Nov 28 2008
Reworking and Revising Past Writing
This week, I came across a call for submissions to a new literary magazine in my area. I was excited, because Australia (where I currently live) has VERY few of these. By contrast, my home country, Canada, is overrun with them!
This particular magazine has recently released its first quarterly issue, and it sounds like a promising place to send some of my writing. Because they’re a new organization, they haven’t yet become jaded by slaving over millions of unpublishable manuscripts. They are even offering some degree of constructive criticism on submissions.
There’s only one problem: because I’ve been working on my novel for the last few months, I haven’t written any short stories recently.
So, I sorted through my computer files and came across a couple of short pieces I wrote for a contest over a year ago. I never got around to polishing them and sending them to other magazines. When I read through them with a fresh perspective, I could see they had definite potential, but were in no condition to be submitted just yet.
As I went through the first story with a fine tooth comb, I was able to pick up on areas where I could have been more concise, and passages that could have been eliminated completely. In fact, just in my first edit alone, I’ve culled about 1000 words. Though I’ll be going through it again and making further changes, I can already tell that the story reads more clearly.
Next time you see a potential market for your work, you don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. Dig out something old and revise it or rework it.
