After finishing In The Land of White Death, I next read Resolute, a book centered around the search for the Northwest Passage (a supposed short-cut through the Arctic) that consumed so much, time, energy, and ultimately, lives in the early and middle ninteenth century. Much of the exploration done in that region was a by-product of rescue expeditions sent looking for Sir John Franklin, whose two ships, the Erebus and the Terror were lost there (most likely in 1846). Some were earnestly looking for Franklin, though some were undoubtedly only using Franklin as an excuse to raise the necessary funds to go exploring on their own.
Having completed the book Resolute, I have now started Ninety Degrees North, which, by happy coincidence, begins with the last of the so-called Frankin rescue expeditions and continues into the early twentieth century to cover men like Amundsen and Peary and the quest to become the first to the North Pole.
I find it interesting that there are variations in the details of the overlapping stories between the two books, though on reflection it is not at all surprising. Each expedition often resulted in the publication of journals written by several of the participants, and these journals were frequently at significant odds with each other. Who the historians chose to believe as they researched their own books goes a long way toward explaining the differences in the details (though not necessarily the differences in spelling of the names of some of the characters involved).
On the whole, these Polar explorers continue to fascinate me. They really were the astronauts of their day. And to echo what Rob Sawyer said on the way to dinner one night at ChattaCon, the research you do before writing a novel is not only necessary, it's a heck of a lot of fun.
In between Polar readings I am also doing some sporadic reading of a short story collection titled Beyond Armageddon. I will confess (take note, IGMS contributors) that I have a real penchant for post-apocalyptic stories, and this collection, published in 1985, contains many of the standards ("There Will Come Soft Rains" by Bradbury and "A Boy and His Dog" by Ellison), as well as a few that are new to me. I have to admit that part of the reason I picked it up was that it was assembled by Walter Miller Jr., author of the famous Canticle for Leibowitz. Unfortunately I found his lengthy introduction to the book, as well as his briefer introductions to the individual stories, to be rambling, preachy and obtuse. This, I suppose, explains why haven't dived more wholeheartedly into it, but only poke at it every now and then.
I've also been nibbling on a tome called Dear Scott, Dear Max, which is a collection of letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor at Scribner, Maxwell Perkins. I've always been a big fan of Fitzgerald and read anything by or about him that I can find. But this collection of letters is also a fascinating insight into the mind of Perkins, who was not only Fitzgerald's editor, but also that of Ernest Hemingway, Thoman Wolfe, and several other major literary figures of that era. There are lots of books out there about/for writing, but not nearly as much about editing, so I am enjoying this book from both sides of the equation.
And speaking of reading and editing, I am also busy reading again for IGMS. For a variety of reason the slush reading had to be put on hold for a little while. I needed to get certain info and input from OSC, and was having a devil of a time catching up with him. But those matters have (finally) been resolved and it's full steam ahead again.
So what are you reading these days?
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
In The Land of White Death
I've always had a passing interest in literature about polar exploration, but when I had an idea for a novel set at the North Pole I started reading everything I could get my hands on regarding both Poles. A few have been mildly disappointing, but for the most part I have to say I am enjoying these books tremendously. Some of the best I've read so far are Ice Master, The Doomed 1913 Voyage of The Karluk by Jennifer Niven and In The Land of White Death by Valerian Albanov.
The latter I just finished today and it proved to be a most compelling story. Originally published in Russia in 1917 (Albanov was Russian), it is the firsthand account of Albanov's abandoment of the ship, Saint Anna, in 1914 along with 12 other crewman . The Saint Anna had been frozen in the Arctic almost due north of the Franz Josef archipelago for more than a year and a half, and Albanov and aproximately half the ship's crew decided they would rather take their chances on foot than waste another year hoping the shifting ice would spit the ship into open ocean before it crushed it (as happened so often to ships frozen in the ice - most famously with Shackleton's ship, Endurance, as well as the Karluk in the aforementioned book by by Niven)).
The main differences between Albanov's story and the others is that Shackleton eventually got all his men home alive, and the Karluk's captain, Robert Bartlett, got over half his men home alive, while Valerian Albanov, the navigator on the Saint Anna, was one of only two survivors of his expedition. Also, his book is told entirely in his words, as opposed to most other books of this kind which are told by historians after the fact. It does start out a little slowly, but by time I got to the end I found myself wishing someone would hurry up and a make a movie based on this book. It was an amazing tale, amazingly well told (especially when you consider who it was written by and under what circumstances). Albanov's descriptions are conscise and precise and created such a vivid picture of the scenery and events that I can still see it in my mind.
And the story behind the story (you know how I love those) is interesting too. The book was originally published in 1917, then translated into French in 1928. But that was as far as it ever went. It was overlooked, lost, forgotten. But in 1998 it was rediscovered and eventually published in English for the first (in 2000). So as familiar as some stories of polar exploration are, here is an amazing one that has been lost until just recently, and I would highly recommend it to any one.
In The Land of White Death by Valerian Albanov. Go read it. Now.
The latter I just finished today and it proved to be a most compelling story. Originally published in Russia in 1917 (Albanov was Russian), it is the firsthand account of Albanov's abandoment of the ship, Saint Anna, in 1914 along with 12 other crewman . The Saint Anna had been frozen in the Arctic almost due north of the Franz Josef archipelago for more than a year and a half, and Albanov and aproximately half the ship's crew decided they would rather take their chances on foot than waste another year hoping the shifting ice would spit the ship into open ocean before it crushed it (as happened so often to ships frozen in the ice - most famously with Shackleton's ship, Endurance, as well as the Karluk in the aforementioned book by by Niven)).
The main differences between Albanov's story and the others is that Shackleton eventually got all his men home alive, and the Karluk's captain, Robert Bartlett, got over half his men home alive, while Valerian Albanov, the navigator on the Saint Anna, was one of only two survivors of his expedition. Also, his book is told entirely in his words, as opposed to most other books of this kind which are told by historians after the fact. It does start out a little slowly, but by time I got to the end I found myself wishing someone would hurry up and a make a movie based on this book. It was an amazing tale, amazingly well told (especially when you consider who it was written by and under what circumstances). Albanov's descriptions are conscise and precise and created such a vivid picture of the scenery and events that I can still see it in my mind.
And the story behind the story (you know how I love those) is interesting too. The book was originally published in 1917, then translated into French in 1928. But that was as far as it ever went. It was overlooked, lost, forgotten. But in 1998 it was rediscovered and eventually published in English for the first (in 2000). So as familiar as some stories of polar exploration are, here is an amazing one that has been lost until just recently, and I would highly recommend it to any one.
In The Land of White Death by Valerian Albanov. Go read it. Now.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
"Approaching Zero" - by Kelly Parks
I love Alternate History stories but it started bothering me the way they all focused on alternate outcomes for recent human history. All of human existence on Earth is a brief instant compared to the age of Earth itself. What about some alternate outcomes in the deep past? Wouldn’t the multiverse of all alternate histories consist mostly of those alternatives? Places where the Snowball Earth era never ended or where the collision with a Mars sized body (that created the moon and stripped the early Earth of most of its volatiles) never happened.
That line of thought lead me to the conclusion that alternate histories where the south won the civil war or Rome never fell might be very hard to find among the many alternate universes where humanity never evolved at all.
Kelly Parks
That line of thought lead me to the conclusion that alternate histories where the south won the civil war or Rome never fell might be very hard to find among the many alternate universes where humanity never evolved at all.
Kelly Parks
Thursday, March 22, 2007
"Call Me Mr. Positive" - by Tom Barlow
Oops, missed one. (Sorry, Tom. Blame it on the jetlag...)
The title started as a bit of irony, since I'm definitely a half-empty-glass type of person, a half-empty glass that I suspect one of my cats has been repeatedly dunking her paw into when I wasn't paying attention.
The story itself probably harkens back to my first viewing of "2001: A Space Odyssey." I was struck, in the first scene where one of the astronauts is running laps around the outside wall of the space ship, by the loneliness of their situation. Death is always nearby in space travel (except perhaps for Keir Dullea), but death is a short-lived inconvenience. Loneliness is an every-day, every-moment pain.
Humans are pack animals, after all, and when we lose our pack we lose the context in which we are defined. In addition, with FTL travel, relativity takes away from the travelers the loved ones they leave behind on Earth. Therefore, the traveler's adopted pack shrinks to those with whom he explores.
Take even that away, and he is left with only himself as company. For some of us, especially we half-glassers, that prospect is more terrifying that any mere vacuum.
The title started as a bit of irony, since I'm definitely a half-empty-glass type of person, a half-empty glass that I suspect one of my cats has been repeatedly dunking her paw into when I wasn't paying attention.
The story itself probably harkens back to my first viewing of "2001: A Space Odyssey." I was struck, in the first scene where one of the astronauts is running laps around the outside wall of the space ship, by the loneliness of their situation. Death is always nearby in space travel (except perhaps for Keir Dullea), but death is a short-lived inconvenience. Loneliness is an every-day, every-moment pain.
Humans are pack animals, after all, and when we lose our pack we lose the context in which we are defined. In addition, with FTL travel, relativity takes away from the travelers the loved ones they leave behind on Earth. Therefore, the traveler's adopted pack shrinks to those with whom he explores.
Take even that away, and he is left with only himself as company. For some of us, especially we half-glassers, that prospect is more terrifying that any mere vacuum.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Rewrite Requests
I got the following question in my e-mail a little while back and thought it and the subsequent answer might be of interest:
Q: "I was curious about something...when you look at response times on various sites (such as Duotrope), one of the potential responses is "Rewrite request." I've never gotten one of those, even when the rejection included "We liked this, but..." and followed with a thing or two that would be relatively simple to fix. I'm not saying that I should have gotten such a request. There may have been more wrong with the story than I thought or they said. But I am curious -- what makes a story worth asking for changes in vs. just letting it go? How do you (as a writer) know if it's really a simple fix or the story has fatal flaws?"
My answer (now slightly edited and expanded) was:
There are two kinds of rewrites I deal with, one more serious than the other. The more serious of the two amounts to - Hey, I like this story, and if you will fix A, B and C to these specifications, then I'll buy the story. The other kind of rewrite request is more along the lines of - Hey, this has potential, and if you'd consider reworking these areas or developing this, that, or the other a bit more, I'd be willing to look at it again.
I try to make a point, also, of telling authors that any decision to rewrite is ultimately in their hands, and if they disagree with what I'm suggesting they should feel free to say "No thanks, I like my story the way it is." And there have been one or two stories that I probably would have bought anyway. In fact, I can think of one story where the author said "No thanks" and I did buy it anyway.
On the other hand, I can also think of one particular writer who kicked and screamed through the whole revision process, but he did it anyway. And when all was said and done he publicly acknowledged that the story was better for the work we did on it. My job is a delicate balancing act of trying to make every story I publish be the best that it can be, yet to do so without taking over or being heavy-handed about it. These aren't my stories; they belong to the people who created them.
Of course, I just realized that I haven't answered your original question about what makes a story worth asking for changes vs. just letting it go. And to be blunt, the answer probably isn't any more complicated than this (usually): the closer a story is to being publishable, the more likely I am to ask for a rewrite.
There are, of course, always exceptions. Every once and a while I'll see a story and happen to particularly like the voice that author has captured (which is one of the harder things to do well), and I'll work through several rounds of revision with them to bring the story up to par. That's a LOT of work though, so I'm pretty selective about when I do that.
On the other hand, there are some authors I have enough experience with that I know what they are capable of and trust them to do a good job. Eric James Stone and Brad Beaulieu are two who come to mind. I don't have to say more than: Can you give me a little bit more of X, or; Please refine Y a bit, and they've come back to me with levels of work far beyond what I thought I was asking for, so that makes it a lot easier for me to ask for revisions again in the future.
The bottom line is that a rewrite request is serious business. I won't waste an author's time or my own with one unless I believe it will result in publishable work that I will want to buy and IGMS readers will want to read.
But that's how I, as an editor, decide whether or not to ask for a rewrite. And the original question was how does a writer know if the story has fatal flaws or not. I'd say there you simply have to trust your own instincts. Robert Heinlein is famous for saying that you should never rewrite except to editorial order - from an editor who is prepared to buy the work. (All five of Heinlein's rules are available in a variety of places, including Rob Sawyer's web-site: http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm).
Personally speaking, several years ago I got the most scathing rejection I've ever received (from an editor I will refrain from naming) on a story I wrote titled, "Jeannie In A Bottle." The editor in question actually took the time to handwrite a note telling me the story was, among other things, "boring and predictable." I disagreed with him, so I stuck it in a new envelope and sent it to Gary Fry, editor of the British magazine Fusing Horizons. Same exact story. Didn't change a word. And Gary not only bought the story, he called it (forgive me if this sounds like bragging, but these are his exact words) "dazzlingly original, just the kind of thing I'm looking to publish." The point is, I believed it was a good story and trusted my instincts, and I'm (obviously) glad I did. It's vitally important to remember that all editors do not have the same tastes, interests, or needs.
Conversely, I've also had a few stories that were rejected several times and after I had enough distance from them, I was able to look at them objectively and say that they would never be published without major rewrites and so I abandoned them. So I guess the real answer is that if you do this long enough, you'll just know.
How's that for helpful?
Q: "I was curious about something...when you look at response times on various sites (such as Duotrope), one of the potential responses is "Rewrite request." I've never gotten one of those, even when the rejection included "We liked this, but..." and followed with a thing or two that would be relatively simple to fix. I'm not saying that I should have gotten such a request. There may have been more wrong with the story than I thought or they said. But I am curious -- what makes a story worth asking for changes in vs. just letting it go? How do you (as a writer) know if it's really a simple fix or the story has fatal flaws?"
My answer (now slightly edited and expanded) was:
There are two kinds of rewrites I deal with, one more serious than the other. The more serious of the two amounts to - Hey, I like this story, and if you will fix A, B and C to these specifications, then I'll buy the story. The other kind of rewrite request is more along the lines of - Hey, this has potential, and if you'd consider reworking these areas or developing this, that, or the other a bit more, I'd be willing to look at it again.
I try to make a point, also, of telling authors that any decision to rewrite is ultimately in their hands, and if they disagree with what I'm suggesting they should feel free to say "No thanks, I like my story the way it is." And there have been one or two stories that I probably would have bought anyway. In fact, I can think of one story where the author said "No thanks" and I did buy it anyway.
On the other hand, I can also think of one particular writer who kicked and screamed through the whole revision process, but he did it anyway. And when all was said and done he publicly acknowledged that the story was better for the work we did on it. My job is a delicate balancing act of trying to make every story I publish be the best that it can be, yet to do so without taking over or being heavy-handed about it. These aren't my stories; they belong to the people who created them.
Of course, I just realized that I haven't answered your original question about what makes a story worth asking for changes vs. just letting it go. And to be blunt, the answer probably isn't any more complicated than this (usually): the closer a story is to being publishable, the more likely I am to ask for a rewrite.
There are, of course, always exceptions. Every once and a while I'll see a story and happen to particularly like the voice that author has captured (which is one of the harder things to do well), and I'll work through several rounds of revision with them to bring the story up to par. That's a LOT of work though, so I'm pretty selective about when I do that.
On the other hand, there are some authors I have enough experience with that I know what they are capable of and trust them to do a good job. Eric James Stone and Brad Beaulieu are two who come to mind. I don't have to say more than: Can you give me a little bit more of X, or; Please refine Y a bit, and they've come back to me with levels of work far beyond what I thought I was asking for, so that makes it a lot easier for me to ask for revisions again in the future.
The bottom line is that a rewrite request is serious business. I won't waste an author's time or my own with one unless I believe it will result in publishable work that I will want to buy and IGMS readers will want to read.
But that's how I, as an editor, decide whether or not to ask for a rewrite. And the original question was how does a writer know if the story has fatal flaws or not. I'd say there you simply have to trust your own instincts. Robert Heinlein is famous for saying that you should never rewrite except to editorial order - from an editor who is prepared to buy the work. (All five of Heinlein's rules are available in a variety of places, including Rob Sawyer's web-site: http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm).
Personally speaking, several years ago I got the most scathing rejection I've ever received (from an editor I will refrain from naming) on a story I wrote titled, "Jeannie In A Bottle." The editor in question actually took the time to handwrite a note telling me the story was, among other things, "boring and predictable." I disagreed with him, so I stuck it in a new envelope and sent it to Gary Fry, editor of the British magazine Fusing Horizons. Same exact story. Didn't change a word. And Gary not only bought the story, he called it (forgive me if this sounds like bragging, but these are his exact words) "dazzlingly original, just the kind of thing I'm looking to publish." The point is, I believed it was a good story and trusted my instincts, and I'm (obviously) glad I did. It's vitally important to remember that all editors do not have the same tastes, interests, or needs.
Conversely, I've also had a few stories that were rejected several times and after I had enough distance from them, I was able to look at them objectively and say that they would never be published without major rewrites and so I abandoned them. So I guess the real answer is that if you do this long enough, you'll just know.
How's that for helpful?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
"Tabloid Reporter To The Stars" - by Eric James Stone
(Ed's note - I saved this one until the end because (as Eric mentions) the essay contains spoilers and I wanted to give people as much of a chance as possible to read the story first. If you have not read the story yet, do yourself a favor and read it before you read this.)
Warning! Includes plot spoilers for "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars."
In early 2004 I sold a story called "The Man Who Moved the Moon." It was a combination of some fairly hard science fiction with a fairly ridiculous premise, and to this day it remains one of my favorites. So, having succeeded with that rather strange combination, I decided to try it again in time for the next Writers of the Future Contest deadline.
So I wrote a first contact story, using some speculative exobiology for the hard science parts. For the ridiculous premise, I dredged up an idle thought I'd had years before about Elvis appearing to aliens.
But what made the story work for me was the narrator. Less than a year before I wrote the story, reporter Jayson Blair was fired by the New York Times for having fabricated stories, and that's what gave me the idea of a disgraced reporter looking to redeem himself. The narrative voice allowed me to inject self-deprecating humor into the story.
Having finished the story, I titled it "The First Ambassador" and sent it off to WOTF.
I was extremely happy when it was rejected seven days later. (Happy? Yes! The reason they rejected it was that I had become ineligible for the contest because my previous submission had just won second place in its quarter.)
Without the pressure of the contest deadline, I submitted the story to some of my usual critiquers. The feedback I got was generally positive, but some people had a real problem with the ending. As originally written, the revelation of the first ambassador's identity came in the last line of the story, which made it feel like a punchline.
In order to set up the punchline a little more, I changed the title to "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars," but that wasn't enough. The story got rejected several times.
When Orson Scott Card asked me if I had anything I could submit for the new online magazine he was starting (and let me tell you, being asked was one of the biggest compliments of my writing career), this story was one of four I sent for his consideration, along with "Taint of Treason" (IGMS issue 1) and "Salt of Judas" (IGMS issue 2).
After Ed Schubert took over as IGMS editor, he read the story and asked if I would rewrite the ending to make it less like a punchline. We had a good discussion about the story when we met at Dragon*Con, and over the next few weeks I wrote a new ending that kept the Elvis element but added a resolution to the conflict between the scientists.
And that's the story behind the story.
Warning! Includes plot spoilers for "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars."
In early 2004 I sold a story called "The Man Who Moved the Moon." It was a combination of some fairly hard science fiction with a fairly ridiculous premise, and to this day it remains one of my favorites. So, having succeeded with that rather strange combination, I decided to try it again in time for the next Writers of the Future Contest deadline.
So I wrote a first contact story, using some speculative exobiology for the hard science parts. For the ridiculous premise, I dredged up an idle thought I'd had years before about Elvis appearing to aliens.
But what made the story work for me was the narrator. Less than a year before I wrote the story, reporter Jayson Blair was fired by the New York Times for having fabricated stories, and that's what gave me the idea of a disgraced reporter looking to redeem himself. The narrative voice allowed me to inject self-deprecating humor into the story.
Having finished the story, I titled it "The First Ambassador" and sent it off to WOTF.
I was extremely happy when it was rejected seven days later. (Happy? Yes! The reason they rejected it was that I had become ineligible for the contest because my previous submission had just won second place in its quarter.)
Without the pressure of the contest deadline, I submitted the story to some of my usual critiquers. The feedback I got was generally positive, but some people had a real problem with the ending. As originally written, the revelation of the first ambassador's identity came in the last line of the story, which made it feel like a punchline.
In order to set up the punchline a little more, I changed the title to "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars," but that wasn't enough. The story got rejected several times.
When Orson Scott Card asked me if I had anything I could submit for the new online magazine he was starting (and let me tell you, being asked was one of the biggest compliments of my writing career), this story was one of four I sent for his consideration, along with "Taint of Treason" (IGMS issue 1) and "Salt of Judas" (IGMS issue 2).
After Ed Schubert took over as IGMS editor, he read the story and asked if I would rewrite the ending to make it less like a punchline. We had a good discussion about the story when we met at Dragon*Con, and over the next few weeks I wrote a new ending that kept the Elvis element but added a resolution to the conflict between the scientists.
And that's the story behind the story.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Prodigal Son Returns
Apologies to all for disappearing like that. I went to London and then southern Italy for a while and assumed I would have access to a computer every so often. I won't bore you with details, but that proved to not to be the case (not that I really, really tried all that hard, mind you....).
I'll get the next Story Behind The Story up tomorrow and then share trip details later on. And speaking of trips, one of the eight million e-mails I came home to was an invitation to come to BaltiCon in May, which I will most likely attend. Hope to see you there.
I'll get the next Story Behind The Story up tomorrow and then share trip details later on. And speaking of trips, one of the eight million e-mails I came home to was an invitation to come to BaltiCon in May, which I will most likely attend. Hope to see you there.
Monday, March 05, 2007
"Wisteria" - by Ada Milenkovic Brown
People who don't write are always asking writers where we get our ideas. My personal writing process is this: Stuff happens. I look at the stuff from a weird spec fictional angle and it makes me think of a setting, a character, a situation. I write that down. When three or four things I wrote down look like they should be together, I figure out a story idea that incorporates them, write an outline, and fill in the gaps.
In this case the stuff that happened was:
1) I was thinking about how my husband is kind of like my own personal Green Man. He loves to garden and has taken the one and a half acres we live on and turned it from a lawn with two skinny saplings on it to this lush grove of sycamores, magnolias, pecan trees, fig bushes, and grapevines. I think of our yard as a personal metaphor of our life together.
2) A relative of ours felt guilty that she hadn't known how close to death her husband was in his last hours and had not stayed late enough at the care facility to be with him when he died.
3) I was driving through Grimesland, NC, and thought about the potential metaphor of setting a story about a gardener in a town named after dirt. (Actually, Grimes was a civil war general, but hey, this is fiction.)
My husband had recently put in a wisteria arbor in the yard, and I liked the Southern moodiness of the word wisteria, which conjures up other words like mysterious, hysteria, wistfulness, whispering. So I thought up a story idea about a woman married to a gardener, a woman who feels guilty that she wasn't with him when he died. She sees a Green Man sculpture and then begins to see her husband's face in the leaves of their wisteria gazebo.
Because I live in NC, I often write stories with Southern settings. The South has gothic and folklore elements that lend themselves well to fantasy. Since I was hoping to learn more about writing southern fantasy from Andy Duncan at Clarion West, I chose to write "Wisteria" his week, because it was my one southern idea. I got some additional feedback from Nisi Shawl, who was helping out at the workshop that week. She suggested using an African version of the Green Man in it, since I had made the protagonist African-American. She sent me reference materials on African agricultural deities.
Reading "Wisteria" made one of the other students at the workshop cry. I hoped that was a good sign.
And that's about it. Oh, one more thing. When I submitted the story to IGMS, the wisteria on our arbor bloomed for the first time, even though it was several months out of season. I wondered if that was an omen that Ed was going to publish the story. And what do you know? It was. I guess the Green Man is really out there.
In this case the stuff that happened was:
1) I was thinking about how my husband is kind of like my own personal Green Man. He loves to garden and has taken the one and a half acres we live on and turned it from a lawn with two skinny saplings on it to this lush grove of sycamores, magnolias, pecan trees, fig bushes, and grapevines. I think of our yard as a personal metaphor of our life together.
2) A relative of ours felt guilty that she hadn't known how close to death her husband was in his last hours and had not stayed late enough at the care facility to be with him when he died.
3) I was driving through Grimesland, NC, and thought about the potential metaphor of setting a story about a gardener in a town named after dirt. (Actually, Grimes was a civil war general, but hey, this is fiction.)
My husband had recently put in a wisteria arbor in the yard, and I liked the Southern moodiness of the word wisteria, which conjures up other words like mysterious, hysteria, wistfulness, whispering. So I thought up a story idea about a woman married to a gardener, a woman who feels guilty that she wasn't with him when he died. She sees a Green Man sculpture and then begins to see her husband's face in the leaves of their wisteria gazebo.
Because I live in NC, I often write stories with Southern settings. The South has gothic and folklore elements that lend themselves well to fantasy. Since I was hoping to learn more about writing southern fantasy from Andy Duncan at Clarion West, I chose to write "Wisteria" his week, because it was my one southern idea. I got some additional feedback from Nisi Shawl, who was helping out at the workshop that week. She suggested using an African version of the Green Man in it, since I had made the protagonist African-American. She sent me reference materials on African agricultural deities.
Reading "Wisteria" made one of the other students at the workshop cry. I hoped that was a good sign.
And that's about it. Oh, one more thing. When I submitted the story to IGMS, the wisteria on our arbor bloomed for the first time, even though it was several months out of season. I wondered if that was an omen that Ed was going to publish the story. And what do you know? It was. I guess the Green Man is really out there.
Friday, March 02, 2007
"Miniature" - by Peter Friend
In 2005, Orson Scott Card came over to Wellington to run a two-day writing workshop immediately before iCon, the New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention, and I was lucky enough to attend. Our overnight writing exercise forced us out onto the streets to look for story ideas, and my writing partner and I found ourselves interviewing an elderly train enthusiast at the library. Oddly, he didn't seem all that interested in trains in general, yet at the same time clearly felt strong emotional links to trains he remembered.
As a science fiction writer, this struck me as a charmingly human foible, ideal to confuse any visiting alien anthropologists. As a model maker, the idea of model trains appealed - both more practical to write about than real trains, of which I knew little, and of course model trains are themselves symbols of real trains. Now I had a theme going. A story about symbols, miscommunication and misunderstanding. Perhaps a comedy.
But as I lay in bed that night, thinking about a possible plot (I do much of my best writing half-asleep at midnight), I realized I wanted more than two bewildered sentient creatures arguing with each other. Sure, we use things around us as symbols, as links to other things. But is that really so uniquely human? After all, Pavlov's famous dog understood perfectly well that a bell wasn't edible, merely a symbol of an expected actual meal. Why shouldn't aliens understand symbols too? Perhaps even better than we do.
By the time I woke up, I had a much deeper plot in mind - still with the alien anthropologist and the human interviewee, but now their misunderstandings were more subtle, and they had more in common than either realized. "Miniature" began there, as a hundred or so words scribbled on an index card during breakfast.
The synopsis was well received by the other workshop attendees, but wasn't yet a story. I knew Tom was an old man, using his model railway to remember his wife, but nothing else about him. Where did he live? What was his personality? What was the alien like? How did it communicate? What should each say out loud, and what should they actually mean? Would the story include other humans, other aliens? What was the relationship between humanity and the visiting aliens? Would the story take place over weeks, days, or just a few minutes? And oh, the historical research - what sort of trains rolled along New Zealand's railway tracks in the 1960s?
A dozen rewrites and many months later, I was finished. Naturally IGMS had to be my first choice of market.
Trivia note on the railway station names - "pumahara" is the Maori word for "memory", and "paenga kore" means "infinity". Not that either Tom or the alien know that, but I think they'd both appreciate the irony…
As a science fiction writer, this struck me as a charmingly human foible, ideal to confuse any visiting alien anthropologists. As a model maker, the idea of model trains appealed - both more practical to write about than real trains, of which I knew little, and of course model trains are themselves symbols of real trains. Now I had a theme going. A story about symbols, miscommunication and misunderstanding. Perhaps a comedy.
But as I lay in bed that night, thinking about a possible plot (I do much of my best writing half-asleep at midnight), I realized I wanted more than two bewildered sentient creatures arguing with each other. Sure, we use things around us as symbols, as links to other things. But is that really so uniquely human? After all, Pavlov's famous dog understood perfectly well that a bell wasn't edible, merely a symbol of an expected actual meal. Why shouldn't aliens understand symbols too? Perhaps even better than we do.
By the time I woke up, I had a much deeper plot in mind - still with the alien anthropologist and the human interviewee, but now their misunderstandings were more subtle, and they had more in common than either realized. "Miniature" began there, as a hundred or so words scribbled on an index card during breakfast.
The synopsis was well received by the other workshop attendees, but wasn't yet a story. I knew Tom was an old man, using his model railway to remember his wife, but nothing else about him. Where did he live? What was his personality? What was the alien like? How did it communicate? What should each say out loud, and what should they actually mean? Would the story include other humans, other aliens? What was the relationship between humanity and the visiting aliens? Would the story take place over weeks, days, or just a few minutes? And oh, the historical research - what sort of trains rolled along New Zealand's railway tracks in the 1960s?
A dozen rewrites and many months later, I was finished. Naturally IGMS had to be my first choice of market.
Trivia note on the railway station names - "pumahara" is the Maori word for "memory", and "paenga kore" means "infinity". Not that either Tom or the alien know that, but I think they'd both appreciate the irony…
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
"The Moon-Eyed Stud" - by Justin Stanchfield
The seeds for the Moon-Eyed Stud struck me, not surprisingly, on horseback. Actually, a lot of the things I write come to me while riding. Maybe it’s the rhythm of the hooves or creaking leather that lulls the mind off to that place where ideas pile up, waiting to be born. Or maybe it’s simply being outside, away from the clutter and clamor of modern life, that frees the sub-conscious enough to let random thoughts flow into a more coherent form. Or, most likely, being in the saddle is just a good place to daydream.
For the record, I raise cattle for a living. Writing is just another of those bad habits I’ve picked up along the way. Part of my job - the best part, by far - is gathering the cattle in October and bringing them home from the high pastures along the Continental Divide where they summer. The day this story came to me was in the middle of a typical Montana autumn, cold enough in the morning that I wished I had worn a heavier coat, so hot by afternoon that a flannel shirt felt too warm. I was riding with a friend named Ron Russell, one of that dying breed that shows Hollywood cowboys up as the patent forgeries they are, a man who has spent the better part of his life working stock throughout the western states. The cattle we were after, half a dozen stragglers holding out above the snow line, had given a pretty good fight, leading us down some of the steepest, nastiest real estate in Beaverhead County, (Yes, I really do live in a county called Beaverhead) but by the time we reached the river bottom all involved, horses, cattle and humans alike, were thoroughly worn out. We stopped to tie our coats behind our saddles, and Ron pulled a folded bag of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers from his vest.
“Hang on second,” he said. “I’m going to twist a smoke.”
I must have had a strange look on my face, because he went on to explain that when he was a young man in Wyoming, some of the old timers referred to making cigarettes as ‘twisting a smoke.’ At that moment I was hit by the image of John Garret leaning against the wall of an abandoned livery stable, rolling Bull Durham tobacco with cold fingers in a place he thought of as Hell.
Of course, Garret didn’t have name at point, and the plot was more sketch than portrait, but the basic story was there. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of fate, that we are given certain tasks or lessons to face and if we avoid them in this life they might well hound us into the next. I knew this story would be about a man obsessed with breaking the horse that killed him, a feral stud with a pale blue eye. I also knew it would be about coming to terms with the fact that sometimes the hardest thing in the world is admitting you can’t do it alone. And, I knew it would be about friendship. Beyond that, things were nebulous. Some of the plot fell into place easily, while some of it came harder, much of the story not finished until the day it was accepted. (Thanks, Edmund, for the help with the final revisions!)
And, in the end I suppose, I wanted a chance to write about the afterlife. It’s always intrigued me that Heaven - or Hell - is not just some shining city in the clouds or a lake of fire, but something more personal, something tailored to the individual. I think all of us have wondered at one time or another what, if anything, lies beyond death. And I also think most of us have given at least some thought to their own vision of Heaven. Mine just happens to look like Montana.
For the record, I raise cattle for a living. Writing is just another of those bad habits I’ve picked up along the way. Part of my job - the best part, by far - is gathering the cattle in October and bringing them home from the high pastures along the Continental Divide where they summer. The day this story came to me was in the middle of a typical Montana autumn, cold enough in the morning that I wished I had worn a heavier coat, so hot by afternoon that a flannel shirt felt too warm. I was riding with a friend named Ron Russell, one of that dying breed that shows Hollywood cowboys up as the patent forgeries they are, a man who has spent the better part of his life working stock throughout the western states. The cattle we were after, half a dozen stragglers holding out above the snow line, had given a pretty good fight, leading us down some of the steepest, nastiest real estate in Beaverhead County, (Yes, I really do live in a county called Beaverhead) but by the time we reached the river bottom all involved, horses, cattle and humans alike, were thoroughly worn out. We stopped to tie our coats behind our saddles, and Ron pulled a folded bag of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers from his vest.
“Hang on second,” he said. “I’m going to twist a smoke.”
I must have had a strange look on my face, because he went on to explain that when he was a young man in Wyoming, some of the old timers referred to making cigarettes as ‘twisting a smoke.’ At that moment I was hit by the image of John Garret leaning against the wall of an abandoned livery stable, rolling Bull Durham tobacco with cold fingers in a place he thought of as Hell.
Of course, Garret didn’t have name at point, and the plot was more sketch than portrait, but the basic story was there. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of fate, that we are given certain tasks or lessons to face and if we avoid them in this life they might well hound us into the next. I knew this story would be about a man obsessed with breaking the horse that killed him, a feral stud with a pale blue eye. I also knew it would be about coming to terms with the fact that sometimes the hardest thing in the world is admitting you can’t do it alone. And, I knew it would be about friendship. Beyond that, things were nebulous. Some of the plot fell into place easily, while some of it came harder, much of the story not finished until the day it was accepted. (Thanks, Edmund, for the help with the final revisions!)
And, in the end I suppose, I wanted a chance to write about the afterlife. It’s always intrigued me that Heaven - or Hell - is not just some shining city in the clouds or a lake of fire, but something more personal, something tailored to the individual. I think all of us have wondered at one time or another what, if anything, lies beyond death. And I also think most of us have given at least some thought to their own vision of Heaven. Mine just happens to look like Montana.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
“Beats of Seven” - by Peter Orullian
The genesis of “Beats of Seven” is easy: It was an assignment.
A few years ago, I attended a writing workshop on the Oregon Coast—Lincoln City to be exact. One of the themes of the entire two-week boot camp was: Write fast and get out of your own way. The idea here, is that too many writers allow their critical voice to impede their creative voice, the result being greatly diminished productivity.
To that end, many of our assignments were given late in the day with an early next-morning deadline. Now, what I learned is that most writers can do in the area of 1000 words an hour. So, do the math. In three months, you should be able to write a novel. And that’s if you write just an hour a day, and you’re slow.
Anyway, on this particular short story assignment, I was also asked to do two things: use a sleepy, costal town like Lincoln City as my setting (part of the uber-assignment given to everyone); and work on “voice” (an exercise for me, in particular).
Each of the attending writers scurried out into the town to consider locations, gather details, look for inspiration. I hadn’t needed to do so; I’d seen my setting already.
A music store.
Which was perfect, since it got me to the second part of the story assignment: voice. For me, the easiest way into voice was to go straight to music. I’m a musician, and for those of you who are too, you’ve no need of an explanation here. For the rest of you, I’ll paraphrase by saying it involves things like timbre, phrasing, dynamics, note selection. All of which should be internalized and forgotten before you try to perform; just like studying the craft of writing, internalizing it, then allowing it to come out (subconsciously) through your fingers as you pound the keyboard.
Back to the music store. There is this great place in Lincoln City, right on Highway 1, that captured my imagination. I’d thought to myself on first seeing it: How does a music store thrive in such a small community? In point of fact, the place didn’t appear to be thriving much. Closer investigation led me to wonder if it was still in business at all. But amazingly, it had this whole large, dusty, neglected room of old pianos.
I was in heaven thinking of the possibilities for stories out of this corner of the world.
The other thing I should mention is that I’m taken with odd time signatures in music. It ain’t easy to dance to something written in 7/8 or 11/8, but I don’t dance much anyway.
All these things coalesced for me, as I imagined a sound engineer doing cheesy ocean-wave recordings (you see these in spas and new age shops all the time) because he can’t get another gig and is tired of the over-commercialization (and dilution) of Jazz music—think Kenny G.
Now, I just needed to write it all down.
I rushed to my room, which I simply must tell you about. This workshop on the coast was held in something of a writers warren. My room was about 7x10, and completely lined floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves (packed—no spaces—with books) save the door into the room and a door out the back of the large house.
No windows.
I loved it.
I imagined the worlds that rear door opened upon. That closed portal proved a wonderful leap point for stories as I sat in the dark, huddled over my laptop, typing like mad.
In about 3 hours I’d finished my story; it’s really rather short. But it felt complete, as it had allowed me to get to the heart of a few things. I was happy with the cadence and the character voices, too. Plus, I’d managed to underscore my own feelings about the power of music.
This second thing mostly came to me when I read the story back. And I recalled a conversation I had with David Morrell at World Horror 2000 in Denver years before. He and I spoke about the degree to which most writing is autobiographical in some sense. I can’t recount it all here, but since that conversation, I’ve been interested to look back on my writing (once its complete) and consider it anew.
The last bit of the back-story on “Beats of Seven” goes something like this. One of the writing instructors, Kris Rusch, at the two-week workshop read my story, and wrote simply at the top: Mail this!
I did no such thing, breaking one of Heinlein’s rules of writing—not to mention ignoring the advice of a successful fiction writer.
Then I happened to be interviewing Scott Card at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) a while back. We got talking about writing, he mentioned his new digital magazine, and I dug up “Beats” and sent it in.
The day before my birthday, I got a note from Edmund expressing interest in the story. Made my day!
A few years ago, I attended a writing workshop on the Oregon Coast—Lincoln City to be exact. One of the themes of the entire two-week boot camp was: Write fast and get out of your own way. The idea here, is that too many writers allow their critical voice to impede their creative voice, the result being greatly diminished productivity.
To that end, many of our assignments were given late in the day with an early next-morning deadline. Now, what I learned is that most writers can do in the area of 1000 words an hour. So, do the math. In three months, you should be able to write a novel. And that’s if you write just an hour a day, and you’re slow.
Anyway, on this particular short story assignment, I was also asked to do two things: use a sleepy, costal town like Lincoln City as my setting (part of the uber-assignment given to everyone); and work on “voice” (an exercise for me, in particular).
Each of the attending writers scurried out into the town to consider locations, gather details, look for inspiration. I hadn’t needed to do so; I’d seen my setting already.
A music store.
Which was perfect, since it got me to the second part of the story assignment: voice. For me, the easiest way into voice was to go straight to music. I’m a musician, and for those of you who are too, you’ve no need of an explanation here. For the rest of you, I’ll paraphrase by saying it involves things like timbre, phrasing, dynamics, note selection. All of which should be internalized and forgotten before you try to perform; just like studying the craft of writing, internalizing it, then allowing it to come out (subconsciously) through your fingers as you pound the keyboard.
Back to the music store. There is this great place in Lincoln City, right on Highway 1, that captured my imagination. I’d thought to myself on first seeing it: How does a music store thrive in such a small community? In point of fact, the place didn’t appear to be thriving much. Closer investigation led me to wonder if it was still in business at all. But amazingly, it had this whole large, dusty, neglected room of old pianos.
I was in heaven thinking of the possibilities for stories out of this corner of the world.
The other thing I should mention is that I’m taken with odd time signatures in music. It ain’t easy to dance to something written in 7/8 or 11/8, but I don’t dance much anyway.
All these things coalesced for me, as I imagined a sound engineer doing cheesy ocean-wave recordings (you see these in spas and new age shops all the time) because he can’t get another gig and is tired of the over-commercialization (and dilution) of Jazz music—think Kenny G.
Now, I just needed to write it all down.
I rushed to my room, which I simply must tell you about. This workshop on the coast was held in something of a writers warren. My room was about 7x10, and completely lined floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves (packed—no spaces—with books) save the door into the room and a door out the back of the large house.
No windows.
I loved it.
I imagined the worlds that rear door opened upon. That closed portal proved a wonderful leap point for stories as I sat in the dark, huddled over my laptop, typing like mad.
In about 3 hours I’d finished my story; it’s really rather short. But it felt complete, as it had allowed me to get to the heart of a few things. I was happy with the cadence and the character voices, too. Plus, I’d managed to underscore my own feelings about the power of music.
This second thing mostly came to me when I read the story back. And I recalled a conversation I had with David Morrell at World Horror 2000 in Denver years before. He and I spoke about the degree to which most writing is autobiographical in some sense. I can’t recount it all here, but since that conversation, I’ve been interested to look back on my writing (once its complete) and consider it anew.
The last bit of the back-story on “Beats of Seven” goes something like this. One of the writing instructors, Kris Rusch, at the two-week workshop read my story, and wrote simply at the top: Mail this!
I did no such thing, breaking one of Heinlein’s rules of writing—not to mention ignoring the advice of a successful fiction writer.
Then I happened to be interviewing Scott Card at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) a while back. We got talking about writing, he mentioned his new digital magazine, and I dug up “Beats” and sent it in.
The day before my birthday, I got a note from Edmund expressing interest in the story. Made my day!
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
IGMS Issue Four Is Live
Now available: Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Issue Four, featuring -
"Tabloid Reporter To The Stars" - by Eric James Stone
"Call Me Mr. Positive" - by Tom Barlow
"Wisteria" - by Ada Milenkovic Brown
"Beats Of Seven" - By Peter Orullian
"Moon-Eyed Stud" - by Justin Stanchfield
"Miniature" - by Peter Friend
"Approaching Zero" - by Kelly Parks
new YA stories by David Lubar
and, as always, a new Ender's Universe Story (in progress)
www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com
Next post here: more Stories Behind The Stories - Essays by authors in this issue about their story.
"Tabloid Reporter To The Stars" - by Eric James Stone
"Call Me Mr. Positive" - by Tom Barlow
"Wisteria" - by Ada Milenkovic Brown
"Beats Of Seven" - By Peter Orullian
"Moon-Eyed Stud" - by Justin Stanchfield
"Miniature" - by Peter Friend
"Approaching Zero" - by Kelly Parks
new YA stories by David Lubar
and, as always, a new Ender's Universe Story (in progress)
www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com
Next post here: more Stories Behind The Stories - Essays by authors in this issue about their story.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
From The POV Of An Elephant
After all the hullabaloo over my friend's blog entry about reading submissions last week, it gives me immense pleasure to tell you that the story written partially from the POV of an elephant (the whole story isn't written that way) is going to appear in issue six of IGMS. Apparently the reader read the entire story, judged it on its merits, and liked it enough to pass along to me. I agreed that it was an excellent story and am going to publish it. It's actually a very touching story.
So you see, it's possible to find humor in a concept and still be professional enough to judge a story on its merits.
I love a happy ending.
(And before anyone reads too much into that last statement, I also consider and publish stories that don't have happy endings, so don't get hung up on that... ;-) )
So you see, it's possible to find humor in a concept and still be professional enough to judge a story on its merits.
I love a happy ending.
(And before anyone reads too much into that last statement, I also consider and publish stories that don't have happy endings, so don't get hung up on that... ;-) )
Friday, February 16, 2007
Give Me The Klingons and Stormtroopers
I spent yesterday at a Women's Business Symposium and Luncheon sponsored by the other magazine I edit, NCCNM. It was a tremendously successful event, with our keynote luncheon speaker being North Carolina’s Lt. Governor, Beverly Perdue, who was wonderful. But I have to tell you, as much as some guys may think that the idea of spending the day with 200+ women sounds like fun, let me tell you it was a lot of work and definitely one of the... I don't know how to put it... one of the most "interesting" days I've spent in quite some time. I have more women friends than men friends and frankly I usually feel more comfortable talking with women. But that many of them?
Women are not treated the way they should be by far too many segments of our society. There’s no question about that. My wife was once offered a job at $12,000 dollars less than any man in the company doing the same job was making, so I've seen the inequities first hand. And as the father of two daughters, that causes me no small degree of concern.
But try being one of three men in a ballroom full of speakers using terms like "sheroes" instead of "heroes" and saying "you go, girl" and "my sisters" every five minutes. I felt like a puppy in a room full of alley cats and the best thing I could do was keep my back to the wall. Whooo-boy, what a day.
If you've ever been to a science fiction convention, you know there are some odd sights to be seen. People dress up in some pretty outrageous costumes, and say and do some pretty strange things. But you know what? After yesterday, I'll take the Klingons and stormtroopers every time...
Women are not treated the way they should be by far too many segments of our society. There’s no question about that. My wife was once offered a job at $12,000 dollars less than any man in the company doing the same job was making, so I've seen the inequities first hand. And as the father of two daughters, that causes me no small degree of concern.
But try being one of three men in a ballroom full of speakers using terms like "sheroes" instead of "heroes" and saying "you go, girl" and "my sisters" every five minutes. I felt like a puppy in a room full of alley cats and the best thing I could do was keep my back to the wall. Whooo-boy, what a day.
If you've ever been to a science fiction convention, you know there are some odd sights to be seen. People dress up in some pretty outrageous costumes, and say and do some pretty strange things. But you know what? After yesterday, I'll take the Klingons and stormtroopers every time...
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Viewpoints Sought
My decision on Feb. 12 to repost a friend’s blog entry has raised some interesting points, as well as a few hackles. But it also has raised my curiosity, so I’m going to take a chance by bringing the conversation up here again.
First and foremost, for the official record let me start by saying that I'm truly sorry that anyone was offended by the post in question, because clearly some people were. I try to be very careful about what I say and do as editor of IGMS, and mocking people would be wrong. If I thought for a minute that anyone would have taken it that way I would never have allowed it to go up in the first place. Anyone who writes a story - good or bad - puts their heart and soul into it, and I know and respect that. And it's imprtant that you know that about me.
The thing that I don't understand – and this is where I’ll happily open the floor to anyone who has a reasonable comment on this subject - is HOW saying that there were a lot of clone stories could be construed as mocking. How the factual statement that there was a story written from the point of view of an elephant is mocking. Yes, we laughed at the concept. It's a funny concept. But does it say anywhere in the blog that we rejected it because of that? No. If you can write a great story from the POV of an elephant, God bless you. If you can write a serous, poignant story from the POV of an elephant, that’s an even more impressive accomplishment. But it's still a funny concept.
And that, in my opinon, is the cux of the matter. Publicly laughing at concepts vs. publicly laughing at people. The latter is wrong and I don't think anyone would agrue in favor of it. But what about the former? At what point do we become so afraid of everyone and everything that there's no one left but a fve year old child to point out that the emporer is, indeed, naked?
Let me just conclude by saying that I am genuinely interested to hear your opinions. Do you think that public statements of this kind crosses a line, or do you see it as a humorous and potentially helpful insight into the editorial process (which is largely what I’m seeking to present with this blog).
There are no right or wrong answers; I just want to know what you think. Anyone who has thoughts on this is invited to sound off, and you’re welcome to do so anonymously if you feel more comfortable that way. The only thing I’ll require is that you keep it civil, and that you keep it about the issue, not any individual’s stance on that issue. (And no, if you have a story submitted here, a negative response is not going to count against you -- any more than a positive one is going to help get you published.)
First and foremost, for the official record let me start by saying that I'm truly sorry that anyone was offended by the post in question, because clearly some people were. I try to be very careful about what I say and do as editor of IGMS, and mocking people would be wrong. If I thought for a minute that anyone would have taken it that way I would never have allowed it to go up in the first place. Anyone who writes a story - good or bad - puts their heart and soul into it, and I know and respect that. And it's imprtant that you know that about me.
The thing that I don't understand – and this is where I’ll happily open the floor to anyone who has a reasonable comment on this subject - is HOW saying that there were a lot of clone stories could be construed as mocking. How the factual statement that there was a story written from the point of view of an elephant is mocking. Yes, we laughed at the concept. It's a funny concept. But does it say anywhere in the blog that we rejected it because of that? No. If you can write a great story from the POV of an elephant, God bless you. If you can write a serous, poignant story from the POV of an elephant, that’s an even more impressive accomplishment. But it's still a funny concept.
And that, in my opinon, is the cux of the matter. Publicly laughing at concepts vs. publicly laughing at people. The latter is wrong and I don't think anyone would agrue in favor of it. But what about the former? At what point do we become so afraid of everyone and everything that there's no one left but a fve year old child to point out that the emporer is, indeed, naked?
Let me just conclude by saying that I am genuinely interested to hear your opinions. Do you think that public statements of this kind crosses a line, or do you see it as a humorous and potentially helpful insight into the editorial process (which is largely what I’m seeking to present with this blog).
There are no right or wrong answers; I just want to know what you think. Anyone who has thoughts on this is invited to sound off, and you’re welcome to do so anonymously if you feel more comfortable that way. The only thing I’ll require is that you keep it civil, and that you keep it about the issue, not any individual’s stance on that issue. (And no, if you have a story submitted here, a negative response is not going to count against you -- any more than a positive one is going to help get you published.)
Monday, February 12, 2007
Story Reading & Borrowed Blogs
The following comes from the blog of a writer/editor friend of mine (she is, among other things, assistant editor for NCCNM, aka "that darn busniness magazine"). Her name is Dena Harris (http://blogsbydenaharris.squarespace.com/), and I recruited her to help me knock the IGMS submission pile down to a more manageable size. She is much a funnier writer than I'll ever be, which is but one of many reasons why I hate her. Every word she wrote about yesterday's adventures is true, except fr the sentence about "S'djme" which is made up to make a point.
A Writerly Afternoon by Dena Harris
I spent Sunday afternoon feeling very literary. A friend of mine who is the editor for an online Science Fiction/Fantasy magazine invited 6 writer friends to join him for an afternoon of reading and evaluating short story submissions to the magazine. (He's relatively new to the position and the magazine has a backlog of submissions--some writers have been waiting for over a year to hear a "yes" or "no" on whether their story has been accepted.) So he filled a room with pizza, beer, wine, lemonade, and dessert and we plopped ourselves around a table and read for 5 hours.
It was challenging as this was not slush-pile reading. (Slush pile reading is the first go through of the huge pile of collected manuscripts. It's called such because it's easy the first go around to eliminate a bunch of crap--or slush--based on little more than reading the first page, first paragraph, or for the really bad writers, the first sentence.) The stories we read yesterday had already made it through an assistant editor's hands so all of them had merit. The challenge was to separate the very good from just the good.
For the first hour or so the room was quite as we worked through the manuscripts, marking an "X" across ones we didn't feel measured up and assigning a value of 1-10 for the ones we thought should make it to the next round. After a while though, patterns started to emerge, and we couldn't help but giggle.
"Oh my God, this is my third clone story," exclaimed one reader (Mark Rainey, who edited the horror magazine DeathRealms for 10 years). "What's with all the clones?"
"This person just spent 3 paragraphs describing the color purple," said another. "Really, let it go and move on."
More silence. Someone made a funny noise and we all looked up. The reader looked at us. "This one is written from the point-of-view of an elephant," she said. We all agreed that should be an automatic go-through. (Kidding.)
Then there were the sentences we read aloud to amuse each other. A hazard of Sci-Fi or Fantasy writing is writers get carried away with unpronounceable character names and places. Inserting an apostrophe in place of vowels in a name is one favorite trick, such as "S'djme." As a writer in our group said, "They think anything with an apostrophe and a vaguly sounding Celtic name is going to get them thr0ugh." So there would be sentences that read, "S'djme rode the Vrturn, descendents of the noble Miturian Roskslors toward Ti-quothis, clutching the Namr'iste Alqutian in his fist." Huh?
My friend the editor grabbed a fresh story from the box, read a sentence and tossed it in the discard pile. "It was written in present tense," he explained and we all laughed.
I had a hard time with it. Out of the 12 or so stories I read yesterday, there were maybe 3-4 that were a clear "no" for me. I liked all the others and had a difficult time choosing. It came down to who had the best package. One story I liked quite a lot had a weak opening and horrible ending--but the middle was quite intriguing so I considered saving it. But in the end it would take so much editing to get it to work it probably wasn't worth the time. A lot of us felt like one woman in the group who placed a manuscript in the "no" box with a sigh and the comment, "I so wanted it to be good."
At the same time, out of all the stories I read, there was only 1 for me that stood out as an absolute, "YES! This one must go in!"
Even though there wasn't much talking during the day, it was fun to just be around writers and their energy for the afternoon. I need to do more of that. I've become a bit bored lately with writing and have been thinking I need to attend some conferences or workshops or just reinvolve myself with writers communities to stir up some energy.
Meanwhile, kudos to the writers who made it to the next round and for those who didn't, take heart. We still really liked your stories.
A Writerly Afternoon by Dena Harris
I spent Sunday afternoon feeling very literary. A friend of mine who is the editor for an online Science Fiction/Fantasy magazine invited 6 writer friends to join him for an afternoon of reading and evaluating short story submissions to the magazine. (He's relatively new to the position and the magazine has a backlog of submissions--some writers have been waiting for over a year to hear a "yes" or "no" on whether their story has been accepted.) So he filled a room with pizza, beer, wine, lemonade, and dessert and we plopped ourselves around a table and read for 5 hours.
It was challenging as this was not slush-pile reading. (Slush pile reading is the first go through of the huge pile of collected manuscripts. It's called such because it's easy the first go around to eliminate a bunch of crap--or slush--based on little more than reading the first page, first paragraph, or for the really bad writers, the first sentence.) The stories we read yesterday had already made it through an assistant editor's hands so all of them had merit. The challenge was to separate the very good from just the good.
For the first hour or so the room was quite as we worked through the manuscripts, marking an "X" across ones we didn't feel measured up and assigning a value of 1-10 for the ones we thought should make it to the next round. After a while though, patterns started to emerge, and we couldn't help but giggle.
"Oh my God, this is my third clone story," exclaimed one reader (Mark Rainey, who edited the horror magazine DeathRealms for 10 years). "What's with all the clones?"
"This person just spent 3 paragraphs describing the color purple," said another. "Really, let it go and move on."
More silence. Someone made a funny noise and we all looked up. The reader looked at us. "This one is written from the point-of-view of an elephant," she said. We all agreed that should be an automatic go-through. (Kidding.)
Then there were the sentences we read aloud to amuse each other. A hazard of Sci-Fi or Fantasy writing is writers get carried away with unpronounceable character names and places. Inserting an apostrophe in place of vowels in a name is one favorite trick, such as "S'djme." As a writer in our group said, "They think anything with an apostrophe and a vaguly sounding Celtic name is going to get them thr0ugh." So there would be sentences that read, "S'djme rode the Vrturn, descendents of the noble Miturian Roskslors toward Ti-quothis, clutching the Namr'iste Alqutian in his fist." Huh?
My friend the editor grabbed a fresh story from the box, read a sentence and tossed it in the discard pile. "It was written in present tense," he explained and we all laughed.
I had a hard time with it. Out of the 12 or so stories I read yesterday, there were maybe 3-4 that were a clear "no" for me. I liked all the others and had a difficult time choosing. It came down to who had the best package. One story I liked quite a lot had a weak opening and horrible ending--but the middle was quite intriguing so I considered saving it. But in the end it would take so much editing to get it to work it probably wasn't worth the time. A lot of us felt like one woman in the group who placed a manuscript in the "no" box with a sigh and the comment, "I so wanted it to be good."
At the same time, out of all the stories I read, there was only 1 for me that stood out as an absolute, "YES! This one must go in!"
Even though there wasn't much talking during the day, it was fun to just be around writers and their energy for the afternoon. I need to do more of that. I've become a bit bored lately with writing and have been thinking I need to attend some conferences or workshops or just reinvolve myself with writers communities to stir up some energy.
Meanwhile, kudos to the writers who made it to the next round and for those who didn't, take heart. We still really liked your stories.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Asimov's
Got a copy of Asimov's today (March 2007 issue), which has a brief write up about IGMS in James Patrick Kelley's column, "On The Net." It's just a cursory look, but it's nice to finally start getting noticed. The one thing I wish he had mentioned was that IGMS pays six cents a word for the stories we buy, so that puts us right up there with the other major markets. Kind of like the quality of the stories we publish...
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Bradbury
I was planning on coming back in here after my “Acceptance Letter” entry to post something (intended as) humorous, something along the lines of: “What do you mean that acceptance letter was discouraging? Why in the world would I try to discourage thousands of people from flooding IGMS with stories every year?” Etc. etc. Why, indeed.
But as I was re-reading Ray Bradbury’s essay (collected in the book by the same title), “Zen and The Art of Writing,” I was really struck with what Bradbury had to say. I agreed with him so wholeheartedly that I had to post part of it (very slightly trimmed down) here. Ignore my previous weak attempt at humor and heed a master:
“You have been working, haven’t you?
What kind of schedule?
You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you become comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done.
For I believe that that eventually quantity will make for quality.
How so?
Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits of incredible control and beauty.
A great surgeon dissects and re-dissects a thousand, ten-thousand bodies, tissues, organs, preparing thus by quantity for the time when quality will count – with a living creature under his knife.
An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards.
Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come.
Is the writer different? I think not.
Nothing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a lesson to be studied. There is no failure unless one stops.”
Let me repeat that. “There is no failure,” Bradbury says, “unless one stops.”
Truer words were never spoken.
But as I was re-reading Ray Bradbury’s essay (collected in the book by the same title), “Zen and The Art of Writing,” I was really struck with what Bradbury had to say. I agreed with him so wholeheartedly that I had to post part of it (very slightly trimmed down) here. Ignore my previous weak attempt at humor and heed a master:
“You have been working, haven’t you?
What kind of schedule?
You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you become comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done.
For I believe that that eventually quantity will make for quality.
How so?
Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits of incredible control and beauty.
A great surgeon dissects and re-dissects a thousand, ten-thousand bodies, tissues, organs, preparing thus by quantity for the time when quality will count – with a living creature under his knife.
An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards.
Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come.
Is the writer different? I think not.
Nothing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a lesson to be studied. There is no failure unless one stops.”
Let me repeat that. “There is no failure,” Bradbury says, “unless one stops.”
Truer words were never spoken.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Acceptance Letter
After my new rejection letter (posted here a week or two ago) I got a number of comments saying that while there are thousands of rejection letters going out, only a small handful of writers see acceptances, so it might be nice to share that letter, too. Fair enough. If you ever sell a story to IGMS, here's what you can expect:
Dear Exalted Author,
How can I thank you? How can I ever properly thank you for lifting my soul from the depths of the slush pile to such glorious heights as you did with your heart-wrenching yet insightful tale. It is art of the highest order and it is my pleasure to offer you this publishing contract.
As you review this contract, please note that clause 1.b does require world-wide and first North American print and electronic rights to your left arm, your second-born child, and your best friend from high school. Clause 6.a, refering to your "voluntary" contribution to my daughter's college fund, is set up in such a way that you can make six equal payments over the course of the next two years. However, if you miss a payment, interest and penalties will be back-calculated to your year of birth. And no, clause 7.c is not negotiable. Don't ask; just go to your grandmother's house and do it.
Thank you again for lifting my soul. I can not tell you how much I look forward to your next submission.
Editor Ed
P.S. Tune in next time for my new letter to subscribers whose subscriptions have lapsed.
Dear Exalted Author,
How can I thank you? How can I ever properly thank you for lifting my soul from the depths of the slush pile to such glorious heights as you did with your heart-wrenching yet insightful tale. It is art of the highest order and it is my pleasure to offer you this publishing contract.
As you review this contract, please note that clause 1.b does require world-wide and first North American print and electronic rights to your left arm, your second-born child, and your best friend from high school. Clause 6.a, refering to your "voluntary" contribution to my daughter's college fund, is set up in such a way that you can make six equal payments over the course of the next two years. However, if you miss a payment, interest and penalties will be back-calculated to your year of birth. And no, clause 7.c is not negotiable. Don't ask; just go to your grandmother's house and do it.
Thank you again for lifting my soul. I can not tell you how much I look forward to your next submission.
Editor Ed
P.S. Tune in next time for my new letter to subscribers whose subscriptions have lapsed.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Don't Bother Me, I'm Reading
Stories, stories, stories. They just keep rolling in. How to pick the twenty-eight I can actually buy and publish each year - that's the challenge. And our esteemed publisher, Mr. Card, tosses a story or two into the mix, too. Issue three of IGMS had an "Orson Picks," as will issue five. These are stories that through one means or another (usually OSC's Literary Boot Camp) end up in Uncle Orson's hands and he decides to publish them. Only one or two a year, but now I'm down to twenty-six stories to pick. From literally thousands. This should be easy, shouldn't it? All I can say is ojala, which a Spanish word my wife taught me years ago. It means, "Oh God, if only..."
However, seven of those stories are about to make their way to center stage. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the next issue of IGMS is going to be released in February. I expect it will be around the 19th, so there are still a few weeks to go, but I promise it will be worth the wait. These stories are just that - stories. No literary drivel that serves no purpose, but tales that are about something. Tales that will make you feel something, yet at the same time are just plain fun to read. Tales about characters who actually do something. And our authors have once again graciously provided a backstage peek into their creative process, so we'll also have more "Stories Behind The Stories" here on this blog again.
I don't know about you, but I'm excited. It's like Christmas, and Santa's bringing me stories.
(You'd think by now I'd have had my fill of stories, wouldn't you? I guess not.)
However, seven of those stories are about to make their way to center stage. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the next issue of IGMS is going to be released in February. I expect it will be around the 19th, so there are still a few weeks to go, but I promise it will be worth the wait. These stories are just that - stories. No literary drivel that serves no purpose, but tales that are about something. Tales that will make you feel something, yet at the same time are just plain fun to read. Tales about characters who actually do something. And our authors have once again graciously provided a backstage peek into their creative process, so we'll also have more "Stories Behind The Stories" here on this blog again.
I don't know about you, but I'm excited. It's like Christmas, and Santa's bringing me stories.
(You'd think by now I'd have had my fill of stories, wouldn't you? I guess not.)
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