Writer’s Life: When Stories Want Blood

Photo by Alberto Otero Garcia, Creative Commons

This week’s Write 1, Sub 1 story came to me fully formed. I love it when they do that. No hassling, trying to pull a plot out of the ether. But usually when I get such gifts, I’m able to bang out a story in two sessions…a mad rush of ideas and inspiration, and sometimes if I think the story is deserving, I try to put a little bit of myself into it.

But this story, currently still untitled, is all about taking what it wants from me. I’m four days into it now, going on a fifth. I’d like to go faster, but it’s draining me. It feels too real.

Of course that doesn’t mean I’m not working on it steadily. I give the story what it demands, because I think this one might be GOOD. I hope so anyway. The characters feel like they’ve stepped out of a novel instead of a short story. I can feel the strain of my character’s relationships. His grief becomes my grief if I let myself get sucked in too far. So I’ve been pacing myself, 600 to 1000 words a day.

Maybe I’m just being lazy and don’t feel like writing for more than a couple hours a day. Or perhaps W1S1 is changing the way I approach writing short fiction. All I know is that I don’t know if I can take 52 weeks worth of bleeding out like this. Why can’t they all be potty humor stories? Have you ever had a story take more than you were willing to give it?

Writer’s Life: Submission Strategies

Photo by Andy Hays, Creative Commons

Two weeks into the new year, and so far my resolutions are holding up for the most part. I’ve ridden my bike every day, usually just a mile, but I’m trying to build up to longer rides on a regular basis. (Especially once it isn’t freezing out!) I think I’ve finally figured out that I need to eat more food being a vegetarian, so I haven’t been as cranky these last couple days. Plus I’ve had fun experimenting more with veggies. Japanese is lagging behind, but I hope to pick things up this week. And I’m on track for Write 1, Sub 1, only I haven’t actually subbed anything new yet, which I hope to soon remedy. Which brings me to the subject of today’s post…

So theoretically, I’ll be producing a lot of fiction this year, and theoretically, I’ll be looking for markets to submit to. I know the general advice is to start from the top and work downward, which works pretty well if you’ve only got a handful of stories out there. From my experience, if you’ve got ten or more stories out at a time, it becomes a weird juggling game to get the right stories to the right markets at the right time. Sometimes you have a story that you think would be great for one market, but can’t send it because you already have something else submitted there, so you send the story to a different market instead, and then end up sending whatever story gets rejected next to the market you intended to send the last story to. Make sense? I didn’t think so.

So basically what you end up with is a free for all, and if I’m experiencing this with 15 stories, imagine how it will be when I’ve got 25, 35, 50 stories out there at a time. (Though hopefully I will be SELLING some of these stories, of course.) Clearly a submission strategy is in order, so here’s what I’ve go so far:

Send a story out to at least 3 pro paying markets

Let’s face it. Not every short story is created equally. A few will be great. Most will be good. Some won’t be able to see the inside of a drawer quickly enough. Problem is, the writer is probably the worst judge of which ones are which. So I figure every story deserves at least a shot at the big leagues.

Send a story out at least 7 times

This is just my own personal number. Out of my 19 short fiction sales, 17 of those sold in seven or less attempts. It can take a few submissions to hit the right market, so I don’t want to sell myself short by pulling a story prematurely, and I don’t want to get in the habit of editing a story every time a rejection comes back. It’d be impractical with a high volume of work. But after 7 rejections, for me it hints that there’s something wrong with the story. It’s a good time to step back and judge if the story needs more work, should be retired, or sent out again as is.

Don’t overlook semi-pro markets

A big paycheck is always nice, of course, but there are a lot of semi-pro markets doing great things with fiction, and some of them are just as tough to get into as pro-paying ones. Editors that actively promote their authors and are active in positioning their magazine and stories for awards are a big plus. Plus a nicely laid out magazine always catches my eye.

If a story doesn’t sell after 7 attempts, consider running it through my critique group

I can’t afford to send every story to get critiqued, so some of these stories are just going to have to stand on their own. But if there’s a story that’s good and I think it could be great, I’m going to offer it up to my critique group for comment. This can be a considerable time sink if I’m not careful, so I really only want to revise stories I can stand firmly behind.

Anything else I should be taking into consideration? Do you have a submissions strategy of your own?

Writer’s Life: Who Needs Story Ideas When You’ve Got Weird Friends?

Photo by Quinn Mattingly, Creative Commons

I think I’ve just figured out the secret to generating interesting story ideas: If one warped imagination is good, then four are better! I got started on my first short story of 2011 today. I went to my usual wikipedia random articles to get some word prompts and came up with:

Fungi (sometimes I wonder if wikipedia is my soul mate)
Ultimate Fighting
Telecommunications
Bolivia
Extra Time

At my usual coffee shop meetup, I was scratching my head about how I was going to put all of these prompts together into an interesting story, but then I realized the answer was sitting right in front of me. I tasked my small group of writer friends to figure out what I should do with these words.

A beautiful brainstorm session happened, and then Emily came up with a premise of communication by foot fungus, and it sort of just spiraled out from there. Bolivian mountains became the setting, and who better to carry a message via foot fungus than an athlete, specifically an Ultimate Fighter? Of course, this message must be of high importance to require such an odd mode of delivery…and what could be more important than the secret of Extra Time here on Earth, or in other words, Immortality. So in about less than three minutes, I had an absurd story idea without putting in any brain power of my own, and all I have to do in exchange is give them a shout out.

Oh yeah, and actually write the story and stuff.

But in any case, Emily, Marta, and Bart…you are much appreciated, and from now on, whenever I think of foot fungus, I’ll think of you.