Torch....

I haven't posted for a while and when I thought about putting something here tonight I thought about my reasons or excuses. I could say the myriad of birthdays, my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary or work but it was my fourth assignment and the tussle I have had with it.
The object was to drag out an old piece, revisit it and bring to bear all the experience and advice from the tutor. I found it hard work. It was a piece I had written a year before for a competition as an object lesson in having the courage to submit it - without expectation of anything coming of it. It was an exercise. So I wrestled, cut, re-wrote and dragged it out to look at it in harsh light. It was hard work, it wasn't creative in the sense that the story was known to me, not an exploration. By the time I submitted it I was exhausted, unsure and strangely worried. I hadn't written in my notebook for weeks, nothing in my diary and nothing here....
Then Nina came back with her assessment and I was deflated; everything she said was true, reasoned and right. Her comments always cut through and get to the nub of the piece and its impression it will have on a reader - and thank god for that! The main comment was that it was a short story burdened with a heavy overcoat – spot on. It’s a comment a couple of tutors have made on previous courses and something I have to battle against.
HOWEVER, the emotional, knackered side of me - my doubting side - was de-motivated. I brooded for a couple of hours, which is part of my process after an assessment has arrived. I emailed Nina about what was wrong and how I felt; had I made a mistake, should I have taken up another story? As usual Nina gave encouragement with a single comment – “Some stories just take a lot of redrafting whilst one searches with a torch for the right way to approach the telling of it. Others seem to flow down onto the page as if they were a gift from the gods.”
In those two sentences, she managed to put everything in context. I am learning and this is one of those stories that I need a torch for.