Revision Reunion

I had an interesting experience in my fiction writing class today that I want to share. I was forced into a revision that I didn't want to do.

The professor had told us to bring a work in progress that we could practice revising and, of course, I forgot to grab something. The only piece of work I had in my backpack was the first workshop story I had written for that class. I was dissatisfied with the story when I was writing it because it wasn't what I wanted to say, but I hadn't had enough time to devote to it. When I submitted it to the class for critique the whole thing jumped around, it didn't explain enough to the reader, and there wasn't a development in the plot. I didn't expect good things from my readers. And I didn't get anything positive from them when it came time to discuss it.

After workshop I hated the story entirely. I felt like I had tried to make a relationship work out with someone who turned out to be incompatible with me and it ended in a lousy break up. I didn't want to see its opening paragraph ever again. I thought it best if we parted ways and never spoke to each other again. I remember feeling reluctant for a while afterwards of starting any new stories because I was afraid I'd have a repeat of the last one.

Here I was today, forced to confront this past fling and try to make it work. I went into it with an open mind, though. I didn't think it could really disappoint me more than it already had. So, I started pointing out its faults and suggesting improvements. I blocked out so many bad mistakes. If we could only find the areas that worked...

There were parts that I felt were telling the essence of the story, so I circled those, and there were a couple scenes in particular that involved good character interaction. I think I'll actually spend more time with this story in the future. I think we might actually have a future. There's still a lot of work ahead for us, but this was a pretty good revision experience for me.