DeAnna Knippling's Blog, page 98

Writer Mom explains how to do your reading homework

My daughter Ray keeps asking me to help her with her homework...not her math homework (she's got that down; mostly I just need to check it for careless errors) but her writing homework.

Every time she does, I'm reminded how not everyone has writer brain.

For instance, she has a recurring set of questions:  "What is the beginning of the story?"  "What is the middle of the story?"  "What is the end of the story?"

To me, these things are easy.  To her, they are @#$%^&&!!!!!

So I found a way to explain them that helped her quite a bit.  Now I find myself using it when I write chapters:

1) The beginning is the problem of the story.

2) The middle is what the main character does to solve the problem.

3) The end of the story is whether the problem gets solved or not.

Simple enough for an eight-year-old to understand, right?  Until I find myself plotting out a chapter and realize THE PROBLEM DOESN'T HAPPEN UNTIL THE MIDDLE OF THE CHAPTER.

[Smack!]

Oh, and a cliffhanger?  Just a hint of the next problem coming up.

What Kind of Writer Are You?

Ever have one of those moments when you realize that you're about to know something you don't know yet?  The Buddhists call it approaching a gateless gate; with my nerderiffic background, I tend to think of it as preparing to level.

I'm preparing to level.

I've been thinking, off and on, a lot about audience.  Some things that I write, I just have to write.  Whether or not anyone else likes it is secondary; I hope other people like this stuff, but it'll probably be by chance.

But, from a business perspective, who do I want to be my audience?  In general?  Do I want to carve out a niche, or do I want to spread out all over the place?  I can alter my strategy through the creative use of pen names, but what do I want?

And then there's the "what do I want to write" perspective, because what you write is intimately tied to your audience.  Do I want to write a genre?  Kids, adults, or both?  What ages of kids?  Again, focus on a genre?  What about length?  Short stories or novels?

What do I want to do to my audience?  Make them laugh?  Cry?  Wrap them around an axle?  Encourage them to grind their axes?  Take them away for a while?  Make them remember what it was like to fall in love?

What if I want to do all of this higgledy-piggledy, and not plan any of it ahead, taking life as it comes?

When I think about audience (which is, essentially, thinking about

career) in general, I find a lot of dead ends, a lot of unsatisfying answers.

What kind of writer am I?

Well, I'm funny (sometimes); I like to pull reversals; I like to include metafiction but so much that the story's pointless; I adore transformations, the tests of true love (and its strange varieties, like the love of adventure), and characters who do things that aren't necessarily the best things they could do.  I love to scare myself, to make myself tear up, to snigger.

What kind of writer could I be?

I used to be a poet, so I could be a more poetic writer; I passionately admire books and writers that include both joy and tragedy but end up on the side of joy; I chase down stories that explore love and sex from the perspective that the ending is romantic but doesn't look like a romance novel (for example, tragic endings); I love hearing ghost stories; I love sifting through the current news to find the what-ifs ahead.

I used to have the ambition to be a Shakespearean writer, as opposed to a specialist.  Tragedies, comedies, histories, all containing the basic, opposite truths about life:  Love is transcendent; love is petty.  Revenge possesses you; revenge is nothing.  "To be or not to be, that is the question."

That's been lost lately.  I've been doing the next thing that comes along, without thought to it.  And there's value in that; I find out things I could never come up with consciously.  But I think I'm going to find out something soon about what kind of writer I am.  My "writer's voice"?  My perfect audience?  (Not that I'll know how to please them, not right away.)

When I was a child, I wanted to be everything.  A singer, a dancer, a nun, a doctor, a mother of fourteen, a princess with a killer wardrobe, someone whose every dream came (literally) true (my alter ego super power name was going to be... "Dreama").  Then I found out I wanted to be a writer.  (Thank you, Mrs. Sanderson.)

Now, I feel like that's narrowing down somehow.  I don't know how, but I feel it.

What about you?  What kind of writer are you?

Big Books...done dirt cheap!

One of the many conveniences I've noticed about my e-reader is that it makes the largest of books seem just as weighty as the lightest.

Witness:  Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  This is a book that I purchased shortly after it came out in hardback and never read.  From time to time, I would look at the book and say, "I should read that; however, I am going to take a bath/going to go out to a restaurant/going to take a trip with limited packing space, and this is too freaking big to handle conveniently in such a situation."  I checked it out from the library in ePub format.  It now weighs just as much as anything else I read on the ebook.

I'm wondering whether ereaders will change not just the way or the times we read, but the length of what we read.  I'm pretty sure there will be a resurgence in short stories, with feeds that load onto your reader every time you're within WiFi range.  And I really hope there are more novellas; I like them.

But regarding long works:  I've heard stories about books that had to be split into two or three parts, turned into trilogies, because the publisher couldn't afford to publish them all of a piece.  I wonder whether that practice will continue for ebooks.  It probably will for a while, as people continue to buy a lot of bound books.

On the other hand, I've been seeing a lot of bundle deals for series.

Perhaps the series editions of these books that were originally intended to be a single book can be formatted so the book is more continuous for the reader.

How To Get Rejected...As A Short Story Writer That Is

I am making a serious effort to get better at short stories; a novel is a novel is a novel, but when I want to get into the fine edge of fiction, I read short stories.  I love them.  Especially horror short stories.  My favorite work of horror is still Stephen King's Night Shift.  I buy short story collections on a semi-regular basis.  The thrill of reading Greg Egan or Ted Chiang stories for the first time.

Ahhh.  The tragic worlds of Michael Chabon.  Oooooh....

So here I am, writing one short story a week...AND getting a metric assload of rejections.  Psychologically speaking, that is.

There are a lot of things that I'm not feeling to professional about at the moment, but tell you what, I can talk ALL DAY about how to get rejections.

Here are my current stats on the project (begun in earnest on 1 July):

Thirteen stories in the mail.

Eighteen rejections, seven of them personal.

It seems to be snowballing; this month to date, I received seven rejections and sent ten stories out (the seven rejections plus three new ones).  Turns out, more stories = more rejections.  Now that I can announce that I have a book coming out, I include that in all my cover letters; however, this has not appreciably increased my success rate.

Either they like your short story or they don't, or you're Stephen King and your crap stories are better than my best ones anyway so who knows whether the name has anything do with it or not?

So here is my (current) set of advice on how to get your short stories rejected.  Perhaps, someday, I can tell you how to get them accepted; I suspect it'll be doing more of the same until you get good enough at it to talk editors into whatever crazy stuff you can come up with.

1) Write.

Sit down and write.  Take a quick scan through the rest of the post; you notice where it doesn't say "edit" or "revise"?

Let's call "editing" the cleanup process--typos and grammar fixed, red shirt in scene one/blue shirt in scene two errors fixed, all words actually mean what you used them to mean, and everything scans well (both out loud and on the sheet of paper).  The kind of thing a copyeditor would do, only without any tact.  Yes, you have to do this; you have to act like a professional if you want to be treated like one.  Try to get to the point where it doesn't take as long or longer to clean up copy as it does to write it.

Let's call "revising" the continuing education process of the writer--getting opinions, considering them, making changes to character, setting, plot, etc.  Writers do need continuing education--but if your story doesn't need it, don't screw around with it.  It's a waste of time to fix something that isn't broken, or THAT WORKS OKAY EVEN IF IT ISN'T PERFECT, SHEESH ALREADY FOUR YEARS ON THREE-THOUSAND-WORD STORY?  WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU???

But I'm not bitter.

There's nothing wrong with revising, but the focus should be on writing.  You should spend most of your time--not 51% most, but 90% most--on writing new material.  There's only so much you can fix a bad story while you're learning to write.  You learn a little bit from revising; you learn a lot more from writing a new story while swearing to get better at whatever sucked in the last story.  Sorry if I told you differently before July, but it's true.

And once you get better at writing stories, you can go back to your old stuff (if you can stand it) and fix it in no time flat; you'll be able to see what's wrong with it and whether it'll be more worthwhile to fix it or write it from scratch (or write something else).

Juvenalia.  Everyone has some.

2) Format.

Format your story professionally STARTING WITH YOUR FIRST DRAFT.

It's a hoop through which you, as the trained seal, must jump if you want your fish.  No hoop, no fish.  It's no more demeaning than wearing shoes rather than bunny slippers to work.  Oh, shooooes, you whine.  Who cares what my shoooooes look like.  Shut up.  You could have written and mailed another story in the time it took you to whine about having to format your story.

This includes your cover letter, if any.

Here's my favorite:  http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

But if the market wants the story in a different format, I say give it to them.  A lot of short story markets are working on a shoestring and a prayer, and don't need to spend billable hours TAKING OUT THE TABS AND DOUBLESPACING YOUR STORY.  Jerk.

And why with the first draft, you ask?  Because the time you spend reformatting your story is time that you could be writing, dumbass.

And when you're writing a lot, you're starting a lot of first drafts.

And when you're sending out a lot, the last thing you want to do is accidentally send out the wrong--unformatted--draft.

A word on file names:  Number your revisions, even if you don't plan to have any.  TitleofStory_1.doc works nicely.  Then create an archive file in the story folder for any outdated revisions AND FILE THEM.

"If only I'd sent the right draft...the one that wasn't completely retarded."  Mistake-proof your process NOW.

3) Send.

I recommend Duotrope's Digest for finding markets.  Use the submission tracker.

Send the story the day you're done editing (that is, cleaning up, which you shouldn't do until after you've done any revisions, if any).

 Do not send more than one story to a market.  Do not send one story to more than one market.  Do not post your story on your website.

I haven't decided what my particular rejection threshhold is.  I have one story with, uh, sixteen rejections, I think.  When I do hit my threshhold, I'll consider publishing as an e-story.  More on that later, I guess.

But keep your story in the mail.

The day after it gets rejected, send it out.  (I find sending it out on the same day is sometimes problematic, as even looking at my e-mail makes me want to throw myself off a cliff.  But no longer than two days, if it's over the weekend, even if you feel like shit.)

Snail mail:  Buy a BOX of 9 by 12s and a BOX of standard envelopes for SASEs.  Keep stamps on hand at all times.  Staple NOTHING as nobody likes to rip open a finger when opening mail.  Use paper clips, not binder clips to prevent excessive lumps in your envelope and on the editor's desk.

A note on writing for a market vs. writing whatever the hell you feel like, then sending it to a market:  I highly recommend getting in the habit of writing for yourself while keeping a reader in mind (not a market).  If you know who likes your stuff, you can deduce your markets from them.  "Is this for my sarcastic-but-romantic sibling or my evil cousin the accounting detective?"  Someone who is NOT you.

Sometimes you can't help yourself; "Ohh, this has Weird Tales all over it."  What happens when it gets rejected?  Death by paper cut?  Pfft.

4) Track.

I recommend a spreadsheet and the submission tracker on Duotrope's, and a paper file for the snaily stuff.  SAVE all e-mails.

Rejections = tax deductions.

I am not qualified to give tax advice; however, if you plan on taking deductions for your postage, supplies, home office, etc., don't paper your bathroom in rejections as it may be somewhat embarrassing to have to invite the IRS auditor into your home.

The more stories you have out, the more complex it becomes to determine who has your story, when you sent it (did they forget about you?!?  It's happened to me before), and, when you get rejected, who you can send it to next without pissing them off because you 1) already sent them that story or 2) already sent them a different story that they haven't rejected yet but are pretty much guaranteed to reject now.  "Look, you greedy bastard, wait in line like everyone else!"  "Ooops..."

On that story with sixteen-ish rejections, I wasn't keeping track, because I was bound and determined to get that story accepted before I wrote or submitted another one.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I'm PRAYING that I don't send it out to someone who's already had it, or that it's been so long ago that they've changed slush readers and/or records system.  I've changed the name of the story several times, too, so that doesn't help.  I was being an idiot.

Be smarter than I was.  Shouldn't be hard.

Announcement: The Mysterious Book!

I got permission from the publisher, League Entertainment, to announce this yesterday. Greedily, I sat on the news for a while, savoring it all my lonesome.

(Actually, I told myself I had to get my work done for the day before I could send it out, then beat my head against the wall for several hours, and decided I had to spend some time with my family after that before they killed me, then decided I was too tired for to be anything but grumpy and disagreeable and read in the bathtub for a few hours instead, which is my version of a recovery tank a la The Empire Strikes Back. How sad is that? I've been harassing these guys for months to let me spill the beans.)

But here I am this morning, back in the saddle, as it were, ready to either a) make my announcement or b) babble.*

The book is called Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse (due out October 26, 2010). It's a pick-your-own-path kind of book, only every choice upon which you embark ends in your death, often in comically gruesome ways. Being a zombie book, death doesn't always equal the end of the story; you just switch sides. But eventually, you get what everybody gets at the end of the road: death.

Muahahaha!

Perfect for me, eh?

As I write this, my beneficent overlords haven't put the book up on their site yet (hint), and I can't release images, so I'll just have to post an update when it's up. The book has just made it into rough galleys and is going out to some utterly awesome people for blurbs, but I don't want to jinx anything (or be inaccurate due to last minute changes which my kind publishers may be too swamped to inform me of), so I'll just cross my fingers and hope.

I love this book. I wish someone had written this book when I was a kid. I would have been all over it. I used to love reading (and trying to figure out all the alternate endings) to Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid (although I hardly remember them now; the only thing I remember was the one about the pyramids and getting turned into a mummy), but I never cared for the happy endings.

The guys at League (Ken Chapman and Johnny Atomic) have been great to work with (as in, they set me loose on this awesome idea, and then when I turned stuff in, picked apart the stupid and vague parts and made me fix them, which is a mark of greatness in my book), and Ana Bruno did awesome art. I chortled over the whole galley; right now, I feel like my writing is just the excuse for the concept and the art. I like working with people who are more talented than I am--I feel like I'm getting away with something, so just try to stop me.

I am lucky to be working on this project, you know?

*Or c) both, apparently.