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Old Stories

The last time I moved, everything was in a rush.  I had been unemployed and my new job started just a month in the future and half a country away.  I slung things into boxes and unpacked, haphazardly, on weekends.  In the decade since then, life has been a blur.

Lately I’ve been trying to find things.  While sorting through a stack of paperwork, I came across a box of old stories.  Really old.  Some of these tales go back to when I first started to write fiction.  Most of them are embarrassing, but when I recall how young I was, they aren’t as embarrassing as all that.

One of the stories I remembered writing as a ninth or tenth grader.  My English teacher told me I should try to get it published.  I lived in a small town where no one had connections to the publishing world, and where nobody really knew how to get anything published.

Where you’re born does make a difference.



The story was in a pile of papers I found.  It seems to have born its age well, but some of the magic is knowing that the kid who wrote it was maybe fourteen or fifteen and had lived a very sheltered small town life.  Now, I know, the story would not be publishable.

Literary journals today want trendy, cool, and sophisticated writing.  They don’t value the sentiment of a story of a young boy in a rural setting just awakening to the possibility that there is more to life than he ever imagined.

Perhaps decades ago, when I wrote the story, some publisher somewhere might have considered it as a juvenile effort.  Being published back then might have changed my perspective on the difficulties of trying to find a voice in today’s literary world.


I’m still not trendy or cool.  Thoughtful, curious, and at times irreverent, yes.  But I am still that little boy, wondering what more might be out there.

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