We probably looked like one of those pathetic couples, who sit together at restaurants and don’t speak. Worse, I was staring into my wine while my husband, Shawn, was slumped over his phone, scrolling slowly downwards, ignoring me.
I imagined the couple at the table next to us glancing over, then promising that they would never become like us.
But on that night, the night after Thanksgiving in 2019, a rare evening away from our three-year-old daughter, Shawn was reading my first short story while I was waiting for his reaction.
The idea for that short story, titled BULL’S-EYE, came to me while I read about the #MeToo movement. I was supposed to be working on an assignment for my research job, but I dashed out a few quick paragraphs in the unfamiliar form.
The premise, based loosely on THE SCARLET LETTER, was that men who had committed sexual crimes, from harassment to rape, woke up one morning with a large, red bull's-eye on their foreheads. At first, they’re ashamed. They’re fired from their jobs, voted out of office, publicly shunned, until they decide that they are the victims, forced to wear a mark upon their foreheads. As the victims, they cry discrimination, and they win. Suddenly, women who judged them for their behavior are deemed the aggressors.
At the restaurant, Shawn finished reading. He looked up at me. He said, “This is excellent!”
Reader, it’s not excellent. I’m not saying this because it has been rejected from esteemed literary journals, because I know enough to know that acceptance does not always equal excellence, just as rejection does not always equal crap. But BULL’S-EYE is a passive-voice nightmare, a jumble of magazine-style reportage (the only non-legal, non-academic writing I had done at that stage) and lazy fury at the subject of the story, the men like Donald Trump who did terrible things and had the audacity to turn their crimes back on their victims.
BULL’S-EYE is not excellent, but my husband’s reaction to the piece was. That reaction led me to write a dozen more stories, made me feel strong enough to use the active voice and patient enough to edit myself harshly. The result of that reaction is that I’m still writing, and even getting some acceptances along the way.
BULL’S-EYE: 1 star
Spousal Encouragement: 5 stars