The Story Behind the Stories   IGMS Authors Share How Their Stories Came to Be

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The Cost of Wonder by Leah Cypess

"The Cost of Wonder" started out as a flash piece, which came to me while I was watching my daughter play with soap bubbles at an indoor play space. The entire story came out in a rush, possibly because the underlying themes are issues I've been ruminating about for years. I couldn't get the words down fast enough, and I finished the first draft right then and there, scribbling it in a notebook while following my daughter around the play space.

When I sent the story to IGMS, Scott Roberts rejected it; but he also suggested that I hadn't actually explored the implications of the central idea of the story, and said that he would be happy to look at a revised version.

I had been stuck on the idea that this was a flash story, but after reading his email a couple of times, I realized that he was absolutely right. I wrote the second version of the story the very next day (this time, I was at the playground), and it's a much better story than the one I originally sent in.