The final version of my article is finally complete and I feel sooooooooooooooooo nice and “released” from its demons. In September I literally suffered from a first draft post-production shock. I was completely incapable of grasping my story structure and as a result, I am afraid, my local editor, Albena, and the English prime editor, Marcus, had to suffer.

I felt utterly dumb and void after finishing my second article draft also, which felt like – basically – putting things in, then taking them out, then putting them back again – until my mind went blank and useless. I only managed to partially recover after I bought myself some expensive stuff - my first in a lifetime “shopping therapy”. It worked.

So I want to be very honest about it: I severely dislike the person who invented British story structures, some time in the 19^th century, I think, because I found a reference to it in a fairy tale (!) — yes — by Oscar Wilde. And it goes like this: A Linnet is telling a story to a Water-rat, but at a certain point goes silent … “Is that the end of the story?” asks the Water-rat.”Certainly not, that is the beginning.” “Then you are quite behind the age,” says the Water-rat. “Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the middle.”

My initial story structure was exactly like this: supposed to begin with the end, conclude with the middle, and to include multiple complications in-between!

We changed it, several times. Thank god!

(no bad feelings about BIRN’s choice of story structures here)
By the way, how did you feel about writing your articles? Eleonora has shared some insight:-) I felt like the black sheep causing the most trouble — mostly because I tried to get things right the first time, instead of attempting to write the article my own way and only then try to fit it to the proposed structure. The result was awful.