SOLD MY FIRST STORY! TO BE PUBLISHED IN "THE YOUNG EXPLORERS ADVENTURE GUIDE 2019!" OH, FRABJOUS DAY!
Okay. Coherence time.
I've done hundreds and hundreds of hours of writing, an acceptance letter and request for revision is in my inbox, and a large cat is on my lap so that I cannot reach my typewriter. So, time to write another blog post.
The dream is bright and shiny--to write stories for magazines and anthologies, the way those people did in the 20s and 30s. To write great literature--maybe not read by a whole lot of people, but bringing in money! Money to legitimize this fine, old madness!
Mad, am I? I'll show them! I'll make them beg for my madnesses! Let us be mad the way you are, Oh Madman In the Pit of Ink! Ahahahaha!
Sorry. Ahem. Back to it.
It is the easiest thing to start doing. You sit down with pen or keyboard or typewriter, and you make up a story. And then you make up another and another, and you edit fiercely. Soon you excitedly send one off to a magazine. The first one I sent to was Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine. March 20, 2016. Rejection.
This did not bother me. I had read enough, seen enough interviews to know that rejections are the rule in this business. So okay. You check on the submissions obsessively, and then you have another idea, and you write that into a story, and so on and so on. And so on and so on.
In a Fafnir-like transformation, I became a different creature. I began to have to look after my back, force myself not to hunch over my work. I cared less about going for haircuts. My hours became later and later, and soon I was a creature of the night (not, I trust, of darkness), and I took the rejections, and let them whip me onward to make more stories all the time.
So this heavy, hairy, baggy-eyed artist stumbles out of his house occasionally, always drawn magnetically back to the stories.
And having an amazingly fun time!
That's a long time without payment. But I also learned while I was writing. Oh, how much I'm still learning! Far from being wasted time, this was my University training. My classes were the interviews I watched with the great writers and publishers. My textbooks were the wonderful, exciting works of fiction I would probably be reading anyway. My coursework was sitting and projecting my mind onto the paper, living stories in my head that I had always dreamed of living in reality.
I thought of a good analogy recently. What if you were going for a law degree, and instead of attending classes and reading precedents, you were told to simply go out and try to get hired at law firms? By the time someone hires you years later, you're probably qualified. If not, you'd better learn on the job. Writing works that way.
After a while, you notice yourself getting better. It really is a quantum leap--one day you're writing on your old level, and the next, you suddenly do something that really surprises you. That really is one of the best feelings!
Recently, I managed to make my father cry with one of my stories. That is worth a lot to me.
So, you watch your stories getting better in front of your eyes--but what about the rejections? You do some research, and you look back, and you realize some of them were actually encouraging, and you didn't know it! Sometimes, the encouragements get personal! "I liked this about your story, but it had too much___" or "not enough ___. Please send us something new soon."
Oh, what a Milk Bone to a starving hound those comments are! Maybe someday I can feed a family! Maybe this lumbering story-factory might support itself! Better get back to writing. Now I wonder what the world would be like if...
Where the ideas come from is the least of it. If the ideas know theyll have a good home with you, they will continue to come. If these little gifts are used, other gifts will pile in on top of them. Some piece of conversation will spark an inner dialogue, or an idea will strike in a quiet moment--baths are good for that--and the fingers cannot flesh it out fast enough. Even if the birth is long and hard, you look down at the baby, blotched and lumpy in your arms, and you can't wait to do it again.
Okay, that's where the metaphor breaks down. Still, though.
Of course, there are other things. Jobs so you can make payments, remembering appointments. I've found a lot of pleasure in going and talking to school-kids about books, literacy, adventure. I've recited some of my favorite poems (other people's), and lately I've even read my own stories to them.
Sidebar here. I desperately want kids to read. I despise a culture that deprives kids, not of books, but of the habit of reading. Libraries in schools are no longer libraries, but "learning commons," and they have fewer books than libraries do. Are some of these kids going to grow up without knowing the smell of an old book as it's opened for the first time in decades, the distortion of time as they bury their minds in other experiences? In the name of all that is reasonable, let children be around books!
I only recently started writing for children. A good children's story takes more skill than anything else, or it should. There needs to be more excitement per page in kids' fiction, and if one has any self-respect, it should all happen intelligently and with passion. It simply needs to be so much cooler than what adults are satisfied with reading. I still don't know if I'm really good enough. Better write more, just in case.
Then I got a response to a story I sent for "The Young Explorer's Adventure Guide," published by Dreaming Robot Press.
Rejection.
But I had submitted two stories, and well now, what do you know, the next message from them was an acceptance, and a request for revision! Oh, hip-hooray! Oh, this bubble of helium in my chest! I'd dance and jump in the air, but I don't know if I can breathe properly right now, and I might faint. Might faint anyway. Seems like the appropriate thing to do.
Now, a few days later, I'm in a calmer mood. The cat has moved off of my lap, and I'll be writing again as soon as I finish here and get myself another cup of tea.
Just thought I'd tell everyone. 'Bye for now.
--UPDATE--
ANOTHER STORY OF MINE IS COMING OUT IN THE "ROBOTS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE" ANTHOLOGY FROM FLAME TREE PRESS.
Okay. Coherence time.
I've done hundreds and hundreds of hours of writing, an acceptance letter and request for revision is in my inbox, and a large cat is on my lap so that I cannot reach my typewriter. So, time to write another blog post.
The dream is bright and shiny--to write stories for magazines and anthologies, the way those people did in the 20s and 30s. To write great literature--maybe not read by a whole lot of people, but bringing in money! Money to legitimize this fine, old madness!
Mad, am I? I'll show them! I'll make them beg for my madnesses! Let us be mad the way you are, Oh Madman In the Pit of Ink! Ahahahaha!
Sorry. Ahem. Back to it.
It is the easiest thing to start doing. You sit down with pen or keyboard or typewriter, and you make up a story. And then you make up another and another, and you edit fiercely. Soon you excitedly send one off to a magazine. The first one I sent to was Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine. March 20, 2016. Rejection.
This did not bother me. I had read enough, seen enough interviews to know that rejections are the rule in this business. So okay. You check on the submissions obsessively, and then you have another idea, and you write that into a story, and so on and so on. And so on and so on.
In a Fafnir-like transformation, I became a different creature. I began to have to look after my back, force myself not to hunch over my work. I cared less about going for haircuts. My hours became later and later, and soon I was a creature of the night (not, I trust, of darkness), and I took the rejections, and let them whip me onward to make more stories all the time.
So this heavy, hairy, baggy-eyed artist stumbles out of his house occasionally, always drawn magnetically back to the stories.
And having an amazingly fun time!
That's a long time without payment. But I also learned while I was writing. Oh, how much I'm still learning! Far from being wasted time, this was my University training. My classes were the interviews I watched with the great writers and publishers. My textbooks were the wonderful, exciting works of fiction I would probably be reading anyway. My coursework was sitting and projecting my mind onto the paper, living stories in my head that I had always dreamed of living in reality.
I thought of a good analogy recently. What if you were going for a law degree, and instead of attending classes and reading precedents, you were told to simply go out and try to get hired at law firms? By the time someone hires you years later, you're probably qualified. If not, you'd better learn on the job. Writing works that way.
After a while, you notice yourself getting better. It really is a quantum leap--one day you're writing on your old level, and the next, you suddenly do something that really surprises you. That really is one of the best feelings!
Recently, I managed to make my father cry with one of my stories. That is worth a lot to me.
So, you watch your stories getting better in front of your eyes--but what about the rejections? You do some research, and you look back, and you realize some of them were actually encouraging, and you didn't know it! Sometimes, the encouragements get personal! "I liked this about your story, but it had too much___" or "not enough ___. Please send us something new soon."
Oh, what a Milk Bone to a starving hound those comments are! Maybe someday I can feed a family! Maybe this lumbering story-factory might support itself! Better get back to writing. Now I wonder what the world would be like if...
Where the ideas come from is the least of it. If the ideas know theyll have a good home with you, they will continue to come. If these little gifts are used, other gifts will pile in on top of them. Some piece of conversation will spark an inner dialogue, or an idea will strike in a quiet moment--baths are good for that--and the fingers cannot flesh it out fast enough. Even if the birth is long and hard, you look down at the baby, blotched and lumpy in your arms, and you can't wait to do it again.
Okay, that's where the metaphor breaks down. Still, though.
Of course, there are other things. Jobs so you can make payments, remembering appointments. I've found a lot of pleasure in going and talking to school-kids about books, literacy, adventure. I've recited some of my favorite poems (other people's), and lately I've even read my own stories to them.
Sidebar here. I desperately want kids to read. I despise a culture that deprives kids, not of books, but of the habit of reading. Libraries in schools are no longer libraries, but "learning commons," and they have fewer books than libraries do. Are some of these kids going to grow up without knowing the smell of an old book as it's opened for the first time in decades, the distortion of time as they bury their minds in other experiences? In the name of all that is reasonable, let children be around books!
I only recently started writing for children. A good children's story takes more skill than anything else, or it should. There needs to be more excitement per page in kids' fiction, and if one has any self-respect, it should all happen intelligently and with passion. It simply needs to be so much cooler than what adults are satisfied with reading. I still don't know if I'm really good enough. Better write more, just in case.
Then I got a response to a story I sent for "The Young Explorer's Adventure Guide," published by Dreaming Robot Press.
Rejection.
But I had submitted two stories, and well now, what do you know, the next message from them was an acceptance, and a request for revision! Oh, hip-hooray! Oh, this bubble of helium in my chest! I'd dance and jump in the air, but I don't know if I can breathe properly right now, and I might faint. Might faint anyway. Seems like the appropriate thing to do.
Now, a few days later, I'm in a calmer mood. The cat has moved off of my lap, and I'll be writing again as soon as I finish here and get myself another cup of tea.
Just thought I'd tell everyone. 'Bye for now.
--UPDATE--
ANOTHER STORY OF MINE IS COMING OUT IN THE "ROBOTS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE" ANTHOLOGY FROM FLAME TREE PRESS.
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