Recycling

I've spent a few days cleaning out my file cabinets, sorting through old, outdated paperwork, tossing away product handbooks for items I no longer possessed, and, in general, doing what I should have been doing routinely.  In the end I'd reduced five packed file cabinet drawers to four loosely filled ones and filled two huge bags with waste paper.  It was the detritus of fifteen years, at least.

I loaded the bags in the car, along with miscellaneous electronics - mostly chargers whose original purpose was long forgotten, and drove a few miles down the road to the county recycling yard where  large bins with prominent labels await each type of recyclable material.  The site is a marvel of efficiency, all cheerfully administered by smiling staff.  Over where the big trucks dump their non-recyclables a million and one seagulls cover the hillsides and hover over newly arrived garbage trucks with squalling anticipation.  Recycling, even through the internal processes of birds is a wonderful thing.

Lest you be wondering, none of my writing stuff followed the recycling route. Instead I carefully package each year's electronic and paper files and work papers for my archivist so that some future researcher can discover and, hopefully, enjoy them. I often fear I am so desperate that even the hope of a pathetic bit of posthumous attention seems appealing. I hesitate to apply the term "re-cycling" when most of this stuff has yet to be "-cycled."

But back to recycling,  During my writing career I've completed perhaps five hundred stories and sold only twenty percent. A lot more unfinished pieces await my renewed interest.  I've kept all of my stories in the hopes that some day I might be struck with some wonderful illumination that might raise a weak plot into something of substance, a phrase that would brighten a scene, or a concept that would resolve a difficult plot turn.  I frequently activate one of these chestnuts and play with it for a while, too often sending it back into semi-recumbancy because the idea still hasn't gelled.  The good ones (IMHO) get sent out to once more make the editorial rounds, a practice that makes me ever  hopeful.

Since a good story is never finished but only abandoned, I persevere in recycling my old material, not willing to see any effort go to waste.  I have some pieces I've been fitfully working on for ten or more years.  Others I turn to are quickly abandoned back to my midden to await another day.  On rare occasions I've managed to turn a failed manuscript into a published story.  It doesn't happen often, but enough that encourages me to keep recycling.

Elation

Last week I was so depressed over a couple of routine rejections that I felt that expending any more energy on writing was futile, even as I sent both pieces forward to the next editor on this list [ yeah, I maintain a list so I know who to torture and curse next.]

Then I had an idea:  Hoping that writing something easy would clear the mental cobwebs and dispel the aura of gloom that had enfolded me, I proceeded to through together an "outline" and then write a page for each of its ten lines. There are some stories I can write almost without thinking. The words, the scenes just roll out, one after the other.  I manage to sell some of these for some strange reason, but that's by the wayside. The problem was that some of the outlined scenes became multiple pages and, by the end of the third session (I tend to write in four hour sessions each day) I had over seven thousand words, some of which (I say modestly) was pretty damn good.

As I did this the issues with the other WIP became clearer, their paths to completion  open, and concerns about their probable sale diminished.  The diversion seemed to be well worth it so I continued my usual rearranging of the chairs, putting the scenes in an interesting sequence, trimming a bit  here and there, moving snippets about so the reader didn't get lost, and in general touching up the language to improve the literary aspect.

Finally, four days in, I had a well organized tale and could begin turning it into  a story.  Although this was an exercise to clear the cobwebs it turned out to produce a half-decent short story, which was an added benefit.  The takeaway on this is to remind myself to stay creative, even if it means heading off in a completely different direction.

To add to my pleasure, I also received a contract for another piece.

Nadir

Two rejections so far this week.  After being in this writing business for so long these rejections shouldn't bother me - part of the game, says I.  Yet, despite the agonizing frequency of such, each rejection feels like a dagger plunged into my heart.  A simple rejection shouldn't make me feel that I've failed, shouldn't make me think I've wasted hours, days, weeks, or months of agonizing over a word, a phrase, a passage, and shouldn't make me doubt my skills.  I know it's a simple statement of editorial preference, nothing more, so it shouldn't hurt, but it does.

Damn, you'd think after all these years I'd have built up some scar tissue to insulate me from the realities of spec writing, but I haven't.  Thanks to today's e-submission and response system I don't even have a letter I can tear up in frustration.  The boundless enthusiasm I have for writing instantly dissipates with each ever-so-neutral "thank-you-very-much- but..." rejection and, for moments after, I feel that all that effort and time put into that piece was wasted.

Two rejections in as many days tells me that finishing any of the WIP --three novels plus a dozen short stories in varying levels of draft-- and selling them is vanishingly small.

Time for assessment of my WIP, says I: Is this what it comes down to in the end; the realization that fighting to get your stories published in a dwindling market os a futile effort, to swim against the shifting tides of editorial preferences, or fight against the fall of dark night from which no one can turn?  What the shit?  Why should I put so much time and attention, my heart and should, into writing only to see my stories rejected and rejected and rejected until I feel like screaming. Why do I put myself through this? Why? Why? Why? Give me a single reason not to turn off the damn computer and walk away from this madness  Maybe it's just not worth it any more.

But then I think: Maybe the next editor won't reject these and there's the new short and that pile of WIP to finish.....

The Short Life

I know more than a few novelists, some of whom have a decent income and a depressingly smaller number who have a fabulous income.  Good for them say I; they should garner rewards for their specical gift of being dedicated to the long form and being rather prolix. Would that my own efforts were among them, but I do not envy their success (well, maybe a little).  I am reconciled to the fact that I am a short fiction writer.

Writing short fiction has proven to be a labor of love and dedication that produces scant rewards that involves beating your fingers (f not your head) against the keyboard in hopes of producing a  quickly forgotten, ephemeral product. It is also learning to deal with more rejection and finding the fortitude to resubmit again and again.  A short fiction writer spends years recycling rejected stories through ever less-rewarding markets, e-magazines, and, finally and distressingly, into freebie anthologies in the hope that someone, somewhere will hear your voice. Sadly many of stores never manage to find a home and must languish forever unread in the writer's midden.

As if rejection were not bad enough, the short fiction writer must fight back a rising tide of the aspiring writers, all anxious to make their mark, and all of whom are competing for the limited attention of the few remaining professional-level short fiction editors, and, finally and distressingly, into freebie anthologies in the hope that someone, somewhere will hear your voice.

The financial rewards of a short fiction career are dismal.  Let us assume that a writer can sell a minimum of ten thousand salable words per month and can maintain at that pace for a full year.  To achieve that many sales the writer has to complete many un-salable pieces just to sell just ten thousand words.  Moreover, a short fiction writer must count the words in their successive drafts, editor's suggested changes and, galleys, not to mention checking writerly business matters.

Let's make a modest estimate that our short fiction writer is a word-crunching machine who can produce thirty thousand finished (i.e. fully edited) words per month. That's three hundred and sixty thousand words per year - the length of a short fantasy novel!  For this Herculean effort the fantastically productive writer sells just ten thousand words a month at an average rate of $0.05 per word.  That means that pounding out short stories for a full year will produce only six thousand dollars.

That meagre income is quickly consumed if the writer has to occasionally travel to a con, spend a night or two in a hotel, and eat out instead of maintaining their writing pace.  A writer can get a free pass at the cons if they are successful, but only if they are willing to publicly bullshit for an hour or two on forums.  This is always in the hope that their presence might attract a new reader or two.  Maybe, if a writer has a lot of published stories, have wheedled themself into enough anthologies, and gotten an award or two, they might, just might, occasionally get a request for an autograph.  As I said at the outset: Writing short fiction is a labor of love.

Just don't do it for the money.

Writing and Editing

Writing isn't that hard; it's just stringing words along and throwing in the occasional punctuation mark so the reader can take a breath.  All you have to do to tell a story is come up with an idea, say something about it, and then get off the stage.  It's a conversation with a reader, a proposition or challenge, nothing more.

Editing, on the other hand is a bitch!  The real  business of writing begins when you have to take that stream of words you wrote and mold it into something that makes sense, that flows well, that is logically complete, evokes a mental image in the mind of the reader, and doesn't violate the dictates of  sensibility.

Editing is not nearly as clean and simple as the original scribbling. The editing path is full of traps for the unwary, of byways that lead nowhere, of vacuous potholes where entire plots may flounder, and vast mountains of facts that must be mastered.  Editing can make you wander far afield, leading you into a wilderness so inpenetrable that you must take a literary machete to hack away the untidy growths of false leads, bad facts, and poor dialogue.  During the editing process characters can  appear and disappear, personalities can merge or disjoin, scenes can change at a thought, and always, always the path to the end seems beyond reach.  Eventually the editing reaches a point where you realize that you must abandon the effort, call the story complete, and send it on its way to certain rejection...

... so you can begin the next.

References

A decade ago I built a wall-sized bookshelf, floor to ceiling, of twenty-five shelves, upon which I
placed books I treasured: college textbooks from my undergraduate days and those from my Master's program - all lovingly marked and tabbed. Another shelf was reserved for the books on writing, dictionaries, thesauri, and references.  On the top shelves I have books lovingly inscribed by fellow authors and, below that, my brag shelves with all the publications I've appeared in (except the e-format ones, of course which are there, I suppose, virtually.) I have a set of books on sailing, on humor, gardening, birds, trees, and wildflowers, and another on wine.  On one bottom shelf I  have the printed drafts of my five or six (unsold and therefore unpublished) novels.  Worse, two shelves contain the books I have not yet read, magazines awaiting exploration, guides for future hikes and travels, and obscure references.  There are a lot of books despite the fact that I get rid of books once read - the library is very gracious about my contributions.

But the shelves also contain the sorts of things one accumulates over the years; souvenirs of trips, gifts from friends and family, small statuettes, an earth globe acquired for a story, framed pictures and awards, and a stereo I have not played for at least a year.  Of the books I could say the same. There are only one or two that I refer to when I have a plot problem, the thesaurus, and occasionally, the big book of quotations.  For the rest, they are merely decoration.  The internet has replaced most of the reference material, the reference books are mostly out of date, and the college texts have languished untouched for years and the decorations serve no useful purpose. The entire wall is superfluous to any rational analysis.

Yet, there is a great comfort as I write in knowing that material is sitting there, close at hand for the marginally small possibility that I might someday need to find a bit of material for a story, a character, or a setting.

It is reassuring.

More About Structure

A few weeks back I mentioned the classic short story structure of set up, exposition, epiphany, and denouement in my blog on Fundamentals.  This was a simple, straightforward form that let's you build a technically straightforward, but simple story.

While all stories  have the four elements mention earlier they do not necessarily need to be in the same sequence.  One could start with parts of the exposition and then move into the set up of the problem.  Starting with an action scene to grab the reader's attention is the most familiar form of this approach and, if you are like me, you always fall for it.  That dramatic, ass-clenching, gut-wrenching, curiosity-rousing beginning shouldn't delay getting to the set up for long because it will overpower the set up and you don't want to do that because it is the set-up that frames the arc of the story and gives the reader a foundation for understanding.

That said, exposition can take a variety of forms chronologically, physically, or even stylistically, such as framing differing narratives in distinct "voices."  You can play with flashback and flash forward, jump between settings or doing both at the same time. In fact, there is nothing that you can't do in this element so long as you don't lose the reader and keep moving toward that dynamite epiphany.

The final rule and that is that you can do whatever you want between the goalposts of set up and epiphany but after you pass that you need to get off the stage as quickly and graciously as possible.