Eggs, Endings, and Other Drafts That Linger
Back in my second fiction workshop, I wrote a bleak little 10-pager about a 13-year-old boy named Maddox who had an eating disorder. His parents had just divorced. The whole thing took place in a single morning on December 21, 2012, the day the Mayan calendar said the world might end.
It sounded like a good premise: a boy who wants to disappear against the backdrop of an apocalypse.
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But the draft itself? Not so much. Maddox made breakfast, nearly fainted, his sister lashed out, his brother called their mom, and Maddox dropped a bowl of eggs. That was the climax: an egg drop.
I sent it to several magazines. Received rejections. Shelved it.
Still, I couldn’t quite let the characters go. Their pain mirrored mine at the time, and I carried them with me like ghosts.
Seven Years Later
Two weeks ago, I pulled that old draft back out. Seven years had passed. I expected to cringe.
Instead, I saw what changes the story needed.
First: it was too long. Readers will sit with pain, but not endlessly. Without moments of lift, grief grows dull. Cutting from ten pages to seven forced me to focus.
Second: I had chosen the wrong narrator. Ajax—the younger brother, barely a shadow in the first draft—was the answer. At 11, he’s the perfect lens: young enough to miss some things, old enough to notice others. Naïve, but not oblivious. His voice brought clarity.
Third: the Mayan calendar. In the original draft, the supposed end of the world barely factored in. Now, it drives the timeline. For Ajax, it becomes a reminder that everything could collapse at any moment.
Finally: the family itself. In the first draft, everything revolved around Maddox’s anorexia. But grief doesn’t isolate. It spreads. In this version, Dex struggles with binge eating—a mirror to Maddox’s starvation. Their mother, Xina, tries to enforce strict food rules, her attempt at control. Through Ajax’s eyes, their grief feels sharper, less cliché, more human.
The story began to shift. What once felt heavy and shapeless started to breathe.
Stories That Linger
This isn’t the first time I’ve had to wait years to finish a story.
Once, while leading a workshop, I drafted a scene: a woman on a wooded shore, a rock in her hand. She imagines striking her absent husband, whose violence hangs in the air. But when he returns with another hunter’s kill, she drops the rock, realizing she may need his protection from another predator.
That image haunted me. Years later, it reshaped itself into my forthcoming story, “Rabbit, Run.” Not as I first imagined, but true to its core.
That’s how it works sometimes. A fragment sticks. Time decides where it belongs.
Why They Stay With Us
Some stories arrive fully formed. Others lodge quietly in the body, impossible to shed. They wait until we have the perspective—or the courage—to finish them.
Even the shortest stories can take years. And maybe that isn’t a flaw at all, but part of the process.
The ones that stay are the ones we’re meant to return to.
They wait for us until we’re ready.
Patiently Waiting,
Gabrielle Esposito
Writer, Writing Instructor, Editor
