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
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