Ode to a Billion Urns

Over at FictionCraft, SD Byrd, commenting on my posts on Charles D'Ambrosio's "Her Real Name," writes: "...how many times have you seen stories about spreading some dead guy's (or gal's) ashes? Billions." Well, I'm guilty as charged, having written my own story about ashes leaving an urn. "Oxygen" is certainly a story I wouldn't attempt today for exactly the reason Byrd mentions. Fresh territory beckons so why repeatedly smash my head against the wall trying to breath life into a tired theme? When I wrote "Oxygen," however, I was younger, and more willing to write such a story just because some writing teacher said I couldn't. The story went through at least 30 revisions and is probably the most consciously crafted story I've ever done. I remember working especially hard on the nouns and verbs, going through the manuscript several times and highlighting every one and revising until I knew that every noun and verb was exactly the word my vision of the story required. The story's symbolism and image system developed organically, but once I saw what I had I went back and consciously revised and threaded it deeper into the story.

Despite—or perhaps because of— all the conscious revision, "Oxygen" was heavily and relentlessly rejected, more times than I revised it— although I never revised it after I started submitting the story—before finally winning honorable mention in the Waasmode contest and being published in Passages North (which has a new web site). The most frequent comment I received from editors in the rejection letters was something like "excellent story but we see too many stories about the death of family members," as Byrd suggests, "billions" most likely.

Anyway, "Oxygen" is my contribution to the billions.