has made me realize how important blogging is to me, and to viewing myself as a professional. And so this–treating writing as a job–feels like a natural next step.
Second, some good news! On February 15th, my short story, “The Long Summer,” will be appearing in Kettlestitch Press‘s Plaything of the Gods, an anthology of Greek myth retellings for teens. I know, I know. I was quiet about this one. 2010 was a year of sobering and thorough rejection for me (also a year of making ill-advised youtube vids about sobering and thorough rejection), and so when I finally got some good news, well, I felt kind of afraid to jinx it. But it turns out that the deal is real; final edits have been submitted and contracts signed and I’m really, really psyched to get a chance to share this story with some readers in a few weeks.
Which brings me to the point of tonight’s blog. “The Long Summer” was one of the first fiction pieces I wrote when I decided to take this whole fiction thing seriously, way back in 2009. It’s a contemporary update to the myth of Hades and Persephone, and basically is all about what happens when Demeter decides to try to trick persuade her daughter into staying with her once summer ends.
One of the reasons I’m so excited about actually getting to share this story is that I originally came up with the idea for it in 1997.
You know, when I was in seventh grade.
Worse, it was strongly inspired by an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (shush!).
One of the things I liked about Hercules was that it wasn’t afraid to take slightly untraditional character interpretations of classical mythological characters. Hades was one that I felt usually got the short shrift in modern retellings–painted as closer to Satan than the sad guy that I always imagined he must be, hustled from the darkness of his father’s body to the darkness of hell. I saw Hades as fundamentally sympathetic; I wasn’t always so sure, too, that Demeter was quite the goody-goody many myths painted her. And so when I saw this episode of Herc, my little thirteen-year-old brain began to bubble over with story ideas.
I was feeling inspired. Only problem was, I had no idea how to write a full short story of original fiction then (fan fic was another story). And so it remain tucked away for years and years and years, way back into my hindbrain.
One day years later, after grad school, when I’d started writing fiction again, I was chatting with a friend about fidelity and monogamy and relationships. And it sparked something. I remembered my story idea, the one about the goddess lured away from her healthy (if in some ways oppressive) marriage by her mother. It took me nearly three weeks of writing to get the whole story out–and another year of editing before it was polished enough to garner an acceptance. But in the end, I was a much better realization of my original concept than I’d ever hoped. Somehow, instead of the story festering or becoming irrelevant, I grew into it.
It’s happened to me before. Two of my trunked shelved novels were based on ideas I originally had as a teen. There are story snippets and characters and themes I still hope to bring to life at some point. Hell, even some of my trunked shelved work might eventually come off the shelf to be dusted off, revised, rewritten, and improved. I figure that, if it worked for Sherwood Smith, it might as well work for me.
In the scheme of things, I’m patient. I don’t care about success right here, right now–but rather realizing a story as best I can. This is a process that takes time. But it’s nice to know that the stories wait for you.
How about you, gentle reader? Have you ever revisited an earlier plot or story idea? Ever unshelf a shelved book? How did it work for you?
