as i revisit this fucked-up story

Tonight I was trying to rewrite ‘Cosmonaut’, a story I had first drafted almost two years ago. In my most recent effort to reshape this story, I saw that the story had become too long, so I divided it into two interconnected stories, and I thought it was a clever idea. But tonight, as I was trying to write one of these stories, the characters just didn't come to me. I couldn’t hear them and I couldn’t feel their texture. I didn't want to force it and end up with a contrived product. I wanted to write something different, a different theme at least, something away from the idea of ‘pondering departure.’

So I dug up a story I first drafted in 2003, a time when I barely knew what the writing life meant. Thinking back to that time makes me realize how far I've come. I never planned for Dorina’s story to be part of my collection, but I feel, at this point in time, that this is the story I really want to explore, and I know this story so vividly that I should be able to complete it in a month. I know this story. I’ve had it in my head for years. There aren’t that many questions to answer. As I started drafting and making prep notes, I heard myself saying, this is a really fucked-up story. Because of this, I want to explore it even more, though I don’t aspire too much to become a writer known for writing fucked-up stuff.