HOW I REVISED "I WON :)"
MY STORY IN THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW
My short story “I WON :)” got published in the Metropolitan Review: read it here.
And you can listen to me reading that story, right here:
I published a version of this story on my stack on February 3rd.
I submitted that version to the Metropolitan Review, but once they accepted it, I rewrote the whole thing.
To my mind, rewriting is the key to writing.
I am never precious about a thing when it’s “done”; I wanna make it the best version of what it can be.
Let’s look at the first paragraph in the 2/3 version:
IT WAS COLD as frozen shit outside and the heater in the gym in the only Holiday Inn in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania was broke and so at 6AM, —terrifying earlybird businessmen and hotel staff, — Pedro Cunha, cocooned in a black sweatsuit, with five pounds to cut before sunrise, looked like a bundled up maniac, jumping rope and shadowboxing in the hottest corner of the third floor hallway.
A bit cluttered, honestly; Pedro Cunha’s name is hidden in there, and what’s our sentence punchline? “hallway”, that won’t do.
Here’s the revision:
16 HOURS OUT
IT WAS COLD as frozen shit outside; the gym heater in Lock Haven PA’s only Holiday Inn was broke; so at 6AM, with 5 pounds to cut before sunrise, cocooned in a black sweatsuit, terrifying the earlybird businessmen & hotel staff; jumping rope & shadowboxing like a raging bull in the hottest corner of the 3rd Floor hallway, Pedro Cunha looked like a fucking maniac.
OK! So, for one, we have a new structural conceit in the story. Pedro’s gonna fight today, that’s what’s looming. And now we have a way to divide the sections with momentum, and with anticipation: countdown.
More than that, in this revision we cut 3 “ands”, 2 are tossed into time’s ravine, and one becomes an ampersand; we clip “Pennsylvania” to “PA”, we cut a redundant “in”; we add an easy, tactile, allusive simile “like a raging bull”, and we reorient the order of the sentence so now our punchline is “Pedro Cunha looked like a fucking maniac.”
The story got accepted the way it was, but you can make almost any piece of writing better & better; the only reason to stop revising is because the publication date is looming and eventually you have to move on to a different project. . .
Let’s look at another paragraph.
The story is just as much about Pedro’s fight as it is about the challenges of his long-distance relationship; he’s lying to himself in every aspect of his life.
Here’s how he thinks about how the exigencies of the relationship are weighing on him, in the 2/3 version:
Meet my girlfriend! this disembodied voice boring me on the perfunctory obligation: right outta practice call, drained and sore, gotta talk to her about nothing, —Miss you baby, Miss you too, I can’t wait until we live together, piling inane etceteras, —modulating stories about female friends so as not to spook her. When are we gonna see eachother? Well, it’s boxing season, you could come visit me. Baby with work and school… He didn’t say, Are you gonna be a snowshoveler, landscaper forever? You don’t respect my job, she would say. That brute ogling boss of hers. Are you insane Pedro, you think I would fuck my boss?!
in the 6/28 version:
MEET MY GIRLFRIEND! this disembodied voice boring me every single fucking day. A life of perfunctory obligations. Right outta practice calls, drained & sore, gotta talk to her about nothing,
Miss you baby, Miss you too, I love you, Can’t wait until we live together,
pretending lust isn’t a glacier eroding your insides,
modulating stories about female friends not to spook her.
When we gonna see eachother? Well it’s boxing season, you could come visit me. Baby, with work & school. . . He didn’t say, You gonna be a landscaper, a fucking snowshoveler forever? You don’t respect my job she’d say. That brute ogling boss of hers. Are you INSANE Pedro?! You think I would fuck my boss??
So, we know in the second version, this is now the beginning of its own section: we see the bold caps. The architecture of the story is snappier. We have the time stamp chapter headings, and more section breaks within the chapters.
Short clearly marked sections: always propulsive.
And you’ll see that these 2 paragraphs are not THAT DIFFERENT.
This is why I like to revise by just starting on a blank page, and acting like I’m copying the last version word for word and just changing things as I go along.
But I never copy and paste from the old version, no matter if I’m copying it word for word. I type it out to feel the rhythm.
What’s the big difference here? We have line broken the sentences in the paragraph; we have changed “boring me on the perfunctory obligation” to “boring me every single fucking day. A life of perfunctory obligations.” This makes Pedro’s experience much clearer. She’s boring him every day: this is life.
The best switch in the paragraph: “piling inane etceteras” not a bad phrase, but now we get, “pretending lust isn’t a glacier eroding your insides”.
Now that is a tactile phrase: a metaphor that shows us & tells us exactly how Pedro feels.
And we all caps INSANE for emphasis and visual variation.
If you’re curious as to the provenance of the story, I competed as a boxer at Miami University in Ohio. I was 12-4. My Junior Year I got 3rd place at Nationals and my Senior Year I got second. . . always the bridesmaid.
My Freshman Year in college I wasn’t boxing much; I was mentally & emotionally deteriorating and I had a long-distance girlfriend who I treated very badly;
everyone in the dorm thought of me as “that scary guy” because I would scowl around the halls and then call her in the middle of the night to leave angry voicemails that everybody could hear. . . so that she would have something nasty to wake up to.
I was mean.
These are all stories for a different day, but I’m trying to give you a glimpse of how my fiction is made.
I was never competing & dating her (whose name is very close to the story’s Audrey) at the same time. But I put those experiences together and the conceit came very easily,
What if she had surprised visited me before a big fight?
You can imagine your way thru almost any scenario, especially one that is so closely related to your memories. Writing fiction is EASY!
You just gotta tell a bullshit story.
Let’s look at the ending. I’m gonna spoil it.
So Audrey intended to surprise Pedro, she got a hotel room in town for the night and she was gonna say they should spent the night together, but he blows it by being an asshole and so it happens that he’s in the room right below her and doesn’t even know it.
2/3 version:
IT WAS PEDRO’S turn in the bathroom before everybody went to sleep. Almost one in the morning. He typed out a message to Audrey, “hey I was an asshole today. I’m sorry. You mean everything to me. I love you. I’m so grateful that you came out here to see me! You’re the best,” but he deleted it, she was driving anyway, she wouldn’t see it.
Instead, he pulled up a naked picture she sent him a few months ago, his cherished favorite, and he dryly jacked off into the toilet.
Contemporaneously with the completion, he got a text from Carmen: “hey srry i was busy all day! how did the fight go??”
He texted back: [REDACTED]
I think we can imagine what he said.
6/28 version:
JUST DOWNSTAIRS
IT WAS PEDRO’S turn in the bathroom. Loser went last. Everybody was asleep. Almost 1AM. He typed out a message to Audrey, “i was an asshole today. i’m sorry. you mean everything to me! I LOVE YOU!!! & i’m so grateful u came out to see me,” but he deleted it. She was probably on the road. She wouldn’t see it.
He pulled up a nude she’d sent him a few months ago, his cherished favorite, and he jacked off into the toilet.
Just as he finished he got a text from Carmen:
“hey srry i was busy all day! how’d the fight go???”
Peep the titling. Now that the fight is over we not using time-stamps. The previous section was called “JUST UPSTAIRS” from Audrey’s POV.
Right at the beginning of the sentence we get a better staccato: “IT WAS PEDRO’S turn in the bathroom. Loser went last. Everybody was asleep. Almost 1AM.”
You can see how the nude sentence is a bit cleaner. And we cut, “Contemporaneously with the completion”: too cute.
And we just end the story now on Carmen’s text (she’s a girl he cheated on Audrey with and is pining for now); I want you to think that he texted back, “I WON :)” that’s why I titled the story the way I did.
Read “I WON :)” in the Metropolitan Review and give it a like and a restack so that people think it’s popping.
OK! THAT’S THAT!
Putting in that phrase about lust being an iceberg inside was genius.
fire