Just got word that my story “Corridors” has been accepted by Nature. This one is an example of some major-league scavenging. Basically, an anthology had solicited a story from me, and I played around with a bunch of different approaches before finally finding one. But even after I’d written my story, I was still haunted by one story beginning that I’d written. It just had a really interesting use of language, and a lot of energy and verve, but it hadn’t really gone anywhere as a story: it just petered out after 700 words. So I was looking at it and then I was like, “Huh! This could just be the story!” So I brushed off those 700 words and expanded them a tiny bit and that was that.

It was kind of an inspiration to me. This is the very first time I’ve ever been able to make anything out of an early draft of a story. However, since then I’ve spent some time looking at some other things I’ve written–early drafts, discarded drafts, false starts–and I feel like some stories can be made out of those too, so who knows?