Conventions

One cannot live life in a dark room, writing, writing, and writing forever and so, one must occasionally venture out to the gatherings of the clan at a genre convention.

I have to admit that I am not completely comfortable at conventions. Mostly this stems from my dislike of crowds, the noise, and the clamor.  Worse is the smell of desperation given off by my fellow writers who are desperate to sell copies of their latest novel, are seeking an agent, or trying to convince a publisher that their next book will be better than the last, despite what the critics might be saying. The short fiction writers mostly hang around the edges, ignored by all.

Equally distasteful is the conviviality of the typical con party where one must put on a happy face and listen to the most inane pronouncements of the garrulous crowd surrounding the free food and drink. I dislike party rooms packed thirty deep by fans who cage snacks wherever they can.  Give me quiet conversations at the bar or in some quiet nook instead.

Worse still is the dealers' room packed with unread books by writers I've never heard of, all of which beckon tantalizingly on table after table, providing an overwhelming feast of potential reads that I know I will never be able to consume.  Worse, with so many good writers producing novels in endless profusion, what chance have I of reading them all, much less selling one of my own?  I usually leave the room with less than I want, poorer in pocketbook, and depressed in spirit.

So why do I go to a convention if it is so uncomfortable?  I go because it gives me a chance to meet my fellow writer face to face and chat about the business. It gives me a chance to meet new writers or those who I have always wanted to meet and whose conversations always exposes me to new ideas and opportunities.

Better, it makes me feel like a god-damned WRITER!

#SFWApro

My WorldCon Schedule

Because there is so much SFWA work and meetings to be accomplished in San Antonio I have signed up for a relatively light panel schedule.

Wednesday August 28: Arrival
Thursday, August 29,  0900-1700:  SFWA Board meeting
Friday, August 30, 1100:  SIGMA panel
Friday, August 30, 1400:  Accessible Hard SF
Friday, August 30, 1700: Kaffeklatch
Saturday, August 31, 1000 - 1200: SFWA Business meeting
Sunday, September 1, 1130: Reading

If you will be at any of these, or run into me elsewhere, be sure to say hello.

Process, process, process

I usually follow a rather structured process to develop a story once I get an idea in my head (which only happens three or four times a day, usually someplace where I can't write it down, and frequently having nothing to do with whatever is happening at that moment.)  Sometimes I can retain the idea long enough to write it down and, if it works, expand it a little.

Once I decide to work with an idea I'll write a page or two to expand the thought and then think about where that thought leads me.  Then I write some more, sometimes chronologically, sometimes just exposition, rarely an ending, or describe a setting. The result is that after a few hours I get a thousand words (more or less) of rather messy text.

My next step is to put the text into Scrivener and break it up into scenes.  I then add notes about the missing elements in each scene: character(s), setting, and/or time stamp and maybe expand those notes into narrative.  Then I look at what I've got, figure out what's missing and populate those scenes with a sentence or two.  I repeat this as many times as I need.  Sometimes I build a scene just to complete an arcs or add emotional complexity. All the time I am fiddling, moving the cards around to get the optimal pattern for the story.

When I am satisfied with the structure I begin writing each scene in detail until all the cards are filled with narrative, dialogue, or exposition.  Usually this process generates more scenes or breaks an existing one into smaller parts. The point is always, as I said in my blog on Scene Theory, to confine each scene to a few characters, a definite setting, and at a specific time.

I usually go through three to five drafts, occasionally on paper, before I send it to an editor.

I've discussed process with other writers who use very different approaches. Many sketch out some text and build it brick by brick, unsure of where the story is going and then, when they reach an end, go back and write it correctly.  Others write unimpeded by consideration and type whatever comes into their silly little heads for hours on end.  Some like to compose the entire story in their head before committing fingers to keyboard.  A few anal retentive types prepare detailed outlines, going so far as to delimit each entry to represent a paragraph of the final story.

And a few liars swear that their stories emerge fully formed in the first draft and need no editing whatsoever.

#SFWApro

Writing Advice

This entry marks my one hundred and sixty posts since I started this blog!  When I started writing this string of rambling prose I never imagined that I could be this garrulous.

The blog began with a promise to myself that I would post something every single week, but not spend more than ninety minutes on it and not a nanosecond more. As Lord Kelvin once said in response to a criticism , "Speed of attack preserves one from errors that arise from excessive contemplation." So too with me: I would rather be called out for a mistake made in haste than confirming that I am an idiot. Now I spend less than half that amount of time.

My original intent was to use this blog to explain, mostly to myself,  how and why I do this strange writing thing in my dark and lonely room  and thereby expiate some of the mixed emotions that accompany creating and delivering a decent story.   Later I thought that, along with this process of sometimes excruciating self examination, I'd pass along a few helpful hints based on my own idiosyncratic experiences. To my utter surprise I found an audience eager to get an insight into my [miserable] writer's life. What's more I learned that my concerns were more common than I imagined.

Aside from my blogs about the self-doubt that always surrounds me when I write, the most popular blog for a long time was my Ten Stages of Story Development that I later modified with Step Eleven of the Ten Step Process when I discovered ten steps were never enough to finish a story. I also documented going through the process in my January and February 2011 blogs just to show that the process I outlined could be followed to produce a salable story (it did!)

I've also mused about the joys of story acceptances and the pain of rejections, rejections, rejections. I've talked about plotting, submitting too early, and all the little demons that afflict all writers regardless of experience (What! You thought you were the only one who had these problems?)

All things considered maintaining the weekly blog has been a healthful and satisfying endeavor for these hundred and sixty blog posts.  I hope you  found them helpful, if only to know that there is someone out there equally suffering from the writing affliction.

#SFWApro

Response Times

A writing acquaintance recently complained that an editor who normally responded in days was taking an excessive amount of time to get back to her on a submission.

This might seem a casual remark on the face of it, but it speaks to a more fundamental issue between we writers and the editors who hold the power of life and death over our fragile prose.  To the writer suffering under a slow response from one editor means that the next editor on the submission list must wait even longer to read the priceless words forged with sweat and tears on the anvil of the writer's desk. That delay propagates  down the list  until it finally, blessedly reaches a receptive audience and, hopefully, produces a check at best and copies at worst.

For years I have tracked the response times of editors so that I can predict when to expect a response to a submission.  I hear from some within a few days of the predicted time. Others are less predictable and some, sad to say, simply don't bother to respond at all -ever! These last heartless bastards populate the absolute bottom of my list and are given an arbitrary sixty day turn around time.  If they fail to respond on a later submission, they get a "forget it and fuck you" message. Well, that last bit is a lie - one must always stay professional, even to the assholes.

Rejections are a fact of life for short fiction writers.  The output of most of us far exceeds the capacity of the market to absorb.  All but raw beginning writers understand that rejection is no verdict of unworthiness but that that particular piece was not meeting the needs of the editor at that time. 

I would not be surprised to find that the balance weighed heavily in the hundreds to one ratio of rejections to acceptances.  There is a vast reservoir of unpublished stories by well known writers that will never be read by their fans simply because of "not right for us" evaluations.  This treasure will fade in time as if the words were never written.

The problem with a delay in response sometimes gives rise to the hope that the story might be "under consideration" which is the best scenario but agonizing for the writer, who then feels like a fool when the rejection arrives somewhat beyond the window of expectation. It doesn't matter how many sales a writer has made, how many times this particular editor has said something encouraging, the rejection when it finally comes, is devastating.  Worse, there's nothing a writer can do about it.  We all understand that reading through hundreds of submissions takes time and editors often have other matters to distract them.

But a little consideration of the writer's business might help.

#SFWApro

Literary Merit, Altruism, and Friendship

The fast approaching close of the Hugo ballot marks the end of the speculative fiction awards season after recently passed the Seiun and Nebula ballots, not to mention the other seven major awards.  It is no surprise that the lists of finalists include many of the same works.  It is an honor to be on any of these ballots and and achievement to be a finalist.

It is no small feat to keep up with the genre, not when hundreds of new books are produced each year, print magazines arrive daily, and the e-publications proliferate like a viral plague. There are only so many hours in the day and, for the working writer, time taken to read anything detracts from their writing time. One must ignore the cries of children and abandoned friends if they are ever to make even a small dent in their pile of books to be read.  Worse, all your writer friends send you books, lovingly autographed (which makes them unacceptable as donations to the local library) which accrue to the already unread pile.  Even with the best of intentions no one can encompass or even come close to reading the entire output.

As an eligible and reasonably conscientious voter my aim is always to select the best work of genre fiction based on literary merit, inventiveness, and that nebulous "sens-a-wunda" that imbue the finest speculative fiction. Knowing how difficult it is to create stories my admiration for a skillfully produced work demands recognition.

I read what I can, finish a few books a month, and strive to stay current on magazines, but it's a losing battle. As a result, when the ballots arrive, I look at the finalists and try to find something I might have read and frequently find one or two.  This induced guilt sets up a frantic effort to read all of the finalists before the ballot closes, searching through the pile to find those that appeared in yet unread magazine and lacking that, obtaining copies elsewhere. The novels are daunting to complete so I usually attempt to read at least a quarter of the way each through before moving to the next, promising myself I will later return to finish that book, which results in so many books with slips of paper marking my place.

Comes the time to vote and I find myself in a quandary.  Clearly some of the works are better than others but is literary merit enough?  What if two of the candidates are people who have helped me along the way or are good friends? Should I vote to support my friends or give yet another award to someone who  has already received an earlier one? Should I select a new writer who might need a boost in their career or throw a vote to the grizzled veteran who deserves something, for God's sake?

My final decision only easy when the work itself is of such outstanding merit that no other choice is possible, but that rarely happens given the quality of most of the finalists.  In the end, the ballot choices I make are erratic, sometimes choosing for this reason and sometimes another.  I am human and I vote both rationally and emotionally. I think I am not alone in this.

Which is why the ballots are not so much a competition as a compromise of principles.

#SFWApro

ReaderCon Impressions

I was absolutely thrilled when I got an invitation to ReaderCon 2013 and considered it a mark that finally, at long last, somebody knew that I was a writer - Wow! It was enough to convince me that it might be worth driving the nine exhausting hours to get to Burlington and ReaderCon.

I usually go to the Nebulas and WorldCon as well as local conventions within reasonable driving distance,  such as Confluence, CapClave, Balticon, and Ravencon. There the audiences are modest and mixed in terms of ages, sex, and fannish intensity.  For some insane reason I expected the ReaderCon crowd to be much the same.

Was I ever wrong!  First, the numbers of people attending the panels were much larger, attendees filling all the seats while others stood around the edges.  I have never felt myself under such intense focus as I did on my few panels.  Like a rabbit encountering a fox, I became nervous by the laser-like stares of the audience and their terribly intense INTEREST. At most cons people are just listening to their favorite author's voices and waiting for an opportunity to have a few words, ask a question, or obtain an autograph.  Not so at this one where the audience poured toward the panelists like a surging tsunami of queries.

I was only a panelist on a few sessions and had a hard time deciding which of the others to attend. All were above average in content and focus.  I also learned that I am not alone in bewailing the vows of poverty that we writers must take for our art and the loneliness of working alone in a darkened room.  This is a solitary occupation, let there be no doubt. Adulation and rewards are far too few, it seems.

What was more interesting was that everyone seemed to be people of the book and voracious consumers of the written word in both print and electronic form. From the number of ReaderCon attendees taking copious notes and the quality of questions being asked I suspect there was a high density of English majors.  Surprisingly for me, the sessions seldom (and thankfully briefly) veered off into media territory.

And the writers!! OMG, I spoke to all my heroes and met most that I knew only by their names and stories.  Writers I knew but had not yet met seemed to know who I was (always a surprise) and some of the fans even mentioned stories I once wrote.  These little things might not seem like much, but I was fucking THRILLED!

It was well worth the drive.

#SFWApro