Hi all,
Received an email tonight telling me a previous anthology I have a story in is being rereleased again with another press who’d been a co-owner of the original…make sense? 🙂
That particular story raised some old feelings in me. As a writer, I think of stories and write them but as most of us writers know, sometimes we’re not in charge. I argue with my son about this all the time, but when I start typing, I never feel like I’m in the ‘at the helm’ of my sailing vessel. I’m steering but the sea I sail on is doing its own thing and I’m at the mercy of Mother Nature.
Maybe my muse.
This story rebirth brought a sour taste to me. Called The Winter Lights, it’s one of those stories that I was really proud of how it turned out. It’s complex and got what I think is a good twist.
Except I hate the ending.
Not how I wrote it and not that I think I screwed it up or missed something. No. It’s because I hate how it ended. Made me sick to my stomach writing that last scene. Not because of any gore or such but because I didn’t want it to end that way. Yeah, I write horror, and psychological horror where it’s the characters who are trying to make sense of the world I’ve thrown them in. It’s what I seem to be good at, but this story just gets to me.
I don’t read it anymore because I don’t like the way it makes me feel afterward.
So my question to other authors is–have you ever written a story you were satisfied with but didn’t like the outcome or some other aspect in it? Not because of missteps or poor writing, but because of the way the story goes and you wish it would have turned out another way EVEN though you know it was the way things had to go?
I see those things as a reader but this story really drove it home for me that I am not really in charge of my creations. I set things loose on the page but once the top starts spinning it goes where it wants. Where it needs to go.
I find that aspect of writing unsettling at best and creepy at the worst. Even though my son will argue to the end that I’m the writer and I’m in charge, we writers know that’s not the truth at all. We dance to the tune of our Muse, and we bow to the decisions our characters make.
Even when bad things happen.
The story was written in 2022 and came out in Unsettling Reads, Still of Winter in 2023 ,and I’m still not okay with the ending. And now it’s being released again. Funny but just like the original press title, it still doesn’t sit right with me.
Writing is such a funny business. Wouldn’t trade it for the world but it’s much more complicated than people think.
My thoughts for the evening. Keep following your creative path.
Craig