Fiction and Other Writings
She Is Elizabeth Lynn Rhodea
This is the story of Elizabeth Lynn Rhodea.
Elizabeth Lynn Rhodea is dead.
This is the story of a woman who has no name.
Without a doubt, "She is Elizabeth Lynn Rhodea" has been the best-received short story that I've yet had published -- a fact that continues to fascinate and terrify me. I remember little of writing this story, beyond moments of total immersion and bewilderment. I know it was a painful story to write, and a beautiful one, and when it was completed I thought it was a disaster. A total mess. I sent an email in a panic to a few of my closest writer-friends with the subject line "She is ... in trouble," in which I begged for help:
"Well, I've written myself into a hole this time," I wrote. "I have been working on this story for far too long, and I know it's not working and damn if I can figure out why. Right now I'm looking at it like it's a wobbly Jenga tower: I don't know what I can safely touch or rearrange or remove completely without sending the whole mess crashing down."
They wrote back to tell me to stop worrying, trim it and sent it out, and indeed they appear to have been right. The version of "She is ELR" that saw print in Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw's first issue of Flytrap was that raw first draft, minus some carefully deleted words.
I remain shocked.
Published in Issue #1 of Flytrap, November 2003.
