So I dusted off an old TYPEWRITTEN story I found in a drawer. It´s called Picarón. I wrote it almost 18 years ago, and was astonished to find that it held up. Dashing my notion that my writing has improved over the years.

The San Miguel Literary Sala is putting out a second anthology of stories from San Miguel de Allende, so I entered the story. It´s about a guy in his 50s in a Spanish class at El Instituto here in San Miguel. He is generally befuddled to find himself divorced, in Mexico and in a class filled with hungover twenty-somethings.

Hoping it makes the anthology! I´ll find out in February.

Short Story as Distraction

Ya, ya, ya on my YA novel. So many things I have yet to decide, like, how confident is my main character? How much does she like herself? Is she a loser in school (not), an unnoticed kid, a popular kid? What do her parents do? How many siblings does she have?

Me puse a clean out some drawers while I tried to channel my main gal and her personality, and what did I find among some old Mother´s Day cards the girls have made, but a short story titled Picarón.

I wrote Picarón in 1992. I was taking a Spanish class at El Instituto Allende, and was interested in (as a character study) and sympathetic to a bulky middle-aged man who seemed to struggle more than the rest of us to learn Spanish.

Picarón means rascal. A salty sort of guy. This is how the character sees himself, as a teasing and romantic fellow, even though the younger people in the class likely see him as inept.

I was surprised to find that I liked the story. Surprised because I think my writing has improved over the years, but here was a 17-year old story that doesn´t need much work. I´m going to polish it up and send it to a contest or literary magazine, and see how Picarón does out in the world.