by Smiley McGrouchpants, Jr-Esq-III
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STORY #1: This, apparently, is part of a continuing-but-inadvertent series I might as well call: "Stories I Submitted for 'The First Line' Which Were Rejected and I Now Have No Use for Except as 'Calling Cards' for My Writing."
When I submitted it, having never owned a laptop, I thought I made a grave error assuming it would, like a cell phone, require recharging to work (something I only realized after I sent it in, having written the thing under a bit of a "crunch." Then, I was like ... "Oh, shit!)
Thankfully (as all laptop owners know, and I confirmed from an incidental reference early on in Cory Docotorow's "Makers"), I wasn't wrong about that -- so, I went ahead and I changed the somewhat-unsatisfactory "working title" I sent it in with (after I heard back that it had been rejected), to THIS one, which I think makes a neat "tie-in" thematically with the end of the story.
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STORY #2: How I wrote this story:
(1.) I took the first line they gave for the Summer issue ("Rachel's first trip to England didn't go as planned") and, almost unconsciously, imagined my friend (via e-mail & "social network" correspondence) Rachel B. Glaser in the starring role;
(2.) Then, I went ahead and "ripped off" the "tone" of parts of her first story from her collection, "Pee On Water" (in much the same way I felt like I was "ripping off" the "voice(s)" of Douglas Coupland's intro pages to "JPod" in the transcribed-conversations part at the end of my "Portland Fiction Writer" story).
NOTE: Kidding around about feeling like you're "ripping off" tones or voices is kinda funny, but ACTUALLY "ripping off" someone else's CONTENT, of course, NEVER is!
(3.) Hilarity (I think) ensued (Though, apparently, the editors of "The First Line" disagreed!)
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STORY #3: Also, this originally started as an "Exquisite Corpse" idea I was pitching to a couple friends via Facebook ... but, as the other two showed no interest/involvement in this particular work (as is their right, of course; guess I didn't "bait the hook" effectively enough for them!) I ended up having to crunch through the last ten paragraphs in two sittings of five paragraphs each on the last day before it was due ...
... et voilà!