The story "Homecoming" had been in the writing for several months now, which included a long hiatus from writing between May and October. It started with a photo in a December 2010 issue of the New York Times, which showed a military officer sitting with his wife, and holding his new born son, just before being sent to Afghanistan. Their shared grief over the upcoming separation was only apparent in the photo. It was them who inspired the story.
The writing of Homecoming was harder than anything I had written. Before this piece, writing was simply a hobby. Most of the stories are based on personal experiences and observations, and were of completely fictional, flat characters who were merely there for bringing out the abstract theme and ideas behind the stories. Yet in "Homecoming", I care much about whether I could actually do the the experiences, views, and beliefs of war veterans justice.
I started taking an on-line writing course while working on the story. One of class assignment was to describe the writer myself from the perspective of the character of a story I was or had written. I chose to write about the interview between Jessica the war veteran and me in the setting of her kitchen from her perspective. Many doubts arose from doing that assignment. Who am I to write a story about veterans when I haven't actually experienced combat myself? How little do I know of war, but the snip bits I have read in books, or seen in movies? With all these doubts, after rewriting and rewriting, I finally came to a halt, and took a long break from writing stories for several months.
The above belong to the generic doubts that arise for writers of fictions who sometime in their life, undoubtedly will have to write from a point of view that is not their own, unless every story they plan to write are autobiographical in one way or another.
The current edition of "Homecoming" is built upon the helpful criticisms and suggestions of many classmates from the Writers' Village, helpful peers from a writing forum (now kind of defunct Valley Sun Sims), and the editors of Everyday Fiction (as included in the rejection letter). Not many words, scenes, and ideas but the very essential ones from the very first version survived. Letting go is all for the better.