{"id":4210,"date":"2026-06-17T02:31:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T06:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/?p=4210"},"modified":"2026-06-17T02:31:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T06:31:39","slug":"new-completed-revamped-short-story-the-curse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/?p=4210","title":{"rendered":"New Completed (Revamped) Short Story: \u201cThe Curse\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another new short story has joined the pack, but it’s also . . . an old story. I decided to rewrite “The Curse,” a short story I initially completed in 2002<\/a>. Yes, 2002!<\/p>\n

This is one of the earliest stories I started sending out to magazines. It collected a few rejections and I ended up retiring it because the parts that were supposed to be commentary on human nature read more like really smug exposition and I didn’t think it was good as it was. I put it on the shelf thinking maybe I’d rewrite it someday. And that day came on June 8. I started revamping the story.<\/p>\n

The parts of it that used to be just narration have been transmuted into a series of radio interviews, which makes them way more interesting to read and a lot less like you’re reading some author’s frame story. But that’s only half the story. The other half is a more traditionally rendered pseudo-fantasy quest, and I kept a lot of the content from the original story.<\/p>\n

And I don’t know that that’s a good thing. I’ve reread those bits and tweaked them a lot but I may need to actually fully rebuild those too before I feel comfortable with the story.<\/p>\n

The thing I’m most worried about, though, is how prone it is to looking like it’s trying to be some top-down insightful nothingburger commentary on humanity. It might come across as fake deep and no one wants that.<\/p>\n

But I’m happy it’s done–I wrapped it up in five writing sessions and it’s sitting at about 10,000 words. I’d like to cut it down of course but the transcript format makes that tougher. Oh well. This story’s central idea is one I did care about and I want to figure out how to tell it so people actually want to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another new short story has joined the pack, but it’s also . . . an old story. I decided to rewrite “The Curse,” a short story I initially completed in 2002. Yes, 2002! This is one of the earliest stories I started sending out to magazines. It collected a few rejections and I ended up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,5,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-news","category-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4211,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4210\/revisions\/4211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}