Years ago, I read the view of an editor from a major journal who estimated that the vast majority of submissions are terrible. My experience leads me to a different conclusion.
Most journals are inundated with submissions and can only publish a fraction of what they receive, maybe 1/100. Many journals publish primarily work by established writers solicited by the editors, so the fraction of work coming in via the slush pile is even smaller, maybe 1/500. So does that mean the other 499 are terrible? Or even bad? Many of those are probably pretty good, but the editors did not rank them to be the best out of the stack of 500 they were considering.
When I began submitting, all my work earned form rejections. Then, as my writing got better, I slowly started getting some acceptances. Now I'm at a point where I still get more rejections than acceptances, but about as often as not I get personal rejections that say things like "this made our short list" or "our editors spent significant time discussing this essay, but . . ." or there's the old classic: "please consider us in the future." I take those personalized rejections as a very good sign that I'm on the right track with my writing. It means what I'm doing is good, very good even, but just not the 1/100 or 1/500 they want to publish in the next issue.
I recently served as a guest editor for Driftwood Press, a journal in its second year. They published a story of mine earlier this year and asked me to help with editorial duties this summer, going through the slush pile and picking a few submissions for consideration.
I was assigned fifty short stories, which broke down roughly like this:
1 was great. I voted yes, it should be highly considered for publication.
5 - 10 were in the maybe pile, good but not
quite right for the journal's aesthetics or maybe matching another
editor's tastes more than mine, so definitely worth having someone else offer a second opinion.
1 or 2 stories were withdrawn by their authors.
2 or 3 didn't meet submission guidelines.
20 - 30 featured some good writing but had some problem or other: they needed additional editing or relied on clichéd plot turns that experienced writers recognize and beginning writers don't. Basically, these stories were promising and with more work and experience, these writers will produce very good material, but these stories just aren't there yet.
Only 5 - 10 were bad, like full-of-typos-bad.
So here's my takeaway from this experience on the other side of the slush pile: there is a lot of good work out there. Being the one standout in the pile is hard. It means being absolutely polished with more interesting characters and plot elements and more resonant metaphors and sophisticated language use than all the surrounding pieces. You have to hit every note just right to be that one standout.
And even then, you never know. It could be the one story I selected will wind up rejected by the next editor who reads it. This journal gets hundreds of submissions but only publishes four to eight stories per issue (and again, some journals have worse odds than that). So it could happen that the next issue is published, and none of the fifty stories assigned to me are included. If that's the case, I hope the many good writers I read understand the rejection doesn't mean their stories were bad. A lot of them were good, but the odds are long. To them, I say, keep submitting. Keep writing. And please consider us again in the future!
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Learning Where You Fall on the Continuum
When I first began submitting my writing for publication, I had no concept of how good I was (or wasn't). I figured I might as well send that short story to The New Yorker because, hey, maybe I'm brilliant and will be discovered at age twenty-three. Then on to a bestselling novel!
I'm sure you can imagine what happened. I did not publish those early stories in The New Yorker or The Paris Review or anywhere else. I did work to learn what could make me better, however. I went to grad school and wrote three novels and a handful of short stories over the next few years.
Most of the stories never got very good (I'm pretty sure at this point I'm just not much of a short story writer). The first novel was a great learning experience, but by the time I finished it as my MA thesis, I knew it was simply that: a learning experience rather than something worth publishing. The second novel I thought was better than the first, and I've gone back and forth on it over the past seven years. Sometimes I think it's worth publishing, sometimes not. I spend months revising it again and then abandon it for years. That's the novel I revisited this summer and have decided to finally submit to small press contests.
I know that novel is not going to take the publishing world by storm. I know it's not going to attract an agent and a six-figure book deal at a major New York press. But I still think it's pretty good. I think other people would enjoy reading it. I can imagine a small press putting it out into the world. So I've submitted it to one contest and intend to try a few others over the next year or so.
My third novel is a departure from what I did before. My first two were written in grad school and were "literary" in the sense that they are not high-stakes, plot-driven stories. They are small, focused on characters, and hopefully sensitive to language and artfully written (especially with my latest revision). The other one is a fantasy story for kids. It's the book I had in the back of my mind ever since I was a kid reading that kind of book. My goal with it is to create something that I would have loved when I was ten.
Like my second novel, I've gone back and forth with the third. After the first draft, I abandoned it for years, figuring I don't know enough about the market or whatever to break into the world of children's books. I continued to focus on literary journals (and shifted my focus to nonfiction), which felt safer and more familiar to me. During that time, I managed to get published. And that third novel has mostly sat on my computer, remaining a rough draft.
But last year, I revisited it in the summer. I revised about half before getting busy with my day job as a university instructor. But I want to finish that revision (and additional revisions after that). I want to try to get this book into the world.
Here's what I know about myself as a writer and where I fall on the continuum of writers: I am decent enough to get some work published in some respectable (if not absolute top tier) journals. I am not about to win the Pulitzer or have something in The New Yorker. But I'm a better writer today than I was fifteen years ago when just starting out. I'm a better writer today than eight years ago when completing my MFA. And while I have high hopes for my second novel and the small press route, I have higher hopes that my third novel (once it's revised and polished) could break into the mainstream world of publishing.
It's sometimes tough to be honest with yourself about how good you really are. We writers tend to have both inflated egos and low self esteem. We think we're brilliant and terrible at alternate moments. But honest assessment is important.
I'm sure you can imagine what happened. I did not publish those early stories in The New Yorker or The Paris Review or anywhere else. I did work to learn what could make me better, however. I went to grad school and wrote three novels and a handful of short stories over the next few years.
Most of the stories never got very good (I'm pretty sure at this point I'm just not much of a short story writer). The first novel was a great learning experience, but by the time I finished it as my MA thesis, I knew it was simply that: a learning experience rather than something worth publishing. The second novel I thought was better than the first, and I've gone back and forth on it over the past seven years. Sometimes I think it's worth publishing, sometimes not. I spend months revising it again and then abandon it for years. That's the novel I revisited this summer and have decided to finally submit to small press contests.
I know that novel is not going to take the publishing world by storm. I know it's not going to attract an agent and a six-figure book deal at a major New York press. But I still think it's pretty good. I think other people would enjoy reading it. I can imagine a small press putting it out into the world. So I've submitted it to one contest and intend to try a few others over the next year or so.
My third novel is a departure from what I did before. My first two were written in grad school and were "literary" in the sense that they are not high-stakes, plot-driven stories. They are small, focused on characters, and hopefully sensitive to language and artfully written (especially with my latest revision). The other one is a fantasy story for kids. It's the book I had in the back of my mind ever since I was a kid reading that kind of book. My goal with it is to create something that I would have loved when I was ten.
Like my second novel, I've gone back and forth with the third. After the first draft, I abandoned it for years, figuring I don't know enough about the market or whatever to break into the world of children's books. I continued to focus on literary journals (and shifted my focus to nonfiction), which felt safer and more familiar to me. During that time, I managed to get published. And that third novel has mostly sat on my computer, remaining a rough draft.
But last year, I revisited it in the summer. I revised about half before getting busy with my day job as a university instructor. But I want to finish that revision (and additional revisions after that). I want to try to get this book into the world.
Here's what I know about myself as a writer and where I fall on the continuum of writers: I am decent enough to get some work published in some respectable (if not absolute top tier) journals. I am not about to win the Pulitzer or have something in The New Yorker. But I'm a better writer today than I was fifteen years ago when just starting out. I'm a better writer today than eight years ago when completing my MFA. And while I have high hopes for my second novel and the small press route, I have higher hopes that my third novel (once it's revised and polished) could break into the mainstream world of publishing.
It's sometimes tough to be honest with yourself about how good you really are. We writers tend to have both inflated egos and low self esteem. We think we're brilliant and terrible at alternate moments. But honest assessment is important.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Goal
I finished up my semester last week, and I have two weeks until I have to specifically do anything. At some point in that time, I need to plan for my summer classes, but basically I'm on vacation time, which means I have ample opportunity to get some serious progress done on a writing project or projects. As it happens, the piece that is at the forefront of my mind (which I wrote about last time) seems like the ideal piece to devote about two weeks to.
I think I might actually have a novella on my hands rather than just a short story. I wrote a rough draft last year that was in the ten page range. Then as I reworked it, it expanded, and I didn't finish a second draft because I realized the whole structure and approach needed reworking. So I've been outlining and structuring the whole thing, and I think it's going to be much longer than the initial short story. So I'm close to ready to begin writing what could be considered the third draft of the story or the first draft of the novella.
I've never written a novella before, so I don't know exactly how long it might take, but when I have so much time available to write, I should be able to get a significant amount done each day. The fastest pace I ever achieved was a couple years ago when I wrote a rough draft of a kids book in about three weeks. That was about 60,000 words, which is in the range of a novel rather than a novella. I'm guessing that this novella I'm writing now will be maybe in the 20,000 word range. So if I could write 60,000 words in three weeks, I should be able to write 20,000 in two weeks. That's less than 2,000 words a day, and 2,000 words a day isn't a crazy ambitious goal; I've often kept up that pace. And if I have a solid outline where I know where I'm going and how I want to proceed from sequence to sequence, I think the writing should flow as easily as a rough draft ever tends to flow.
So we'll see how it goes. I feel good about it. I think I might actually manage to produce something solid by the time I go out of town in two weeks.
I think I might actually have a novella on my hands rather than just a short story. I wrote a rough draft last year that was in the ten page range. Then as I reworked it, it expanded, and I didn't finish a second draft because I realized the whole structure and approach needed reworking. So I've been outlining and structuring the whole thing, and I think it's going to be much longer than the initial short story. So I'm close to ready to begin writing what could be considered the third draft of the story or the first draft of the novella.
I've never written a novella before, so I don't know exactly how long it might take, but when I have so much time available to write, I should be able to get a significant amount done each day. The fastest pace I ever achieved was a couple years ago when I wrote a rough draft of a kids book in about three weeks. That was about 60,000 words, which is in the range of a novel rather than a novella. I'm guessing that this novella I'm writing now will be maybe in the 20,000 word range. So if I could write 60,000 words in three weeks, I should be able to write 20,000 in two weeks. That's less than 2,000 words a day, and 2,000 words a day isn't a crazy ambitious goal; I've often kept up that pace. And if I have a solid outline where I know where I'm going and how I want to proceed from sequence to sequence, I think the writing should flow as easily as a rough draft ever tends to flow.
So we'll see how it goes. I feel good about it. I think I might actually manage to produce something solid by the time I go out of town in two weeks.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Structure
I've been working on a story recently and really wrestling with how to put the thing together. I wrote the rough draft nearly a year ago, and I've been playing with a revision for months, but I keep hitting a wall in my progress. The initial inspiration for the story was just a character and a situation, which I let play out in front of me. Then as I rewrote, I figured out more back story, and now I have a lot more material that I want to include, and I think the newer version will be much more interesting and complex than the rough draft where I was just figuring out basic elements of the story. But my current trouble is that I'm not sure how to put all the material into a new draft.
I started rewriting where I began at the same point as last time, just before the big event that sets the present story in action, but as I wrote and wrote, it became obvious that this structure results in a couple of paragraphs followed by pages of flashback before eventually returning to the present story, a structure that doesn't typically work well. Flashbacks are best kept to a minimum.
I could structure the story in the absolute most straightforward way, where I begin with the very first element and then play it out in order. But this would mean starting with the character as a child and then going through years of events until I reach the big scene that was the original inspiration for the story, which also feels like a mistake since it would take pages and pages before reaching the hook, the exciting event that really sets the action in progress.
Another approach would be to start with the hook and then insert mini-flashbacks throughout the whole story, interweaving memories into the present action. But this seems like a set up for a schizophrenic story that fails to ever be quite one thing or another.
Part of the problem is that any of these structures CAN work. Writers have done them well before and will continue to do them well in the future. But they all have drawbacks and weaknesses. And sometimes the pitfalls appear so large that there seems to be almost nowhere safe to step.
So I've been wracking my brain, trying to remember what I learned in grad school about how to find an appropriate structure for a work of fiction, and the sad truth is that I don't think this issue was covered very well. Part of the problem is that the teacher I had for the class that should have covered this material was simply not a good teacher. Instead of learning about structure in the fiction class, I learned about structure in the screenwriting class, and that's now what I'm falling back on.
One major structural point in the screenwriting class was the inciting incident, the action that sets the plot moving, which, in a screenplay with a standard three act structure, comes in the first act, typically fifteen to twenty minutes into the film, after the world of the film has been established. Before the inciting incident occurs, the audience needs to understand the world and who the major character is, so when the inciting incident occurs and the character makes a choice about what is going to happen, we understand what is at stake. I'm not sure a short story necessarily has the exact same structure as a screenplay and whether I can plot out my story in the same exact fashion, but I think this concept of the inciting incident is probably useful to keep in mind.
So the question I've been asking myself is whether the hook, the event I began with as the original idea for the story, is the inciting incident or something else. I tried something to help me sort through the material: I wrote down each separate event, which could be an entire scene or simply a memory that is represented in a single sentence, and I wrote down each one on a note card. Currently, I have forty-two cards. I looked at these events and tried to determine which one has the most potential to be an inciting incident, which one results in the character making a choice that affects his life and sends him down a new path. And I've tentatively concluded that the original spark for the story is actually more of a plot point later. It's a complication from the second act (if I'm thinking of a three act screenplay structure), and the inciting incident is something that occurs much earlier. So what I need to do is not necessarily begin at the very beginning, but begin shortly before the true inciting incident, the action that occurs that sets my protagonist on his path that leads him to where he is when the big event occurs, setting up the final action down the line.
Anyway, I'm still struggling with it. I'm also trying to figure out whether I have a short story on my hands or a novella, so I'll probably write another post here soon where I hash out my ideas on length as I keep working on this.
I started rewriting where I began at the same point as last time, just before the big event that sets the present story in action, but as I wrote and wrote, it became obvious that this structure results in a couple of paragraphs followed by pages of flashback before eventually returning to the present story, a structure that doesn't typically work well. Flashbacks are best kept to a minimum.
I could structure the story in the absolute most straightforward way, where I begin with the very first element and then play it out in order. But this would mean starting with the character as a child and then going through years of events until I reach the big scene that was the original inspiration for the story, which also feels like a mistake since it would take pages and pages before reaching the hook, the exciting event that really sets the action in progress.
Another approach would be to start with the hook and then insert mini-flashbacks throughout the whole story, interweaving memories into the present action. But this seems like a set up for a schizophrenic story that fails to ever be quite one thing or another.
Part of the problem is that any of these structures CAN work. Writers have done them well before and will continue to do them well in the future. But they all have drawbacks and weaknesses. And sometimes the pitfalls appear so large that there seems to be almost nowhere safe to step.
So I've been wracking my brain, trying to remember what I learned in grad school about how to find an appropriate structure for a work of fiction, and the sad truth is that I don't think this issue was covered very well. Part of the problem is that the teacher I had for the class that should have covered this material was simply not a good teacher. Instead of learning about structure in the fiction class, I learned about structure in the screenwriting class, and that's now what I'm falling back on.
One major structural point in the screenwriting class was the inciting incident, the action that sets the plot moving, which, in a screenplay with a standard three act structure, comes in the first act, typically fifteen to twenty minutes into the film, after the world of the film has been established. Before the inciting incident occurs, the audience needs to understand the world and who the major character is, so when the inciting incident occurs and the character makes a choice about what is going to happen, we understand what is at stake. I'm not sure a short story necessarily has the exact same structure as a screenplay and whether I can plot out my story in the same exact fashion, but I think this concept of the inciting incident is probably useful to keep in mind.
So the question I've been asking myself is whether the hook, the event I began with as the original idea for the story, is the inciting incident or something else. I tried something to help me sort through the material: I wrote down each separate event, which could be an entire scene or simply a memory that is represented in a single sentence, and I wrote down each one on a note card. Currently, I have forty-two cards. I looked at these events and tried to determine which one has the most potential to be an inciting incident, which one results in the character making a choice that affects his life and sends him down a new path. And I've tentatively concluded that the original spark for the story is actually more of a plot point later. It's a complication from the second act (if I'm thinking of a three act screenplay structure), and the inciting incident is something that occurs much earlier. So what I need to do is not necessarily begin at the very beginning, but begin shortly before the true inciting incident, the action that occurs that sets my protagonist on his path that leads him to where he is when the big event occurs, setting up the final action down the line.
Anyway, I'm still struggling with it. I'm also trying to figure out whether I have a short story on my hands or a novella, so I'll probably write another post here soon where I hash out my ideas on length as I keep working on this.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Writing Sample
Lately, I've been working on multiple projects at the same time, or rather I'm going back and forth between projects. I've got a story I'm working on that I started last summer. I wrote the rough draft and then have been tossing it about in my head and jotting down notes on where I want to go with it for months. Now I'm writing the next draft of it. Then I'm also in the process of revising my MFA novel again. That's a similar situation. I wrote it years ago, of course. I defended it as my thesis, continued to revise for months afterward, thought I was done, did more revision, really thought I was done, started into the query process, thought maybe I wasn't done, and so on and so forth. I've been jotting down additional notes and planning out a revised structure for the novel for a while now and slowly sitting down to rewrite. I'm tackling the opening of the book first because that's where the most substantial changes are coming in. Some of the new beginning is coming from previous drafts and simply being shifted from later in the book to earlier, but some of it is brand new. So, anyway, I had been working on the novel for a while and then felt more like tackling the story, and I worked on that for several days, but then I felt obligated to work on the novel again.
Obligated is not the right word there. It's not that I feel like I should work on the novel and it's a hassle or something like that. I want to work on the novel. But at the moment I'm thinking about a fellowship I'm going to apply for. I have to get my application packet in this month, and, of course, a writing sample is the major component of the application. And I'm stuck on what to include as my writing sample. If I land the fellowship, this novel is the primary project I want to work on during the fellowship year, so I think it would make sense to include an excerpt from it as my writing sample. Yet which part should I excerpt? The obvious answer is the beginning, but that's the section of the book that is in the most disarray right now because I'm completely reworking it. But if I send a later section, that might indicate to those evaluating the applications that I don't feel confident in the beginning of my book. I've read several places that when querying agents and such and including sample pages, one should include the opening of the book rather than a section from the middle for that very reason. However, applying for a fellowship is not the same as querying an agent; the assumption here is that I have a project that I will continue to work on, not that I have a finished manuscript ready for publication.
Another option is to forget about including an excerpt from the novel as my writing sample and just use a short story (the application doesn't indicate that the writing sample has to be from the project I would be working on). That would show what my writing is like as well as be a complete piece. That might be to my advantage because it's often difficult to judge a part of something by itself. I used to bring in chapters of my novel to workshops in grad school, and a good deal of the time it seemed like my peers didn't know how to comment on it because they had no idea how this one section fit in with the larger story or really what that larger story was. Sometimes when I read the fiction published in the New Yorker I have that problem. They publish short stories, but they also publish excerpts from forthcoming novels, but they don't clearly identify which a given piece is, and sometimes I'll read it and then feel a bit baffled because it was well written but doesn't feel complete at all; then, later I discover that it was the first chapter that wasn't supposed to work on its own. So, for a fellowship application, would it be wise to try to entice them with a slice of something larger or to give them something complete so they can get a better sense of my ability to not just write a nice sequence but to write an entire story?
Anyway, what I've been doing the past few days is working on the beginning section. I figure that if that comes together really well and I feel confident in it, then that would be the best thing to send. But I only have a couple of weeks before I need to send the application off, which is not much time to get a new piece of writing into polished form. So in the likelihood that the opening isn't ready, I have to decide what else to send. I'm leaning toward an excerpt from the novel that works on its own as a story. But that leads to one more question. Do I refer to it as a novel excerpt or as a story? If sending a novel excerpt, I can include up to thirty pages, which would be about two chapters. If sending a story, I can only include one story. I think maybe I'd be better off sending one story by itself (again, that way there are no issues of trying to figure out how the excerpt works in terms of the larger piece), but that means I'd only be using half the amount of space available to represent myself. Would they look down on my application if they only get fifteen pages instead of thirty? Or do they really know after two pages whether they like the writing?
I'm probably over thinking this and would be better off just picking a piece I think is good and representative of my abilities and sending off the application already.
Obligated is not the right word there. It's not that I feel like I should work on the novel and it's a hassle or something like that. I want to work on the novel. But at the moment I'm thinking about a fellowship I'm going to apply for. I have to get my application packet in this month, and, of course, a writing sample is the major component of the application. And I'm stuck on what to include as my writing sample. If I land the fellowship, this novel is the primary project I want to work on during the fellowship year, so I think it would make sense to include an excerpt from it as my writing sample. Yet which part should I excerpt? The obvious answer is the beginning, but that's the section of the book that is in the most disarray right now because I'm completely reworking it. But if I send a later section, that might indicate to those evaluating the applications that I don't feel confident in the beginning of my book. I've read several places that when querying agents and such and including sample pages, one should include the opening of the book rather than a section from the middle for that very reason. However, applying for a fellowship is not the same as querying an agent; the assumption here is that I have a project that I will continue to work on, not that I have a finished manuscript ready for publication.
Another option is to forget about including an excerpt from the novel as my writing sample and just use a short story (the application doesn't indicate that the writing sample has to be from the project I would be working on). That would show what my writing is like as well as be a complete piece. That might be to my advantage because it's often difficult to judge a part of something by itself. I used to bring in chapters of my novel to workshops in grad school, and a good deal of the time it seemed like my peers didn't know how to comment on it because they had no idea how this one section fit in with the larger story or really what that larger story was. Sometimes when I read the fiction published in the New Yorker I have that problem. They publish short stories, but they also publish excerpts from forthcoming novels, but they don't clearly identify which a given piece is, and sometimes I'll read it and then feel a bit baffled because it was well written but doesn't feel complete at all; then, later I discover that it was the first chapter that wasn't supposed to work on its own. So, for a fellowship application, would it be wise to try to entice them with a slice of something larger or to give them something complete so they can get a better sense of my ability to not just write a nice sequence but to write an entire story?
Anyway, what I've been doing the past few days is working on the beginning section. I figure that if that comes together really well and I feel confident in it, then that would be the best thing to send. But I only have a couple of weeks before I need to send the application off, which is not much time to get a new piece of writing into polished form. So in the likelihood that the opening isn't ready, I have to decide what else to send. I'm leaning toward an excerpt from the novel that works on its own as a story. But that leads to one more question. Do I refer to it as a novel excerpt or as a story? If sending a novel excerpt, I can include up to thirty pages, which would be about two chapters. If sending a story, I can only include one story. I think maybe I'd be better off sending one story by itself (again, that way there are no issues of trying to figure out how the excerpt works in terms of the larger piece), but that means I'd only be using half the amount of space available to represent myself. Would they look down on my application if they only get fifteen pages instead of thirty? Or do they really know after two pages whether they like the writing?
I'm probably over thinking this and would be better off just picking a piece I think is good and representative of my abilities and sending off the application already.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Journeyman
My thoughts at the moment are along the same lines as several previous posts. I've been reading short stories recently. In part I've simply been in the mood for short stories for the past six or nine months or so, but also I've been quite busy with teaching and grading and working and commuting; I've had less time to sink into a full novel, so it's easier to pick up shorter pieces that I can read in a single sitting. I've been dipping into collections, reading Raymond Carver, John Cheever, J. D. Salinger, George Saunders, and others. I've also recently picked up the latest O. Henry Prize, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize collections. What strikes me about these stories is that--and this is certainly a "duh!" statement--they are really, really good.
When I read stories by these artists--Pulitzer prize winners, MacArthur Genius grant recipients, writers with decades of experience, and some publishing their very first story--it hits me that I'm plain and simply not that good yet. I don't abandon hope or anything. I plan on being that good someday. But at the moment, I'm still struggling to find my own voice, my own style; I'm in the process of figuring out what exactly I want to say with my fiction. I have a couple of themes I keep returning to, but I also have ideas for stories that I haven't yet figured out what they're really about. Sometimes I manage a beautiful set of sentences followed by some awkward prose that completely disrupts the flow of the piece. I have a couple of stories I think are nice, but many more that are still far too rough to even seek feedback on.
Essentially, what I'm getting at is the notion that I am at the journeyman stage of my career, at least I think I am. I find it a useful metaphor to think of grad school and that period of formal education as an apprenticeship, a time of study under a master craftsman (or several master craftsmen), learning and improving and developing. But now I'm out on my own, and yet I'm not yet a master craftsman myself. I'm a journeyman. I have the basic knowledge and experience to be on my own, but I have yet to prove myself.
I sometimes find it frustrating when I'm looking for full time employment that there are jobs out there for creative writing teachers, but I don't yet meet the minimum requirements. I came across a great position recently for a one-year visiting writer instructor position specifically geared toward writers at the early stage of their career, and I have the education and teaching experience to qualify, but not yet the publication credits. There are many opportunities for small steps into the academic world, but before one is able to take those steps, one must publish and have a demonstrated mastery of the craft. Or, in other words, one must be further along the journeyman path than I am right now.
But I find it oddly comforting to think of myself as a journeyman and to read the work of masters. If I genuinely felt that I was their equal already, that I was an unrecognized master, then I would be endlessly frustrated by my lack of advancement. But instead I can try to continue learning from them, honing my own craft, pursuing my efforts, and hope that soon I will reach their level.
When I read stories by these artists--Pulitzer prize winners, MacArthur Genius grant recipients, writers with decades of experience, and some publishing their very first story--it hits me that I'm plain and simply not that good yet. I don't abandon hope or anything. I plan on being that good someday. But at the moment, I'm still struggling to find my own voice, my own style; I'm in the process of figuring out what exactly I want to say with my fiction. I have a couple of themes I keep returning to, but I also have ideas for stories that I haven't yet figured out what they're really about. Sometimes I manage a beautiful set of sentences followed by some awkward prose that completely disrupts the flow of the piece. I have a couple of stories I think are nice, but many more that are still far too rough to even seek feedback on.
Essentially, what I'm getting at is the notion that I am at the journeyman stage of my career, at least I think I am. I find it a useful metaphor to think of grad school and that period of formal education as an apprenticeship, a time of study under a master craftsman (or several master craftsmen), learning and improving and developing. But now I'm out on my own, and yet I'm not yet a master craftsman myself. I'm a journeyman. I have the basic knowledge and experience to be on my own, but I have yet to prove myself.
I sometimes find it frustrating when I'm looking for full time employment that there are jobs out there for creative writing teachers, but I don't yet meet the minimum requirements. I came across a great position recently for a one-year visiting writer instructor position specifically geared toward writers at the early stage of their career, and I have the education and teaching experience to qualify, but not yet the publication credits. There are many opportunities for small steps into the academic world, but before one is able to take those steps, one must publish and have a demonstrated mastery of the craft. Or, in other words, one must be further along the journeyman path than I am right now.
But I find it oddly comforting to think of myself as a journeyman and to read the work of masters. If I genuinely felt that I was their equal already, that I was an unrecognized master, then I would be endlessly frustrated by my lack of advancement. But instead I can try to continue learning from them, honing my own craft, pursuing my efforts, and hope that soon I will reach their level.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Rejection
I got another rejection today. I know that rejections are an inevitable part of being an aspiring writer. There are many reasons a piece can be rejected, and it's a bit foolish to take them too personally. There's no way around them, and the old notion that those who succeed are those who don't give up is certainly true. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't frustrating when work is rejected.
I'm willing to admit that not everything I've written is amazing. In fact, most of what I've written is not that good. Part of the learning process is improving and being able to look back somewhat more objectively on past work and see where it is flawed. I think that despite writing seriously for the past several years, I have up to now produced only a small handful of work that is good and hundreds of pages of work that isn't especially good. But that small handful of good work is genuinely good. I swear it is. So it's frustrating when I continue to send it out into the world in the hopes that some editor out there will agree with me that it's good and have it keep boomeranging back.
Sure, it's nice to get the handwritten notes or personal e-mails telling me that, while my writing is good, this piece wasn't a match for that journal. Those notes buoy my spirits. But come on already, world. Please, please, please, with sugar on top, can I get one of my stories accepted?
Part of the struggle, I think, comes from the pure subjectivity of literary writing. Unlike genres, which have certain conventions, literary stories can be about pretty much anything and have almost anything happen or not. Characters might grow and change or they might not. Epiphanies may occur or they may not. One reader will say that a character has to change or else why bother reading the story. Another will say that it's a cliché to have a character change, and such a convention is outdated and unrealistic. Some editors will want work that has little plot but experiments wildly with form. Other editors will want traditional forms but plots that are unlike what has been seen before.
I've been reading literary stories for years, picking up journals and collections to see what is being published. Most of what I see I don't particularly care for. Much of it is simply boring because not much happens, or what does happen is so minimal that it's left mostly up to the individual reader to figure out why the events of the story have any significance. But I will admit that the stories are well written from a basic craft standpoint. The language is solid. The prose works effectively. Sentences and paragraphs construct a living dream. But beyond that, there are no real standards as far as I can tell. There doesn't have to be anything in particular that a story does. There doesn't have to be a catharsis or a moral lesson or a dramatic climax or a commentary on society or an interesting twist or a character that represents reality.
Actually, let me pause a bit on that last point. I think that one might be the real kicker. I think that the subjective nature of fiction lies largely in whether or not an individual reader connects with the characters and ideas, and creating a piece that connects with an individual reader or editor at any particular magazine seems to me to be largely up to chance. Experts advise new writers to read all the journals (and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them) to get a sense of what they publish. From what I've seen, there seems to be no consistent vision or style for individual journals beyond the subjective tastes of the editors who happen to be there at the time; so, honestly, I don't see that reading all the journals accomplishes much. At least I've never been able to detect any real standards that differentiate one journal from the next. And as far as creating characters that will resonate with an individual reader goes, again, I think it's pure luck. I remember having wildly divergent views from people in my workshop classes. For instance, one particular story once struck me as being uninteresting in part because a character seemed so unrealistic, so irrational, that I suspected that the character must be insane, and I didn't understand the appeal of reading about insane characters if they are presented as if they are ordinary; yet others in the class loved the story, feeling that it accurately depicted the world as they knew it. I can think of other similar situations where viewpoints on stories simply diverged. And these were well written stories as far as the basic issues of craft are concerned. The language was strong. The situations were explained and the plot moved from point to point and so forth. But if we can't agree on what a realistic person is like, we simply aren't going to agree on whether the story is appealing or not.
So if it is indeed the case, as I believe it is, that having a story accepted is largely a matter of chance, of sending it to the right place at the right time where the right person happens to somehow find the characters and situation relatable and interesting, then is there ever any end to the frustration? I think it comes down to perseverance, I guess. The old saws are true: one must stick with it; not give up; try, try again. Once a writer has a reputation, I think editors start to ignore the issue of whether or not they personally find the piece appealing because it has already been established that the writer is good. In fact, journals will seek out established writers to send them pieces, and I'm fairly certain that a journal won't solicit a story from a well known writer and then reject it because the editor doesn't care for it. But getting established, having those first few people acknowledge that one is good is a frustrating endeavor.
A final note: Maybe this rejection today is hitting me harder than many do simply because of when it arrived. I'm a bit stressed at the moment because I have stacks of papers to grade this weekend; I have to work at my retail job tomorrow, which eats into my grading time; and the final weeks of the semester are going to be incredibly busy. And when I get stressed, I tend to get a bit depressed. I feel a bit frustrated in general with my life at the moment. I'm in my thirties without a full time job. My plan B is to teach, and even that isn't fully working out since I can't actually land a full time position, and it's often frustrating because many of my students don't care or don't try or really should not be pursuing a college education in the first place. And the dream I've been pursuing for years continues to elude me. It might be easier if I had some of the other things in my life that make life enjoyable for many people, like fulfilling relationships, but I don't. Apart from my immediate family, my only real friendships are with people I see in person only every few years because they live thousands of miles away. I feel like my entire life, my identity, is wrapped up in my dream to become a writer, and the reality is that that dream may never come true. And there isn't anything else in my life that makes me want to keep going day to day. Each day I sustain the hope that maybe today will be the day that I get that big acceptance. I check my e-mail obsessively in case a journal has sent me a notice that they'd like to publish me. So it's tough when that dream keeps getting dashed.
I'm willing to admit that not everything I've written is amazing. In fact, most of what I've written is not that good. Part of the learning process is improving and being able to look back somewhat more objectively on past work and see where it is flawed. I think that despite writing seriously for the past several years, I have up to now produced only a small handful of work that is good and hundreds of pages of work that isn't especially good. But that small handful of good work is genuinely good. I swear it is. So it's frustrating when I continue to send it out into the world in the hopes that some editor out there will agree with me that it's good and have it keep boomeranging back.
Sure, it's nice to get the handwritten notes or personal e-mails telling me that, while my writing is good, this piece wasn't a match for that journal. Those notes buoy my spirits. But come on already, world. Please, please, please, with sugar on top, can I get one of my stories accepted?
Part of the struggle, I think, comes from the pure subjectivity of literary writing. Unlike genres, which have certain conventions, literary stories can be about pretty much anything and have almost anything happen or not. Characters might grow and change or they might not. Epiphanies may occur or they may not. One reader will say that a character has to change or else why bother reading the story. Another will say that it's a cliché to have a character change, and such a convention is outdated and unrealistic. Some editors will want work that has little plot but experiments wildly with form. Other editors will want traditional forms but plots that are unlike what has been seen before.
I've been reading literary stories for years, picking up journals and collections to see what is being published. Most of what I see I don't particularly care for. Much of it is simply boring because not much happens, or what does happen is so minimal that it's left mostly up to the individual reader to figure out why the events of the story have any significance. But I will admit that the stories are well written from a basic craft standpoint. The language is solid. The prose works effectively. Sentences and paragraphs construct a living dream. But beyond that, there are no real standards as far as I can tell. There doesn't have to be anything in particular that a story does. There doesn't have to be a catharsis or a moral lesson or a dramatic climax or a commentary on society or an interesting twist or a character that represents reality.
Actually, let me pause a bit on that last point. I think that one might be the real kicker. I think that the subjective nature of fiction lies largely in whether or not an individual reader connects with the characters and ideas, and creating a piece that connects with an individual reader or editor at any particular magazine seems to me to be largely up to chance. Experts advise new writers to read all the journals (and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them) to get a sense of what they publish. From what I've seen, there seems to be no consistent vision or style for individual journals beyond the subjective tastes of the editors who happen to be there at the time; so, honestly, I don't see that reading all the journals accomplishes much. At least I've never been able to detect any real standards that differentiate one journal from the next. And as far as creating characters that will resonate with an individual reader goes, again, I think it's pure luck. I remember having wildly divergent views from people in my workshop classes. For instance, one particular story once struck me as being uninteresting in part because a character seemed so unrealistic, so irrational, that I suspected that the character must be insane, and I didn't understand the appeal of reading about insane characters if they are presented as if they are ordinary; yet others in the class loved the story, feeling that it accurately depicted the world as they knew it. I can think of other similar situations where viewpoints on stories simply diverged. And these were well written stories as far as the basic issues of craft are concerned. The language was strong. The situations were explained and the plot moved from point to point and so forth. But if we can't agree on what a realistic person is like, we simply aren't going to agree on whether the story is appealing or not.
So if it is indeed the case, as I believe it is, that having a story accepted is largely a matter of chance, of sending it to the right place at the right time where the right person happens to somehow find the characters and situation relatable and interesting, then is there ever any end to the frustration? I think it comes down to perseverance, I guess. The old saws are true: one must stick with it; not give up; try, try again. Once a writer has a reputation, I think editors start to ignore the issue of whether or not they personally find the piece appealing because it has already been established that the writer is good. In fact, journals will seek out established writers to send them pieces, and I'm fairly certain that a journal won't solicit a story from a well known writer and then reject it because the editor doesn't care for it. But getting established, having those first few people acknowledge that one is good is a frustrating endeavor.
A final note: Maybe this rejection today is hitting me harder than many do simply because of when it arrived. I'm a bit stressed at the moment because I have stacks of papers to grade this weekend; I have to work at my retail job tomorrow, which eats into my grading time; and the final weeks of the semester are going to be incredibly busy. And when I get stressed, I tend to get a bit depressed. I feel a bit frustrated in general with my life at the moment. I'm in my thirties without a full time job. My plan B is to teach, and even that isn't fully working out since I can't actually land a full time position, and it's often frustrating because many of my students don't care or don't try or really should not be pursuing a college education in the first place. And the dream I've been pursuing for years continues to elude me. It might be easier if I had some of the other things in my life that make life enjoyable for many people, like fulfilling relationships, but I don't. Apart from my immediate family, my only real friendships are with people I see in person only every few years because they live thousands of miles away. I feel like my entire life, my identity, is wrapped up in my dream to become a writer, and the reality is that that dream may never come true. And there isn't anything else in my life that makes me want to keep going day to day. Each day I sustain the hope that maybe today will be the day that I get that big acceptance. I check my e-mail obsessively in case a journal has sent me a notice that they'd like to publish me. So it's tough when that dream keeps getting dashed.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Some Disconnected and Random Thoughts
1. Once again, I've been evaluating the essay I was working on. After many more hours reading it, editing, reorganizing, composing new material, cutting out old stuff, and so on, I'm still dissatisfied and unsure that it will ever be quite what I want it to be. I've concluded that writing creative nonfiction is incredibly difficult, much more so than I had originally appreciated. There's such a freedom with fiction to manipulate the characters and situation to make it all work, but nonfiction is limited by reality. And reality is messy and without clear themes or conclusions. I had envisioned my essay as having a sort of pivotal epiphany moment, but that's simply not how things happen, at least not for me. Life isn't full of epiphanies. Life is a slow process; changes happen slowly if at all. So condensing that process into a ten or fifteen page essay is a daunting prospect. When I steer the facts--including some details and leave out others--I feel like I'm being dishonest and turning the facts into fiction. I don't know. Maybe that's what all nonfiction writers do. I suppose truth is an impossibility.
2. My next novel has been pushing its way more and more into the forefront of my brain. It's an idea I came up with a few years ago and started a couple years ago as a short story, but after writing it I realized I really wanted to continue on and discover what else happens, where the characters go from the point I'd left them at the end of the story, and that this would wind up as a complete novel idea for me. I had planned on writing this one after my MFA thesis novel, but then I became more interested in writing my kids' book, so I did that first. But now I'm still really early on in the kids' book process--I have a complete draft but have barely started on an initial revision. So I'm left with this question: Do I put the kids' book on hold while I move on to a story that is more pressing on my mind or do I leave the new book alone to keep working on the kids' book? Well, unable to quite decide between the two of those choices, I've opted for the middle ground. I'm going to begin drafting the new one while rewriting the old one. I'm not sure yet whether this is a smart move, but I'll give it a try and see how it goes. My fear is that I won't fully sink into either world and I'll end up doing both poorly, but who knows?
3. With my new novel I'm proceeding in a different manner than I have in the past. Typically I have a basic story idea in mind and start writing even if I'm unsure where exactly it's going. I make a lot of notes as I draft and usually before I'm very far along I have some sort of rough outline of the entire project so I can see where I'm heading even though the route changes as I go and find detours or shortcuts. With my MFA thesis I began writing out of order, originally composing one piece as a short story then another as a separate story until I concluded that rather than a series of linked stories I really was writing a novel. It turned out the early pieces wound up (in rather different forms) as the end of the book. But by the time I had drafted the first few chapters I had a very rough form of the entire book outlined.
Right now I'm lacking that clear vision of my new book, but rather than beginning with chapter one and seeing where it goes, I'm starting before the beginning of the book. I'm doing character sketches that are more extensive than I've done in the past. Previously I've jotted down key details of characters so I can keep them straight as I go or whatever, but I haven't worried too much about fleshing out their pasts and motivations and so forth since those things tend to come up as I write and I know I'll discover those details by the time I get through a couple of drafts. But now I feel like I won't be quite sure how to proceed with each new section of the story until I have a solid understanding of each character and why they are motivated to do the things they do. So I've written several pages about the lives of the two main characters and have yet to reach the point where the book actually starts. It's really fun to explore the back story like this, and I'm hoping it proves helpful as I move forward. In part I felt compelled to do this because the first big plot point relies on a somewhat absurd turn of events, and I feel like I have to justify those events in order for the story to work. That was one of the problems with the short story version I attempted a couple years ago. I didn't have enough time to make the unlikely event seem plausible. So I need to really understand the character in order for his bizarre action to seem like something he would genuinely do under the circumstances.
Another significant factor with this new novel (that I've commented on before here I believe) is that the story and characters move much further away from my own experiences and characteristics, which in part means I don't have as thorough an understanding of the characters and their motivations. My first novel, my MA thesis, drew heavily on my own traits for the main character: he thought much like I do, had the same tastes and interests, and so on. I didn't have to worry too much about how he would react to different situations because I could simply imagine how I myself would react. My second novel, my MFA thesis, moved further away from myself but still had a lot of me in the characters. While the first book had a stand-in for me, the second one used different aspects of me in different characters, an exaggerated version of characteristic X here, characteristic Y there. None of the main characters were me, but I still felt like I understood them fairly intuitively, that it wasn't a major shift to step into their shoes and discover how they would react in different circumstances. The third book, the kids' book, was a whole different thing, so it doesn't really enter this discussion. With the new novel, though, I don't think any of the characters I've come up with so far have a whole lot in common with me, so it's going to be more of a challenge to figure out exactly how and why they do what they do and then to also make it seem reasonable to a reader that these characters would indeed do what they do. It's fun and exciting to take this new step away from what I've done before.
4. Comedy. I've been reflecting recently on comedy. It's weird, I used to be pretty good at comedy. The major piece of writing I did that convinced me I definitely wanted to devote my life to writing was a one-act farce. I wrote it in college and it was accepted into a festival of one-act plays on campus. Seeing an audience laugh so hard at my words was thrilling. But since that point I've become less and less comic in my writing. I see my new novel as being highly comic. In my mind it's on the lines of A Confederacy of Dunces or Candide, a sprawling episodic novel, maybe picaresque, where a number of characters pursue different goals and keep falling flat and perhaps there's a bit of Camus's absurd thrown into the mix where things fail to turn out as the characters expect. I have a strong sense of the feeling I'd like the novel to have, but I'm a bit doubtful that I'll be able to achieve the right balance. And I realized that the major obstacle in my way is a weird one: empathy.
What's that? Empathy? Why would that be a problem? Well, here's why. I've heard a definition of the difference between comedy and tragedy attributed to Mel Brooks: "Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die; tragedy is when I get a paper cut." There's definitely something to that. Comedy has a distance between the audience and the characters so we feel fine laughing at them. Yes, we often like the characters, but I think we still don't fully empathize. If we did, would we be so callous as to laugh at their misfortunes? Dramatic stories are all about empathy, feeling that torment of the characters. And I feel like over the past decade or so I've shifted somewhat in my level of empathy with my fellow human beings. I formerly identified myself only half-jokingly as a misanthrope, and with a misanthropic view of humanity it's easy to laugh. But more and more I feel a sense of the basic worth and individual suffering and joys of every person, and with that kind of connection, it becomes harder to laugh. So then when creating characters for a story, I want them to be real, to be empathetic, to have people care about them, but then how can I also make them funny? I don't know. I haven't sorted it all out yet. I've heard comedy is all about the head and drama about the heart, and I think my heart has become a bigger part of me than it used to be.
2. My next novel has been pushing its way more and more into the forefront of my brain. It's an idea I came up with a few years ago and started a couple years ago as a short story, but after writing it I realized I really wanted to continue on and discover what else happens, where the characters go from the point I'd left them at the end of the story, and that this would wind up as a complete novel idea for me. I had planned on writing this one after my MFA thesis novel, but then I became more interested in writing my kids' book, so I did that first. But now I'm still really early on in the kids' book process--I have a complete draft but have barely started on an initial revision. So I'm left with this question: Do I put the kids' book on hold while I move on to a story that is more pressing on my mind or do I leave the new book alone to keep working on the kids' book? Well, unable to quite decide between the two of those choices, I've opted for the middle ground. I'm going to begin drafting the new one while rewriting the old one. I'm not sure yet whether this is a smart move, but I'll give it a try and see how it goes. My fear is that I won't fully sink into either world and I'll end up doing both poorly, but who knows?
3. With my new novel I'm proceeding in a different manner than I have in the past. Typically I have a basic story idea in mind and start writing even if I'm unsure where exactly it's going. I make a lot of notes as I draft and usually before I'm very far along I have some sort of rough outline of the entire project so I can see where I'm heading even though the route changes as I go and find detours or shortcuts. With my MFA thesis I began writing out of order, originally composing one piece as a short story then another as a separate story until I concluded that rather than a series of linked stories I really was writing a novel. It turned out the early pieces wound up (in rather different forms) as the end of the book. But by the time I had drafted the first few chapters I had a very rough form of the entire book outlined.
Right now I'm lacking that clear vision of my new book, but rather than beginning with chapter one and seeing where it goes, I'm starting before the beginning of the book. I'm doing character sketches that are more extensive than I've done in the past. Previously I've jotted down key details of characters so I can keep them straight as I go or whatever, but I haven't worried too much about fleshing out their pasts and motivations and so forth since those things tend to come up as I write and I know I'll discover those details by the time I get through a couple of drafts. But now I feel like I won't be quite sure how to proceed with each new section of the story until I have a solid understanding of each character and why they are motivated to do the things they do. So I've written several pages about the lives of the two main characters and have yet to reach the point where the book actually starts. It's really fun to explore the back story like this, and I'm hoping it proves helpful as I move forward. In part I felt compelled to do this because the first big plot point relies on a somewhat absurd turn of events, and I feel like I have to justify those events in order for the story to work. That was one of the problems with the short story version I attempted a couple years ago. I didn't have enough time to make the unlikely event seem plausible. So I need to really understand the character in order for his bizarre action to seem like something he would genuinely do under the circumstances.
Another significant factor with this new novel (that I've commented on before here I believe) is that the story and characters move much further away from my own experiences and characteristics, which in part means I don't have as thorough an understanding of the characters and their motivations. My first novel, my MA thesis, drew heavily on my own traits for the main character: he thought much like I do, had the same tastes and interests, and so on. I didn't have to worry too much about how he would react to different situations because I could simply imagine how I myself would react. My second novel, my MFA thesis, moved further away from myself but still had a lot of me in the characters. While the first book had a stand-in for me, the second one used different aspects of me in different characters, an exaggerated version of characteristic X here, characteristic Y there. None of the main characters were me, but I still felt like I understood them fairly intuitively, that it wasn't a major shift to step into their shoes and discover how they would react in different circumstances. The third book, the kids' book, was a whole different thing, so it doesn't really enter this discussion. With the new novel, though, I don't think any of the characters I've come up with so far have a whole lot in common with me, so it's going to be more of a challenge to figure out exactly how and why they do what they do and then to also make it seem reasonable to a reader that these characters would indeed do what they do. It's fun and exciting to take this new step away from what I've done before.
4. Comedy. I've been reflecting recently on comedy. It's weird, I used to be pretty good at comedy. The major piece of writing I did that convinced me I definitely wanted to devote my life to writing was a one-act farce. I wrote it in college and it was accepted into a festival of one-act plays on campus. Seeing an audience laugh so hard at my words was thrilling. But since that point I've become less and less comic in my writing. I see my new novel as being highly comic. In my mind it's on the lines of A Confederacy of Dunces or Candide, a sprawling episodic novel, maybe picaresque, where a number of characters pursue different goals and keep falling flat and perhaps there's a bit of Camus's absurd thrown into the mix where things fail to turn out as the characters expect. I have a strong sense of the feeling I'd like the novel to have, but I'm a bit doubtful that I'll be able to achieve the right balance. And I realized that the major obstacle in my way is a weird one: empathy.
What's that? Empathy? Why would that be a problem? Well, here's why. I've heard a definition of the difference between comedy and tragedy attributed to Mel Brooks: "Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die; tragedy is when I get a paper cut." There's definitely something to that. Comedy has a distance between the audience and the characters so we feel fine laughing at them. Yes, we often like the characters, but I think we still don't fully empathize. If we did, would we be so callous as to laugh at their misfortunes? Dramatic stories are all about empathy, feeling that torment of the characters. And I feel like over the past decade or so I've shifted somewhat in my level of empathy with my fellow human beings. I formerly identified myself only half-jokingly as a misanthrope, and with a misanthropic view of humanity it's easy to laugh. But more and more I feel a sense of the basic worth and individual suffering and joys of every person, and with that kind of connection, it becomes harder to laugh. So then when creating characters for a story, I want them to be real, to be empathetic, to have people care about them, but then how can I also make them funny? I don't know. I haven't sorted it all out yet. I've heard comedy is all about the head and drama about the heart, and I think my heart has become a bigger part of me than it used to be.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Starting
My last post was about finishing a big project and resulting anti-climax that comes with the absence of this thing that was such an important part of my life for so long. I suggested that a good way combat the resulting funk is to begin something new. Unfortunately, this is not always as easy as it seems, at least for me.
I've read about writers (Stephen King comes to mind) who work on shorter pieces immediately after finishing bigger works. This seems like a great way to use up the energy that still is inside as well as to combat the anti-climax of being done. However, I've come to realize in recent years that deep down I'm not a short story writer; I'm a novelist. I admire short story writers and appreciate when I read a great piece that manages to tell a good story in such a small space, but the truth is I probably read more novels than short stories, and sometimes I read short stories and feel that they're okay, but would be better as novels (stories by E. Annie Proulx and Alice Munro come to mind). And beyond my taste in reading, it just seems that when I have an idea, it's for a longer piece. Even when I have the initial inspiration of a single scene or a simple event, I'm not satisfied with leaving it at that slice; I want to know what happens next and after that. Currently I have ideas for a few novels that I want to write in the next number of years, and two of those began as what I thought could be short stories, but I wrote the short stories and realized I was deeply unsatisfied with them although I still loved the original ideas. The problems were due to the failure of the ideas to fit into the short story frame. In order for those pieces to be explored in a satisfying way without turning to sentimentality, cliche, or whatever, they have to be larger. I need to know the characters more fully, to explore where they came from and where they go after the scene that was the initial inspiration. So as far as shorter pieces go, although I've been working for the past several years at the craft of writing and I've written a handful of stories in the process, I feel I have only produced one that is any good along with one personal essay that is also strong. Possibly I have a couple novel chapters that might be able to stand alone, but writing a short story may be more difficult for me than writing a novel, so turning to that avenue as a way out of my post-completion funk doesn't typically work well.
I finished revisions of my second novel a couple months ago. I tried to fight off the blues through getting involved in the hunt for an agent, but of course that's not the same as actively writing. Although it takes a lot of time and an essential part of becoming a professional writer with published books, it doesn't satisfy me at all. It's just hard work, and the more I think about the difficulties of actually landing an agent and getting my book out there, the more I'm likely to sink into the depression that comes with having finished my novel. So clearly, I needed something else, another creative project. But what?
I decided to try my hand at screenwriting, not expecting to really produce anything that will make me a Hollywood success or anything, but just to gain more experience of another form and to give myself something to work on. I took a screenwriting course in my MFA program, and for the final project of that class I wrote the first act of a screenplay along with an outline of what the rest of the story would be if I finished it. So I decided it was time to return to it. So that's what I did. I absorbed myself in screenplays, reading more of them to refresh myself on the form, and I sat down and worked day after day. It was fun for a while, and it provided some of the distraction I was looking for, but ultimately I lost steam with the project. Essentially my problem with it came from a basic uncertainty with the story at the heart of the piece. I wasn't convinced the characters were really working and that I could conclude the story in any satisfying way. In part, I wasn't sure what I actually believed was the "right" thing for the character to do in his situation, and so I was left with choices of a standard Hollywood happy ending or a cynical finish, neither of which felt honest or satisfying, but I couldn't come up with anything else, any middle ground either. I suspect the entire thing needs substantial alterations much earlier in the story at the very heart of the characters before an ending will be possible. So I sputtered and floundered and was left in the same position I was in before, only now instead of merely the anti-climax of finishing a novel, I was in the added funk of attempting something and failing. Of course failure is an unavoidable part of the creative process, and I still have hopes that some day I might return to the screenplay and be able to figure it out, but in the mean time, what do I do to satisfy this deep urge in me to write a story?
Well, I tried to do a short story, which as I wrote above, is not my forte. The story was one that had been needling away at my brain for a few years. I wrote an unsuccessful version of it a few years ago, which due to a computer crash a few years ago is now completely lost. So I thought I might be able to write this story now and avoid the problems I had with it back then. But it wasn't working either. I sat down day after day with it, and produced only a few pages, including two separate and very different openings and a number of notes that haven't yet become the key to solving the story's failings.
Let me clarify one thing here before continuing. I don't want this to seem like I'm complaining. I fully understand that failure is part of the process. Most of the paths I take will be dead ends. That's simply the nature of writing. That's why writing is a process and not merely a single step. Furthermore, every time I attempt something and produce a version I'm unhappy with or I abandon a project three quarters of the way into a draft, it's still a valuable learning experience. I like to think of it as analogous to painting: a great artist doesn't doodle his first sketches and produce masterpieces, but that doesn't mean that every crap drawing or flawed painting wasn't a valuable part of the process that eventually led to great work. Hopefully in the future I can anticipate some of the problems I hit in the past and avoid them, or I can see why I went wrong and do something else instead. Time spent writing is worthwhile. Period.
However, as great as it is to learn and see problems that can be overcome or to simply try new things and add that experience to the sum of what I've done, it's not the same as being actively involved with something I love.
So after unsuccessfully trying a couple of routes to get into a new project following my novel I decided a new novel was probably the best option. As I mentioned above, I have a few ideas for novels that I want to try in the next few years. One I'm sure I'm not ready to write simply because it's too serious and dark, and I feel I need at least a few more years of living before I will be the person who can write it. Another one will require extensive research about a historical time and place, so I'll have to do substantial work on that before I can actually begin writing anything. Then there are two others. One of them I'm excited about. It's one of the ideas that I thought could be a short story, but now I feel has to be a novel. For about a year or more I've thought in my head that it will be "my next novel." However, life issues prevent me from beginning it at the moment. Or, I suppose I could start it anytime I want to, but I don't feel the timing is quite right. I'm in between things as far as a job and a place to live, and I know everything will be in upheaval in a few months as I move. So for the sake of continuity and momentum I don't want to be smack in the middle of this novel when I have to pick up my life and transport myself. I'd rather start this novel in a couple months when I'm settled and can work the writing into my new routine.
So that leaves one other possibility for a novel to work on. And once again, I feel like this post is dragging on and on, and if anybody ever actually reads this, I imagine they're getting anxious for it to end, so I'll leave the details of my current project for next time.
I've read about writers (Stephen King comes to mind) who work on shorter pieces immediately after finishing bigger works. This seems like a great way to use up the energy that still is inside as well as to combat the anti-climax of being done. However, I've come to realize in recent years that deep down I'm not a short story writer; I'm a novelist. I admire short story writers and appreciate when I read a great piece that manages to tell a good story in such a small space, but the truth is I probably read more novels than short stories, and sometimes I read short stories and feel that they're okay, but would be better as novels (stories by E. Annie Proulx and Alice Munro come to mind). And beyond my taste in reading, it just seems that when I have an idea, it's for a longer piece. Even when I have the initial inspiration of a single scene or a simple event, I'm not satisfied with leaving it at that slice; I want to know what happens next and after that. Currently I have ideas for a few novels that I want to write in the next number of years, and two of those began as what I thought could be short stories, but I wrote the short stories and realized I was deeply unsatisfied with them although I still loved the original ideas. The problems were due to the failure of the ideas to fit into the short story frame. In order for those pieces to be explored in a satisfying way without turning to sentimentality, cliche, or whatever, they have to be larger. I need to know the characters more fully, to explore where they came from and where they go after the scene that was the initial inspiration. So as far as shorter pieces go, although I've been working for the past several years at the craft of writing and I've written a handful of stories in the process, I feel I have only produced one that is any good along with one personal essay that is also strong. Possibly I have a couple novel chapters that might be able to stand alone, but writing a short story may be more difficult for me than writing a novel, so turning to that avenue as a way out of my post-completion funk doesn't typically work well.
I finished revisions of my second novel a couple months ago. I tried to fight off the blues through getting involved in the hunt for an agent, but of course that's not the same as actively writing. Although it takes a lot of time and an essential part of becoming a professional writer with published books, it doesn't satisfy me at all. It's just hard work, and the more I think about the difficulties of actually landing an agent and getting my book out there, the more I'm likely to sink into the depression that comes with having finished my novel. So clearly, I needed something else, another creative project. But what?
I decided to try my hand at screenwriting, not expecting to really produce anything that will make me a Hollywood success or anything, but just to gain more experience of another form and to give myself something to work on. I took a screenwriting course in my MFA program, and for the final project of that class I wrote the first act of a screenplay along with an outline of what the rest of the story would be if I finished it. So I decided it was time to return to it. So that's what I did. I absorbed myself in screenplays, reading more of them to refresh myself on the form, and I sat down and worked day after day. It was fun for a while, and it provided some of the distraction I was looking for, but ultimately I lost steam with the project. Essentially my problem with it came from a basic uncertainty with the story at the heart of the piece. I wasn't convinced the characters were really working and that I could conclude the story in any satisfying way. In part, I wasn't sure what I actually believed was the "right" thing for the character to do in his situation, and so I was left with choices of a standard Hollywood happy ending or a cynical finish, neither of which felt honest or satisfying, but I couldn't come up with anything else, any middle ground either. I suspect the entire thing needs substantial alterations much earlier in the story at the very heart of the characters before an ending will be possible. So I sputtered and floundered and was left in the same position I was in before, only now instead of merely the anti-climax of finishing a novel, I was in the added funk of attempting something and failing. Of course failure is an unavoidable part of the creative process, and I still have hopes that some day I might return to the screenplay and be able to figure it out, but in the mean time, what do I do to satisfy this deep urge in me to write a story?
Well, I tried to do a short story, which as I wrote above, is not my forte. The story was one that had been needling away at my brain for a few years. I wrote an unsuccessful version of it a few years ago, which due to a computer crash a few years ago is now completely lost. So I thought I might be able to write this story now and avoid the problems I had with it back then. But it wasn't working either. I sat down day after day with it, and produced only a few pages, including two separate and very different openings and a number of notes that haven't yet become the key to solving the story's failings.
Let me clarify one thing here before continuing. I don't want this to seem like I'm complaining. I fully understand that failure is part of the process. Most of the paths I take will be dead ends. That's simply the nature of writing. That's why writing is a process and not merely a single step. Furthermore, every time I attempt something and produce a version I'm unhappy with or I abandon a project three quarters of the way into a draft, it's still a valuable learning experience. I like to think of it as analogous to painting: a great artist doesn't doodle his first sketches and produce masterpieces, but that doesn't mean that every crap drawing or flawed painting wasn't a valuable part of the process that eventually led to great work. Hopefully in the future I can anticipate some of the problems I hit in the past and avoid them, or I can see why I went wrong and do something else instead. Time spent writing is worthwhile. Period.
However, as great as it is to learn and see problems that can be overcome or to simply try new things and add that experience to the sum of what I've done, it's not the same as being actively involved with something I love.
So after unsuccessfully trying a couple of routes to get into a new project following my novel I decided a new novel was probably the best option. As I mentioned above, I have a few ideas for novels that I want to try in the next few years. One I'm sure I'm not ready to write simply because it's too serious and dark, and I feel I need at least a few more years of living before I will be the person who can write it. Another one will require extensive research about a historical time and place, so I'll have to do substantial work on that before I can actually begin writing anything. Then there are two others. One of them I'm excited about. It's one of the ideas that I thought could be a short story, but now I feel has to be a novel. For about a year or more I've thought in my head that it will be "my next novel." However, life issues prevent me from beginning it at the moment. Or, I suppose I could start it anytime I want to, but I don't feel the timing is quite right. I'm in between things as far as a job and a place to live, and I know everything will be in upheaval in a few months as I move. So for the sake of continuity and momentum I don't want to be smack in the middle of this novel when I have to pick up my life and transport myself. I'd rather start this novel in a couple months when I'm settled and can work the writing into my new routine.
So that leaves one other possibility for a novel to work on. And once again, I feel like this post is dragging on and on, and if anybody ever actually reads this, I imagine they're getting anxious for it to end, so I'll leave the details of my current project for next time.
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