Hilmer Gibb and His Honkin' Huge Bib is not finished, as it turns out. Let me share a strange story and you decide if it was some sort of cosmic sign.

For critiques, the author prints out around 10 copies to be handed out so people can follow along with the story as one person (not the author) reads out loud. After the critiques are finished, the copies are handed back to the author.

Following the B&N critique of the last part of the 27-page version of the bib story, I separated the copies of the story into two sections: those with comments written on them and those without. The former I would use to make final corrections; the latter I would place face-down next to my work station to be recycled.

In the morning, I returned to my work station to apply people's changes to the story. I looked over and happened to see comments on the back of the last "no comments" stack. I had missed a quite in-depth note written on the back page.

What were the chances that I would put that stack, the only one with comments on it -- I checked -- last so that they would be on the one page I happed to see? Shocked by the unlikelihood, I picked up the paper and read the comment.

The core of the note was this: The ridiculous problem that makes the story big and interesting should be solved by an equally or yet more ridiculous solution.

I had written the story around a giant bib stretching across the city and Hilmer's search for it. After the bib is introduced, the solution pretty much stays in the realm of the very normal, in fact the very boring.

The comment was exactly what I had needed to hear. I had felt a luke-warm about the story's ending, but I couldn't put my finger on why that was. They hit the nail on the head.

I stood up at that moment, paced around the house and brainstormed a new ending, a bigger, crazier ending. I wanted something worthy of the problem. Sure it was a big bib, but was that all I wanted out of the story. Did I want to stop at "Imagine if there was a big bib?" No. I wanted a story about what happened when Hilmer accidentally ordered a big bib and the "you wouldn't believe it" solution.

The strange thing about the note is it was signed illegibly. I have asked a number of people in SAWG if they recognize the signature or writing, but so far no one has.

So I have taken the story from a 27-pager to one that stretches on -- not unnecessarily -- to around 75 pages. There are some bits to iron out: typical grammar and punctuation in the beginning; and two wholesale mini-scene rewrites. I expect to be finished with all work in a week.

My original plan was to be done by the end of March, but that is nigh impossible unless I decide to take a day off from work next week. I don't see the need to force myself to that timeline in this case. I feel good about the story and I would hate to compromise it at this late stage due to an arbitrary timeline.

Beginning writers have many misconceptions about what makes good writing. Two of these commonest of these misconceptions are related. One is that he needs to be different from any writer in history, so he applied effort to achieve that goal. The second is that he must be poetical in his writing.

Both misconceptions are understandable and both are easily avoided simply by writing simply.

It's been said by some wise, experienced writer somewhere that one doesn't really achieve writing until one has written 1,000,000 words. In my experience, that was about the time I found my own writing confidence, my voice as it has been described.

The truth is you probably will sound boring at first...if you're doing it right, keeping it simple. Cling to the rules. Embrace them. Limit yourself to them. Once you've got those tools down pat, your natural style will naturally emerge.

You can't force a flower to bloom.

Forcing uniqueness or complexity into your writing will sound forced to the reader. Keep your writing simple simple simple, even after you feel you've reached a certain point of proficiency. I can't explain how you'll know, but you'll know when to let something through that breaks the rule.

So I've been writing seriously since the 2006ish and only now does it come out over the phone that my mom wrote a children's book some odd years ago. She was here for nearly three months and she knows I've been writing a children's book since the beginning of the year and that little nugget never came up? Weird.

I asked her what it was about, what she did with it at the time, where is it now? Her answers: I can't remember but I'll try to think about it; I submitted it to one magazine, received a rejection and figured -- her words -- "I guess this isn't the right thing for me"; and I think I threw it out somewhere along the way.

Crap, drat and c'mon!

I told her, knowing what I know now about rejections, that they are signs of a soon-to-be-successful author in many cases, that she shouldn't have stopped submitting. Certainly she shouldn't have taken as a sign she wasn't a good writer, and, dear God, she shouldn't have thrown it away. I can't fathom that last one.

I really want to know what it was about. Mom is a strange animal when it comes to things like this. I've told her many times how much I enjoyed her writing when I was in Basic in '86, how her ability surprised and pleased me. My guess is that's the last I'll hear about it unless I press her further.