I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...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 as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, short story observations by Sarah Pinsker – with a few from myself…
SP: “Some stories simply need more time. The ideas need breathing room, or the author needs time to develop the skills to write it. I took my novelette “Wind Will Rove” to the Sycamore Hill peer workshop in 2015, then put it aside for a year before revising it. The advice at the workshop was encouraging and thoughtful, but I knew I wasn’t ready to do the work necessary to transform a good draft into the story I thought it could be. I thought about it during that time, and how to make the changes, all without touching the document again until I thought I was ready.”
I can very much understand this. I’d written a serial novel that I wanted to compile and create a “real” novel. I finished that 11 years ago! I knew I had nowhere NEAR the skill it would take to mold all of those bits and pieces into a coherent Kim Stanley Robinson GREEN MARS-length novel.
And yet, now that I have the skills necessary (NOT THAT IT WAS EASY!!!) I finished THAT job this past summer. Then the ROM on my computer died and the finished book is locked in Memory Limbo. I found I had to take it and split it into two books in order to submit it to the ONLY publisher who might be interested in handling it. But skill-wise, I was ready.
SP: “My goal is to make…rushed stories the exception, rather than the rule. I’ve come around to the theory that those situations come up and need to be handled, but most stories are better for a little aging.”
Lately, I’ve set myself a personal challenge: learn to write humorous SF. I know – only funny people can write funny!
I have since found that that isn’t true – I KNOW I’m a funny person; especially to teenagers. I could crack a class up given half a chance, and have the group laughing without too much trouble. Of course, dealing with teens, most of my humor is self-deprecatory! The fact that I’m writing flash makes me want to send the thing off the INSTANT it’s finished. But, while I HAVE sold pieces that have a good sense of humor, those are few and far-between. Sending them off right away usually means a quick (or lengthy!) generic rejection – mostly because, as Pinsker notes, “…most stories are better for a little aging.” I’m either impatient – or I’m afraid to send something out. It’s been rejected once or twice, and I look at it and tell myself it’s rotten and certainly not the worth the pain of subbing it a half dozen times.
Hesitation is the BIGGER issue for me, but I’m guilty of sending things our FAR from finished.
“…Sturgeon writes, ‘ask the next question.’ That’s what my first-draft-and-out-the-door stories lack. A first draft has all the shine of the original inspiration, if I’m lucky enough to have removed it from my head intact, but it’s often superficial. It has good bones, some turns of phrase I’m pleased with, characters and structure that carried me through. And yet it often lacks depth. The ‘why’ or the ‘and then’ to the ‘what if?’”
“A story I’ve finished without rush has time to go to one of my critique partners.”
I’ve almost never had a critique partner – I find they’re not particularly helpful to me. That probably says more about ME than it does about the idea of finding someone you can trust enough to offer advice to you (and who isn’t PAYING YOU to take their advice!) However, as evidence, I offer the following.
I tried to join a children’s writers group. To see what they thought of a story I’d actually sold already to CRICKET The Magazine for Children. I handed out copies and the next meeting the unanimous verdict of the group was that there were things they DID like about, it just wasn’t ready to be sent to CRICKET (“Heaven forbid! They’d never buy anything like this!”) The fact was that, the editor HAD bought the story. It was also purchased for supplemental reading for a programmed Fourth Grade Reader series. I never went back.
Finally, in March of 2019, an interviewer at B&N Reads made this statement: “A wealth of varied lived experience comes through in these stories. At the same time, the focus is often on the future—an apocalyptic, post-climate change landscape. The result is what feels like an extended love song to the world, as it feels like much of what we know is about to slip away.”
SP responded, “I can’t tell you how much I love this take on my stories. Also, this may be a short answer, because yes. I feel like anyone who is paying attention is scared right now. I can’t shake a feeling of decay, and yet I still see beauty everywhere. I meet wonderful people. I have a new dog who has invented the fifty cutest ways to sleep. I have nieces and nephews who bring me constant joy. I get to go amazing places and see amazing things. But there are also progresses that I would have said were permanent a few years ago that now feel fragile. There’s a combination of beauty and brokenness just permeates everything.”
I was a science teacher for 41 years, and I still teach a summer school class on creating realistic aliens. I’m fairly accomplished with both communicating science and I often read journals and studies for my writing. (Most recently: “Importance of silicon and mechanisms of biosilica formation in plants” (Sahebi M, Hanafi MM, Siti Nor Akmar A, Rafii MY, Azizi P, Tengoua FF, Nurul Mayzaitul Azwa J, Shabanimofrad M. Importance of silicon and mechanisms of biosilica formation in plants; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25685787/ )
DIGRESSION: [I have both trouble believing and trouble hearing people who think so highly of Humanity that they fervently and violently believe that we’ve somehow created the power in ourselves to alter the climate of this planet so profoundly that there appears to be a certainty that we have, as a race of some 8 billion individuals doomed not just ourselves, but all other life on Earth to permanent extinction.
These people, many of them intelligent, learned scientists seem to have, for some reason, forgotten that “The mass [of the Chicxulub Crater impact object] is in the range of 1.0e15 kg to 4.6e17 kg (30,000 gigatonnes)”. (https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6391#:~:text=The%20mass%20is%20in%20the,in%20the%20K%2FPg%20layer.) It did not obliterate all life on Earth.
The current mass of Humanity is hard to find, but Smithsonian Magazine in May of 2018 baldly proclaimed, “Of the 550 gigatons of biomass carbon on Earth…humans [weigh] in at 0.06 gigatons. (33 gigatonnes)”. [Of course, it's not the same thing. I'm trying to make a point!] (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000th-earths-biomass-180969141/)
The Chicxulub meteorite was unable to obliterate all life on Earth. “Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.” [What does this even mean? What is the unit of “utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth”? It sounds like an emotional estimate of the grandeur and power of Humanity – calculated by a Human.]
The Chicxulub meteorite accelerated the extinction of most of the dinosaurs, it didn’t cause life on Earth to end entirely. I doubt very much that if we cause our own extinction through climate change, no matter how egregious the insult to the planet is; that ALL LIFE ON EARTH WILL BE DONE FOR. We are NOT God or gods or even a particularly grand force of nature. LIFE will exist on Earth after our demise. And while we might accelerate our extinction a bit, I doubt in the long-run it will make much difference. We’re programed to believe or reason or think that we and all our stuff will last forever. But for strict materialists, that’s absurd. It’s all gonna vanish eventually, and on a geological scale, whether we’ve “become a dominant force in shaping the face of Earth,” or not, Humans will be gone someday. But I’m pretty sure the spirit we think is unique to us will still remain...I think it's one of my missions to write hopeful; even humorous fiction. That's what I'm working on...
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