In September of 2007, I started this blog
with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how
little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak
at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and
Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the
writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran,
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they
write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers,
columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications
now that I can share some of the things I did “right” and I’m busy sharing that
with you.
While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make
enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the
professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what
I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a
point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote
above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and
sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
I’m a writing
teacher during the summer. I work with kids who have been identified as gifted
and talented. The class I teach is, QUITE specifically, Writing To Get
Published.
These days, I
have a reasonably extensive repertoire of work that parents figure I’m good at
what I teach. I also have a small cadre of students who’ve gone on to publish
as well. It’s an overview class touching on many types of writing – poetry,
essay, journalism, how-to, fiction (of course!) in its multiple forms like
twitterfic, flash, short story, and novel, scripts (this year, my classes wrote
a the first episode of a telenovela together based on an outline I gave them.
It was hugely successful!)
Of course, every
kid believes that they can write fiction. A third of them were already working
on “novels” (They called their one-page-per-chapter, 4000 word masterpiece…). I
nodded, encouraged them to expand the idea (“Look at your favorite book. How
long is it?”). Then I suggest another form of fiction: the 142 space twitter fiction.
Often when I give
an assignment, I do it myself to offer insights to the process. So, every year,
I write a piece of twitterfic, and then submit it, showing them how it’s done.
It’s a great all-around lesson because I also talk about the probability of
rejection. I mentioned that I’ve subbed to the Nanoism site six times and that
I’ve been accepted once – a 17% success rate.
Why did this one
work where the others failed? Mostly because the subject was both painful and
ongoing.
See, I’m one of
the “sandwich generation” – kids in their late 20s and early 30s and parents in
the early 80s, both with unique needs that my generation can help with and that
stretch both resources and emotions. My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in
2014 – and we didn’t find out until 2015 when I gained access to both of my
parent’s medical records.
Something about
me – I’m a science fiction writer and I also keep a blog chronicling my wife’s breast
cancer experience (I added Dad’s Alzheimer’s in 2015), with the main goal of “translating
the medicine” (as well as an emotional outlet for myself as I’m not a big “group
sharer”) and keeping up on developments in both fields. If you’re interested in
either, go here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/.
My mom was stuck
in the past.
She’d had hip and
knee replacements, starting in her early 60s. In her early 80s, one of her
knees was giving her lots of pain. She insisted on getting another replacement.
Her doctor refused at first, but she persisted, and he finally gave in and did
it. Mom was expecting to do a bit of PT, then move on like nothing had changed
as she did when she was in her 60s. That’s not what happened. The replacement
was so painful, she refused to do the PT. As a result, she began to struggle with
edema in her legs. A stay in the hospital and a weird situation sparked a bout
of skin cancer on her forearm. She grew weaker. Her lungs began to retain fluid
as a result of an inoperable heart valve problem.
Dad’s Alzheimer’s
progressed and his memory issues grew worse and I “took away the car keys”…
We moved them
into a senior, assisted living residence (a very nice place), where they both
continued to slide into dementia – Dad on a frictionless surface, Mom as a part
of (I think) age-related dementia.
It was at the
time I was teaching summer school again that Mom passed away and I wrote the
piece as a sort of therapy. How did I mash so many feelings together? I started
with a paragraph that was simply descriptive. Then I tried to fit it on the worksheet
I gave the kids that had 142 short blanks, playing with the idea that I was the
one who looked to the future. Mom got more and more mired in the past. Dad had
no idea what time it was – literally and figuratively as he swung from the present
to the far past as his recent memories eroded faster and faster…
The Nanoism came together
because of the intensity of my experience. Reaching into myself allowed me to
write a piece that at LEAST reached the editor. As Walter Wellesley “Red”
Smith (1949) and Paul Gallico (1946) together coined the quote “Writing Is Easy; You Just Open a Vein and
Bleed”.
Smith had been
quoted as saying, “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your
veins, and bleed.”
Gallico wrote, “It
is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you
establish contact with your reader.”
So, in this case,
I opened up a vein and bled my heartache and you can read the result here: http://nanoism.net/stories/736/
Two stories I
sold recently are also in the same “opening the vein and bleeding”…er…vein. “Road
Veterinarian” and “Kamsahamnida, America” are deeply personal. The first
will be in the September/October 2019 of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact; the
second will be in the November/December 2019 issue of the same magazine.
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