have just finished reading a really fine short story by Janice Daugharty—ME! If that strikes you as terminally immodest, forgive me, shoot me. But I’ve waited almost twenty years to say that; I’ve waited two decades for a story that would please me after the heat of creativity had cooled. Following publication, most of my stories serve as reminders of how badly I was writing then. Problem is, this one successful story, “Name of Love,” published in the 1998 Autumn issue of STORY, and recently anthologized in NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH 1999, THE YEAR’S BEST, owes its success to the high standards of STORY, and specifically to that journal’s lately-retired editor, Lois Rosenthal, one of the most exacting, exasperating, and brilliant editors I know.

Writing is my life, and my life seems divided down the middle—novels, short stories. Such different forms, the two, but also for different audiences. I’ve had a novel a year published since 1994, and at least a couple of stories a year since then, several in major journals and magazines. Still, I torture and test myself by submitting to those out of reach publications, like THE NEW YOKER with its two or three token Southern writers. I’m never satisfied with the story side of my life. Stories represent my inadequacies; they are my grade-B soul revealed.

When Lois Rosenthal first read “Name of Love,” the story of a twelve-year-old girl named Sunny fighting to keep her mentally retarded brother, Horace, from being sent away from the family ranch to an institution, she called and scolded—yes, scolded!—me about the “sweet” ending.

“It’s just too sweet,” she said in that teacherly voice. “Don’t you think it’s too sweet, Janice?”

“Well, yes. I guess. I simply couldn’t come up with anything else…I mean, I thought a girl like Sunny would probably discuss the problem with her wise grandmother and accept that Horace would have to be sent off.” (I always started off tongue-tied and then got wordy when Lois called—that’s how in awe I was of her.)

“This is quite a switch,” she continued, “from that last story I published of yours in which you ended with a drugged-up young woman jumping from a bridge.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But last time you called wanting a story, you were in the mood for something sweet. Said you were swamped with mean stories.”

“Not this sweet though. This is unbearably sweet—Sunny wandering back across the pasture, in the moonlight, stopping to talk to her horse. Really, Janice!”

“Well, Lois, what would you have her do? Take her brother out in the woods and leave him?”

“I like that. Write it and send it to me.”

I really wanted to please her; I really wanted another story in STORY, one of the few fine journals with a focus on literary fiction. Plus, a story in STORY is an accolade, the best anthologies pull from just such journals, readers of serious fiction read STORY, and, hey! STORY pays good too. But, sanctimonious as it sounds, the main reason for getting another story in STORY was to increase my chances of publishing a story that wouldn’t make me shake my head and mumble after the fact. Lois Rosenthal would come down hard on me and not let me hang on to some precious line that would go sour between the covers of a book.Good and bad news from Lois Rosenthal: “Wonderful ending! But I need to talk to you about some other editorial changes. Of course, you’ll have a hard copy ready when I call on Friday at eleven A.M.”

The last story we worked on together, by phone, I’d wasted valuable seconds scrolling down to find words or lines under discussion. “I thought I told you to have your hardcopy ready when I called,” she barked.

“Yes ma’am.” We’re slow in the South.

Final editing session on “Name of Love”: I was ready, had been ready, had my hardcopy out and read through a dozen times—perfect!—when the phone rang.

“Janice, this is Lois Rosenthal at STORY. Really, we must do something about Horace’s crying. Page one, you mention it three times; page two, you mention it four—shall I go on?”

“No, ma’am.” I was marking frantically.

And about all those references to color: green grass, green trees, green eyes.” She was flipping pages. “Blue sky, blue dress, red sky, red eyes. “ I thought I heard her sigh, or gag. “This simply will not do.”

“Yes, ma’am, but what about imagery? Won’t it suffer without color?”

“Let’s assume STORY readers are smart enough to know that clear skies are blue and spring grass is green. By the way, Horace doesn’t have to ‘croak’ every other line of dialogue, does he? And those frogs—so many frogs croaking too. And while we’re at it, look at page seven where Sunny says…”

God, I’ll miss Lois Rosenthal!