Behind the scene: Fair Deal

Getting things done is written on the back, seriously.

 

Idea

This one is kinda nifty actually.

I am an avid read of postsecret.com, which you can get to by clicking on that secret to the left. Or just typing in postsecret.com, unless you’re lazy. Or lack the ability to type.

Postsecret is a brilliant website where people from all over the world send this guy, Frank Warren, their secrets on postcards, some are sad, some are funny, some are a bit creepy. But all of them make you think about the billions of other humans on this planet.

I discovered postsecret when I was in college and every once in a while I would come across a secret that made me think, “whoa, that would be a phenomenal story.”

So I took a bunch of those secrets and turned them into stories.

Revision

This is the only one that is worthwhile. One of the secrets is in Gloria’s confession that when she drives under the overpass she thinks all she has to do is not turn with the road and she will find some peace. There are others hidden in their between this man and woman. I’ve lost and cut out quite a few over the years, but that’s the one that haunts me.

One of the reasons why the other stories didn’t make it was that these secrets are so personal. I don’t want to take advantages of someone else’s suffering and turn it into what to me is a fine art, but to them is just something filthy. Something worthy of a post secret.

Of the actual story:

“A Fair Deal” or as it was originally titled “The Whore of Tuckerton” was a sort of post secret to myself for a while.

I don’t like writing from a woman’s point of view. I’m not sure why.  I feel uncomfortable and I don’t think I do it well, though no one has ever complained.

 So for years I worked on this story, amused by it, saddened by it.  I think it’s one of my best, but I was afraid to show it to any of my workshop groups. The only reason I eventually did was because one of my friends caught me doodling a picture of a woman on a tractor and I couldn’t explain her away. That doodle is the cover by the way.

Read it here.