Bane's Existence

I wrote a short story called "The Hallway" back in 1991. Yes, that's how long ago it was. Over the years I worked on this story numerous times, but I never felt that I had it right. Publishers felt the same way, and it never sold. Like an itch I had to scratch, however, I kept coming back to it.

After yet another rewrite, I submitted the story for a read and critique session at the La Jolla Writer's Conference in November, 2013. I received some good advice, but I was deep into the writing of the novel, "The Majik of Spark" and "The Hallway" went back on the shelf.

Jump forward to today, almost three months after the conference. Work on the novel went gangbusters for awhile, but the torrent has slowed to a thin stream and I felt I needed to work on something else for a bit. I reached once again for "The Hallway."

The story has a number of problems with it, but the overall issue was that there was too little detail for the reader to get a real sense of who these people were and why they should care about them. I had spent a lot of time paring the story down to meet artificial limits according to "those who are supposed to know about these things" and for publishers who had word counts to worry about. I decided to let the story be what it wanted to be, and take as long as it needed to get there.

Yesterday I finished it. The story is now called "Bane's Existence" which I think is a clever title that matches the intent of the story. I'm always a little giddy when I finish a work. I'm sure there will be some editing on further reading and reflection. Right now, though, I am very happy with the results.

Our writer's group will get first crack at the story. In the meantime, I'll be looking for a home for it.