Author Lisa L. Hannett joins the Shimmer blog this week and helps us navigate the perilous waters of short story collections. How does one make such a collection, anyhow? Read on.

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Imagine yourself at a party.

Not just any old party. There are no paper hats with snug elastics digging into your throat here; no streamers twisted and taped to the ceiling; no gaudy candles melting into your Dairy Queen cake.

Instead, picture a castle with many rooms, each decked out with sparkling chandeliers, priceless artworks, furniture that once belonged to kings. The bar is stocked with imported wines and a champagne fountain graces the main hall. Long trestle tables line the walls in each chamber, laden with delicious hors d’oeuvres that won’t spill down your front when you bite into them, and don’t leave any green bits lodged in your teeth. There are as many guests as you’d like—you’re the host, after all—but to really get the shindig going, let’s say you’ve got at least a dozen. Each person is eloquent or funny or mysterious or brooding in a Byronic fashion (if you’re into that kind of thing). Men, women, immortals, fées—they’ve come from worlds both near and distant. Depending on their customs, they give perfect gifts wrapped in silk, or sheets of beaten gold, or dew-beaded cobweb ribbons. Your guests have got their own quirks, costumes, histories, but you’ve an eye for matchmaking. Everyone gets along. And, really, how could they not? They’re all excellent conversationalists. So much so, in fact, you wish you could clone yourself just so you could talk to them all simultaneously. All night, you move from group to group, chatting, dancing, drinking without getting drunk.

For hours, you’re enchanted.

You wish the party would never end.

This is what it should feel like to read an excellent collection of short stories. Whether the book is a compilation of works previously published or a collection of mostly new pieces, it should leave us with the impression that we’ve been invited to a magical word-party. A place where characters, story sequences, themes coalesce to make a strong impact on our imaginations. A gathering of infinite worlds which, ideally, is one we’ll continue to think about long after we’ve read the last page.

Obviously, authors can’t control the reactions their readers will have, any more than hosts can force their guests to have a good time. But there are a few things we can focus on when collecting our stories that will ease readers’ journeys through our written worlds.

Make each new story your favorite.

This almost goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. Write the best story you can, every time. Make each new piece your current favorite, so that it can be lavished with all the love and attention you poured into earlier works. Because when it comes to collections, a good story might be left loitering outside with the valets. An excellent story will be in the grand ballroom, hanging with the cool kids on the Table of Contents.

If the glass slipper doesn’t fit, Stepsister, don’t force your foot.

‘But all of my stories are excellent!’ I hear you say.

That may be true. As I’ve already mentioned, many collections are ‘compilations’ of short works published elsewhere. And ‘elsewhere’ may indeed be the top fantasy magazine, the award-winning science fiction anthology, the most popular ’zine on the internet. There are so many examples of ‘collected works’ of this variety (by brilliant writers like Theodora Goss, Robert Shearman, Neil Gaiman, Kaaron Warren… oh, the list could go on and on) but ‘collected’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘all-inclusive’. Some stories, no matter how great, will not suit the tone, style, length of the collection. ‘Best of’ collections usually can’t showcase the author’s entire oeuvre, unless the term ‘best’ is actually a euphemism for ‘all’ (but few publishers are willing to sacrifice their readers’ wrists by forcing them to hoist a 5000 page tome). A writer’s favorite fantasy stories won’t suit a collection of their most popular space opera tales. There should be a clear dialogue between stories on a given collection’s ToC—which means that not all stories will be able to join in the conversation.

This is especially true for collections of mostly original stories. Books like Amal El-Mohtar’s The Honey Month, Angela Slatter’s Sourdough and Other Stories, and even my own collection, Bluegrass Symphony, are constructed around central themes or conceits—each piece was either custom-written or carefully selected to enhance these ideas, and to create a coherent body of work. Throwing in extra tales just to pad the book out wouldn’t have done us any favours. When writing Bluegrass Symphony, a collection of stories all set in a pseudo-Midwest American setting (but with shapeshifters, clairvoyant cowboys, tentacle-boys and talking squirrels), I had several ideas that almost fit but weren’t quite what the collection needed. So although I’d thought of including fifteen stories, it turns out the work was stronger with only twelve. It’s much better to have a small and perfect suite of stories (as in The Honey Month, for instance) than a clunky, incoherent rabble.

Seating plans were invented for a reason…

After you’ve whittled the collection down to its essential stories (a dozen or thirty? see the previous point) you need to decide in which order they should appear. What kind of mood are you trying to set? Which narratives will hook readers most deeply? Do you have two stories that feature magic lamps? If so, should they go next to each other, or will they be most effective separated by a handful of other adventures? Do some stories jar when read in succession? Is that the desired effect? Do you want to leave your readers crying, laughing, wishing the collection will never end?

As the author of these works, you know them best; their rhythms, themes and tones. Most editors will place the strongest stories at the beginnings and endings of collections, so that readers are immediately drawn into the books and reluctant to put them down. This is something you may want to consider when assembling your own published works. Of course, there are no hard and fast rules. A collection of original stories may work best chronologically, building towards a climax in an overarching narrative—in which case, you may not want to present the conclusion as the first piece in the book. (Then again, you might want to do just that.)

The beauty of short stories is that they are precise. Elegant. Concise. They enchant without wasting any words. A collection of such finely-crafted works should aim to do no less.

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In just over two years, Lisa L. Hannett has sold more than 20 stories to venues including Clarkesworld Magazine, Fantasy, Weird Tales, ChiZine, Electric Velocipede, Shimmer and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. Her work has appeared on Locus‘s ‘Recommended Reading List 2009’ and Tangent Online’s ‘Recommended Reading List 2010’. ‘The February Dragon’, co-written with Angela Slatter, won the Aurealis Award for ‘Best Fantasy Short Story 2010’. She is a graduate of the Clarion South Writers Workshop. Bluegrass Symphony, her first collection, is published by Ticonderoga Publications. A second collection, Midnight and Moonshine (co-authored with Angela Slatter) will be published in November 2012. You can visit her online at http://lisahannett.com.

My conversation with writers continues. Today, we look at titles and how one approaches them. Participating writers include: Luc Reid,  Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan.

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How do you go about choosing a title for the story? Do titles present themselves before the work begins, or when it’s complete?

 

LR: Titles for me come before, during, or after writing the story. I have strong opinions about what titles should do: I have a whole rant about them . While they do serve as postscripts and labels for stories, my feeling is that their biggest job is to convey why someone might like the story so that they can attract the readers who would be most interested. This means my story titles often come out on the long side, though.

When a title doesn’t jump out at me automatically, I tend to go through the story looking for something that broadcasts what’s interesting about the story to me, like “My Girlfriend the Mentalist,” “On the Talking Horse Circuit,” or “Bottomless” (which is admittedly a title that’s vulnerable to off-color jokes). It’s not difficult to guess that these are stories about a mind-reading girlfriend, a performing talking horse, and a bottomless pit, respectively. With any luck, those titles will tend to interest the kinds of readers who like stories with those kinds of premises.

KHL: Finding titles is tricky. I’m a sucker for a good title, but choosing my own can be a bit of a challenge. Almost always, the title is the finishing touch, only apparent after the story is complete. The marvelous poet Matthea Harvey has come up with a series of categories for titles (in reference to poems). My favorite category illuminates just how powerful a good title can be. She calls those titles “helium balloons,” where the titles lift the work into whole new stratospheres of meaning and resonance.

DM: I’ve given up trying to think of titles before hand or during the writing process. It’s only when the piece is finished that the title emerges.

JH: Either before or during. I don’t think I’ve ever written a story and afterwards sat around wondering what to call it. Normally the hard part will be trying to decide between a few contenders. I do have a list of titles in need of stories, and whenever I start a new story, I get a bit excited wondering if, yes, now, finally I will get to use that awesome title I’ve been saving.

On a side note my friend, Jay Ridler, came up with this challenge where we made a list of titles and gave them to each other and some friends. We named the challenge after horror producer Val Lewton who was given a similar list by his studio executives. (It’s because of this that I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE is such a great movie.) Jay wrote about the experience over on his blog.

VK: Titles are like little advertisements for the story. A good title makes the reader say, “What could that be?  Wow, I want to read it.”  Strong titles have motion, just like a story. They may have a verb to give them some action, or pair two words that don’t belong together and cause friction between them. Single-word titles rarely work unless they are a very interesting word. (Of course, like any writing guideline, there are a zillion exceptions. But my point remains.)  The other point about titles is that it’s impossible to get a perfect title for every story. About 50% of the time, I can find a great title with some thought. 25% of the time, I find a decent one. And the other 25% of the time, I just give it the best one I can think of and then stop worrying about it.

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How do you title your stories? Leave us a comment to let us know. When we next meet, we’ll talk about the dreaded middle slump of a story!

I like interviewing other writers, to find out how they do what I do: write! This idea came after too much coffee, I’m sure, but I thought what if I ask five authors the same five questions and see what kind of patterns emerge or don’t. Surely we can break the secret code to writing. For starters, I picked five random writers from my writing group.

My victims for these first rounds are: Luc Reid, Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Don Mead,  Justin Howe, and Vylar Kaftan. My thanks to them for taking part!

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How do you begin a story? Does it start with the idea, a character, an image, a line of dialogue, or are all stories different?

LR: A story idea that grabs me usually has a character getting mixed up in something strange or difficult, and I write the story to find out more about that. For instance, my most recent story came from the idea of a stick figure who was in love with a cartoon–someone who was completely out of his league because the object of his affections was drawn so much better than he was. The world of the story emerged because it had to exist in order for that character to have that problem. For another example: my novel Family Skulls is about a teenager whose family can’t get help from anyone with anything, which doesn’t seem like such a bad curse until you break your leg at work, miss the bus back from a field trip an hour away from your house, or pass out on the street in winter. So: characters in strange and difficult situations. If the situation piques my interest and pushes my emotional buttons, I’m there.

KHL: Every story is different. Has a different inspiration, or spark. The challenge is how to kindle each spark into the best possible story. I like to sneak the theme in as early as possible, as that tends to lead to the most cohesive stories. I also find it helpful to think of the first paragraph as similar to a job interview. Lead with your strengths, and have the confidence that this particular story is the story that will change the reader’s life.

DM: I often start with dialogue—sometimes unattributed dialogue, which drives some people nuts though it’s worked for me quite well. I like to swing for the fences on the very first sentence. It’s not for everybody, but if I can get an editor to turn to the next page, I’ve broken through a barrier. I don’t want them to turn the page in mild interest or a sense of obligation, mind you. They have to want to know what happens next.

JH: All of the above which is another way of saying every story is different, which is also another way of saying by staring at my computer screen and mumbling to myself until something happens. Often the beginning, that arresting image, dialogue, nugget, or whatever you want to call it, will emerge only after a certain amount of drafting has occurred. It’s like that Steven Wright joke where he says he drinks at least three cups of coffee before his first cup of coffee every morning.

VK: All stories are different. Very generally speaking, the first line of a story should be a sentence that means one thing on first read, and something deeper or entirely new on second read (after the reader has finished the story). For example, an innocent-sounding line will take on a darker tone, or a play on words becomes clear.

How do you start a story? Leave us a comment. Next time, we’ll talk about story titles.

When you first begin writing, it’s hard to know what’s new and what’s worn out. People tell you to read broadly and this is one reason why. If you know what’s current in your preferred genre and beyond, you have a better chance of not stepping in the same puddle. If you fully intend to step into that puddle, at least you know how it has been done before and can attempt a new path through it.

Similar ideas to tend to collide and coalesce in the slush pile; some weeks, the slush seems to be of one distinct flavor, wherein everyone has decided to write about one topic, be it birth, death, or deals with the devil. It’s the genre hive mind hard at work–what power might we harness from that mind?

Some days, one has to groan when another story about Death rises to the top of the reading stack. I would pay good money to never read another story where one’s spouse turns out to be Death. Deals with the devil or the devil in disguise? That sweet old lady the protag helped across the street–the devil? You don’t say! I would like to never again see a story wherein it was all a dream; where the two characters in the story are the last two on Earth; where the heroine is a mermaid trying to live in the human world.

And yet, some stories do succeed in giving old ideas a new twist. Shimmer has published more than a few, but here are some recent examples:

Gutted, by L.L. Hannett (Shimmer 13)

“Erl  doesn’t believe in selkies.

The only skins women in his village discard are covered in scales, separated from juicy white flesh at the points of their gutting knives. Twice a day, fisherwives make short work of the fleet’s catch. Dawn and dusk see them straddling mermaids’ torsos, cleaning plump tails with efficient, intuitive slices. Thigh-length fillets slap into piles on the jetty while bloodless heads, grey shoulders and breasts splash back into the ocean. Waters churn as surviving merfolk wrestle to feed on the scraps.”

With the opening line, the story has already caught my interest because of two things. Thing one: selkies. Selkie stories, much like mermaid stories, are a dime a dozen in the slush pile. They are very common. This story had to work to gain my trust–which it did with thing two: “doesn’t believe.” This already gives a standard idea a subtle twist. I’m already curious about Erl and where his disbelief will take him and me, the reader. It takes us to a dark land, where mermaids are killed for their flesh, and where the interior landscape of one fisherman is stranger than any coastline you may find.

A Window, As Clear as a Mirror, by Ferrett Steinmetz (Shimmer 13)

“Malcolm Gebrowski returned from his job at the stamp factory to discover his wife had left him for a magic portal. He stared numbly at the linoleum floor of his apartment, all scuffed up with hoofprints, the smell of lilacs gradually being overpowered by the mildewy stink of the paper plant next door. All that was left of eight years of marriage was a scribbled note on the back of the telephone bill.”

Magic portals and elves and unicorns. For me what makes a story is its characters. This story quickly endears a reader to Malcolm–standing on the scuffed linoleum kitchen floor to read his wife’s devastating letter–she’s leaving him for a magic portal, but has left him lasagna in the oven. What could be a story full of classic fantasy trappings (unicorns! princes! fairies!) turns into a tender tale about an eight-year marriage and what happens when one partner bolts for the hills.

Red and Grandma Inside the Wolf, by Carmen Lau (Shimmer 12)

“What fabulous fur you have,” I said.

He really did. It was sleek, the color of snow and ash. And what quantity of it! Imagine my delight upon opening Grandma’s bedroom door and finding him, lying on his side with his head propped up with one sturdy leg, as if posing for a portrait. Veritable hillocks of fat and fur, this wolf had, roll upon roll, all spilling one over the other. One small shift and his entire body trembled. His fur glistened like metal in the lamplight. Looking at him made me hungry.”

Little Red Riding Hood was a staple in the slush pile for a good while, though she seems to have faded some in recent weeks. As with any fairy tale retelling, the author may have to work a little harder to provide a new twist, especially for readers well-schooled in this genre. This story starts with the title itself–how could that not capture a person’s attention? The title immediately anchors the reader, the first paragraphs sucking the reader inside with Red’s attraction to the wolf. She shouldn’t find him lovely, should she? Why is she hungry for him? Curious, curious, and the pace keeps on, until the last haunting line.

As you commit words to paper, be aware of what has come before. Read broadly, especially of the publications you submit to. If someone tells you stories about Death are cliché, you can thumb your nose at them. Blaze a new path. You don’t have to obliterate the old with your new twist–if you can twine your story alongside the original, giving new depth to a classic, so much the better.

My writing group is always coming up with new ways to egg each other on: contests and challenges, awards and speakers to inspire us.

One of our strategies is to pass around a sheet every week where we write down what stories we’ve submitted to markets. Knowing how many stories we have in the mail, seeing the group statistics of submissions vs. sales, bemoaning rejections, it keeps us accountable and makes us want to write more, and submit more.

That is, except for Anne.

Anne joined our group for just a little while. During her short stay, every week she’d scrawl on our submission sheet in all caps:

Which wasn’t the question, really, but okay. Needless to say that got old after a few months. Eventually she quit, never having submitted a story.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had writer’s block. It sucks. Sometimes it seems like every time I get into a solid writing groove, something comes out of left field and knocks my feet out from under me.

Here come the Life Rolls

Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith have an analogy for our writing careers they call The Game. They literally set up a board and have writers move along their career, try to get by, writing stuff, getting it out to markets, maybe even someday *gasp* making a living from writing. The Game chugs along and you roll dice to emulate good and bad stuff that happens. Life Rolls.

Unexpected, unplanned bad stuff that happens. Stuff like getting a divorce or your grandma  dying. It derails you, demands your attention,  possibly leaves you too wrecked to even think about writing.

Wonderful, delightful things can kill your writing dead too: getting your dream job, selling a story, winning an award. When I got into Clarion, it was a dream come true. The six weeks I spent there was one of the most powerful times of my life.

Then it ended and I didn’t write for a year.

Life Rolls are pretty much anything that drag focus away from your writing and career.

Learning to surf

Life’s going to throw stuff at you. I guarantee it.

Life is kind of like the ocean, it’s huge and can seriously knock you for a loop. You can try to stand tough against it, but it’s going to hit you hard. When dealing with life, we need to be flexible. We can make all the solid plans we like, but something is going to go wrong sometime, count on it. If we’re going to keep writing through our Life Rolls, we have to learn how to surf.

Strategizing

Life surfing takes a little planning. Sure, there’s no way you’ll be ready for when someone plows into your car or your lover pops the question, but you can make your writing strategy realistic and modular. You can break your plans into small pieces that can be moved around inconveniences and put on hold when things get crappy (or awesome). Set reasonable goals and break them down into little steps. (More about that in a minute.)

But you know what? You don’t swing with cancer. Okay, I know one guy who just pushed through it and kept writing, but most of us need to give ourselves time to mourn and reflect and just plain feel sorry for ourselves. Another writing friend who had cancer kept trying to make herself finish her damn novel until she was even more sick and miserable. It wasn’t until she let herself stop that she really started to heal.

Sometimes the very best thing we can do is let it go. I have a friend who needed to say, “I’m just not a writer anymore.” He cried, moved on to other things, and eventually felt better … and then he picked up writing again, stronger than ever.

It might help to give yourself vacations, sick days, whatever allows you to recharge and get back to it. You could set a date to check back in with your writing self. Set up a small, reasonable project to start with. In the meantime, do things that make you happy, things that feed your soul and give your life meaning.

Personally, I have A.D.D, and it keeps me sane. When I look on my current artistic plate, I see that I have a novel in the works, two others on the back-burner, and about thirty short stories I need to finish. When I just can’t look at the novel, I pull  out some short fiction. When writing feels too hard I record music, or  bind books or draw. Something. Anything.

That way, when I’m procrastinating, I’m still doing something. I’m doing things that feel good and get my artistic juices flowing.

But sometimes nothing helps.

Asking for support

You’re not in this alone.

Pretending you are isn’t doing yourself any favors. I’m blessed with friends and family and peers and if I don’t reach out to them, I’m just hurting myself. Even if I didn’t have people around me, there are thousands of people out there who understand what it’s like to feel stuck and blocked. Look for local writing groups. Go online, find forums and blogs. Find support.

Writer’s block

Anne was right: it sucks, it really does, but it can be dealt with.

My friend Ray pushes himself to the one page rule. He has to write 250 words every day. One page, every day. My sister does this in her own writing, but she lets herself write anything she wants, even just to rant about how much she hates writing in that moment. Sometimes that clears the way for fiction writing. My friend Damon’s rule is one sentence. Even on the worst day, he can still write one sentence. And on a lot of days he just keeps writing.

Some people write in the company of other writers. Some folks get energized by challenging other writers to see who can write the most.

Try different things. Some things will work for you, others won’t. Some things will work sometimes and not others or work for awhile and then stop. If you keep a toolbox full of tools to help you write, there’s a better chance that something will work.

A series of very small goals

So what do you do when you’re immobilized by fear or sadness or overwhelm?

My friend Bruce’s idea is atomizing: Break every task down into a series of tiny digestible pieces. Goals so small that they can’t possibly overwhelm you.

For example, you are never at one single moment writing a novel.

You’re writing a bunch of scenes. Wait, no, you’re writing one scene at a time.

But you’re not, you’re writing paragraphs that make up scenes. Or  actually sentences that make paragraphs.

Actually, all you’re ever doing at any one moment is writing words that make sentences, and, you know, any of us can do that, right?

Maybe your goals should always be very small. Oh, sure, they should fit together to make something glorious and huge, but maybe the focus should always be something like, “for the next twenty-five minutes I’m going to write a number of words.”

Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird:

Often when you sit down to write…it’s like trying to scale a glacier. It’s hard to get your footing, and your fingertips get all red and frozen and torn up. … panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and I’m going to have to get a job … I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I … remember that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.

I suggested working in twenty-five minute increments intentionally. There’s a whole system called the Pomodoro Method that creates structure to break any goal down into twenty-five minute chunks. It’s off and on done wonders for me.

Try this with your writing. You could also spend small chunks of time planning the larger structure for those words. (Or if you’re not into planning ahead, maybe use small chunks of time to smooth those words into something larger, or a little of each.)

I wish I had thought to say all this to Anne, because obviously writing was making her miserable. Hopefully she’s found her own set of tools to deal with what life throws at her writing.

Maybe a system like this will work for you, maybe another will. The point is, when life tries to kill your writing, go ahead and feel crappy, go ahead and mourn. But if you plan ahead a little, if you let yourself be flexible and cut yourself some slack, you can get through life rolls and writer’s block.

And don’t forget, we’ve all been there (and probably will be again). You’re not in this alone.

Shimmer author Eric Del Carlo imparts words of wisdom unto thee! His story, “Bad Moon Risen,” is slated for Shimmer #14.

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If you have ever talked with an aspiring writer, you’ve had this conversation:  she or he wants to tell you about a great story idea.

There is nothing wrong with being an aspiring writer.  Every writer has been one, no matter how early success arrived.  Neither is there anything indisputably awry with sounding off about one’s story ideas. (Although I, personally, prefer not to talk about works in progress; not ever.)

But if you encounter this same would-be author months or years later, and find she or he still talking about the same story concept, you can roughly bet on one of two things:

1.  The story idea was never any great shakes to start with.

2.  This grand concept has held back the writer.

Science fiction and fantasy differ from other fields.  Ideas are given a great deal of weight.  An author must, after all, concoct something well outside the trappings of familiar reality.  With fantasy this might start with a world-building notion (a king must balance his power against a magic cult sweeping the land), just as with s-f it might begin with a technological innovation (the rich are transplanted into immortal robot bodies, while the poor still suffer and die).  Part of the allure of these two genres is that they sort of look easy, especially to someone who has spent a lifetime reading s-f and fantasy.  One learns the tropes.  You see stories play out in recognizable ways.  Maybe more than that, you see the dressings of these stories and novels, the lingo and the invented cultures.

If you are of a bent to become an author yourself, you inevitably start with imitation.  Nothing wrong with that either.  Somewhere some professional writer feels flattered.  But if you persist, you will eventually come upon your first original story idea.

Now, of course, it’s probably not going to be terribly original.  It may be derivative as all get-out, in fact.  But it will feel new to you because you did put it together in your own head.  It will also feel like a precious jewel as you lovingly caress it, stunned by its beauty.  You might be tempted to think:  This is it!  The idea that will launch my career!  Hugos and World Fantasy Awards glimmer mirage-like on the horizon.

That is not a bad feeling.  Enjoy it.  In a very real sense, you’ve earned it.

But then, after a respectful interval, go ahead and PUT THAT IDEA INTO A STORY.  Do it now.  Many hopeful writers start out with book-length aspirations or, really, triology and series amibitions.  Probably not wise.  Probably–I’m just saying–you won’t finish any of those projects.  Try a short story, even if that isn’t going to ultimately be the form in which you plan to work.  Short fiction is a great way to exercise the creative muscles you will need.  It is also the most expedient means to put forth your ideas.  Get them onto paper or onto a screen where you can take a good long hard judgmental look at them.

Very likely you will find that your concept isn’t quite what you thought.  That’s okay.  You’ve still accomplished something.  You have set your personal creative apparatus in motion.  Another idea will come, even if you find yourself using some minor or unconsidered aspect from your earlier concept.  And while you’re doing that, still another story tangent might well spring up.

It comes down to this:  the more you write, the more story ideas you are liable to generate.  The very act of writing leads to this.  You start out cranking an unwieldy intimating generator; and after a period of struggle and strain you find the handle turning more easily, and at some point after that the sparks are flying willy-nilly and the whole thing is humming like a dynamo.

BUT:  if you hoard that original idea, and never get around to committing it to anything, you will never get past that early primitive stage of writing.  You’re just that guy who talks endlessly about his or her “greatest–idea–ever.”

Don’t be that guy.

Hi, folks. I’m Daryl Gregory, and I’m writing this during one of the busiest weeks I’ve had this year. I’ve got several comics scripts due, I’m writing material to support the launch of a new book, and the first chapters of a new novel are due in a few weeks.

But that’s okay. That’s the point. Because the most important thing I’ve learned about writing as a career is this: Put yourself under the gun. Back yourself into a corner. Promise things you’re not sure you can deliver.

In short, say yes.

You see, I have self-discipline issues. If I don’t have a deadline, I goof off. I fritter. I start checking Twitter every ten seconds. And it was much worse when I was first starting out.

When you’re unpublished, no one is waiting for your next story, or your first novel. There is no ticking clock, except perhaps in the tapping feet of your spouse or partner as they wonder when the hell you’re going to finish something. It’s quite possible to wallow about like this for years. After all, life is busy. There’s your day job, and the kids, and that new series on HBO. And there’s the undeniable fact that if you don’t finish, you can’t truly fail.

I used to tell people, “Oh, if only I was locked up in a cell with a typewriter, I could finally get some writing done.” But because I was afraid of committing a felony (and afraid they’d never give me a typewriter), I had to give up on the prison fantasy. Instead, I started putting myself into situations in which I had to deliver, or suffer pain and humiliation.

Here are a few of the things that worked for me, and maybe they will for you, too:

• I took a fiction writing class at the local college. I finished three stories in that semester, and two of those became some of my first sales.

• I joined a writer’s group, and suddenly there were several people waiting for my next story. Social pressure works, friends. We are all chimps.

• I went to a writing workshop. There are many fine workshops, but I went to Clarion East. This is chimp pressure in hot house conditions, and the only surprise after six weeks was that we weren’t throwing feces at each other. (Okay, maybe a little feces.) The experience changed my life, and made me realize that I had to get serious about writing.

But the most important thing I ever did was 24 years ago, when I told my fiancée that I wanted to be a writer. Amazingly, she believed me. And once she believed me, I realized I had to sit down and write, or I’d be a liar. While I’ve since lied about many things—“Feces? The other guys started it, honey!”—I’ve at least made good on the writing promise. For some reason she’s still married to me.

These days, I say yes to assignments that I don’t have ideas for, and agree to deadlines that are awfully tight.  And when I’m working on a story, I write at gunpoint, too. I deliberately put myself into jams on the page that I have to write my way out of. My outlines have gaping holes that must be filled with plot. Characters have to be invented when they walk into a room. Events and dialogue must be invented on the spot.

But this isn’t news, is it? It’s only an extension of what you do as a writer every time you sit down. The sentence doesn’t exist until you type it.  So get typing!

Me, I have to go check Twitter now.

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Daryl Gregory lives in State College, PA, where he writes programming code in the morning, fiction in the afternoon, and comics at night. Raising Stony Mayhall was published June 28, 2011 from Del Rey Spectra. His first novel, Pandemonium, won the Crawford award for best first fantasy and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award. His second novel, The Devil’s Alphabet, was named one of the best books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly. His first collection of short fiction, Unpossible and Other Stories, will be published by Fairwood Press in October, 2011. He writes the comics Dracula: The Company of Monsters (with Kurt Busiek), and Planet of the Apes for BOOM! Studios.

You will have heard some of these before–I know you have, but have you tried them? I challenge you do so this week! Time’s a wasting. Get cracking.

Driving to the story

You’re so hypnotizing
Could you be the devil?
Could you be an angel?

From the opening of “E.T.,” Katy Perry poses questions that hook you into the song. Who is this person? Is he the devil, is he an angel? How could a person be both things? The contrast captures interest keeps you there until the last beat fades away. She leaps in, she doesn’t take a country drive to get to her point.

Your fiction should do the same thing. Aunt Catherynne told you not to hold back on the ghostpigs, right? So why are you still doing it? Don’t bury them on page five. The editor may never get there. Be specific, be clear, and start with your devils, angels, and ghostpigs. Hook your reader.

Passive Voice

You open my eyes
And I’m ready to go
Lead me into the light

The more active you are, the more specific your sentences become, and the more specific your sentences become, the more engaged your reader is.

Perry doesn’t say “you were opening my eyes,” or “you were leading me into the light.” She doesn’t say “I was ready to go.”

“I am ready to go” rules the day. Strike the “was.” Look for strong verbs. Stronger words mean stronger characters and stronger actions.

Shorthand Description

Boy, you’re an alien
Your touch so foreign
It’s supernatural
Extraterrestrial

Here’s one point where I thought pop and fiction might diverge, because you have a smaller canvas when it comes to a song, but! In fiction, it feels like a cheat when a writer says “She was beautiful” and offers nothing else in the way of description. Why is she beautiful? What makes her beautiful to the POV character?

Though you get small bits of description at a time in a song, it contributes to an overall image of a scene, character, setting. Perry layers “E.T.” with description to build an image of an alien (though she also tells us outright that he really is an alien):  touch so foreign, magnetizing, different DNA, fill me with your poison, powers, lasers, and…apparently he vibrates!

Expand the initial thought; there are more layers to “beautiful” or “alien.” Explore them.

Non-Endings

Take me, ta-ta-take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction

It’s clear throughout the song what the ending of this story will be; girl goes off with her alien–she’s ready to be a victim of his abduction! Will they live happily ever after? Based on everything that came before, it seems so.

In short fiction, I too often read about an interesting place filled with interesting characters and conflict. That last paragraph should seal the entire deal with a shiny bow, but often, it ends with “And the alien set out to abduct his human lady love.” Really? Seriously? Does a story end with someone setting out to do something? This feels like the beginning, not an ending.

Also: if you’ve seen the video, you’ll know about the ending, which turns the entire story on its head and has it make a new kind of sense. Fiction should do this more!

Magically Delicious

You’re so supersonic
Wanna feel your powers
Stun me with your lasers
Your kiss is cosmic
Every move is magic

Sometimes, you do want an adverb, but overall, I’m inclined to avoid them. While my first drafts are riddled with adverbs, they’re something I destroy on an edit. (And see, made an edit there: “seek to destroy” was my first option, but seeking wasn’t active of me. They are something I destroy, period. Doesn’t that feel better?)

The lyrics here need no modifiers as they are strong enough on their own. Supersonic powers; lasers stun; the kiss cosmic, the moves magic. It’s active, it conveys characters and situation both. When you kill adverbs, you get stronger adjectives: cosmic, magic, supersonic. And stronger words mean…stronger characters and a stronger piece of fiction.

Get to it!

 

Katy Perry lyrics are property and copyright of their owners. “E.T.” lyrics provided for educational purposes and personal use only.

Jay Lake here, happily guest-blogging for Shimmer on the subject of selling fiction for new writers. This post recaps a number things I’ve said before along the way, with a focus on the basics of aspiration and breaking in. I hope it proves helpful to you.

The Internet is rife with advice to aspiring authors on submitting, markets, manuscript formats, handling rejection, editor-friendly blogging: everything in the world to tell you what to do, how to do it. All kinds of strong opinions and good thoughts both.

(Which, I might add, was certainly not so widely available back in the many years when I was struggling to break in. You kids today, you don’t know how good you have it. And, hey, you! Get off my lawn!)

But really, it all boils down to one simple recipe. Write, revise, submit.

This isn’t exactly new information, to say the least. Charles Dickens probably hung out in London coffee houses telling those punk kid pre-Raphaelites the same thing. To focus on our field of speculative fiction, however, here’s what Robert A. Heinlein said in 1947:

1. You must write.

2. You must finish what you write.

3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.

4. You must put the work on the market.

5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

I don’t agree with his number three, for a variety of reasons, but the rest of this advice is as solid today as it was over sixty years ago.

My version is, “Write more, finish what you start, send it out.” Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary.

But the key to all of this isn’t simply doing these things for the sake of having done them. It’s doing these things in a consistent, repeatable manner over a long baseline of time and effort. Simply put, if you write one story a year and send it to one market a year, you’re not likely to see a lot of career impact. A couple of famous exceptions spring readily to mind, so if it works for you as well, go for it, but that’s a low-return strategy for almost all the rest of us writers out there in the world.

For that consistent, repeatable manner to succeed, it requires frequency as well. What I’ve often referred to as ‘psychotic persistence.’ As Rita Mae Brown famously said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” That’s also the definition of writing success. (Not to mention parenting success as well, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Much like learning a foreign language, or taking up a martial art or a musical instrument, writing and selling fiction requires practice. No one is born a literary genius, any more than they are born a black belt or a first chair violinist. That same psychotic persistence that has you writing and sending out will also give you the room to stretch your skills and improve your output.

In my own case, I spent the decade from 1990 to 2000 workshopping semimonthly. I brought a new story almost every time, 20-24 stories a year for those ten years, except for the period of time when my daughter arrived in my life. I sent my carefully crafted fiction out diligently, managing to collect an entire trunk full of rejections in the process. (Which I still have in the garage, for posterity’s sake.)  In 2000, I moved from Texas to Oregon and found a new home at a weekly workshop. That fall I began a new rubric of writing a story every week. I kept that practice going for almost five years, until I became consumed in the process of writing novels, at which point I essentially substituted production goals for finished manuscripts as my metric for self-evaluation.

All in all, between 2000 and 2005, I wrote close to 300 short stories.

That is psychotic persistence.

But it’s also smart, guided persistence: Listening to critique feedback from my workshop and first readers. Paying attention to editorial feedback from markets. Reading my first glimmerings of critical response from observers in the field.

Most of all, though, it was me writing in a consistent, repeatable manner.

My point again being, this process is not for wimps. It requires intense focus and dedication far beyond any rational measure of the available external validation or overt rewards.

This practice of constantly writing and sending has a happy side effect of inuring oneself to the impact of rejection. The more rejections you receive, the less each individual one can sting. Our one-story-a-year writer will invest an enormous amount of time and effort in each send out, and feel the impact of the response acutely. Our fifty-story-a-year writer collects rejection after rejection, reducing the sting and increasing the opportunity for those rejections to transition into acceptances.

As for Heinlein’s third rule, “3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order”, I do disagree with that. There is a difference between rewriting/revising and polishing. It’s a very rare first draft indeed that doesn’t require at a minimum some basic line editing and revision. It’s an unusual first draft that can’t benefit from some quiet time in a drawer, followed by a thoughtful revisiting after sufficient time has elapsed for the immediacy of the story has vanished from the writer’s mind. But not rewriting at all? Maybe it worked for RAH, but I don’t recommend that as a practice, either. And believe me, it took me years to think my way around that corner.

Note that I’m not actually advocating that everyone reading this immediately start writing a story a week. That’s what worked for me. It might work for you, it might not work for you.

What I am advocating, specifically, is that you write more. That you cultivate persistence. That you recognize the fact that without consistent practice and production, breaking in to the field as a professional writer is simply a lot less likely to happen. Make your own luck by making your own words.

Write more.

Sean Wallace, from Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and a plethora of other fabulous projects (including twin girls), joins us this week on the Shimmer blog!

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Every once in a while, we get an author who has gone over the line, and done something so horrible that they either get banned or receive a stern talking-to or are simply ignored. It happens very rarely, though, considering the hundreds of submissions received every month, maybe only representing less than one percent of the total slush.

But I’m going to tackle five that boggle us here at Fantasy Magazine / Lightspeed Magazine, stuff that drives us bonkers and occasionally over the edge, and might have unintended consequences. (Editors talk!) So, here we go, with the five don’ts of submission blunders:

This represents the worst of them all:

Don’t brag, after we’ve rejected your story, that you immediately resold it to another market and then gleefully dance on our graves because we failed to acknowledge your God-given brilliance. I mean, WTF? It’s just downright tacky, unnecessary, and rather bugs the hell out of us, because it shows a level of unprofessionalism. We’re less likely to take a more studied look at your next submission. Oh, we’ll remember you, but for all the wrong reasons.

Next,

don’t argue with us, unless you want us to go Mamatas on your ass. (A pale-imitation of Mamatas, I grant you, but you still won’t like it!) I don’t care what it is, you shouldn’t be engaging with the editor on any level. And we won’t respond. You’re just wasting your time and energy, and you could be using those resources to write another story to later send in. That’s all we care about.

Which leads to the third don’t:

Don’t bother thanking the editor for the speedy rejection/reading your story/whatever. Just send another story more to our taste. We don’t have time to process emails, really. It’s just filling up the inbox, and usually gets automatically deleted every thirty days. We’ve got lives and families to attend to, and unwanted emails are going to get the (lack of) attention they so rightfully deserve.

Fourth,

don’t ask us to give you feedback. We’re not a writing workshop. We’re not a writing organization. We’re not your teachers. That’s what they’re there for. Use them! Magazines, on the other hand, are businesses, and in these days and times it’s not efficient for anyone to give detailed rejections, not without sacrificing response rates . . . and for us, responding quickly to your submissions is the greatest service we can do for you, which segues into

. . . our last don’t:

for the love of all that’s unholy please don’t attempt to question our submission return rates, or accuse us of running a scam, because we process your submission incredibly quick. The rates are what they are because of the time and energy the slush team puts in, and everyone works very hard so that it doesn’t pile up. (And it’s a pain in the ass when this happens!)  Usually a half-dozen times a year this crops up, where a disgruntled author bemoans that there’s no way that we could have processed their story in only a few days or even less. (I’ve been known to reject stories as they come in, which can be a few seconds after they drop into the system.) Most magazines have a slush reader, or even many. For the magazines I’ve worked with, we even have a dozen or more busy slushing, which makes for an even faster process. Every story gets its time under the sun; some stories get a quick glance, and some get a longer study, but every last story is looked at. There is no conspiracy, no scam. It is what it is.

So, if you can avoid these five major blunders you’ll be making a slush-reader or editor out there incredibly happy, and really, at the end of the day, isn’t that what you want?