Connie's Corner

Can you keep a secret?

Like many others, I’ve made my share of writing mistakes, and luckily, most of them I have found and corrected before publication. Once your work is published, your mistakes are there for all the world to see, and unless you self-published, there’s not much chance of a correction. I say this because I have a secret. And it’s a real secret, one that only I know…I think. And now I’m going to share it with you to show you how easily it can happen.

Several years ago I attended a writers’ workshop sponsored by my writing group and held at a beautiful setting in the Florida countryside. The day was split into two sessions, morning and afternoon, with a catered lunch. Some of our own members made presentations about their writing and publishing experiences, and one in particular resonated with me.

This particular member related her experience with getting stories accepted for publication in the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Although I had only been published in virtual magazines up to that point, she made it sound so easy, I thought, yes, I need to try that. I took her handouts, made my way to the Chicken Soup site online, read all the submission instructions, looked over the story topics they were looking for and got to work on a submission of my own.

It seemed like they were just waiting for me personally because the topic I had chosen, which would also be the title of the book, was “The Cat Really Did That?”. I had an unlimited number of cat stories. I’m a cat lover and have had many cats over the years so I dug out what I thought was my most likely story to be accepted and started polishing it up. I was excited! It seemed in no time I was ready to submit, and wonder of wonders, it was accepted for publication. Could life be more perfect?

From acceptance to publication took about six months, and when the book was actually in my hands, I was on cloud nine. I shared it with relatives and friends, did a reading at a local writing program, and couldn’t have been happier. And then one day when I was reading it for about the thousandth time, I noticed something, something I had added to “polish” it up and make it funny and interesting.

Let me say here that I began my story with these words, “When we moved from Delaware to Florida in the late 1970s, our first order of business was to find a building lot and get started on our house.” The story goes on to talk about how a stray that someone must have dropped joined our family and became a very special pet who we named Fetcher. But Fetcher was not like every other cat on the planet. He was not a mouser. After one of the little devils invaded our piano, we did everything under the sun to get Fetcher interested, but nothing worked.

The following is how I ended the story:

“It got to the point we considered “adopting” another cat, one who could earn his keep. Or, I thought, maybe we could borrow one from a neighbor. Should we post something at the front of our development? Feline mouse catcher wanted for the night. Must be well-trained with a high success rate. Urgent. Reply to this number as soon as possible. Or maybe I should post a similar ad in Craig’s List. Nothing would appear weird there. I was beginning to think our mouse would have to commit suicide for us to be rid of it.

Finally the mouse did succumb to the trap and fortunately we found no damage inside the piano. Fetcher never showed any interest in the rodent, and wouldn't even get near it when we tried to show it to him. Later we found out that female cats were the best mousers. Fetcher was a retriever extraordinaire. He always ran after sliding pecans, and one other thing, the grinding sound of the can opener.”

Did you find the secret? In my haste to make the story funny and interesting, I forgot to verify something. My time period was the late 70s. Craig’s List did not appear on the scene until 1995. Until now, I am the only one who has noticed this inconsistency. Can you keep a secret?