a writer's diary

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I finished a story on Friday but had mixed feelings about it. It seemed simultaneously too weird and yet ultimately not strange enough, not enough of a challenge to our common beliefs, to justify the liberties I had taken with it. So I showed it to Marianne and Sean. Marianne was unsure what she thought, but expressed hesitations. Sean, of course, knew exactly what he didn't like about it and told me.

I had been planning to shove the thing in the pie closet and forget it for a few years. But their comments, when put together inside my skull, made me realize how to fix it. So I jotted down a few notes and I'll do the revision Monday morning. Then put the story into the pie closet for God knows how long.

Marianne thinks it may be unpublishable, for reasons that seem eminently sensible to me. But this has never been a sensible occupation. Anyway, if it isn't publishable, it will give scholars something to find in my papers. A small frisson for them, a little joke for me.

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