Slice of PIE: How Can I Make My Stories Sing If I’m Tone Deaf?

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Finland, I will NOT jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. Today, I’ll start with notes I took from the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Fall Conference.

While the focus of the conference was “Make Your Stories Sing”, I was looking for a solution to my problem of writing INCONSISTENTLY.

I don’t mean having a time to write regularly. I don’t mean having an instrument and place to do my writing. I have both of those. I mean that I’ve published stories in the biggest markets in my chosen field – CRICKET/CICADA, for children’s writing; ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact for my SF writing; even THE WRITER (online) – but I don’t get published CONSISTENTLY.

The statistics back me up.

CRICKET/CICADA – Total submissions since 1990: 44; Total publications: 4; Total submissions since FIRST publication: 40 (It’s my thought that I’ve been blacklisted since my fourth publication, but I have no proof and no evidence…just a feeling based on “what I did”.)

ANALOG – Total submissions since 1990: 42 ; Total publications: 5; Total submissions since FIRST publication: 20

ANALOG has numerous subs before 1990, but I didn’t keep much in the way of records, so I won’t count those.

I posed the problem to the most recent winner of the Newbery Award winner. In case you don’t know: “The Newbery [is] considered the…most prestigious award for children's literature in the United States. Many bookstores and libraries have Newbery sections; popular television shows interview the winners; textbooks include lists of Newbery winners, and many master's and doctoral theses are written about them.”

Not only was she the keynote speaker, during the Q&A after her talk, I was able to pose my question: “I’ve been published in the big markets, but I have not been consistently published in the big markets. Do you write consistently well – and if you DO, how do you do it?”

She told me it was a good question, then offered a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway, “The first draft of anything is shit.” [If you are a quote National Socialist like I am, here’s a discussion of the attribution: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/20/draft/]

It's only a part of a quote, usually taken out of context. When you find it IN context, the particular line is bracketed by precursor statements and a sort of coda: “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself.”

Given Hemingway's is somehow a truism that applies to the art of revision, Ms. Barnhill continued, “The secret of consistency is revision.”

Hmmm…she should know because she taught high school English in Oregon, then 7^th grade English in Minnesota where she taught her class to call her Princess Barnhill. She probably also taught them to not hand in first drafts and to do lots of draft. While she lived in Oregon, she’d written a mystery novel, sending it out to agents. When she DID get a response, the agent told her that she’d written the wrong book…

Set free from that book, she restarted writing something different and after having the image of a kid in a car holding a drawing tablet on his lap on his way to (of all places) rural Iowa, she felt compelled “to write a place for him to belong”. The result was THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF JACK.

Now granting the importance of revision, what did she mean by it? She answered with an anecdote and an appalling practice she committed when she first started writing (she has since come back to her senses – possibly after her husband nearly lost his mind…or something like that…)

The anecdote: When she and her husband worked for the US Forestry Service in Oregon, they were surveying the damage created by a huge blowdown. Another park Ranger was assigned to work with him. His first name was Vic and I have NO idea what I wrote for his last name except this: “Stanscliskie”. At any rate, overwhelmed by the damage, she and her husband had no idea where or how to start. Vic said, “Take the worst part of the trail and make it the best.”

Since that time, Ms. Barnhill has adapted that advice to her writing. The practice she committed however, seems wildly reckless, (though from our really brief time in the session, it seems to somehow mesh nicely with her description of how her principals viewed her as a teacher: “…impertinent. And impatient. And insubordinate. And I had a difficult time holding my tongue.”)

She'd applied Vic's theory of of rebuilding trails to the practice of writing by clicking SELECT ALL -> DELETE -> and then REWROTE THE WHOLE THING FROM MEMORY method of revision.

Since those days, however, she has revised her revision methodology (so-to-speak) to writing long-hand first drafts and then enter them into the computer. She notes that cursive writing or longhand stimulates both sides of the brain (http://www.twosidesna.org/US/2014/03/31/handwriting-helps-the-brain-function/, using actual research references: http://mashable.com/2015/01/19/handwriting-brain-benefits/#hPB0q.o2TsqI) and it’s been effective for her work.

Obviously effective, as she’s won the Newbery award as well as the World Fantasy Award, and she's been nominated for several others.

The takeaway here seems pretty clear, even to me: Take the worst part of the trail and make it the best.

The Site: https://minnesota.scbwi.org/events/2017-mn-scbwi-conference/

Image: https://www.dx-revision.com/wp-content/uploads/posts/revised-revision-logo-font.jpg