SOMETHING DIFFERENT

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

Every once in a while, I try something different – or at least different from the same old, same old. Nothing newsworthy, but something to shake up the routine. This last week, I painted my nails a non-traditional (for me) cotton-candy pink instead of my usual Hot! Hot! Hot! red. Not a big sports fan, I attended a hockey game where we not only saw a fast-paced game where “we” won 7-2, but also a helmet slid across the ice bringing the crowded stadium to complete silence. After a lengthy pause, the crowd was on its feet and the sound was deafening. A fist fight had broken out between two players, neither of them wearing helmets. A referee stood on either side of them and let them knock each other enough times to excite the crowd before pulling them apart. (Is this a man thing or a sports thing or maybe a man’s sport thing?) And then, just to throw a monkey wrench into my life, I wrote a short story. Not just any short story, but a literary short story.

I don’t usually fish in those waters. I don’t understand the tricks of the trade and find there are currents I don’t recognize in that deep end of the publishing world.

An e-mail appeared in my mailbox on Tuesday. It might as well as been wrapped in a plain, brown wrapper because what popped up inside was a gauntlet in the guise of a contest. A nice monetary prize, a short length and a word-of-wisdom from the friend who passed along the information: “Think literary as even a hint of genre won’t work in this one.”

Think literary? That seems a bit impossible for someone who believes odd things happens with the printers when a literary short story shows up. I keep turning the page back and forth sure I’d missed where the story continues and instead there’s a new story beginning. Being a mystery writer, I like things all tied up by the story’s end. Literary authors seem to want readers to wonder what happens next.

The sense of the challenge was why I started the story, but the characters popping into my mind were the reason I continued. The main character was a fourteen-year-old boy. When I finished the first draft, my almost-always first reader, my daughter said, “It’s okay.” I’ve heard that before. Translation: the mechanics are good and maybe there are some elements that work, but something is missing. When I questioned her, she admitted she didn’t like the boy’s name. That’s never a good sign.

After polishing the second draft and since it had been sometime since I was fourteen and I’d never been a male facing puberty, I wanted a guy’s opinion. All four of my male guinea pigs also hated the character’s name – Aidan — even though it is the most popular boy’s name this year. The guys thought the kid was a sissy. I said he was smaller than the others. That didn’t seem to sway them a bit. None really appreciated the ending. One said he needed a friend and wondered why wasn’t he interacting with at least one girl, especially since he was fourteen. A good question.

I could either do a major rewrite or forget the whole thing.

I decided the characters deserved another try. I changed the boy’s name to Jon, gave him a friend to confide in and a girl he wanted to impress. My readers were right, the story was much stronger with the changes. The ending was more viable and dare I say it: almost literary. While there is a true The End to satisfy me, the literary reader should be satisfied that the story could continue in more than one direction.

It would be nice to win the contest, but whether I do or not, I know I met a challenge.

Tomorrow I’m having my hair cut a good eight inches. That one might be scary.