The Man, the Market and the Muse

Well, that was an interesting exercise–and I'm not sure what it tells me. It tells me that "Look at Me" has a plot and a theme, I guess. No. "The Silence Has Its Wounds" has a plot and a theme. There's already a book and/or movie out there called Look at Me. And though "Look at Me" relates directly to the theme, what I'm most concerned with is the wounds. Or maybe not. Ach, indecision. I'll go with the poetic title, the one that turns up my blog on Google and Altavista. Correction. The one that earlier turned up my blog on Google for sure and Altavista maybe. Aaaargh.

Some other time I'll go into the imagery and symbolism, all that rich literary stuff that I thought would make it interesting to literary types. Tonight I want to discuss marketing.

What is publishing, anyway? It's marketing. You have a product: a story or a penchant for writing stories, and you want people to know about it: know about it and act on that knowledge: read your stories. 

I'd better back up.

Before I submitted "Look at Me" to Joseph Conlin at SNReview, I'd already decided that I could write good stories and that "Look at Me" was a good story. When Joseph Conlin rejected my story on the ostensible grounds that it didn't suit present needs, I instinctively fell to reviewing my decision that I could write good stories and that "Look at Me" was a good story.

By way of reviewing my decision that I could write good stories and that "Look at Me" was a good story, I undertook a lengthy critique of the story's plot and wording. I found that the story wasn't perfect, but was pretty good. I also submitted the story to a variety of readers, most of whom indicated that they either liked it or thought it was well written.

I then began to consider the relationship between the story and the publication I'd sent it to. Perhaps they didn't match. "Look at Me" was a very visceral story about instinct and moral rift. Nothing in the issue of SNReview that I'd read seemed to fit that category.

I determined to develop a matrix for profiling authors and publishers.

I also reconsidered the role I expected of publications. What could publications really do for me? Well, they could pay me, which would be nice, and they could bring my work to their readership, which could help expand my audience, which would also be nice. But what did I really want? Well, I wanted to write, no matter what, and to be noted for it, if possible. What did it mean to be noted for writing? Well, it meant being considered a good writer (okay, a great writer) and having people be willing to pay money to read what I wrote, put their money where their mouths were and spit some of it into my pocket. In other words, I wanted to write for a living, so that I could have more time to write and more time to work on the background to writing: research.

While all this was going on, traffic to my blog seemed to be increasing a bit. I'm not sure how to interpret the reports in "blog stats" and "feed stats", but a lot more was happening than had been. This encouraged me to believe that I could, eventually, get noted just by running the blog. If people read my blog and made their way to the stories posted there, an audience would grow as people who liked my writing or knew people who might like my writing passed the word along. The larger my online audience, the better my chances of getting published somewhere other than on my own blog and of landing a book deal someday. Even if I never got published on paper, movie makers might hear of me and the film rights alone could really help put me in the position to write full time. In other words, any number of things could happen if I just kept up my Web presence and kept putting stories on the Web.

As far as being thought a good writer and having people like your stories goes, I guess it comes down to doing your best and running into people who like the kind of thing you do. Let's face it, there are plenty of people who like music we think is just noise and writing we think is just ink. Somebody's bound to like what you do and if you keep working at it on paper and in the market, enough people will find and like your work to make it pay. Whether certain people like or dislike your work doesn't matter unless you judge your work by their opinions. In the broadest sense, good writing is writing that somebody likes (and might be willing to pay to read).

So what about paying to read? What about selling reads on the Web? What about figuring out how much a reader would pay to read your story in a magazine, journal or book, and how much of that you would get as the author, and charging people that amount to read your work online? Or what about selling subscriptions like magazines and journals do? What about writing your own online magazine or journal? Hmmm. There's potential there.

That's all I have time for. Time for bed.

Goodnight.

The Author’s Critique

As mentioned yesterday in "Looking for Trouble", I've been passing that story around and getting pretty good reviews. This is not to suggest a defect in the editor. Plenty of perfectly good prose gets passed over at the publication level. This is not to suggest perfection in my prose.

I've been asking myself what constitutes the essential difference between what I sent Mr. Conlin and what he publishes. Based on the latest issue, Winter 2006, I'd say it's viscera."Look at Me" is a very visceral tale. It's about one quick moment of fear and regret on a dark night in Victoria. It's about utterly and summarily rejecting fellow human beings because of their (and our) connections and associations. It cuts to the chase and through to the bone.

In my reading and writing classes, I do a thing called "chapter diagrams". We look at the first and last paragraphs of a chapter, summarize them at either end of the whiteboard, and fill in the space between with details that lead from the start to the finish. This method is perfectly suited to short stories, too. Let's try it on something of our own, eh? 

1. A man is walking down a street.
2. Three girls approach.
3. The man is afraid of the girls.
4. The man ignores the girls.
5. One of the girls asks the man if he wants some drugs.
6. The man ignores the girls.
7. One of the girls shouts that he should look at them.
8. The man ignores the girls
9. The girls are angry and hurt.

In my classes, once we've diagrammed the whole story, we build a plot summary out of the combined chapter diagrams, sifting the really important details from the supporting details. Let's try that with my story.

1. A girl asks a man if he wants some drugs.
2. He ignores her.
3. She is hurt and angry.

From the plot summary, we distill a synopsis, a single sentence that lays out the main action of the story. Let's see…

When a girl offers a man some drugs, he ignores her and she is hurt.

Based on the synopsis, we formulate a theme, a life lesson, a general statement about people. Hmmm…

We often refuse to connect with people who have unpleasant or dangerous associations, and this hurts them deeply.

Not bad. A trifle crude, perhaps, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.

Now we demonstrate the soundness of our claim for the theme by inserting quotes, introducing each quote with a reference to the plot summary.

A man is walking down a street in Victoria, BC. The man does not know the town well.

We, too, are strangers here. We grew up on the mainland, in Maple Ridge, a tidy quilt of library, theatre, high school and quiet farms.

When three girls approach, the man feels threatened.

They have an air, like the town, of frontier decency about to molt. Violence and hedonism crackle in their hair….

It is night. The silence has its wounds. Cars rip like knife blades down the seams. Pent, idle pockets of frail youth gather in shadows and the glare of lights.

The man decides to act as if the girls are not there.

We walk as if carelessly, as if without fear, both eyes averted as the girls approach.

When one of the girls asks if he wants drugs, he continues to ignore them, although he is very conscious of their presence and continues to feel threatened.

We do not look back. They have passed us. Or we have passed them. They may have stopped. The monkeys that prowl the trails on Mount Longevity are best ignored. Keep your food securely in your pack. Do not confront them; they may attack….

Malevolence claws at our backs and our hair yearns to stand on end. The hatred pelts us like the breaking of a star.

When the same girl shouts that he should at least look at them, he continues to ignore them.

We do not look back.

The girls are angry and hurt, because they have been rejected, consigned by their behaviour and the mans' fear to an exile similar to that of vampires.

They glare like vampires at our backs, gnashing in shadow, frightened of the day.

In my reading and writing classes, that would be as far as we went. Here, however, we can go a little further, examining the devices used to create atmosphere and build tension.The first paragraph establishes the locale, Victoria, BC, an island town known more for its tourism and politics than for crime or debauchery. The same paragraph also establishes the narrator's unfamiliarity with the town through phrases like "We've forgotten the name [of a street]", "We…are strangers here", and "We grew up on the mainland".

The first paragraph also establishes a pattern of contrast and comparison between Victoria and other locales, the first of which is Maple Ridge,  a bedroom community of Vancouver, "a tidy quilt" consisting of "library, theatre, high school and quiet farms". For the purposes of the story it is idyllic, a place where the narrator "hunted crayfish in the creeks" and "dove head first into the deep, black swimming hole", in short, a place where the narrator felt safe. In Maple Ridge, the narrator was predator. In Maple Ridge, even a deep, black swimming hole held no terrors.

The second paragraph switches immediately to a third locale, the one from which the narrator's wife comes, a place where "a motel is a place of sin". The characterization is categorical. In this setting, the narrator is naive, unaware of the motel's illicit purpose as a place where "secretive couples go…day and night". He "slept in one once", but "did not know if for what it was".

The same paragraph likewise establishes the narrator's self-conscious virtue and his instinctive tendency to explicitly shun "evil": "We left the condom in the ashtray. We turned off the TV [and its two channels of porn]".

The references to sex in the second paragraph colour the scene in the third paragraph. As the narrator walks, he is approached by three girls who "have an air, like the town, of frontier decency about to molt". With the phrase just quoted, the narrator suggests that Victoria and the people in it are somewhere midway on a spectrum between innocent, idyllic Maple Ridge and the debauched place from which his wife comes. "Frontier decency" is on the verge, or in the process, of giving way to something "evil". Although, strictly speaking, to molt is merely to shed a layer of skin as it becomes to tight for a growing body, it is easily associated with pupation and the dramatic, if gradual, metamorphosis from one form to another. In other words, the girls and the town, though perhaps unaware, are in the process of losing innocence and acquiring sin. "Violence and hedonism crackle in their hair. They do not know this. They are only tense."

The fourth paragraph heightens the tension by emphasizing the violent potential of the environment with phrases like "The silence has its wounds", "Cars rip like knife blades down the seams" and "Pent, idle pockets of frail youth gather in shadows and the glare of lights". Whatever the intensions of the three girls, the idle youth, or the town itself, the narrator experiences stress in the face of potential. Bad things could happen, whether sinful or violent, and this distresses him. He is on his guard.

He is on his guard, but careful to appear unmoved, unassociated, unconnected. In the fifth paragraph, he walks "carelessly", "both eyes averted". But though avoiding overt contact with the girls, he is minutely sensitive to them as they "laugh" and "smile". He even tastes "the evil in their eyes".

Studious to avoid connection, he is accosted. One of the girls offers to sell him drugs. She calls him "man". He is offended by her familiarity, for he is old enough to be her father. He refers to his "clean living youthfulness", emphasizing through this reference and the one to his age the gap between him and and the girls. He represents righteousness and responsibility. They represent sin and irresponsibility.

His overt reaction and its rationale are established in the sixth paragraph. Just as he would ignore the trail-prowling, pack-robbing monkeys on Longevity Mountain, he ignores the evil-eyed, drug-dealing girls, lest they "attack".

The seventh paragraph underlines the extent of his effort to ignore the girls. The narrator makes every effort to appear unaffected by them, walking on "as if no offer had been made". He returns to the contrast between this place and the idyll of his youth: "We want no part of this creek. We will not [even] dip our feet [let alone dive head first] in this swimming hole."

The effort is doubly underlined in paragraph eight, where his hair "yearns to stand on end" but is denied that reaction in the narrator's concern to appear unaffected, though "malevolence claws at our backs" and "hatred pelts us". The violence and regretableness of the anger the narrator perceives are underscored by comparison with "the breaking of a star", once a source of light, now a source of destruction.

The tension reaches its apex in paragraph nine, where the same girl that offered him drugs now challenges his deliberate neglect: "You could at least look at me!" If you don't want my drugs, that's your choice, but don't act as if I don't exist. But for the narrator, the danger represented by this girl and her offer of drugs are too great. She would have "[torn] us piecemeal from our wife and child".

In paragraph ten, the narrator considers what he might see if he were to look at the girl. He would see a child who had not lived up to her parents hopes or her ancestors efforts. He would see a victim of "the heartless eddy sucking at us all", the danger of succumbing to sin, whose agent in his life the girl might be if he connected with her. It is because he is not completely immune to sin that he so fears those enmeshed in it.

The eleventh and concluding paragraph leaves us with an image of the girls as vampires, hapless victims, perhaps, but now to be feared and shunned. They lurk in shadows, hungry for blood, tormented by their state ("gnashing" has two meanings: to threaten and to suffer), afraid now to return to goodness, consigned to darkness by their sins and by the associations they have taken on, whether in reality or only in the narrator's mind. By the fact that he tells the story at all, we can surmise that the narrator pities the girls and wishes he could connect with them. He ignores them to protect his world and his place in it, but in doing so reinforces the girls' world and their place in it. This he regrets, as should we all.

"Look at Me" reads more like a poem than like a story, even a short-short story. Its recurring iambic rhythms seem out of place in prose, as if Ray Bradbury had lapsed entirely, his crisp imagery and taut phrasing too much for scattered iambs to contain. Meanwhile, the intermittent stands of short, choppy sentences, intended to suggest the visceral and primal quality of the experience described may distract some readers from the tone and theme.

The verb molt in the third paragraph provides subtle foreshadowing of its echo the vampire image. Do not vampires change shape and shed their human skin when ready to feast?

"Look at Me" depicts a moment that most of us have experienced, that moment of decision to turn away from a fellow human being because he or she represented a threat to our decency, our reputation, our insolvency. It simultaneously commiserates and condemns, forcing us to remember and regret those moments of rejection, but offering no counsel for next time.

An inevitable, perhaps indispensable, silence falls in the night between people, but the silence has its wounds.

Perhaps the story should be renamed.

Rabid Reaction, Reasoned Response

Joseph Conlin, chief cook and bottle washer at SNReview, very graciously took the time to respond to my post "Rapid Rejection, Rabid Reaction". I will reprint and respond to his comment below, but I'd first like to make it very clear to him and everybody else who happens on this entry that I really do appreciate his taking the time to put a word in. He is no doubt a very busy man and could, if he wasn't careful, end up in a storm of correspondence with disgruntled neophytes like me.

Mr. Conlin writes:

Having received more than my share of rejection letters, I am at a loss as to what to write. When I write, “Your story does not suit our needs at this time,” I mean precisely what the words say.

When reviewing a manuscript, I confront two issues: one, the manuscript; the second, myself. When judging a manuscript, I first react to the craft of the writing and then to the art. The second half is admittedly subjective. In the history of writing, more than one accomplished writer has been rejected for artistic reasons, and time has proven the editor wrong. The second confrontation is with my limits as an individual. When sitting and reading 30, 40, 50 short stories, the mind becomes blurry. So is it possible that I might reject a perfectly well-written, artistic short story? Unfortunately, it is.

The process has its limitations. No one has improved upon it in years.

For any offense, I apologize.

Joseph Conlin

Now, that's about as nice as you could get without actually retracting the rejection. I'm not sure what it says about his reaction to the story I sent him, although it does seem to confirm my suspicion that he didn't dig it that much. He explains that he reacts to the craft and the art and concedes that "[i]n the history of writing, more than one accomplished writer has been rejected for artistic reasons". Call me a lawyer, but that sounds to me like "You suck". Well, maybe just "Your story sucks". And that's okay!!!!! Maybe it does suck. Heck, maybe I suck. An indication that an editor objected to a story on grounds of craft or art gives the author the go-ahead to dredge through the piece and haul up both his faults and his fine points, to discover what it is that makes him who he is, that makes him write the way he writes about what he writes about.

Mr. Conlin apologizes for any offense. That's, again, very gracious, but entirely unnecessary. No offense was taken or meant. I apologize, by the way, if any was taken or suspected on his part. You see, I too love literature (quite a broad spectrum of it) and I'm just as concerned to uphold the quality and variety of it as I imagine he is. So if he thinks my story isn't up to snuff, I thank him for saying so. The opinion of an editor of some experience goes a long way with me.

I wonder what he'll make of the poems I sent.

To spare Mr. Conlin and others of his trade the drudgery of reading manuscripts by me that don't suit present needs, I'm working on a sort of matrix to assist profiling of authors, magazines, journals, contests and publishers. Using this tool, I (and the general writing public, if so inclined) should be able to find tight fits for our work and save everybody concerned a lot of time, money and eye sweat. Since I've become somewhat better acquainted with Mr. Conlin and his journal, I shall be focusing on SNReview during preliminary development. I shall be sharing my findings here. I hope Mr. Conlin and his authors will not take my observations as insults. Once finished with Mr. Conlin's publication, I shall move on to other online offerings. I, too, am a busy boy, so this may take some time, perhaps months or more.

Looking for Trouble

So I've been showing "Look at Me" around. Had a couple of colleagues read it. Had a few students read it.

Two of the students thought it was weird. Senior high school students. Males. One student asked a lot of vocabulary questions. Junior high school student. Female. One student said the style took getting used to, so the story should be in a set, and that the opening had led him to expect a longer and somewhat different story. Pharmaceutical chemist. Age close to fifty. Male.

Both colleagues said they liked it. They sounded sincere. They were able to discuss it at length, indicating that it certainly hadn't bored them: they were willing to spend some time on it. Mystery Colleague Number One, who took a break from Chinese study to look my story over, suggested the reference to Mount Longevity and its simian denizens needed support earlier in the story, that "where my wife comes from, where we live" in the second paragraph should be phrased more directly to something like "in Taiwan". He also felt that the sentences read a bit choppily. Age in mid-thirties. Male.

Mystery Colleague Number Two, who paused in his progress out the door after the last class to look my story over, suggested the "cinematic flashbacks" between Victoria and Taiwan needed clarification. Age in early fifties. Male.

My mother, who read it yesterday during an MSN chat, said it was well-written but dark, too dark for her tastes. No hope. No light. Ironic, since I originally planned to improve on reality by having the protagonist interact with the girls and bring some sort of redemption. I am not as pessimistic about human nature as some of my stories and poems may suggest.

I myself, after rereading it a few times, couldn't help feeling that it read a bit pretentiously, amateurishly.

Hmmm.

Back to the drawing board? I'm tempted to do a complete rewrite, treat the current version as a sort of pitch, a botched attempt but a successful bid, a storyboard version to be drawn on and drawn over.

I was doing a few things when I wrote that story. I was trying out a rare voice (first person plural for first person singular). I was attempting to encapsulate and elucidate a very brief moment. I was practicing flash fiction (478 words, I believe). Just a second. No, 458. Even better.

Here's the story. Check it out. Like it? Hate it? Think it needs work? Leave a comment. Much obliged.

Rapid Rejection, Rabid Reaction

So I sent "Look at Me" to SNReview. The editor responded in hours, for which I was grateful, with a slight variation on a form letter, for which I wasn't so grateful.

Thankyou for giving us the opportunity to read "Look at Us", but the story doesn't suit our needs at this time. Good luck with your writing.

I've seen that text before. Years ago I sent something to one of our church magazines (The New Era or The Ensign, can't remember which) and got pretty much the same set of words in response. So what was the next step? Well, for one thing, I wanted to know how the guy reacted to the story. Did he think it was crap? Did he like it all right, but know from experience that his readership wouldn't? Did he think it lacked something? There are all kinds of questions that could be asked about literary rejection. I decided to reject the rejection.

Thankyou for the prompt and craftily personalized reply, but the rejection notice does not suit my needs at this time.

I don't want my ego assuaged. If there are problems with my stories, I want to know. As an ESL/EFL/ELT instructor, I come up against rejection all the time. I can handle it. But I want to know why I was rejected. What did I do wrong? What didn't I do right? Gentle letdowns are polite but unhelpful. Hurt me. Make me cry. Help me see what I need to work on.

Back in 1998 my contract at Lineup Language School was not renewed. I was not performing to the director's or manager's satisfaction. I was working hard. I was putting in time. I was reading up. I was trying new things, but enough parents were unhappy, I guess, that it made more sense to let me go than to keep me around.

I cried, in a corner, about it. It was frustrating. I had just emerged from a five-year stint of shifting from pillar to post while Canada dealt with its recession. I had come to Taiwan in part as an economic refugee. I had been elated to get steady, reasonably well-paying work. Anybody with pink skin and a native accent could get a job teaching English here. What was wrong with me?

Once I got over the frustration, I reviewed the events. I still felt I'd been shafted, but I had to agree with the director when she said I was much better suited to teaching adults. Quite frankly, I hadn't been all that happy at Lineup, anyway. I didn't enjoy teaching the same basic stuff again and again. And I hated having to control my students. I had knowledge to share and I didn't want any guff about it. Heaven knows how I'd have fared doing it for more than a year.

So I accepted the situation and considered my options. One evening, looking out from my apartment over northern Kaohsiung, I thought to myself: I'm free now and I'm going to conquer this town.

I went round to all the adult schools I knew of: ELSI, Chingshan, Global Village. They were all interested. My then-girlfriend, who worked at a kid's cram school, passed on a recommendation from a teacher who had begun teaching adults and teens there: try TLI. I didn't feel much hope for some reason, but I walked in to check it out. They needed somebody right then and there. They took me.

Eight good years later, five of them as co-manager of the foreign language department, I'm ready to move on, but I'm sure glad I got rejected at Lineup.

The thing is, the director at Lineup told me why I didn't measure up. That little bit of painful but useful information helped me to reassess my goals and pursue a course I could follow. Why can't editors do the same for writers as that director did for an English teacher? Why can't they be just that little bit more specific, give you a rejection notice that helps you improve your writing or dig up something that does suit their needs at this time?

Don't worry. I know how to answer that. They're busy. I can only imagine how many manuscripts some of them get a day. And guys like Joseph Conlin at SNReview aren't getting paid to read manuscripts. They're contributing free of charge. They're sacrificing to do something they believe in for something they love. Good on 'em and more power to 'em.

Mainly it's the wording. "Does not suit our needs", "at this time", "good luck with your writing". It's dismissive in the way we dismiss sales pitches and engagement rings. Especially that last phrase: "Good luck with your writing". That phrase says to me, "You suck. Maybe somebody else will take you, but don't ask me to." Is that what is meant? Is that what they're thinking? I mean, if it really were a matter of not suiting needs at the present time, you'd think they'd stick in a hint or two, something like: "We don't publish short-shorts" or "Unflattering references to specific geographical points may make us liable for financial losses due to decreased tourist revenue". They could pop in a blurb about what they're "needs at this time" are. The phrase does suggest that their needs change, so scouring the guidelines and poring over back issues won't necessarily shed much light.

All right. All right. I know. I know. It's like that director said: "We expect our teachers to know what they're doing." Other writers get published. Their stories do suit the needs of the present time. My question is, is that all it comes down to? It's a nice car, but you need something bigger? My resume is impressive, but you need someone from a visible minority? Fair enough, but say so.

And if, as is always possible, no matter how famous you get, your story just sucks, it would be nice, on a transcendent plane, if people would just say so, even without going into detail. I would have preferred: Thanks but no thanks. Your story just isn't that good.

That I can work with.

I admit I didn't do my homework. Maybe that was obvious. Probably was. I absorbed the guidelines and read the first story in the latest issue. It all looked like it was in my league. I fired off a short-short, a piece of creative non-fiction, actually, based on an incident in Victoria, BC, three years ago. It dealt with one of my pet themes: moral rifts. A girl asks a guy if he wants drugs and the guy just ignores her because she represents a danger to him. She responds by demanding that he at least look at her. He does not comply, because she represents a danger to him.

Maybe it was too short. Maybe it was too geographical. Maybe it was too Canadian. Maybe it was too iambic. Maybe it was just dull. Maybe there's some element that makes a half-decent story and I'm just not getting it in there.

I haven't cried yet. Probably won't. I'm not angry, either. Why should I be? I haven't even paid my dues yet. I've been writing like mad, yeah, and I've had a few friends and family members look over some of my stuff, sure, but yesterday's submission was the first in a coon's age and only the third, fourth or fifth in history. Let's see: there was that church magazine, a contest in grade nine, a contest while I was in Kiev, the time my dad took me down to talk with George Bickerstaff at Bookcraft about my epic poem (Sandalstone, I think) based on the story of the stripling warriors in the Book of Mormon. That's four I can think of.

George Bickerstaff. He's probably gone now. He looked to be in his sixties back then, and that was twenty-five years ago. I immortalized the incident in a song once: "Daddy Made Pancakes".

When I was seventeen I tried to write a book

And my daddy took me down to get it bound

The editor said he wouldn't even read it

But there was something more important that I found

My dad believes in me and he believes in someone else

He taught me how to pray and how to listen for myself

Good stuff, eh? It gets better.

Once there was a blizzard and Daddy had to drive

A long way home through a world of snow and ice

It was dark out, so I told the Lord

You gotta keep an eye on Daddy and a finger on the Ford

Sheesh. Good thing I was half joking about the style, though I really do love my Dad (and the Lord) and am grateful he took me down to Bookcraft.

This is part of what happened, as I recall it.

We walked into the office, which was surprisingly small, sort of cozy in an officy way, and my dad asked the receptionist if we could talk to the editor. She sent us right in. We sat down. I handed over the manuscript. George stood it up on a shelf. He advised me to start my career with short stories in magazines. We shook hands. As we were leaving, my dad asked George, "Are you actually going to read it?" George said, "No. We don't publish fiction based on scripture." We took the manuscript back.

Sometimes I think we should have left it. He might have tossed it in the trash (where it probably quite rightfully belonged). He might have given it to someone. He might have filed it and it might have turned up in the right hands later. Who knows? In those days people didn't have home computers, so everything was typed and one copy of a manuscript meant a heavy investment of time at the typewriter. If George wasn't going to read it, we weren't going to leave it.

That little incident was both instructive and discouraging. I kept writing. I couldn't help it. Might as well tell a thoroughbred not to run or an eagle not to fly. But I didn't feel very hopeful about getting published. That's never been the main idea, anyway. You don't breathe in the hope someone will come and put their head to your chest. You don't have children in the hope of conquering the world and founding a dynasty. It's like David Gilmour of Pink Floyd said about playing guitar: He loves to do it. He'd be doing it in bars if he didn't get to do it in stadiums.

So fine! If nobody wants to publish me, no problem. I like to write. It feels good to do it. I learn from doing it. It's one of my reactions to life. Pa ka pa la, as the Haitians used to say. Can't not be there. Gotta do it. Gotta breathe. Gotta eat. Gotta sleep. Gotta write.

But man do I want to get published! I want to make a living at writing. I want a project-oriented job with deadlines instead of office hours.

Back in grade nine I took an aptitude test. Recommended careers? Number one: minister. No go. No paid clergy in my church. Number two: writer. See?

So what's next? Well, keep writing. I've got about thirty stories on the go. I get ideas faster than I get time to work on them. Ship out a few more 'scripts. Collect a few more 'jections.

And figure out what it is the published authors are doing that I'm not. I like to analyze things. I'm pretty good at it. I should be able to develop a system.

Of course, SNReview is just one of many journals and magazines. Joseph Conlin is just one of many editors. Getting published is seven parts luck. The right publisher, the right editor, the right manuscript on the right day. It's the same in any business, especially show biz. You keep trying. You keep crying. You live and learn. Yada-yada.

One of my students is reading The Alchemist. It's one of those Richard Bach/Og Mandino affairs. Same size. About as useful. It pits your Personal Legend (dream and destiny) against an opposing mysterious force that appears negative but actually shows you the way to go to achieve your Personal Legend in a universe that conspires to help you. My student had difficulty understanding the concept, so I likened it to climbing a mountain or swimming upstream. The way you need to go to climb a mountain or swim upstream is the most difficult way. You can do both with your eyes closed, because resistance (gravity, current) is strongest in the direction of destination. I wasn't so sure about the universe conspiring to help you, although Personal Legend includes the notion of fated contribution. It's encouraging nonsense, but encouraging all the same.

It's my destiny to write and be read. It's my destiny to lead in that field. Not necessarily to be the best or greatest, but to lead at some level. Others have done it. I can do it, too. Blah-blah-blah.

So I got a rejection notice. It's electronic and I don't have a nail to spike it on, but I suppose my posthumous electronic literary museum could use it, so I'll keep it. And I'll keep the hundreds to follow. I will hammer at the door of journal after journal, magazine after magazine, publisher after publisher until I get in and my literary career gets going.

I'm ready now.

Here I come.

Traffic at Last

Well, that was nice. Two people I don't know and didn't beg actually looked at my blog. One of them is an editor. You can bet I lost no time sending off a story to the guy.

One guy bookmarked me on de.li.ci.ous. Much obliged.

My Genres

These days I write fiction in four genres: science-fiction, supernatural thrillers, mystery and dramatic realism.

I have written fantasy, and will probably write more down the road, but these days I gravitate toward science-fiction and the supernatural.

By dramatic realism I mean fiction set on this world in this universe with characters you could meet on the street and events that could happen in your kitchen–with this difference from plain realism: that something plausible but unusual happens. For example, in "Sky Burial" the son shoots his mother; in "Recyclables" an old man dies when he falls off  a rock face; in "In the Woods" a woman wakes up naked on a remote beach.

My sci-fi tends to focus on technological development (Three Ways to Profit from a Thing Called Time", "Nowhere Man"), cultural adaptations of or to technology ("Nose Job"), dependence on technology ("Sutler's Vale"), cultural differences ("Saaacriifice", "The Long-Shed Skin", "Let There Be Light"), social dementia (Jack Squaw, "Sutler's Vale") and a few other things I can't think of at the moment.

My realism, plain or dramatic, tends to deal with interpersonal stress ("Look at Me", "Sky Burial") and personal trauma ("Recyclables", "In the Woods").

The Day of the Triffids Meets The City of Gold and Lead and The Lotus-Eaters

Got a new piece going: "Since the Green Folk Came". What if alien plants invaded earth? And what if their mission was not domination, but peace on earth? And what if we didnt' appreciate that? What if peace really went against the grain?

Doesn't it?

The story is still in the works, so it's difficult to say much about it. It starts in the country. The country is becoming a favourite setting. "Sutler's Vale" (also still in the works) takes place entirely in the country.

One of the funnest things about writing stories set in fictional locales is making up names for places and features. We've got Perdon's Lake (which may become Lac la Perte) in "Sutler's Vale". There's Woody Ridge in "Since the Green Folk Came". There are High Mountain and Governor's Lodge in "Sky Burial". And there's Missing Creek in "Missing Creek" and "Tornado at Prophet's Lake".

A Clairvoyant Selfportrait of the Artist as a Published Author

Stephen R. Covey recommends this exercise: write your own obituary and live up to it.

The other day, after reading Ron Carlson's "The Tablecloth of Turin" in Robert Shapard and James Thomas's Sudden Fiction (Continued), I had the idea of describing a press conference for some sort of suddenly successful artist, probably an author. I decided to tell the story through one of the journalists. As I wrote, it made sense to present everyone in attendance as physically flawed. The artist, an author, has "tired eyes, formless cheeks and present but indadequate chin" and one of the journalists, a woman, has a torso that is "distressingly long" while another journalist, a man, is balding, "pudgy, poorly dressed, an eyesore and a brazen one".

I started out with the title "A Dream of Fortune", since I recognized that I was in fact daydreaming about my own success. Then the first question was asked, by the woman with the distressingly long torso, a question about the author's meteoric rise, to which the author replied that "The fate of meteors is not to be envied" and I added "The Fate of Meteors" to the title, after a forward slash. I thought "A Dream of Fortune/The Fate of Meteors" gave an intriguing hint of the story's contents and theme.

The press conference continued, taking on the characteristics of an interview, only three of the qestioners being identified, and only two of them described. The author spoke of his and his family's coping with his success, voicing for me my concerns about what to do with my current studies and career if I ever make it big enough in literature to have the option of doing nothing else but write. Then the narrator rose to ask a question.

This was where the story took an unexpected turn. Up to this point I had focused on the author, my "shadow" (when I read the story to a student, he said he could see my shadow in it). Suddenly, as has often happened, especially with female characters, in my stories, a minor character wrested the story from me and announced a larger and more interesting role for him- or herself than I had intended. The narrator asked, "What do you say of your critics, those who say your views are too conservative, that you are not sufficiently accepting of alternative lifestyles?"

This question did not come entirely out of the blue. Alternative lifestyles are of interest to me and I have begun writing or planning a few stories that involve them, but I did not begin this story with any notion of bringing them up.

The author's reply summed up my position fairly well, but then I was left with the curious matter of the narrator's internal response to the reply. Imagine my surprise when it came: "I am not satisfied. I suppose I can never be. I love his work–what I have seen of it, but I am wounded deeply by its undertones".

Wow! The narrator was gay! Granted, gender and sexual orientation are never stated and other readers may give the character a different gender and a different "alternative", but for me he was gay.

The story starts with the line "We are all assembled in ranks like a tray of chocolates". I nearly wrote "like a box of chocolates", but that phrase was taken and would have lent a droll tone that I didn't want. Besides, "a tray of chocolates" has a nice formality to it, an echo of the occasion. It also suggests that some other power than our own groups and orders us and puts us forth–and that all choices are in some measure ranked for us by circumstances.

The idea of choices is key in this tale. I knew it would be, in fact, I had already chosen the last line: "It's nice to have choices," he says. I had meant that in a very personal way. Like most people, I feel somewhat, well, boxed in by circumstances. I am not displeased with my lot as it has fallen (or been shaken) out, but I want more. I want more choices. I want to be able to choose to keep teaching, not forced to teach.

That was how I understood the line when I began writing, but by the time the time came to use the line, it had taken on a new meaning. Sexual orientation is also a choice, one that has become increasinlgy varied and ever more widely available. The author clearly intends his choices of career, but the story suggests choices of all kinds, especially of "lifestyle".

The experience of writing "A Dream of Fortune/The Fate of Meteors" was somewhat akin to the experience of writing "Into the Fire". The narrator and protagonist of "Into the Fire" is a woman. She was originally a minor, nay, a marginal character in "Auld Lang Syne". There was more to the background of "Auld Lang Syne" than "Auld Lang Syne" could handle, so I opted to write an offshoot, the story from the wife's perspective. That meant trying to think like a woman, like a wife and mother. It was revealing. I have learned a lot ("Into the Fire" is still on the desk). I think my relationship with my wife has improved greatly because of my new perspective on her lot.

As the author says of his career choices, sexual orientation is "a tricky issue with many perspectives to be considered". One of the issues is that "we are not all the same in terms of what makes us happy or in the degrees or tones of happiness we seek".

I enjoyed writing it and have enjoyed thinking about it. I hope you enjoy reading it and thinking about it.

People and Problems

I do this exercise with writing students. I ask them what two things all stories have. They usually guess setting, details. I develop "stories" with setting and details that do not feel like stories.

All stories have people and problems: characters we care about, problems we relate to.

That's all you need, but you need them both.