A Second-Guesser Gets Philosophical

I keep thinking about the 987-word submission I made to the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge on Sunday.

I keep thinking of it because that's what writers do: a) they obsess about stuff they've sent out, and b) they second-guess the quality of what they sent out.

That said, I re-read my piece this morning and, honestly, I highly, highly doubt that it sustains itself well enough to be considered a "Comedy."

I also doubt that my one-line synopsis does anything very tantalizing.

This is where I get philosophical, though:

*In order to figure out what works, you have to be willing to do some stuff that doesn't work.

And

*You have to be willing to see what you did get out of the work you completed (or drafted).

In my case, I now have a better sense of some elements of comedy: exaggeration, deception, misunderstanding, contrast... very few of which I successfully used.

I also wrote an entire story (which might belong in another genre!) that I can now revise, polish and possibly submit somewhere. At the rate I'm writing this summer, I wouldn't have had that at all otherwise.

Final lesson?

*Play and Learn.