Category Archives: Starting a Career

Weird Antho Angst

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It’s not the waiting the kills… it’s the waste.

One of the more common ways of getting into the writing business and building “street-cred” is to peruse the calls for submissions on sites like Duotrope.com, Ralan.com, and Submission Grinder. Those sites are great for providing loads of opportunity. The problem is that many of the themes listed are pretty specific. Most of them run along the weird paths of cross-genre or niche topics that are hell-and-gone from the mainstream.

Sure, it can be fun writing a story about zombie porn or purple unicorns, but it’s also exceedingly risky. And yes, I have a buddy who is in a zombie porn antho called 50 Shades of Decay, and I just had a story come out in a purple unicorn anthology titled One Horn to Rule Them All. I can say with confidence that the quality of stories in these off-the-beaten-track collections is on par with mainstream fiction, and can be even better as a result of the topic.

The problem stems for the fact that once you write the story, you have to wait weeks or even months to hear back on whether you made the cut. That’s the same as with any short story submission, certainly, but with one of these, the bar is sometimes a bit higher than “normal” fiction. With regular fiction the bar is established and fairly well understood by the community. With non-traditional anthos, however, you not only have to write a good story, you must more accurately discern the tastes or intent of the editor or publication putting out the call for submission.

It can be like trying to hit a kangaroo from orbit with a drunken koala.

(Just let that visual sink in for a minute).

Now, if you make it in, great. But statistically speaking, the odds are that you won’t make the cut. That’s where the real pain comes in. If your story isn’t selected, you have one to six-thousand words that you’re going to play hell placing elsewhere. I mean, what are the odds that Asimov or Fantasy & Science Fiction want something that was written specifically for someplace else? It can be done, but those are pretty long odds, especially if the story wasn’t good enough to make the cut for the antho.

There are no easy roads into the business, and while weird anthos are one of them, you may want to go with the more mainstream topics when you’re first starting. Once your writing is cleaner and you’re placing stories more frequently, or even at will, then it’s time to hit the weird stuff.

Rejection: Everybody Hurts Sometimes

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Rarely Oftentimes, the writing life feels like an uphill climb. First comes the Dear Sir or Madam rejection, then the personalized rejection. Then, the editor gives you personal feedback and/or reasons why they couldn’t publish your work. After that, you cry into a Blue Bonnet-sized bucket of chocolate ice cream and ask the gods why you can’t just be good enough, already. All of that time, all of that work! What you wouldn’t do for a hot, luscious, sexy, multi-paged contract in your inbox. You are the Charles Barkley of the writing world: pretty good, just not good enough to win a championship. You’re a Baby Ruth when all you want is to be a Snickers bar.

I know it may be hard to believe (har har), but you’re not alone. You’re actually in really good company.

Every now and then Pretty much every week or so, I read about a classic or popular book that had been rejected a bajillion times by every publisher on the planet until one said yes. Here is a list of those books, just for you to keep handy. May it bless you and keep you, and may it help pry your fingers off of the tub of Rocky Road.

1. Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Rejected 140 times, one publisher claiming it was “too positive.”

2. Dubliners by James Joyce. Rejected 22 times, only sold 379 copies in the first year (James Joyce bought 120 of them).

3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Rejected 121 times.

4. Carrie by Stephen King. Rejected 30 times. We have Tabitha King to thank for it seeing the light of day, as she dug it out of the trash when King threw it away.

5. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Rejected 38 times. Mitchell won a Pulitzer for her efforts.

6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Rejected 26 times. Awarded a Newbery Medal.

7. Anything by C.S. Lewis. Lewis amassed over 800 rejections before selling a single piece of writing.

8. The Diary of Anne Frank. Rejected 15 times. Recieved the editorial comment, “This girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the curiosity level.”

9. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. After receiving so many rejections, Potter was forced to publish the book herself.

But my favorite story of all time goes to Dune. You can read an interesting story from Frederik Pohl here, but here’s the abridged version of Dune‘s publishing history. Frank Herbert spent years trying to get a publisher to pick up Dune, and received about 20 rejections. After years and lots of revisions, he sold the book to a small publisher that was known for mechanical manuals for automobiles and motorcycles. It’s now one of the most celebrated science fiction novels of all time.

Keep your head up, and keep on going. You really don’t know when or from where your big break is going to come.

Fear and Loathing in the Writing Life

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Welcome to October, everyone!

To fit the occasion, this being the month of fears, the Fictorians will be looking at the things that give us pause, make our hearts pound, or just plain give us grief.

That’s right, we’re looking at the darker side of the writing life.

As writing hobbiests, when our scribblings are just to feed that hungry monster in our souls that demands we create worlds all our own and put those worlds and the people that live in them on a page, we don’t have to deal with anything we don’t want to. We can live in our heads, playing with our characters to our hearts content, and be perfectly happy doing so.

It’s not until we decide to make a living off those worlds and characters that we run into trouble. After all, no job is perfect. They all have negatives. Writing is no different.

Actually, it might be a little worse.

In a normal job, we can say, “Hey, that’s not my responsibility.” Often, we can procrastinate, we can ask for help, or push whatever it is on to someone else. Or, we have to grin and bear it until we’re done, but hey…we’re getting a steady income that pays for shelter and food for our trouble.

Not so in the life of an aspiring author.

All of us in this business face things that we don’t particularly want to do or aren’t good at, especially those who take the self-publishing route. And in this day and age, going with a publishing house doesn’t mean you get to hide away in your underground bunker to type away and cackle like a mad genius.

Everything is our responsibility. We are self employed introverts, for the most part, so there are no coworkers to push the work on, or to help us, and procrastination just means it takes that much longer before we get the payoff. We always have to grin and bear it, not for a steady paycheck, but for the chance of an advance or royalty that could be steady, but for the most of us, not big enough to live on or balance out having to earn it.

Good thing we’re not in it for the money, right?

No, we’re in it for the love. Our love of words and worlds and characters. The hungry monster in our souls cares nothing for paltry trinkets and paychecks. But when they’re fed, we’re over the moon.

So, we deal because we get to feel that anticipation when inspiration strikes and we know we’re off to someplace new, that satisfaction of finishing something uniquely ours, that pride at inviting other people into our creations and knowing they enjoyed it there. At least, that’s why I do it. I don’t know about you.

So, this month, we and some of our friends, will be sharing stories about having to face the less enjoyable parts of being an author and how we’ve dealt with it, from fears of not finding an audience, to dealing with catastrophic book launches and writing induced injury.

We all have to face the fears of not being good enough, or the hassle of being our own promoters, or dealing with our own real life antagonists. So read on, my friends, commiserate with us, and join us as we conquer our writing fears and professional loathings.

In the Company of Giants

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A guest post by Lou J. Berger.

As other writers have mentioned to me, sometimes life manifests situations so improbable that, if you were to write them into a story, no reader would accept them as plausible.

And yet…

I walked through the dealer room at Reno’s WorldCon, showing my girlfriend Kelly around, marveling at the artist displays, looking around to see if I could spot Bob Eggleton, a tremendous artist that I’ve only met via Facebook, never in real life.

My eye lights upon a grinning, elfin woman with graying hair and the eyes Yoda only wished he had had, as expressive as a sunset. She spies me and calls out my name and wraps me in a hug that conveys love and adoration and respect, then calls over her husband, Joe Haldeman.

Gay Haldeman is an angel among people, and she has an encyclopedic memory, knows everybody, loves everybody, and is one of the nicest folks I know. Without my being able to figure out how, she manages to convince me that she considers me one of the most important people she’s ever met. I know, in my soul, that I am just another cog in the gears that permeate her life—and a small, insignificant cog at that—but she has that magic touch, that personality that the best of the best seem to have.

Joe smiles at me and shakes my hand, I introduce them both to Kelly, and Gay says, a hand upon my forearm, “You will join us for lunch, won’t you?”

I glance at Kelly, she nods, and I say, “Of course!”

A rare cloud crosses Gay’s unlined brow. “Oh. Do you mind if I invite another person to join us?”

Well, I had been hoping for some one-on-one time with Joe and Gay, but any friend of hers…

“Sure,” I reply. “The more the merrier!”

Gay’s cloud dissipates and sunlight radiates from her again. “Great! I’m sure Larry will love to meet you.”

Larry. That’s such a familiar name, especially the way she says it. I open my mouth to clarify, because, after all, there is no way it could be… “Oh, here he is!” Gay cries out, grinning, looking past my shoulder.

I turn and, in true Ewok form, there strides one of the greatest giants of SF-dom, Larry Niven. It is him. Of course it is him.

He’d passed me in the hallway at Denvention, a couple years earlier, and I’d said, upon seeing him, “Shoot! I was hoping to attend your panel!” Without breaking stride, he shot back. “Well, you missed it.” And then he walked on.

So we walk, the Haldemans and I and Kelly, with Larry Niven beside me. I’m trying to be cool, but this is the man from whose brain all those books I read in high school sprung. He’s the Ringworld Engineer Deluxe, the guy who invented the Mote, this is Larry freaking Niven!

“You’re a writer,” says Larry to me. (See? I’m calling him Larry. Like we grew up together. Like we’re old pals. Like I have any damn right to be walking beside him, this ordinary-looking man whose prose has put me on the badly-colored carpet of a Reno convention center, walking toward an unimpressive cafe in an adjacent casino.) “Tell me a story,” he finishes.

I take two careful, measured steps. I think of the works I’ve written to date, the stories I’ve excised from my fertile imagination, the tortured words I’ve yanked out of my brain and through my fingers and onto the page, the single story I’d sold. Worthless. In the company of a god, my best work is fool’s gold, iron pyrite glittering with false richness, not worthy of discussion.

“I’m sorry, Larry,” I stammer, after a while. “I’m a little star-struck. My brain isn’t working quite right.”

“It’s okay,” he says, patting my shoulder. “Happens all the time. Give it a moment.”

I walk alongside Larry, watching the carpet flow beneath our feet, and we walk into the casino, my hand clutching Kelly’s. We sit down for lunch and I listen to Larry and Joe talk about old times, laughing and reminiscing, and I slowly relax, beginning to process that what’s happening around me, this august company I’m part of, is because of Gay, not because of anything I’ve ever done.

She’s the catalyst, the one who keeps her eyes peeled for the spark, that ineffable quality in a writer, just starting out, that signifies some semblance of promise. And like any spark, the spark she sees is tenuous, hesitant, and should, as most sparks do, simply wink out. She captures it, fans it, finds a home for it, and nurtures it into a small flame.

Then she brings that flame into the firelight and welcomes it home.

I’m not sitting with Joe Haldeman and Larry Niven because I’m some sort of brilliant writer. I’m sitting with them because Gay believes in me.

I lean across Kelly and catch Gay’s attention while Larry reminds Joe of something arcane and brilliant. “Gay,” I whisper. “Thank you.”

She peers at me through her glasses and a warm smile crosses her face. “Thank you for joining us, Lou.” She turns to Kelly. “And you too, Kelly.” She gazes at us for a minute and then turns her face back to Joe.

Her eyes go soft as she looks at the man she loves.

I squeeze Kelly’s hand and we eat our lunch in the company of giants.

loubergerpicGuest Writer Bio:
Lou J. Berger lives in Denver with three kids, three Sheltie dogs, and a kink-tailed cat with nefarious intent. He’s an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has been professionally published in short form, and is writing his first novel, a non-genre YA book set in 1978’s North Carolina. Take a few moments to visit his website.