As per my goal at the beginning of the year, I have just submitted an entry to the Jane Austen Made Me Do It Short Story Contest.
I’ve had quite a struggle with it. I’ll talk more on that later in a post which I plan to entitle “Trusting Your Gut Instinct.” I’ve redrafted the story from different points of view and deleted entire scenes and restructured it. The story has always been the one I wanted to tell. It was just the manner of telling it that complicated matters.
One thing’s for sure. I combed that manuscript multiple times for all manner of typo and yet, only after it was submitted did I see one missed return, one use of double word, and a seriously messed up set of commas (due to the fact that I’d deleted words from a sentence but forgotten to rearrange the commas). This experience has taught me a lot in microcosm of how it will doubtless be on a larger work of fiction (only magnified that much more).
The inspiration for the story is The Letter (you know the one). It is about a young man who receives a page torn from a novel mailed anoymously to him and the chain of events that result from it.
The first line reads: I never expected to pull a mystery out of a self-addressed stamped envelope.
To read the rest, click the link: The Love Letter. If you like it, feel free to vote for it!
As of this writing, there are over 60 Jane Austen-inspired stories to read and enjoy. I’ve read almost all of them and noticed that there is a huge variety of both genre, style and influence. The creativity is truly amazing!