Writing Stuff

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Here's a link to my latest piece from Philadelphia Stories called "Revise, Revise, and Then Try Revising."

Truthfully, I haven't been revising anything, but I have been sorta/kinda working on the wheelchair story--the one about the girl who's dating a paraplegic; a very attractive guy who is also an asshole. I like some of the scenes, but ti's not hanging together that well as a whole, because I keep coming up against the question of why she wouldn't just break up with him. And I don't want to be too plotted about it, like, she's dating him because she was molested and he can't chase her. Or she's dating him because her mother was in a wheelchair and they never connected. I want it to be a little less dramatic and authentic. So, then I have to think about times when I've maybe dated someone who I didn't actually like that much. This has happened. More than once. And I stayed because it was just too scary to think about being single or alone. It was better to be with someone I didn't even really like that much than to break up. But I sometimes did leave the guy, and sometimes, he left me, which was even worse, like he won the race to the break-up finish line. But I also don't necessarily want it to be a story where it can have only one of two endings--they break up or they don't--but, really, what are the alternatives? I'm going to go back and read Mary Gaitskill's "Secretary" to see how she manages to make it plausible that a girl continues to go to a job where her boss spanks her regularly. Mostly, if I remember it correctly, she does it because she's bored. Maybe my character continues to date the guy b/c he has central air. But of course, that makes her shallow and possibly unlikable.

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