During the 1980s and 90s, I was a prolific short story writer.  I have dozens of them cluttering up computer disks (some of them on those old 3×5 floppies – my God, I’m old. Luckily I have hard copies too.) Only about a third of them have been published, most in small literary magazines that are probably out of business by now.  Another third I had never even tried to have published. I was more chicken back then.

I’m a better writer now than I was then, but still – some of these stories are really quite good. They just need a bit of tweaking here and there. (In the eighties there was no Internet. Few people had cell phones. Mr. Rogers was still alive.  It’s surprising how much these cultural changes can impact a story.)

Recently I took one of my old unsubmitted, unpublished stories to my writing group and asked for critique. I was amazed at how positive they were, and how many good suggestions they had about how to rework the story so it didn’t seem dated. Suddenly I saw that my stash of stories could come alive again; with just a little work I could send these stories out into the world.

It’s a good thing I no longer cluck.

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