There are stories sometimes that feel perfect when you’ve finished them, but you discover they are not perfect. You may discover this on your own, reading over your handiwork the next day, or a week or a month later. Or it may be that a friend is needed to show you why you’re missing the big picture. (Even those authors who bash workshops and MFAs have people on their acknowledgement pages.) There are stories where you finish them, and you feel like they’re just absolutely right, and very little if anything will need changing. And then you show them to …

I have so many stories on the go, now, mostly because I got most of my grading done in a flurry of activity and all that’s really left is for me to: read the final “stories” (or poems) submitted for my Creative Writing class, sort out the attendance records (a bunch of attendance records are in sign-up sheet form, for group discussions where one of my classes was split in half and attendance-taking would have wasted precious classtime, decide on and finalize participation/attitude grades, review my Public Speaking students final self-evaluations, which are due on Sunday by email, input everything …

I’ve been posting about brewing a lot, and not about writing, and there’s a reason for that: given the stuff going on at work, I spent October pretty much drained, and there wasn’t much going on in terms of writing or ideas for fiction. Well, I’m still somewhat overloaded, but I’m happy to report that I’ve finally gotten some writing and revising done. Not just a flash piece I wrote a few weeks ago (or was it last week?) but also that massive rewrite of “Instead of Pinochets” that I mentioned a few days ago. And… ta-da… a new story …