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”.
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 wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write on this
morning. I had a bunch of scattered thoughts, but then found myself drawn to my
own advice – the posts I’ve made that I kind of clumped together into the “What
Went Right With…” essays.
The published pieces cover decades of writing – the earliest
published piece (that wasn’t a sort of shot-in-the-dark like a piece I wrote
for a local student magazine called LITTLE BIT when I was seventeen) is from
the June 2000 issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact.
Then there was “bit” of a lull that included an
acceptance from a magazine called ANTITHESIS that folded before they were able
to publish it…the story was called “Dogie” and while I still have a typewritten
copy, it’s far from publishable in any sort of pro market.
As for the others, if you look left and scroll down to
Professional Publishing Credits, you’ll find a list of those stories that have
found homes. Under that you can find stories that are still available online or
that I’ve posted on an adjunct to my regular blog called The Work and
Worksheets of Guy Stewart (http://theworkandworksheetsofguystewart.blogspot.com/).
So, as illustrated over there, I’ve had forty-one stories
published; I’ve commented on eighteen of them, poring over what I thought made
them successful sales. Some have garnered positive reviews online; one got a “review”
in the form of a fan letter! I’ve even thought about collecting and self-publishing
all of my YA/children’s science fiction in one place; and I’d probably do both
published and unpublished work. Of the stuff over there, most of them are stories
with adults as main characters.
What I’d like to do is begin to distill my own “wisdom”;
at least distill my own experiences and reflections as I try to not only
duplicate what I did to get published, but to figure out if there are themes in
my writing. I’ll start with what I seem to have done right in my published
stories.
The first thing I notice is that every story has something
of me in it. That seems obvious as I’m the one who wrote it; but what I MEAN is
that every story has something I’ve wrestled with as a person – either a young
person or an adult.
For example, my most recent story, “Kamsahamnida,
America” deals with aging, self-image, and self-confidence. Larry Henry
(besides my envisioning him as a black man, but that’s beside the point) is a “…bitter,
sarcastic, old man with no descendants whatsoever…” While I have descendants
(two NextGen; three grand) I have been known to be bitter and sarcastic. And I’m
competitive. Maybe not as much as Larry, but I absolutely worry about the legacy
I’ll leave when I die. Larry goes to the Moon in a new space race sparked by the
South Koreans landing a human on the Far Side of the Moon, hoping to create a
legacy…
Let’s go back farther: “Fairy Bones”. A bitter, sarcastic
old woman wonders about the legacy she’ll leave behind after she dies. When she
– with the help of a deeply sarcastic teenage grandson – discovers fairy bones
in owl pellets…
“Mystery on Space Station Courage” in which a
young girl (the artist envisioned her as black and while startled, I was
delighted!) struggles with the death of a friend and how to move forward
without becoming (from the viewpoint of an adult, so she doesn’t THINK of this)
sarcastic and bitter…
In “A Woman’s Place”, a sarcastic and bitter ex-husband
goes into danger, forcing his ex-wife, whom he must work with, to rescue him –
and become a mythic figure in a series of stories and a novels I’m writing.
Are you sensing a pattern here?
Better still, are you seeing what I’m seeing? My
characters struggle with the kind of legacy they’ll leave behind once they are
gone. The fact is that, I not only struggle with that myself, I intentionally
direct my students to the same issue. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of times, I
point to a small “handprint” I have pinned to a bulletin board in my office
with an image similar to the new icon above, but simpler. (I may take a picture of the one in my office, so we'll see!) and I ask the student, “What kind of mark do YOU want to
leave on the world?”
I ask this of myself, I ask it of the rest of the world.
Because the issue is relevant to me, it leaks into my stories; because it’s an
important issue, its importance lends import to the story. Others wonder the
same thing, and so, (perhaps) that’s why my stories started to sell when I
finally figured out what drove me.
References: (my catalogued stories at the Internet Speculative
Fiction Database) http://https://i.pinimg.com/originals/80/1b/a1/801ba1454f3169e80e12557791df7125.jpgwww.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?12973
Image:
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