Writing Reflections: Walt and the Visitor

Happy Saturday, everyone! Today, I want to focus my Writing Reflection on another more recent short story of mine called “Walt and the Visitor”. I know that this goes against the rule of letting the story sit for a while before revisiting it, but I have set it aside for about two months without thinking about it too much, so I think that counts as letting it sit for a bit before revisiting it. Also, something about this particular story has been bugging me today, and I would like to try and figure out what might be behind it: it has absolutely no likes, no comments, and, it seems, no reads.

Now, this isn’t uncommon for my earlier works or for my longer works. However, this one is more recent, after I have gained somewhat of a following on Vocal, and it is not too long at all, only a five-minute read, according to Vocal. So, I am not certain why it has no likes, comments, or reads whatsoever. That is what I am going to try to figure out today.

As with my other short stories that I have analyzed, I am going to leave a link for you to read it at your leisure and a brief summary (with few spoilers):

Walt Disney has fallen asleep in his office—or at least, he thinks he has. In his dream, he finds himself in his apartment above the firehouse on Mainstreet, USA, in Disneyland. There, he meets a very familiar friend: Mickey Mouse. Yet something is wrong with his longtime friend. He’s speaking strangely, and when he smiles, something is not quite right. Still, Walt can’t help but listen when “Mickey” has a message for him about the upcoming 1964 World’s Fair—and life beyond.

This story was just a cute, funny project that I set out to do in order to combine two interests that I’ve had lately, one that I’ve had my whole life and one that I’ve had more recently: Disney and aliens. It wasn’t meant to be a serious story by any means, and it certainly does not mean that I am one of those…interesting people who believe that world’s top minds have been visited by aliens. I have just heard those conspiracy theories far too often, and I thought, “Well, why hasn’t anyone thought that Walt Disney was visited by aliens yet? He was one of the world’s top innovators, and his company is still a leader in robotics technology through audio animatronics. What would have happened if he had been visited by aliens?”

For what I had set out to accomplish, “Walt and the Visitor” is a good story. It is inventive, taking what I know about Walt Disney and twisting it to fit aliens into the works. It also gets a bit creepy, with the way that “Mickey” smiles at Walt. There’s also a decent amount of world-building, with the aliens being shapeshifters and engineers that are worlds beyond us technologically who can enter our dreams.

Unfortunately, I would argue that this isn’t my strongest story. As cute and entertaining as it is, the plot isn’t very prominent. There is a plot in that the aliens give Walt the idea for EPCOT and he takes it (although he does not take their advice to quit smoking). Still, it is not a very compelling plot for those who are not as “into” Disney as someone like me. They would not understand that he had been planning a city of tomorrow before he died, that that was the original idea for EPCOT—not a theme park—and so the plot would not make sense to them. Furthermore, it just does not feel as though much happens in the story. Sometimes, even when something does happen in a story, it can feel as though nothing does. That’s when you know that a story has fallen flat. It’s not something that can really be taught in a writing class or explained; it’s just a feeling that you get as a writer or a reader. Upon rereading this piece, I get this feeling from this story. I’m not saying that I would add action sequences to the story, but I would add a bit more emotional weight to it, something that makes it feel as though more is at stake if Walt does not follow through with what “Mickey” is telling him to do.

This might not be the reason why there were no likes, comments, or reads for this story. That could just be a matter of bad publishing time. (There are certain times of day or of the week when people simply aren’t reading on Vocal, and if your story is published during those times, then it gets buried and forgotten.) However, I can see now that maybe this story was not quite ready for publication at the time. Like I said, it’s an amusing story and one that I won’t shrink away from. Nevertheless, I can see ways in which it can be improved, and if I get the chance to do so, I will probably return to it someday and make it better. That’s one of the great things about writing: we can always return to the story and make it better (just ask Walt Whitman).

What about you? Have you ever published a story or poem on here only to find that it wasn’t quite ready? How did you improve it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

As always, if you have any pieces of mine that you would like me to analyze, leave them in the comments below as well!