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”. In this case, I’m going
to use a quote from a famous “short story artist” and jump off from there.
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!
It's been a while since I decided to add something
different to my blog rotation.
Today, I’m going to be looking at “advice” for writing
short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative
fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories:
“The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word
count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500
to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”
I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to
writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. The
advice will be in the form of a single quote off of which I’ll jump and connect
it with my own writing experience.
Without further ado, let’s start with Ray Bradbury, a
master storyteller in multiple genre, though perhaps best remembered for his speculative
writing. Upon his death, The New York Times noted: “[Bradbury is] the writer
most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary
mainstream”.
I started reading Bradbury’s short stories in THE MARTIAN
CHRONICLES shortly after I graduated from John Christopher’s WHITE MOUNTAIN
novels, Andre Norton’s entire body of work, and Heinlein’s juveniles. I found
them weird and almost incomprehensible, but took from them a startling vision
of Mars. Contemporary writer Kim Stanley Robinson evoked a similar sense for me
in his epic, multiple-award-winning MARS trilogy (RED MARS, BLUE MARS, and
GREEN MARS).
But we’re here to look at what Bradbury said about short
stories – he wrote over six HUNDRED of them after all (he “only” wrote 27
novels…), so advice from him is perhaps wonted by anyone who wants to write
short speculative fiction. We’ll start with a few quotes from him:
“Write a short
story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
“Don’t think.
Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious
is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You must simply do things.”
“Ideas excite me,
and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and and the next thing
I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.”
“There’s no one
way to be creative. Any old way will work.”
“The answer to
all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.”
Wow! A lot to
mine here, so I’ll focus on the one with which I have the most experience. In
this case, I’m going to comment on two: “You must stay drunk on writing so
reality cannot destroy you.”
This is a part of
the “who I am” of writing. As a science teacher and school counselor (since
1981 and while that continued; I’ve been in the second since 2010), I’ve seen grief.
If I dare count, three or four of my students – ones I knew well – have been
murdered or have taken their own lives. There are few things as sad as the
death of a child. In this, I don’t mean “child” in a derogatory sense. I mean
it in the sense that even though life has dealt them misery, they are
completely unequipped to deal with it the way an adult is. They have either
been drawn into a life where their time intersected with bullets; or they have
given up entirely and saw no reason to continue on Earth.
At the school I
work at, we have had an influx in recent years of students from countries torn
by civil and declared war. They have personally witnessed atrocities. Others
have lost parents to death, murder, or incarceration. Of those, some have dealt
with the crushing load of life in a self-destructive manner. Others have risen
so far above their past that I am convinced they look down on the rest of us
with sad resignation.
All of that to point out that if I were to completely immerse myself in the lives of these students,
I would soon find myself lost in a dark, grim place. My writing – and you’ll
see that I tend toward the hopeful and the silly – is my way of dealing with
that darkness.
The second
Bradbury quote, “I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before, but it’s true
— hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice,
practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.
This is one that
anyone who knows me – in particular my wife – will roll their eyes in mock (I
hope!) frustration when asked what I do in my “spare” time. I DON’T HAVE spare
time – I am either living life to the fullest or I’m writing. I was going to
say there’s nothing else, but that’s not being completely honest. I DO use the
bathroom; I DO sleep; I DO spend time with my lovely wife; kids; kids-in-law;
foster kids; grandkids; and less-frequently, my brothers, sister, and nephews
and nieces…
At any rate, I
LOVE writing and I spend an inordinate amount of time writing. I’m currently
organizing my files (after thirty or more years of writing, filing, and carting
the files around.) I’ve written A LOT of stuff. By last count, I’ve submitted
manuscripts to markets 1139 times since 1990. 107 of them have been accepted
and published somewhere. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know how MANY
manuscripts I’ve written that never reached to submission stage; and of the ones
I’ve submitted, I don’t know exactly how MANY manuscripts there are there.
So, with that in
mind, I think I qualify for the idea of working hard and loving what I’m doing!
Seeing my name in print those 107 times STILL thrills me – and I page through
the magazines and websites to find them every once in a while. It’s fun!
In conclusion, the
advice of Bradbury is sound and I will continue to apply it to my own writing.
How about you?
References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury,
https://writingcooperative.com/6-quotes-by-ray-bradbury-to-make-you-a-better-writer-3b341e840a84
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