tanaise | (no subject)

My mother sent me a couple of boxes of things, including the box of books I'd packed up before moving up here with all the books I hadn't read yet but meant to and such. And in it was my copy of Polyphony. Now, I'm bad. I know this. I've had that book since mid November or so, and I can barely bring myself to open it. As such, i think i've read the first few pages of barth's story, and maybe something else. It's not that I don't want to read it, it's that I can't open it because my story's in there and I still feel like it was a mistake.

I can't even bring myself to look at my story. When I sent it to them for publication, I literally scanned through it to make sure that it started, middled and ended, in that order, but didn't read it. And every time I look at the first few pages I cringe. but today, I flipped it open in the middle of the story and looked at it and wasn't completely disgusted. I see, if not what others were talking about when they tell me it's a good story, then at least some good stuff. I'm still not quite sure that Jay and Deb should have bought it, but I'd forgotten parts of it completely. it was like reading someone else's story. except that I built so much of that story out of parts of my life that things hit weird notes with me, and I'd be like, "How did the author know that?" oh, wait, that was me.

the whole plates thing? I don't remember it at all. I mean, reading it, I know what I was thinking of, as a friend gave me blue glass plates for xmas one year, but other than that, I don't remember writing that part of the story, even though I see where thematically it works, and why I did that. But I don't remember writing it, and if you'd asked me to tell you the details of the story, I wouldn't have remembered the plates at all. I remember the cutting, and the healing, and the boy taking her to coffee. And I remember everything that she hid under her skin and when it comes out again, but I didn't remember the plates.

I don't know. I'm not secure enough in my stories to hazard a guess if that scene was necessary or what purpose it actually served, but I can see myself getting enough distance to truly look at it like an outsider. And it's not as sucky as it could have been. :)