I wonder if we ever really finish a story.

What I mean by that is something I’ve noticed during the short story challenge. I’ll finish the story, put it aside for a while. Sometimes only an hour or so if I’m close to the deadline. After that break I’ll read through, correct spelling and punctuation (I have a habit of throwing commas in everywhere during my first draft – usually when I pause the typing to frame the next sentence or paragraph. Probably ninety-percent of these get weeded out as I cycle through the story, but there are always a few that hide until the last minute), and tidy up any gaps or discrepancies I spot.

Very often, and this week’s story is a good example, I’ll send the story out, and then it’s like my mind looks at it from a different angle and says: Well, if you’d done it that way, the action would have started several pages sooner, and . . .

By this time I’m not sure if it’s the creative voice offering a solution to make the story better, or critical voice offering judgement to stop the story being submitted somewhere.

Too late critical 🙂

I may rework that story, but not this week. This week there’s a new story. It’s not much more than a fragment of an idea at the moment, but I will warn anyone reading this, that if I offer you a cupcake with icing, be very careful!