I just put story #9 for this month’s challenge in the mail, and it put a smile on my face. While most of the story is grim, it ends on an upbeat note that makes me feel hopeful every time I read it. But that’s not what really made my evening.

Usually, when I pick up a story I haven’t edited for a while, the experience is roughly akin to picking up a cheese I forgot about in the back of the fridge. And rather than deal with it, I have the urge to just put it back and pretend I never noticed it, despite the smell.

But every once in a while, I rediscover a story I set aside to focus on other things, and it’s good. In this case, I’d forgotten that I’d already gone to the trouble of cleaning it up. So I looked it over, and found only copy-edit changes to make. It’s good enough to go to a market — heck, it was good enough before I tweaked the copy. So this story went from the back-burner to a science fiction market in about an hour.

And that, my friends, is what made my evening.