On May 7th, I blogged that my short story, "The Witch, the Ghost, and the Troll," intended for the Black Hare Press "Emerald City" anthology had been rejected for incorporating obvious Wizard-of-Oz references, owing to a misread of the submission guidelines (including an emphatic warning to avoid Oz mythology or "fan-fic".)
Fortunately, those Oz-related details were not essential to the story, and I was invited to rewrite and resubmit, since plenty of time remained before the submission deadline. A helpful critique which I was advised to heed if I followed through, was that my story had ended with a key emotional thread unresolved. Honestly, this happened because I believed my story had already reached the maximum word limit, and so I chose a rushed ending. It wasn't until much later someone else pointed out that the word limit was 10k, not 5k. *Heavy sigh*.
Anyway, while still believing my revision had an upper limit of 5k, I was forced to cut mercilessly in order to make room for a more complete ending. Somehow, I completed a new, more satisfying draft in fewer than 5k words. The ending was poignant, but summarizing. I was still being economical.
And then, because as I was preparing to submit, I noticed that the actual word limit was 10k words, I explored a more thorough, descriptive ending. My own readers assured me this 6k-word version was the strongest yet, and so I submitted it this week. No word yet, whether it has been rejected.
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