Another "Abandoned" Work

I've finished tinkering with my short story, "Spin." I feel wrung out. I lanced open my soul and bled some of it into this work. In it, I attempt to answer a deep and profound question:

What happened to all those poor women who had their spinning wheels taken away from them at the beginning of the Sleeping Beauty story?

Yeah, really deep, huh? I tried to mix humor with angst here, and gave it a bittersweet ending.

I have always had trouble with short stories. I would think of situations, not plots. My characters were always shallow and they petered off into nowhere and nothing. I only bothered to send out a few and I never even had so much as a "we'd like to see more of your work" type of reply (although JJA said I had "nice writing" a couple of times). I was not very aggressive in sending them out. I knew something was wrong with them.

With this story, something feels different. I got as into it as I have any of my novels. I have five different drafts of it, numbered and each quite different although they are the same basic story. I almost sent it off last week, but I had to add a scene which I think made it much more powerful, so a lot of it had to be retooled.

It's in an envelope here beside me, all ready to send to my top-choice market. I don't talk about rejections here, so the next time I mention it will be either when I sell it, or if I give up and I decide to post it here for all the world to see.

Wish me luck in getting it in front of the right editor!