WRITING ADVICE: Writing FLASH FICTION

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Sixteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things with my blog. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, the oldest of whom just became a teenager. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other essays as a sometime  contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens. Oh, I also discovered that more and more of my stories are falling into a set of futures I’ve invented. This is all because I dislike "disposable worlds" -- too much like the society we live in. I want to reuse the places.

YEARS ago, I was nominated for a Nebula Award by popular SF writer Catherine Asaro ( http://www.catherineasaro.net/ ).

The nomination was for a short-short I wrote for ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT called "Warning! Warning!" (October 2005).

It was inspired by something that irritated me -- a label in both Spanish and English plastered inside the lid of my wheeled recycling tub, UPSIDE down when you're opening the can's lid; right side up when it's open. It read: "Caution: Owner may trip if lid is not closed." This was such a stupid warning that I knew immediately that someone MUST have tripped while rolling the tub with the top open and tried to bring a lawsuit against the company that made the garbage can. They probably won.

It SO irritated me that checked several other appliances and furniture in my house, finding to my horror that just about everything had a warning label on it. I wrote a short-short SF story carrying the absurd increase in "warning" lables to its obvious conclusion -- everything, everywhere on Earth and in space will have to carry some sort of warning label on it. In addition to being adhered to and engraved on objects, these warnings will be broadcast from a special "Warning Broadcast Network" as well as visually projected on to all surfaces capable of causing harm. In this future, mea culpa (Latin, "my fault") will be struck from the English language and everything will be the fault of "someone else".

Like essay writing, short-short writing has to come from a passionate heart. There's no time to develop character, so POINT becomes all important. What is the POINT of the short-short? Can you state it in three or four words? Are you passionate about the POINT you are trying to make?

Then perhaps you'll have a saleable short-short story when you're done!

(I don't know if Ernest Hemingway INVENTED Flash Fiction, but this piece of his is quintessential flash!)

IMAGE: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiWXWfkWGlzaE2vYmNN_glfyjD4ms9FzXWlr4I8OoyoXtaxsQGyNPq-Rs-vxcn6zlJLYf4BHNtHQi3fE-QP_O5mPEQvM7eOLAVEq6hvw3OURQfOYb2DGWJ2sf2PZH-Ou66ToMtHUIt44Gk/s400/baby+shoes.jpg

IDEA ON TUESDAY 644

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Apocalyptic Diary
Current Event: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385522045/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687402&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0143036874&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=12GZ8H98NAT6JAAX4NBC

July 4, 1895
Mother said that when she was a girl, they ate pigeon every day at a time, and sometimes for days and days at a time. She said she hated pigeon meat.

She also said that pigeon didn’t make you vomit until you brought up only blood. She said there were days when pigeon’s didn’t fill the sky and eat everything in sight, including people sometimes. When I asked her if they sounded nicer when she was a girl, she said, “No, they’ve always sounded like a rusty mill wheel pump in an afternoon breeze.”

July 19, 1895
I’ve been thinking about what a time traveler could possibly want with pigeons. They’re monsters and the preachers round these parts think that they are a curse placed on mankind for the hubris of thinking he was better than nature. Most of them are old enough to remember when people actually ate pigeons instead of pigeons eating the clothes and food off us. Pa says that the pigeons don’t eat Human meat – except for the eyes. Mother hushed him up real fast and asked me if I’d heard what he said. I turned around and said, “What?”

Mother managed a pained smile and a glance at Pa that would have peeled paint from the outhouse – if there’d been any paint left on it.

Later that day, a pigeon flock passed over our town and it was dark enough to have to light the lanterns. The sound is horrible and we could hear the sound of the birds as they relieved themselves on our house.

Mother shouted at the roof as if she was trying to scare them away. She scared the littles so much, I finally had to hold the youngest and let the others lean on me.

It took fifteen hours for the flock to pass. Mother said, “This is the end of Humanity. The very, very end, and we will have died surrounded by meat we can’t eat any more, bereft of what food we grew and might have eaten, with our waters poisoned by pigeons who drop a deadly rain as they pass over us…”

Pa said nothing but hung his head. Danforth and me looked at each other until finally Dan looked down. He was so much like Pa, it made my heart clench tight.

Outside, the deafening shriek of the passing flock faded into complete silence.

Names: ♀ American Midwest, ; ♂ American Midwest
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 38: Talking To A Sapient Apartment Building

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS in biology and a fascination with genetics, I started to use more science in my fiction.

After reading hard SF for the past 50 years, and writing hard SF successfully for the past 20, I've started to dig deeper into what it takes to create realistic alien life forms. In the following series, I'll be sharing some of what I've learned. I've had some of those stories published, some not...I teach a class to GT young people every summer called ALIEN WORLDS. I've learned a lot preparing for that class for the past 25 years...so...I have the opportunity to share with you what I've learned thus far. Take what you can use, leave the rest. Let me know what YOU'VE learned. Without further ado...

You can check out the Wikipedia article linked below as well as a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY I wrote a couple of years ago when I first started poking around the idea of “intelligent jellyfish”. First thing I found out was that jellyfish are single organisms – like Humans. But the siphonophores are COLONIAL organisms are made up of thousands – and potentially millions of individual creatures working together but still separate. One way to look at it is that Humans are individually identified; and Le Lignon in Switzerland is considered the largest apartment building on Earth with 6000 full-time residents. A jellyfish would be a Human; the apartment a siphonophore.

In the event of a first contact, the Siphon (I’m calling them that for the sake of brevity and admitting that, like every other long word, Americans would shorten names to nicknames; but not all cultures do it so, it’s my blog and I’ll do it how I want to! ;-)…Sorry, let me pick up the statement before I wandered off…wouldn’t be speaking to a Human as an individual, but as if it were a…I suppose “city” or “town” would be closer as the siphonophore is a co-dependent colonial organism. While distantly related, they are NOT jellyfish.

OK – enough biology.

How would I communicate with a sapient apartment building? Unlike talking to an individual Human, talking to a Siphon would of necessity be like talking to each resident of the apartment building alone. A decision made by one of the residents would be completely independent of every other resident.

That’s how it would go with a non-sapient creature. While incredibly tedious, it could, I suppose, be done. “A siphonophore is much more than the sum of its parts. In fact, none of its parts could function on their own. Each siphonophore is actually a colony of individual parts, called “zooids”, which are produced as the siphonophore grows, and stay connected together. Some form rope-like chains that can grow longer than a whale. Each zooid has a distinct job in this colony: some catch prey, while others digest it, and still others reproduce, swim, and keep the colony upright. The result is a biological marvel that makes us wonder just what it means to be an ‘individual’!”

But if a Siphon were to evolve to Human-equivalent intelligence there would be other types of organisms – probably brain-type cells as well as electrical communication-type cells. These would link up with the light-emitting cells, and while the Siphon would NOT have a brain or a mouth or one voice…hmmm…

Siphonophores live (at least on Earth) in the oceans, so if an alien Siphon came to Earth, we would likely be speaking to them in the open ocean. Probably the best way to work this is to bring a large submarine with Humans who serve all kinds of capacities. And once we made contact, the Siphon should be able to understand that while we appeared as they do – a huge massive “creature”, they would instead be a colony serving individuals. Maybe something like this:

The entire Contact team gathered in the forward Light Emitter of the Contact Ship. A disk of transparent plastic, each Human lay in a tube with a light disk facing outward – something like a giant, circular honeycomb.

The Siphon alien drifted across from them. Each Human Emitter was linked with the others via headset. At the back of the disk, Control was made of a cluster of Human monitors. Still others controlled the buoyancy and forward and reverse motion of the Contact Ship. They were banking on the probability that the Siphon would use light to communicate. As far as Humanity was concerned, if they were going to contact them via mental telepathy…well, it could be argued that if it WERE possible, some Human, somewhere would have heard the Siphon already.

WHAT they would have heard was a complete unknown. They had proceeded under the belief that “psionic powers” continued to remain fictional. Light seemed the most logical.

Control sent out a message from each console – scripted, but allowing for slightly different expressions. They had decided to initially use the ten most common languages on Earth, including JavaScript: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and German. The language was transcribed into electromagnetic pulses and translated into the same frequency of light the Siphon was emitting in and appeared on multiple light emitting disks of different intensities.

The first message: “Do you wish to speak to us?”

The response was nothing less that powerful and stunningly beautiful. Rather than a simple disk of light, messages flashed back to the Human Contact Ship from many parts of the Siphon. Not every message was identical, which the Humans had expected, but sometimes the response was radically different, not just in frequency, but in content.

At least that’s what appeared after that first flash of communication…

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonophorae, Youtube: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=566487c1e8374dca&sca_upv=1&hl=en&authuser=0&q=flashing+siphonophores&tbm=vid&source=lnms&fbs=AEQNm0AiWqXpwpi4y_F8VDYetL6Dlnkps_EIKkohBFm2lDUsiBepNBjmASBr9uelbUYBbgOgSinKnsikOw8eX0WEsCCwGvOIvfwleINDrjuVTRluMTv3nX8Frtmxn4Qe_W2QKK1dJN5mLvfVGYgDzBpTcFZ4qRW9sb2H-dwGidyfFM4hXfFGP2K7PF0m3LKNusD786nNUaJGQIHCM3Az9G-LUbh-I4FUCw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjb_-yiiNKIAxX7nokEHbhUM1gQ0pQJegQIEhAB&biw=1528&bih=704&dpr=1.25#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:bbefe8ba,vid:OeflgYWxyVI,st:0;
https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/search?q=siphonophores; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPUF40j47-o, https://twilightzone.whoi.edu/explore-the-otz/creature-features/siphonophore/
Image: https://www.mbari.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/blue-siph-glow-640b.jpg (Frillagalma vityazi)

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: NOT Alternate History! “Time Alteration” Science Fiction

Time Travel Movies are undeniably my favorite genre of movie – ranging from obvious one’s like the iconic  BACK TO THE FUTURE franchise to the eerie soft time travel mainstream movie, “The Lake House” (ranked “Rotten” by Rotten Tomatoes because regular people didn’t understand it or accept the premise, and in Wikipedia is defined as a “romantic drama”, probably to keep the genre safe!)

While I’d love to review them all, I’m going to focus on three, all of them multiple episodes but part of a seamless whole. I’ll start with the one-sentence-blurbs from the Internet Media Database:

BACK TO THE FUTURE – “The trilogy is about a teenager named Marty McFly who is able to travel in time. This is due to the invention of an automobile time machine made by scientist Dr. Emmett L. Brown. Living in 1985, Marty McFly travels to future 2015 and also to past 1955 and 1885. During these times he has several adventures in his home town Hill Valley in California.” (Simple English Wikipedia) Well THAT plays down what happened! My synopsis? Marty (more-or-less accidentally) and using Doc’s time machine, screws up the timeline by creating successful parents, then wrecks it again making nuclear waste and Mafia rule in his home town of Hill Valley, CA the norm. He’s unintentionally murdered his dad, and got Doc put into an insane asylum. Trying to fix THAT, Doc himself then screws up a timeline and Marty helps Doc find a wife and ends up almost back where he started from, though his gf now knows about time travel as well, but it doesn’t matter because the time machine’s scrap. (The body count in these movies is unexpectedly large: three Libyans (I); his dad, future 2 kids, and any number of other people who have died as Biff established BiffCo…(II); Doc, Mad Dog Tannen (III – who will obviously hang), but Doc doesn’t die and the formerly dead Clara Clayton is now alive…so 3 + 3 + 1 = 7.

Also, Marty never meets the “new him” who was shaped by the events he and Doc changed. He’s still the old Marty who remembers Biff bullying his dad and (possibly) raping – which is implied but never stated – that lead up to his trips into the future of 2015 and the past 1885. Who is Marty in the altered timeline?

STAR TREK: The Next Generation deals with the personality-changing results of this kind of time meddling in “Tapestry”. Jean Luc Picard, legendary and archetypical captain of the USS Enterprises both D and E finds himself a lieutenant of average skill, average personality, and most notably, an individual who was never interested in taking a single risk, always playing it safe when Q gives Picard a chance to change one event he regretted. He ends up unraveling the tapestry of his life.

STAR TREK: Voyager, “Year of Hell”, a “alien” scientist, fiddling with a machine that can alter the timeline in order to make the empire he lives in even greater than it is – imagine Hari Seldon in Asimov’s Empire able to instantly alter time so that he can achieve his goal of an eternally stable, galaxy-spanning Empire! He inadvertently erases his beloved wife and spends two centuries making carefully calculated changes to get her back – to no avail. Voyager’s sacrificial plunge into the ship as a last resort resets the original timeline, returning his wife.

I looked at the effect of altering a timeline we actually seem to be approaching in STAR TREK: Deep Space Nine’s episode, “Past Tense” in which the poor and indigent in San Francisco are herded into Sanctuary Districts that leads to the Bell Riots – https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/02/possibly-irritating-essays.html.

So, my question however, is, “Why do these stories touch something deep in you?” or more simply, “Why do they touch something deep in ME?”

First, I realized that these are different from Alternate History. MAN IN THE HIGH TOWER looks at “What would the world be like if Hitler had won?” In a recent issue of ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, “Bonehunter” posits a present where the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct. AVENGERS End Game seeks to rescue half the lifeforms in the Universe from oblivion. These are stories that deal with huge issues and vast populations, and while there might be repercussions for individuals, the focus is on All Time. I love these stories, too, but they aren’t my favorites.

In a Time Alteration story like Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman’s “Kate and Leopold”, the grand sweep of history is beside the point.

The point is making individual characters happy.

During the landmark, paradigm changing Eleventh Series of the long-running BBC series, Dr. Who, The Doctor and her Companions find themselves in 1955 Montgomery, Alabama. In a (slightly) judgmental episode, filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, the English save American History by keeping the time-traveling mass-murder, Krasko from keep Rosa Parks from sparking the Civil Rights movement that continues today. While it seems like it’s an attempt at an Alternate History story, it’s far more a Time Alteration story – Krasko is a racist and wants “his side” to win. He identified Rosa Parks’ influence as a critical event.

In the Disney animated film, “Meet the Robinsons”, Lewis The Orphan wants to find his real family and rejoin them. Inventing a time machine, his sole focus is to change time to give him a family. The villain in the story, The Man With The Bowler Hat is just as intent on changing history, though in his case, it was a self-inflicted wound. While the future DOES change when The Man With The Bowler Hat – who has been a pawn of the evil artificial intelligence robot, Doris – steal a time machine, the intent of the story is to make Lewis happy…clearly a Time Alteration story.

So, coming back to my question, “Why do I like these?”

The answer on reflection, is simple, there are events in my past that I’d like to change. For example, I was a pretty sickly little kid, so when I was seven, my parents agreed with the doctor and I had a tonsillectomy. In 1964, this was a pretty standard operation, “In the United States, the number of tonsillectomies has actually declined significantly and progressively since the 1970s. The frequency with which tonsillectomy is performed varies from region to region. 30 years ago (1978), approximately 90% of tonsillectomies in children were done for recurrent infection; now it is about 20% for infection and 80% for obstructive sleep problems (OSA)…Extensive data shows the negative effects of OSA in children on behavior, school performance, and bed-wetting. Improvement for such behaviors following tonsillectomy is very well documented. Tonsillectomy for recurrent tonsillitis is effective at significantly reducing the number and severity of sore throats in children who are severely affected. There is also anecdotal evidence that some children’s quality of life is transformed by the surgery. This may be caused by a combination of factors that include the tendency of the frequency of recurrent sore throats to resolve over time and the elimination of a source of infection and of obstructive symptoms.”

So, in my experience, once my tonsils were removed, I started eating. Constantly. I became blimp. BUT WHY? I remember being “abandoned” in the hospital overnight by my parents. I had no idea WHY. Then someone came in, shoved something up my butt, and then I woke up with a horribly sore throat, and spent the next several days eating ice cream and drinking 7 Up. The rest, as they say, is history. I have struggled with my weight since then. What if I had gone back, cured my “tonsillitis” with a current-day drug? Would I still struggle with my weight? Would I have my self-confidence? Would I be a published science fiction writer? I don’t know. But, I’d like to have seen the results.

Also, being able to change other events in my childhood and teenage years WOULD have made me a different person. A better person? No idea. So, the idea of playing with Time Alteration is fascinating; I’m even exploring my own feelings regarding my inability to “change people” in a series of stories I’m working on.

I know it’s not going to happen, but at least I have some idea why I like these things!

Resource: My other Favorite Time Alteration stories: “Men In Black III”, “Arrival”, STAR TREK: The Voyage Home, STAR TREK: The Original Series “City on the Edge of Forever”, STAR TREK: Enterprise “Carbon Creek”, TIME TUNNEL, and finally QUANTUM LEAP (1989-1993 version).

Source: https://www.entnet.org/content/tonsillectomy-facts-us-ent-doctors
Image: https://poweredbyrobots.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/1-1-18-newman-timetunnel.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 643

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them? Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.

F Trope: Appeal to a pastoral ideal: Much genre fantasy, of all genres, appeals to the pastoral ideal, one reason for the pseudo-medieval settings. Even urban fantasies will quite often depict cities as blots on the landscape, whose denizens /are blinded to what really matters by material ephemera. There are some fantasies, however, which either deliberately take the opposite stance or present a more balanced worldview.
Current Event: “The Minnesota Renaissance Festival is a Renaissance fair, an interactive outdoor event which focuses on recreating the look and feel of a fictional 16th Century ‘England-like’ fantasy kingdom.”

Svenja Johannson puttered around the edge of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. She crossed her arms over her chest, tossed her platinum blonde hair and said, “I was hoping for a bit more authenticity.

Matias Gallagher, strawberry blonde hair curled like a swim cap over his head, shook his head and said, “Then you should have tried out for ‘Castle Life’.”

She snorted – a sound worthy of a horse, Matias thought – “That’s just as fake.”

He scowled at her and said, “Just because you Germans have all kinds of castles...”

“Not ‘all kinds of castles’ – Wartburg Castle. That is the only castle.”

He shook his head and said, “Speaking of Martin Luther, what makes you think you’d even like the real Renaissance?”

“Are you kidding? My ancestors lived then, there was no pollution, no noise, and definitely no people!”

“What’s wrong with people?” Matias asked as a pair of teenaged boys in basketball shorts, wearing high-topped basketball shoes and suggestive slogans, walked past them using an F-bomb every other word. They looked at him and Svenja. One flipped Matias the bird, the other asked Svenja if she wanted to engage in a sexual act. After Svenja fired a crude rejoinder back at him and Matias leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, flashing both his six-pack and expanding his pecs, the other boy waved him away. The two of them faded into the mob of 21st Century Minnesotans stuffing their faces the way they did at the State Fair and pretending they were in the 16th Century, Svenja glared at Matias.

Matias sighed, “Point.” He paused and said, “Let’s just enjoy the RenFest for what it is.”

Svenja scowled as a parade of knights in armor entered the Festival grounds, the earth trembling under the pounding hooves. The steel plate, gold trim, and silver filigree flashed in the brilliant afternoon light. There was a coolness in the air, a tiny bite of autumn hinting at the winter not far away. There seemed to be hundreds of knights prancing by. “There are so many...” she said.

“What?” Matias shouted. “I can’t hear you!”

“There are so many knights! Where did they come from?” The sun abruptly dipped behind a cloud. There was a flash of light and clap of thunder, yet when Matias pressed his hands over his ears, it seemed that only he and Svenja did so. Others around them seemed oblivious to the darkness and cold. “What’s happening, Matias?” she shouted.

“I don’t know...”

An instant later, the sun came out again. Matias blinked in surprise and Svenja stepped closer to him, grabbing his arm, long fingernails digging into his muscle. The first thing he noticed was the stench of open sewer and the legless man on sitting on the ground in front of them...

Names: ♀ German, Swedish ; ♂ Norwegian, Irish Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #28: Kate DiCamillo “& Me”

In this feature, I’ll 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. 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, writing observations by Kate DiCamillo – with a few from myself…

I’ve actually shared an event with Kate DiCamillo. Not JUST me, of course – some three thousand kids and another twenty-something writers and I attended an annual event called the Young Authors Conference in St Paul, MN.

When I had lunch with her later, she’d only published BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE, which I read and also read to my own kids. My daughter still remembers the book. While WINN DIXIE did win three awards: the Josette Frank Award (2000), a Newbery Honor award (2000), the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award (2002), she was still at the beginning of her career.

I wanted to dig into her advice on writing – and then look at how I might apply it to my own writing.

“When I was a junior in college, I took an expository writing course taught by a graduate student named Trey Greer. On the first day of class, he assigned a five hundred-word essay: describe something, anything. At the time, I was convinced that I was a real writer, an undiscovered Eudora Welty or William Faulkner. Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing. I wanted to be a Writer; and so I put off the work of the essay until the last possible moment. The night before it was due, I went grocery shopping. And sitting outside the Winn-Dixie, perched on top of a hundred-pound bag of Purina dog chow, was a woman with a tambourine.”

While I haven’t quite managed to master this skill, I HAVE sold a few stories that have a foundation in reality. CICADA Magazine, a magazine aimed at young adults, was once part of the fabled stable of CRICKET Magazine Group. It folded several years ago – but before that time, published a short story of mine, “Dear Hunter”…

That story came about because my college roommate’s father actually DID shoot a young person who had gone for a horseback ride – during the weekend of the Deer Hunting Opener. That weekend is a HUGE deal for the people in the north of our borderland state. The accident involved a young woman, and while she didn’t die, she neve contacted my roommate’s dad… Something I’d learned from (among others) Kate DiCamillo was that you can’t take a real incident and just transcribe it into a story.

On another website, Kate DiCamillo was interviewed. She gave a longer answer, but I’d like to condense it and add some of my own insight.

Write. “This step may seem obvious, but is in fact one of the most overlooked.” I guess I never experienced this. After I finished reading John Christopher’s THE WHITE MOUNTAIN trilogy, I started writing my own story. Unimaginative 7th grader that I was, I titled the story, “The White Vines”. It was two or three pages of penciled, old-fashioned hand-written story. I thought it was FABULOUS. It wasn’t…but it was, in fact, where my writing career was born.

Rewrite. “You can’t sit down and expect something golden and beautiful and wise to spring forth from your fingers the first time you write” Kate says. Even your favorite author had to sit and redo passage after passage of your favorite book.” This was a lesson I didn’t learn until I was well into my writing. I cringe when I re-read stories I wrote even a few MONTHS ago! I ask myself how I could have possibly written such a loose-limbed conversation that circled back on itself more than it drove the story ahead. Another thing I’ve discovered is that when I write “in the heat of the story”, I imagine that I’ve written something SO obvious…but I didn’t.

“Read. Just as you can’t become a world-famous chef without eating, you cannot write without also loving to read.” You’d be stunned to hear how many of the students who come to a Writing To Get Published class I taught for 27 years (in a summer program for gifted students) respond to the question, “How much do you read?” answer, “Like maybe a book a month.” I’ll ask, “A whole book? Like a fiction book?” Several will say, “Nah, I read websites on my phone.” If you’re going to write journalistic reporting – you should be doing it for the school or your local paper. If I’m going to write science fiction, I should be READING rather than watching STAR WARS and writing from that…

“Look. Be able to look at the world around you, to “open your heart to what you see”. How can you create your own world of magic without first being able to see it? Live in the world, and it will live in you.” Truth? I would LOVE to live in the worlds of my imagination! The problem is that there are no aliens on Earth for me to hang out with! So, I have to READ. Extensively. Sometimes even stuff I wouldn’t CHOOSE to read, but NEED to read. That’s how I discovered Bruce Bethke, (the man who invented the word Cyberpunk”. We’re friends now and I’ve learned a lot from him. He went on to write books and short stories and now publishes books and short stories. I STILL have to look!

“Listen. Kate is a big fan of eavesdropping. You never know when an interesting conversation will pop up, one that will just stick in your brain and needle its way around until it finds its way down on to the page.” Listening is how I got the idea for my short-short piece, “Warning! Warning!” in ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact; though, the voice I listened to was my own. I was rolling my trash bin down to the curb for pickup and had the top open. Inside the cover was a warning telling me that if I didn’t close the cover…well, CERTAIN DISASTER would occur. Shaking my head, I extended that into the future where literally EVERYTHING would be carrying a warning…even the air we breathe.

“Believe in yourself. This may just be the hardest out of all six. ‘There is one reason that writing is so wonderful and terrifying,’ Kate says, ‘you have to find your own way.’ There is no right or wrong way to tell a story, just your own way. So, make sure you hold fast to your vision and stay true to yourself. Kate graduated with a degree in English in 1987. She worked lots of jobs including Circus World, Walt Disney World, a campground, and a greenhouse. She said that during this time that she thought she was a talented writer so she ‘sat around for the next seven or eight years’ writing short stories. While published, no one ‘discovered her’. Finally she moved to Minneapolis in 1994. That winter, she came up with the idea for BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE. She gave her draft to a Candlewick sales agent who gave it to an editor…who promptly left the company on maternity leave, and it was lost in a pile of other manuscripts. It was rediscovered when the employee's office was cleaned out. She was offered a contract AND AFTER A REWRITE! the book was published in 2000.”

I’m not famous yet, either. Will I be? I don’t know, I guess. I continue to write; to learn; and keep on sending things out. Even if I get a big publishing contract, it won’t mean that my name will become a household name. But…it WILL mean that some people heard what I was trying to say, and agreed with me!

Kate DiCamillo’s Writing Website: https://www.katedicamillo.com/on_writing-2/; https://www.quaybooksstore.com/blogs/the-quay-books-blog/kate-dicamillo-s-six-steps-to-writing
References:https://www.writerswrite.co.za/kate-dicamillo-6-writing-tips/?fbclid=IwAR1sH8dNZwa4FNKVoFyX1pLEtFnJwvL-rO15QGbkqY5mGMPH0gAojT4_m80 Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320