Forcing the story

I've been working on a short story for weeks, rewriting, restructuring, and rephrasing  to get it "right."  Nothing seemed to work. I kept having a problem with resolution and the characters' motivations. Or maybe  it's the dialogue, or the setting, or the asides, or the ....  Too much, too much! It seems that everything's a mess and when I smack one problem down another rises to confound me.

I keep asking myself at what point do I stop trying to force a frustrating story to behave and toss it in the trash. It's never been a yes/no decision: nothing ever is.  Instead there are always shades of gray, stages through which a story must pass before it reaches its final (and probably unfinished) form.

Frustration

I frequently abandon the first draft resulting from my enormous enthusiasm for an idea. Seized by the concept I write like a fiend until... I can't think of what might come next.  Usually, I put the draft aside and move on to something else for diversion, promising myself to return later, after my mind clears.  For days I toy with the idea of just hitting the delete key to send the draft to oblivion and give me headroom to write something else.  Except there's already too many "something else's" on the desktop.

A few days ago, I realized that  this particular story was NEVER going to go as planned!  No matter how long I would try to pound it into shape it would never, ever end. I could write a weak,  facile ending, but then the story wouldn't be worth the time already invested.  What to do, what to do?  Should I cut my losses and dump it or do something else?

In a sudden fit of self-examination I realized that I'd been trying to force the story to a predefined conclusion instead of letting it tell itself.  I was letting let my desire for structural control to overcome whatever natural story telling inclinations I might have. Did the story want to be a tragedy or a comedy?  Was I allowing my characters to act honestly or was I making them march lockstep to a predetermined destiny?

I decided at that point to let the story grow naturally from its beginning and let the characters' actions and conversations take me where they wanted to go.  In doing so, in releasing the tight controls, each character became their own creation and together, they led me to a place, a time, and an emotional resolution that I never envisioned at the outset.

Last night the story became itself.

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Collaboration

A rather short collaborative novella is in the wild at present, the result of a six month collaboration between Cat Rambo and myself.  Cat recently commented on collaboration in general and our attempt in particular. This was my third attempt at collaboration:  Jeff Kooistra and I attempted a novel when were raw novices at this game and I later did an experimental flash-ish story with Ramona Wheeler.  Those early attempt taught me dialogue from Jeff and brevity from Ramona.

Cat and I decided on doing HAUNTED on a whim at last year's Nebula award ceremony. The ground rules were that we would use Scrivener in a shared DropBox folder and take turns working on successive drafts.   We'd periodically archive each draft that encompassed a complete story as a Word file, but continue to work on the draft within Scrivener.

At first the two of us wrote scenes without consulting about where the story was going, letting our words speak of the concepts and directions.   I tend to write fast when the muse sits on my shoulders and found it extremely frustrating to have to wait (and wait, and wait, and wait) for Cat to finish so I could get my hands back on the controls.   I have to admit that I cheated on her by sometime writing scenes while I waited and then sneaking them into my next draft.  Neither of us made this collaboration our main focus and continued with other projects as we worked so delays were inevitable.

Cat contemplating the arrangement

 By using Scrivener we were allowed to move scenes about and independently insert new text or reference material.  We met at WorldCon after we archived version 1.0 and physically moved the printed scene cards about the table top to get our story's structure "right."  This was the first time we could discuss whether the story should unfold to the reader sequentially or in time-shifted vignettes.

With two active imaginations at work it was inevitable that our original short story idea would morph into a virtually unsaleable thirty thousand word novella.  Eventually common sense prevailed and we whittled this overwritten monster down to less than 20K words.

On balance I thought the effort was well worth it.  I learned a lot about Cat's style (and more about my control issues than I cared to know.)  I hope my writing has improved as a result.

And gaining a new friendship ain't bad either.

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Joy

Someone commented on how I seem to be depicting only the miseries of being a short fiction writer instead of describing the rewards that naturally flow from the effort.

I apologize for dwelling on the bad aspects of trying to write something I think as worthwhile (and, less frequently, salable.)  Yes, there are bitter disappointments - fewer now than when I was learning the craft. Back then I expected the setbacks of any beginner.  Even after I'd achieved a measure of writerly skill I began to realize that I frequently failed to communicate with the editor and/or their potential readers:  Facile writing must be paired with an interesting vision/concept if it is to be published.  Having a plot or at least an objective, as I've learned, helps a lot.

The practice of actively creating, the process of putting down the words to say something, has its own pleasures. Getting the daily allocation completed gives me a sense of accomplishment, even if the work is incomplete.

I have fifteen or sixteen drafts open at present and about thirty pieces that I think are worth publishing, despite every freaking editor in the world saying otherwise.  Each of these started with a spark of an idea, was brought to flame in an initial burst of creativity (and not a lot of forethought in some cases) and then became smothered by the weight of successive drafts before it was left to smolder on the desktop. Someday, one of these embers might be brought to flame with a breath of inspiration, which is why I occasionally play with them and, once in the while, slog along to bring it to the point where I'm not embarrassed to submit it. Until that time each one screams daily for attention and prays that I might be blessed with the talent to bring it to full flame.

Eventually, despite the procrastination, the disappointment of successive drafts, and self-doubts enough to sink a battleship, the hard work of producing a decent manuscript gets completed.  When that happens I sit back with satisfaction and bask in the wonder of having created it.

And with that feeling of accomplishment, I feel joy.

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Schadenfreude!

Throughout the development of this blog stream I've agonized and complained about my rejections, my miserable depression with every setback, the loneliness of being a writer, and my inability to achieve the level of success of my peers. While schadenfreude might have been entertaining, airing my agony on this blog stream has not relieved these feelings (well, a few pieces did, but not all.)  At times I've wondered if I was clinically depressed or simply have such low self-esteem about my writing ability that I am unable to take joy in my few successes.

Then I discovered an article that appeared in Slate about the friendship paradox and it became clear that I could blame my feelings of inadequacy on other writers. It's their fault that I feel so badly!

It is all in the way we (and here I mean "I") perceive others' efforts.  I am We are not usually privy to other writers' rejections, failed drafts, or abandoned stories.  Very few writers of my acquaintance openly publicize these things, much less talk about them. They no doubt think (as do I) that by resubmitting endlessly, keeping the unfinished drafts on their desktops, or holding onto fragments they keep hope alive that these will eventually reach completion and that some day, an kindly editor will tire of seeing the story reappearing in their slush pile and offer a few cents out of mercy* just to take it out of circulation. We (and here I mean "I") hope so.

Or maybe I should just get some new friends?

*If such editors exist, please let me know because I've got a boatload of stinkers to send them.

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The Long March

I generally have multiple projects open at once - jumping from one to the other when I get bored, run into a problem, of simply get too frustrated, disappointed, or depressed.  Been doing this for years without ever feeling that I've accomplished anything.  The whole time it has felt as if I was on a long march to ... somewhere indefinable.  Then I was directed to a well-wrtiten blogpost by Kameron Hurley about persistence being the secret to becoming a writer and it all came clear.

The reality of being a writer is that, despite distractions of family and friends, of television and books, of temptations beyond measure, you have to write, and write, and write some more until there are no more stories to be told, no more inner voices to chide, and no more gnawing worms eating you inside.    Ideas fill your head to the point where getting them down as a story, as a fragment, as an outline, or as a short note to yourself is necessary to keep your head from exploding.

Or maybe writing's  a worm in your belly that gnaws at your guts until you have to find release from the pain and give birth. It could be the nagging muse behind your eyes that challenges you to come to grips with it, to wrestle it into concrete reality and silence it for a time.

Writing also means moving beyond the creation and slogging away for days, weeks, months, or years to get it down right.  And when you finally finish it to your satisfaction you have to submit it against the slim chance that someone, somewhere might be affected by your words and flip a comment or a few coins your way. Even if those don't come to pass you might warm yourself with the thought that at least somebody read your offering before rejecting it. That infinitesimal bit of acknowledgement might not mean much, but it's a whole lot better than leaving something you've created sitting unread on your hard drive.

It's now clear to me that the long march doesn't have a destination.  It is a process through which you improve your craft.


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The Dismal Valley

I  like to think of myself as a fun-loving guy, albeit somewhat socially inept and a little bit of an anchorite. Nevertheless I've written some funny stuff, a few really HARD SF stories, and a bunch that were neither.  The few I've sold follow the same pattern (yes, sad to say, I write a LOT more stories than ever get published.)

Of late I've realized that my writing has drifted into a dismal valley since 9/11, which caused me to write BRIGHT RED STAR in which everybody dies.  Then I wrote GLASS BOX in which both the protagonist and his companion die.  Followed by CYBERMARINE which... well, it does not end well.  Then there was SCOUT where, as you probably guessed, the protagonist sort of dies. After that came TRUE FRIENDS where the dog might have been killed, and most recently TOMMY AND THE BEAST where alien, man, dog, and beast die.  Somewhere in valley was DECELERATION where I wiped out the entire human race. Even HAUNTED, my recent (unsold) novella collaboration with Cat Rambo turned out dark, for God's sake! 

I wonder at times if I am depressed, disillusioned (hard not to be when you write short fiction), or just a dreary person.  Maybe I need to get out more, talk to people, and have some fun instead of sitting alone in a semi-dark room, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling.

Which gives me an idea for a story.

Annual Writing Review

Every January I update my archive files, clean out the messes I've created, and do an assessment of what I've written in the past year.  I've been doing this since I started writing again in 1991, partly to see how far I've come and partly to torture myself that I could have done better. Twice, this practice has caused me to reassess what I was doing and change my behavior.

The chart at right shows the arc - the blue representing the total number of pieces written, the red the cumulative number of sales and the green the ratio of sales to production year by year. For those who might be interested in figures the total number is just under 500 and the peak ratio is 100%. My "lifetime" sales average is 24% (which sometime produces enough income to  order extra fries.)

It is interesting to reflect on how things have gone so far as sales and production are concerned.  Since I only did a gross count of files, any novels get the same weight as novellas,novelettes, short stories and articles to get the total for production. I really ought to count words of megabytes, but even for me that's too detailed.

The chart indicates the ups and downs of my working/writing career. Strangely the years I had problems with work also turned out to be the most productive for writing.  In my peak years I sold almost as many as I wrote, the bad news being that I didn't write very much in those years.  The chart also shows the decline of the novella markets, which was my first love, and which I pursued against all reason.  It was only after I'd relearned how to write short, that my sales increased. Periods spent attempting novels also meant low production, much to my regret.

So, looking back on the year just passed I have to say I didn't do badly.

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