My mission today, which I chose to accept, was to go over the edited proof of the story that has just been accepted for an anthology. The only real work was the editor's request to rejig the opening paragraph. The rest pretty much stays as submitted, which is always heartening.
Curious to know how long this particular tale has been in the works, I dug out my notebooks and discovered it was conceived 18/1-07 (from the other story ideas jotted down around that time, 3 of which have progressed to rough drafts, I can see I was smack in the middle of my 'I can write lighter/humorous stuff too' phase which came after producing a series of very dark and serious stories involving dystopias and environmental ruin). It didn't really amount to much until 13/3-09 when I discovered its present voice and structure. Then I had a ball rewriting the whole thing. Apart from the core idea, very little of the original story survives. After that, it was forged in the fire of nine, mostly nice, rejections, with each 'no' received after months and months and months of waiting. After each rejection, I polished it some more, until finally it found a home.
So, it only took 4 years and eight months to produce this particular 5400 word baby.
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