Change of Heart

As you might have gathered from my previous post, I've changed my mind on what to use for my final portfolio piece for my masters.

To be honest, I'm rather ashamed of this. Carolyn, my tutor, very generously offered to read the first chapter of 'The Waiting Room', and I sent it to her. Her feedback was wholly positive and encouraging.

So, why did I change my mind? The outline of the story was already there, the plot, the story arc, the characters were all established. The problem was, it's 80,000 words. Not only that, but it's 80,000 words I wrote more than a year ago.

As I started to work on the manuscript, I could not help but be appalled at my own writing. Making this into something I might be happy to submit to a publisher was going to mean a complete re-write. Since I work full-time teaching and I'm doing this masters, it became obvious to me that it was just unfeasible to produce a finished version in two semesters.

I emailed Carolyn and told her this, feeling pretty sheepish. I felt like I was letting her down. I could imagine her rolling her eyes and thinking: "Flakey!"

Yes, sometimes I really do feel like a flake. Not because I don't believe I'm a competent writer, but because I have such a horror of facing work I've done in the past that I now consider sub-standard. I really do wonder how other writers do it. Dredging up drafts from the past and not wanting to slit their throats in shame rather than try to salvage whatever kernels of good writing have survived once the crap is carved away.

I spend quite a bit of time on the net hunting down advice on this. Perhaps I'm using the wrong search words, but I found nothing. Do other writers not have this problem?

I decided to put it as a question on my ERWA writer's email list.

"Have any of you ever had to take a look at older pieces of writing and polish them and thought...oh, FUCK, this is terrible. I can't look at it?"

One of the responses I received made me really think about what I was doing to myself:

"Sure. But then I forgive myself for getting better at my craft over time. Fix the story if you can. If it's too much to deal with, chuck it aside and start fresh. There's no reason to make the process of writing anymore painful than it already is."
Bradean, Kathleen. "HELP! Do you ever read your old stuff and want to throw it away?." E-mail to Madeleine Morris. April 10, 2008

So, I've decided to "forgive myself for getting better at my craft".

Synopsis of "The Splinter"

The Splinter is a morally ambiguous story of Moira Tierney, a young Catholic woman who has aspirations of entering holy orders. She has a history of practicing 'mortification of the flesh' in an attempt to achieve what she believes to be a state of religious ecstasy.

Her mother and parish priest decide to intervene and she is sent into the care of a Catholic monk, Brother Simon, who runs a half-way house for recovering drug addicts, and who has a history of this practice himself and has been "reformed".

There are struggles between them, both on emotional and ideological levels, which results in each transgressing the other's idea of moral law.

The story is told as a flashback. Now, in the present day, Moira not only carries a physical reminder, but the psychological burden of the consequences of her past actions and beliefs. It is left up to the reader to decide if she has achieved redemption.

600 words (2,421words and counting)