Not the WIP.  I think I fixed that.  Only time will tell.

No, it’s one of my short stories that’s broken in the middle.  And I don’t know how to fix it.  I’ve rewritten it ever so many times and every time I think, “Okay, I think that’s got it.”  I let it go, send it out into the world again to garner more rejections.  Then after many months (sometimes many, many months) I read it again and I think, “Dang.  It’s still broken in the middle.”

The beginning is good, the ending is good, I’m very fond of this story, but I know in my heart of hearts why it keeps garnering rejections.  There’s a clear drop off point in the middle where the opening momentum collapses and the oomph doesn’t pick up again until the closing pages.

But I don’t know how to fix it.  And it makes me very sad.

I seem to always have trouble with middles.  I can grab with openings, I can satisfy with endings (if anyone reads past the middle to find out about the endings), but middles slay me every time.  Sometimes I can figure out how to make them work, and sometimes I can’t.

Dang.