If you’re not familiary with Twitter, there is something on that called Sample Sunday. You basically mark a Tweet with something like a tag (in this case #SampleSunday), and you link to some of your writing that you want to let others sample. Last Sunday I decided that I needed to toss my trepidation aside and participate in #SampleSunday. I wasn’t ready to throw my novel work in progress into the ring just yet, so I thought I’d share a short story I wrote last year. Personally, I like the story, and for the most part the reviews I’ve received have been positive (though the positive feedback hasn’t been universal).
The story itself was published through Associated Content, and has been out on the web for eight months or so. Since posting it, I’ve released the story on Sojourner Mountain and I’ve submitted it to TriggerStreet.com. To my dismay, every time I’ve released it, I’ve discovered bone-headed mistakes that simple proof-reading should have caught, but didn’t. And to add insult to injury, when I posted the story to my Short Stories tab on Sunday, I discovered a horribly awkward sentence in the teaser paragraph…the same paragraph that’s been sitting out on Associated Content for eight months. So what gives?
When the story gets close to completion, and we want to get it out the door and in front of our readers, we are contending with a perfect storm of circumstances that may blind us to basic editing mistakes:
Sojourner Mountain 