After Professor Williams threatened to give me no higher than a C if I ever turned in another piece with fantasy elements, I felt horribly lost, angry, and plain wrong. What was I supposed to write? What was I allowed to write?

My classmates, who I considered the closest thing I had to the general kind of audience, liked the stories I wrote. They liked my writing style. But a lot of them hated the sound of my voice when I read my work aloud—enough that I received a few comments that told me my voice ruined my stories.

It just wasn’t fair.

Transferring to a different class wasn’t an option. All I could do was try rehearsing my readings and write something different. Most of what I was reading at the time was for my classes, so that’s where I looked for ideas.

One of my textbooks was a collection of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. A classmate in a previous creative nonfiction writing class once commented that my writing (in that class, at least) was Hemingway-esque. Surely, Professor Williams wouldn’t have a problem with my work if I wrote something like Hemingway, right?

Though I didn’t specify exactly when the story was set, I intended it to be a piece of historical fiction. I can’t remember if I actually had a specific time in mind when I wrote it. During verbal critique, Professor Williams asked with barely restrained exasperation for the time period.

Put on the spot like that, I made something up. I claimed it was supposed to be in the early 1300s in Ireland. Why Ireland? At the time, I was casually reading about Irish and Scottish history in my spare time. I was armed with a lot of touristy fun facts, which seemed like enough to work with.

However, then Professor Williams challenged whether whiskey had been invented by that time. Rather than a calm question about my research, it felt like he was determined to find problems with my writing. Even after I gave him some highlights on the history of whiskey (thank you, random internet rabbit hole), he didn’t believe me. Not until a classmate who worked as a bartender and had had to learn this backed me up.

Afterward, she told me she had to speak up because she was still angry that Professor Williams commented on one of her stories that green eyes don’t really exist. Even though she discussed it with him—even pointing to her own green eyes as evidence—he never fully accepted it.

When I revised the story for the end of class, I made a few changes. Rather than put in any contextual descriptions that would indicate the setting, I simply put something lazy like “1306, Ireland” under the title. I was still bound by the 500-word restriction, after all. I had also originally used the word “healer” to refer to someone of general medical practice in a remote area, but switched it to “surgeon” after critique included a debate on whether “healer” was for fantasy only, or was an accurate historical term.

Themes in the Story

We writers often talk about the horrible things we put our protagonists through with a Grinchy grin, fingers pressed together like we are the villains in their stories. We are engineers of suffering.

But when it comes to our antagonists, we show a lot more restraint. Too much pain in their backstory and they become “all villains are broken people” clichés. Their comeuppance must be proportionate to the harm they caused. And it can’t come in the form of karma; that’s rarely satisfying.

For “Splinter,” I wanted to play with all of that. The lead character goes through a grisly ordeal, but he’s actually the antagonist. The physical damage he suffers parallels the emotional damage he caused. No one holds him accountable for his actions, yet he suffers the consequences of his choices.

Inspiration From Other Works

The specific Hemingway story I took inspiration from was “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” I thought about how Harry reflects on his life and his treatment of Helen as he’s dying from gangrene. It reminded me of when characters in longer stories hit a massive turning point in their development when they’re confronted with failure, near-death experiences, and so on.

With that in mind, I wanted to write a character who didn’t have that turning point. He ignores how dangerous his condition is. He stands by his treatment of his wife. Other than briefly remembering the minor injury that led to his infection, he barely thinks about the past.

How I Feel Rereading the Story Now

Of all the pieces in the Legacy Collection, “Splinter” is the one I’ve come back to the most. I think this is when I finally started to grasp how to do a short story, but giving myself another 300 words or so could make it really good. Like, I could submit it to publications and maybe have an actual chance good. Maybe.

Even now, it’s hard not to think of how to make it better.

But I think I figured out why the time period problem happened. I had a clear vision in my head of the second and third parts of the story. At the time, I thought the second part would only work if the character didn’t have access to anesthesia. I didn’t have much personal experience with big medical procedures, so I didn’t know a post-surgery fever from infection was an option. In the third part, the significance of the line “She left not long after I arrived” would change if it was spoken in a hospital rather than in the lead character’s home.

There are a lot of little changes I’ve considered, wondering if they would make this story the best it could be. Move the setting to 1940s rural America. Put them in a small town instead of the middle of nowhere. Add a few lines about being in a hospital, then going home. Explore the emotional angles more. Play with themes like guilt, denial, and loss. Do more research.

I could go on. For me, this story will always be one full of potential. Maybe one day I’ll write a new version, see what I can do with it without restrictions. Maybe I could add some speculative fiction elements. Maybe…

I hope to see you here Wednesday for the whole story.

Set the Mood

If you like creative add-ons to fully immerse yourself in a story, I have some suggestions. While I didn’t necessarily have these on hand when I wrote the story, they’ve definitely enhanced my experience rereading them.

Soundtrack

Once again, I think I was listening to Mumford & Son’s album Sigh No More while writing this story. “White Blank Page” always comes to mind when I reread it.

Scenttrack

When I try to think of a candle to pair with the feeling of “Splinter,” nothing comes to mind. There’s mention of whiskey in the story, but the main emotional note in the story comes from absence and loss. What better scent pairing than no scent at all?