Still think it needs a few weeks in a drawer.

The drawer is a magical place. I've looked over stories I hadn't read in years and just been aghast at what I used to think was good. And then there are times when I've pulled something out and it made me laugh and I was all, "Fuck you all. I'm funny." There are -- I write stories, you write essays, I'm using the word stories -- stories you just know are good, the ones you pick up after not having looked at them for a while, and still love to pieces, no matter what your professors said about seventeen pages being too short to carry that much stylistic flair. "Shopping" is my favorite, I adore it, and you'll get that feeling too, once you step away and clear your head of it and approach it as a slightly informed reader rather than the writer.

I'm rambling. I want to revise the damn death story. And maybe write something new.

I loved it as I read it, with one grammar-y thing. For what that's worth. The drawer time should mellow it to perfection, I think.

That's what I ended up with last night, Robin. I took the one thing everyone commented on, defining what "sparkliness" is, when I say that there was something sparkly about him that stood out and made me all, "say! you're totally going to be my friend 4EVAH!"

Tim moves like he owns whatever space he's in. Makes me want to be in that space, too, like the air is more comfortable within it. That's sparkly.

I was trying to incorporate everyone's feedback, and instead of saying, "I love this sentence. I want to have unsafe sex with this sentence." I made changes.

Yep. Yep yep yep. That is to be avoided. In the end? This is your baby; not to be gross in comparisons, but it came out of you. You get the final say on how to feed it, and when.

I think three of us - Bev, ita, myself - felt a kind of muffling in one or two places. Using the beta feedback, as Robin mentioned, gives you one thing in the piece in which three of your readers got a similar hit, though we might have expressed it differently. If it's my piece (and it isn't - this is purely how I look at beta feedback and lord knows, I am a humongous beta ho, and send my beta readers nummy things to eat, even when they loathe me), I give it a couple of days to process in my head, then compare with the places where the muffling was mentioned, and see if the consensus there jives with your intuition.

But always, always, go with your gut, if there's any conflicts.

"I don't do tender so good." I think that's bullshit, Allyson. It's in there, and I bet you can bring it to the page. Tough-tender is the Best Evah, imo. But then, I wrote a story with the line "Kiss me, you idiot." So I may be projecting.

It's in there, and I bet you can bring it to the page.

I thought it already was there on the page; implicit is so cool, because the reader goes back, and looks, and wonders: whoa, is that what I'm seeing, or am I reading it in myself?

Best kind of projection.

It's in there, and I bet you can bring it to the page.

I thought it already was there on the page; implicit is so cool, because the reader goes back, and looks, and wonders: whoa, is that what I'm seeing, or am I reading it in myself?

What I meant. This is why she's the professional writer, yo.

Thanks, Deb.

Ginger, that one was disturbing.

Ginger, that one was disturbing.

I was just thinking that about yours. Bells have turned out to be a good topic.

I love this thread. I learn so much from this thread, even when I'm totally not involved in the conversation.