Originally I published this story in February of 2014 on my old blog (second iteration of the story; first attempt was written from a 3rd person perspective). I believe that was the first ever short story that I put online, although I always joke about having a fish memory, so who knows for certain?
I loved the idea back then and I still do today. However, with the experience that I’ve acquired since, I decided to restructure and rewrite it from scratch. Part of the reason why I am doing that is because I plan on having these short stories in some kind of a collected format – a book of short stories. And so I want to have some kind of continuity there.
From the original version I kept the main theme, a few key events, the protagonist name and their friends names and that’s pretty much it. Everything else, rewritten anew, which is why it took me a whole week and a half to do this.
Given how it’s been going so far, I believe I’ll be using the same approach for the other few short stories previously published on my old blog:
- read the old version
- rethink the premise, outline some new ideas
- rewrite according to that.
Looking at this particular one, Digital Brain, there is something quite hilarious that happened. I saw that my old version was about 12000 words (give or take), and I said, “well that’s definitely too long!” …
… The rewrite is around 11000 words. Such a huge difference, I can’t even! Joking aside though, I do believe because of the main theme I tackled in it, there was just no good way of shortening it and I enjoy this new version even better.
Click below to get to it, and any feedback appreciated!
Tomo Umer 
Leave a comment