TL;DR – I rewrote Killing Time. You can download the new version for free here.
So, I had an epiphany the other day.
Well, maybe not a full-on epiphany. Maybe half an epiphany. An Epiph, as it were. Or a Fann-
You know what, let’s not get bogged down with names.
The point is, I realised a few things.
Firstly, that over time we all get better at stuff, and because we all know this fact we tend to forget the truth of it. It’s a natural part of undertaking any endeavour over a long period – you learn, you develop, and ultimately you become better. ‘Practice makes perfect’ and all that jazz.
Some people – such as Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers – even quantify the number of hours of practice needed before you can be truly great at something. (10,000 apparently, which works out to around 417 days. Or four James Cameron films.)
Anyway, it dawned on me that writing is no exception to this. And, as I write a lot, surely I must be better at it now than I was when I started?
So for that reason I went back and took a fresh look at my short story Killing Time. This is the short psychological thriller that I wrote for all new subscribers to my email list. The idea is that people will download it and get a feel for my writing style, without having to spend any money on a book they may or may not like. Kind of like a try-before-you-buy deal – but with less edible Costco samples where you’re not quite sure how many you’re allowed to eat before getting shamed by security and kicked out of the store…
Anyway, it was actually quite interesting going back over the story, rewriting and editing large sections, and making smaller tweaks here and there. I haven’t made any drastic changes – none of the characters are now robots or anything – but (I hope!) that the writing itself is better.
Click the image below to download the new version
It’s important to say that I’m not going to do this with any of my commercially published work. I don’t think novels and short story collections should be changed after people have paid money for them. I think they should stand and fall on their own merits from the time they were written. It would be massively unfair to anyone who bought them the first time if I went back and started changing things. So, just to reiterate my novels and short stories are not changing. Ever!
Anyway, please do let me know what you think of this new version of Killing Time, either in the comments below, via email at info@angelomarcos.com, or by leaving a review at Goodreads.
I’m hoping it still has the impact and emotional punch that it did when I first wrote it – in fact, hopefully even more so, otherwise all my painstaking editing and rewriting was, well, pointless…! (I could make a joke about ‘killing time’ while editing here, but I’m better than that, so I won’t. You’re welcome.)
angelomarcos 