As you (hopefully) already know, whatever fiction that I post here on my blog is an unedited version of whatever piece I’m working on. “Unedited” as in it is the Zero Draft. No revisions, no edits, basically however it first appears in my head is how it is in the blog post.
As I edit, some of the posts change pretty drastically. I’ve changed tenses, main characters, overall themes… I’ve changed some from a poem to a story and vice versa. There’s even a story or two where the only thing that has survived revisions was the theme.
I guess my blog is more or less where I go to see if I can somehow make my ideas work. From there, I’m tasked with seeing which pieces I want to add to the mini-anthology that I’m working on. I’ve widdled the list down to 12 short stories/poems (it should be 11, I’m still figuring out which one I want to drop). And I’m currently working on the edits that I want to make prior to sending it off to critique partners. Speaking of, I NEED critique partners, wink wink, nudge nudge, massage me (see that there? Perfect typo. It stays)!
Wow… This is a lot of rambling. I’m getting to the point, I promise. So, I just finished another round of edits on Al, and I think it might be time for me to do a Inside The Ink on it. See? Point made. Here we go.
This was the first thing that I wrote for this blog. Actually, it was the first piece of fiction I had written since… Well… I can’t recall exactly, but it had been YEARS. I’ve talked about my relationship with Al on this blog before, so you all know that there was an underlying issue with alcohol that played a part in her cheating on me. So, when I wrote the poem I really wanted to make lies into something more than just what you hear. I wanted it to be a sort of drink. Something tangible.
I wanted you to imagine putting a lie on a wound as if you were pouring whiskey. I wanted the lies to both heal and hurt you, to the point where you couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. Hopefully all of that came out in this piece.
Through the various edits I’ve added about 50% more words to it. About half of them are rooted in fiction and half pulled directly from our relationship. Originally, when I was writing this out of pure emotion, I wanted it to be truthful. Now that I’m putting it into this book I find myself a little more concerned with how it sounds/reads. You can see why, right?
This post is all over the place, I’m sorry about that. Hopefully as I make this Inside The Ink serious more of a thing I get better at staying on topic. I’m going to stop rambling and just end it there.
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Until next time, Al is still Al.
Alphonso Francis White 