The Three Endings of “Defrost”

I have these magazine files that I hold old pages in. Everything is organized chronologically and finished work is interspersed with unfinished ideas. I had a new idea for a story based on something I had thought of years ago, so I was looking through these magazine files earlier this week. That’s when I discovered something that I had completely forgotten about. My story “Defrost,” which is in This Wasn’t the Plan, went through two different endings before settling on the one it has now.

Here’s the first draft ending:

I liked that line “why can’t I be born?” but it also didn’t feel right for what I was trying to get across. It also seemed too much like a standard horror ending. I didn’t want Lucia to be simply afraid of what was coming out of her freezer (yes, I wanted fear, but other emotions as well).

So here’s the second draft:

The second version I scrapped because Lucia and the creature don’t interact. It’s too easily a dream sequence. I wanted something more ambiguous.

But I not only redid the ending for a third time, I redrew the entire story, changing the line work from single line strokes to a more sculptural approach. All the stories in This Wasn’t the Plan are inked this way.

Maybe forgetting I do stuff like this is how I am able to keep doing stuff like this.