Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I finished the rewrite of “Cast in Stone,” today. It’s longer and, in my opinion, much improved. I’m going to give it another read-through before posting it, but I’m pretty happy with it.

As a reminder, I’m giving away the original story, the hand-written rewrite, and now I’m adding the marked-up printout that I created during this rewrite process. To enter this contest, go to the original contest post and leave a comment (full rules after the jump).

Rewrites are always instructive, if you approach it with the right attitude. Problems I thought were insurmountable (albeit 20 years ago) I now find correctable.

• The “new character halfway through the story” issue was solved by bringing all three characters into the first scene.
• The “too-short scene near the end” issue was fixed by combining it with the following scene.
• The “too many POVs” issue I addressed by pulling the entire story up into full omniscient viewpoint.

But why rewrite the whole story, every word of it? Well, my style has changed a lot in 20 years, and I want it to sound like me, now, and not me, then.

Keep your eyes peeled.

Official rules for the Cast In Stone Giveaway:

• Leave a comment on the original contest announcement post by midnight, 28 Feb 2013
• The comment must:
  • use fewer than 31 words.
  • describe why you should receive the recipient of both artifacts
  • be clever
  • optional: state why others are less worthy

More weight will be given to comments with fewer words and greater cleverness.

I will be the sole judge. I will mail the items to any country, via street mail. I will not make any copies of the handwritten MS; you will have the only extant copy. This handwritten MS will be the source from which I type the final story (though some variations between MS and typed version are going to exist.)

I will not promise that you will be able to read my handwriting.

k