Five Years a Writer

...spring will come again... Doing something once is good, but when that one time is the first time we have done it, our results can (usually) benefit from some critical feedback. This goes for just about anything we tackle in our lives, and it goes especially for writers -- this writer doesn't always like it, but she knows more often than not it's true: critique improves the work.  When I submitted my first 101-word fiction story to an online site, I waited months for a response. When it came, it was NO. The editor's feedback stated the timeline was problematic and the emotions were unclear. Harrumph, said I. Closed the message and sulked for a bit.  A while later, I went back to the story and looked with a clear eye and open mind at what I had written. I had two responses: on the emotions, the editor misread the story despite the blatant clue it closes with, but on the timeline, I could grant that greater clarity could be presented with a re-write and different structure.