Ever since I was a kid I loathed getting stuck in group projects because in every one of them I always found myself doing all the work while everyone else go the credit. This repeated experience growing up soured me to the idea of doing anything that needed team effort. But I’m an adult now trying to make a go of writing and one of the many ways to get my name out there is to collaborate on anthologies.
So I’ve been trying. But the first one was a massive clusterfuck with no organization and I don’t know what came of it after I fled for the hills. I didn’t try again until recently when someone I knew invited me to write a story for a Cinderella themed anthology. No extra guidelines, just write a Cinderella based story. I thought this was fun and decided on my hook. Let’s make Cinderella a boy! By the end of the day I had a darling story which I absolutely loved called You Don’t Know Jack which I’ve linked here so you can enjoy it too. The woman who invited me to the project loved it. I received no word whatsoever on anyone else and right then and there I figured something was up. Two months later it was “lost” so I sent it again. More silence. Finally after a few weeks I got an e-mail back with a HUGE list of demands and “suggestions” on how to fix them. By the time the list was done I realized they were asking me to drastically change EVERY character, plot point, major detail, and even my verbiage! They were as follows:
- Change the introduction and spell out the entire situation right off the bat (Right, so expect very little of the readers and don’t dump them into an action scene like we’re constantly told we’re supposed to. Got it.)
- Make him more “likable” (What does this even mean? I thought he was very likable thank you very much!)
- Make him act older (Have you met a teenage boy before? They’re idiots. I know a lot of parents that can testify to this.)
- Ditch the Santa joke – this is a medieval world (Actually it’s a made up fairy tale world…)
- Also choose if it’s modern or medieval and make the dialogue reflect as much (….MADE-UP FAIRY TALE WORLD….)
- Give him a reason to be powerless. Maybe make his step-mother regent (He’s powerless already – to chose the life he wants for himself. THAT IS THE POINT OF THIS STORY.)
- Perhaps turn his step sisters into brothers and have them fight over power for the throne (My head hurts. He doesn’t want the throne. That is the mother!@#$ing point)
- Delete the fairy godfather. He’s “an offensive stereotype.” (Oh. My. God. He was “an offensive stereotype” for a reason. To make a point about bullying. And he’s SUPER humanized in that scene so don’t give me that BS about not having enough time to “flesh out the character.”)
- Maybe make the dragon the fairy godmother! Or the solution to the problem! (Mmmmm yup. Might as well since this story clearly can’t have adult themes. At all. Why not make a minor side character the whole point of the story?)
- MAYBE make the dragon the romantic lead and have him turn into a dragon in the end! (Am I writing this for 12 year old girls? This is literally the only way this makes sense.)
OK so clearly that pissed me off. They could have said my story just didn’t fit in with the rest of the submissions and sent me on my merry way. I would have preferred that. Instead I decided to play ball. It strikes me that eviscerating my story was a great way to just push me out of the project buuuut I don’t work like that. Instead I took the above stupidity and wrote out EXACTLY what they wanted.
And it was excruciating. Just imagine all the power struggles of Game of Thrones in a fairy story about a knighted prince Cinderella. Now hit that with a bus marked Sopranos and have it come-to and in a state of concussed delirium have it begin reciting Shakespearean prose. It’s seven pages of torture. Not torture to my characters, torture to my readers. The new and improved “medieval dialogue” even makes my head want to implode. It took me ALL DAY to barf it up and I feel like it’s a bastard child. I called it Where Art Thou Cinderella? I’ve linked it here in case you need something to put you to sleep.
And then I said fuck it. Let’s write another version using all these suggestions but with my usual flair and of course keeping Cinderella a boy (which may have been the reason they hated my story to begin with.) I made it obscenely cutesy. He is in fact powerless in it. Because he’s an orphan peasant boy now. I bet you they will not find my glossy depiction of child labor particularly amusing but… at least there’s no fairy godmother anymore… And here it is in all its glory: Puppy Love.
I’m awaiting word back which will likely take a good few weeks. God only knows where this will go from here but you know what? Now I am thinking of starting my own Cinderella based anthology… sure, I can do Cinderella in space, Cinderella as a ghost, Cinderella as a Victorian detective… the sky’s the limit!