Posts Tagged ‘Writing Advice’
An Editor’s Perspective on Rejection
Filed Under: SF Business, Uncategorized
Since I’ve taken on the gig of managing editor at Escape Pod, I’ve been relearning a lot of things about being an editor that I had forgotten in the time since closing th Fortean Bureau. I’ve been thinking a lot about rejection letters, and rejection in general, but not from my usual perspective as a writer, but now as an editor. It’s informing the way I think about rejections as a writer as well.
It’s Not Personal
Rejection letters aren’t personal. I find it very hard not to take them personally because by god, I wrote the story, I poured my self onto the page, and so it hurts to see that rejection come in most of the time. My stories are like the mind-prosthesies I never really asked for. And they transmit pain like any real limb. Er, so to speak.
Doling out rejections, many to fine writers whose work I love in a general sense, it’s really hit home. The rejection is always for the story at hand, and it’s not about you. Great writers get rejected. You will too.
I walk a very fine line in trying to avoid offense with my rejection letters. How much detail does a Hugo-nominated writer need when you bounce his or her story? Do they need a reason other than, just didn’t sync up with my inventory needs at this time? I don’t want to be in the business of handing out writing advice in my rejection letters. I tend to err on the side of less, rather than more, information. Which brings me to my next point.
My Rejection is not Writing Advice
Most of the time, my rejection letter says the same simple line: “didn’t grab me.” I stole this one from F&SF, because it’s succinct and a polite way of putting the truth. When I write this, it means that I did not finish your story because I got bored with it. Sorry, but that’s the truth. And that’s why I don’t write what I literally mean in the rejection letter, because I am not a callous monster. When I do provide feedback as to why I am not buying a story, it’s just based on my personal experience of reading the story. Every editor brings their own peculiar biases and interests to the table. There are some ideas that always grab me more than others. Biological SF will win out over asteroid mining every time, until you write that asteroid mining story that proves me wrong.
New writers should most definitely not be looking for writing advice in their rejection letters. Other writers, and a critique group, are the best way to gain this insight. It’s not the (short fiction) editor’s job, especially not today, to cultivate the writer’s talent. We support your talent, but we don’t have the time to fertilize it. You need to turn to other sources for advice.
I can understand the impulse to seek feedback from editors. Writing is a solitary game, and it’s hard to find methods with which to measure your progress. How do you know if you’re getting close?
Again, time to be blunt. You’ll know you’re getting close because the editor will tell you. When your rejection letter asks for more of your work, that’s not just being polite. That’s because we think you have the chops and we’re just looking for the right story. When rejection letters turn from “didn’t grab” to “didn’t work for me, for the following reasons” that’s a step up.
Trust me, the pain is only beginning when you’ve made those first couple of sales. You’ll want more, and if lighting has struck a little early, it can be painful to go quite a while afterwards.
At the same time, if you go from encouraging rejections to a non-encouraging one, it doesn’t mean you’ve backslid. It probably just means the editor has gotten a bit too busy to give you special attention.
I Liked It, but I Didn’t Love It
I get to buy 52-ish stories a year, and I probably select those from ten times that many at least. This means I am not only looking for good stories, but I’m looking for stories that leave an impact on me. I reject a decent number of good stories, because I can’t use up all my slots buying just good stories. They have to be good, plus some. That spark is the most elusive thing you’ll seek as you develop as a writer.
I personally haven’t broken past this phase. My rejections are very often in the “this is a good story, but I didn’t like it enough to buy it” variety. I sell ocasionally, but this is my career wall at the moment. I think I’m close to understanding why, but I may never know, and I may never take the step forward. Especially if I don’t write more than I have been these past few years.
Doesn’t Fit My Needs at This Time
This is very similiar to the “like it, didn’t love it” rejection letter. Under different circumstances, I might have, probably would have, bought this story. But maybe it’s a bit dark in tone, and I’ve been buying way too many of those lately. Maybe at the moment, I need more light-hearted pieces. Maybe I bought an asteroid mining story shortly before you submitted yours, and they’re too similar in subject matter.
This is the “shit happens” rejection letter. I find they’re the hardest and easiest to take at the same time. They’re frustrating, but at least you can put these to the capriciousness of fate, rather than your own personal skills. It helps.
So that’s a little bit of the thinking I’ve been exploring regarding rejection as I work to select stories for Escape Pod. It’s definitely given me a better perspective on my own rejections. If it were possible, I would recommend every serious writer find a way to read slush some day. Not only do you learn to spot the most common mistakes, you start to get a little empathy for that poor soul on the other side of the transom.
What Is a Podcastable Story?
Filed Under: Podcast, SF Podcasting, Writing Advice
Greg Van Eekhout asks:
Thoughts on what kinds of stories translate well to podcasts and what kinds don’t?
First of all, full disclaimer. I am the managing editor at Escape Pod, the science fiction audio podcast. I’ve been doing this job for about 3 or 4 months now, and I am by no means an expert on to topic. I can only comment as to my personal tastes here. I reserve the right to change my opinion as I learn more about my job and what seems to work.
I can talk much more easily about what does not work well in podcasts. Here are a few things:
- Typographic weirdness, of the sort you would see in The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
- Fiction that plays with formatting in some way–fake news report, branching dialogue, and so on. This would be great if we produced audio dramas, but Escape Pod approaches production in a very straighforward narrative fashion. I’d love to do more radio-drama style readings, and we have one coming up that was recorded live by Steve Eley at a convention. But the production that goes into a regular episode is difficult enough.
- Stories that have a lot of very short scenes and lots of jumping around in time.
The last one is the one I’m least certain about, but I find that stories that go back and forth in time can be a bit more confusing in audio format. On the page, it seems easier to organize the events into a chronological order, but when listening to a story, it is harder to do this. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s definitely something I pay attention to.
Okay, so what works particularly well? Here are some general ideas:
- A strong, unique perspective or voice. It’s my experience that some of the most popular EP episodes have been from a very unique character, such as a bomb dog or the AI that resides in a soldier’s helmet. These stories are often in first person perspective. That’s not to say that I find first person better than third person. First person coupled with a really unique and orginal voice stands out very well. Like it does in regular fiction.
- All the other, usual things that make a story good.
Other than the few things I think don’t work that are specific to the audio format, I use basically the same criteria for selecting a story in audio that I would for selecting in print. I have some restrictions unique to Escape Pod, such as length. I can’t tell you how many times I remember what I think would be a great story fo rthe podcast, only to look it up and find out that it was a novella. It’s something I’d like to see us do more of in the future, but I’d want to pay more for them and possibly serialize them over the course of two or more episodes. It’s something I think about a little when I have time.
If you listen to podcast fiction, what do you think? What kinds of stories really work well for you in audio? Try to focus on the things you think work particularly well, and cite specific examples if you like. This will make up for my rather underdeveloped list. If you have something critical to say about a particular podcast story, share it on the forums over at the ‘cast or send it to our feedback email, as a favor to me, please.
Reader Questions: How Do I Decide How Much Work to (Self) Publish Online?
Filed Under: SF Business, Writing Advice
Let’s kick off reader question answer week with a real doozy. CDThomas asks:
I don’t have a website or blog. And I don’t know if I want one.
I understand if I’d create a blog for nattering on, but most of that itch gets scratched by Twitter. I’m not much of an essay writer, because I think I find others who say what I’m thinking better than I would.
That leaves self-promotion, possibly, of my fiction (plays, poems, short stories). If I don’t want to go the full Doctorow and Creative-Commons license everything, then how do I decide how much of my work to publish online?
I’m not going to be the type of writer who obsessively searches for online theft, but I need to find a way of talking about what I’m doing before I’m published regularly by magazines, online or otherwise – learning how to be part of a writing SF/F/H community, I guess, but without my questions getting lost on web boards.
First of all, I don’t think every writer needs a website or a blog. Anyone who says they do is probably selling something (to paraphrase The Princess Bride). Now, I sell web design services, but I would never try to sell a writer on a blog/website if they didn’t have any interest in maintaining or updating it. It sounds like you know what you like, and that’s Twitter. That’s great! You can do a lot to build a reputation and an audience with just that service. I tend to recommend a more comprehensive strategy. I think of it as being like fishing. You can fish all day in one spot if you want, and you’ll catch fish. You’ll catch fish if you change up your lure and move around too. Now, readers aren’t fish, but potential readers/fans can be found in a lot of different places. Unlike fishing, you can be in multiple places at one time. So it’s more like having a couple of poles in the water.
Okay, that metaphor is stretched to the breaking point. Moving on.
I used to blog rarely, thinking basically that I didn’t have anything unique to say. But I don’t think that’s true of anyone, especially anyone who writes. Why do we write if we’re not compelled do to do so by a need to share something we feel is unique? Everyone has something unique to say. Maybe not on every topic or issue, but everyone has within them, in my opinion, the potential to write a great and gripping blog. Sometimes this involves living a very public life, sharing your deepest embarrassments. Sometimes, it means sharing the little bit of knowledge about writing you’ve garnered. But if you’re sure, no big deal. You don’t need to have one. Nobody’s going to order you to have one.
Now, how do you decide what fiction to release online if you don’t want to go the full Creative Commons route and release absolutely everything? My opinion is, unless you’re really, really certain of it, don’t release it online unless it’s been published somewhere. I’ve written possibly a hundred short stories. But only about a dozen are available for anyone to read outside of my close friends and family, and only one of those was self-published online.
It’s hard to build authenticity as a self-publisher. It’s not impossible, but the thing is, there is a lot of stuff to read online. People are looking for reasons to key in on things to read, and just throwing your writing out there all on its own can be a very hard way of building authenticity. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I personally wouldn’t want to go that route.
Now, say you’ve sold a couple of stories. You might want to release some of them online, but let’s backtrack and remember that we don’t have a website. How do we release fiction online and get it out there to be read if we don’t have a website? Well, you can throw up a quick free website with a service like Blogger or LiveJournal. Or you can sell your fiction as downloads with Fictionwise. Or you could upload it to Scribd and take your chances. There are a lot of ways to put your work out there without having a website, but you take your chances with each one of them. It’s really, really hard to get people to pay attention to you online.
I find that it’s best to try online reprint sales first. Might as well get some money from it, right? That’s more respectability than just publishing it online yourself. Most sites will archive it for a long time. The podcasts like Escape Pod, Drabblecast, and Starship Sofa are another great way to get your fiction online in basically a permanent fashion. The main difference here is that someone else is lending credibility to your work by selecting it for their publication, as opposed to you putting it up on your personal website. If one place liking a story gives cred, imagine that two places means even more cred. Same principle behind the Year’s Best anthologies, I think.
As to how much of your work should you get online? That’s up to you and I can’t give you a satisfactory answer. I personally try to get every single story online via the ways I’ve listed above. If I can’t sell something as a reprint or podcast, I’ll format it nicely on my website and throw it up myself. Especially if I want to do a cool illustration to go along with it. Once you’ve made all the money you can from a story, why not put it out there for free? Stories are disposable most of the time. If you write a story so great that you can resell it dozens of times, then, well, someone will post it online for you whether you want them to or not. Try Googling the title of a classic SF short story, and you’re likely to find a bootleg copy online on some poorly policed .edu site as much as anything else. Might as well be the person to be in control of it, right?
The last aspect of the question above deals with how to become a part of the community and take part in a conversation without being lost amongst the noise. This is very easy. I’ll break it out in bullet points.
- Pick four or five blogs or forums and haunt them. Check them every day if you can.
- Provide helpful answers to questions. Key word here is helpful. Don’t be negative or critical unless it’s asked for. Talk about yourself and your work only if it relates directly to the topic at hand. Be positive. Try to find a unique perspective on the posts you comment on.
- Do that over and over again. You’ll get a reputation quickly.
There are other ways, but I think this is the easiest way. It involves putting in a lot of time, but being a part of a community isn’t easy. I have a really hard time keeping up with all the writer blogs and forums I would like to read in an ideal world. I try to stay on top of a few specific ones as best I can. I’m not very good about my second point of advice, so bear that in mind, but I think if I could do things over again, that’s how I would approach it.
I hope some of these answers prove helpful. If anyone else has any advice for CDThomas, please share it in the comments.
Revising Short Fiction is for Suckers
Filed Under: SF Business, Writing Advice
I’ve heard a lot of different opinions on the subject of revision over the years. The one that has stuck with me was the opinion of, I think it was Heinlein. This author wrote one draft, dropped it in the mail, and never looked back. I don’t know what his reasons for this were, but I know what a modern writer’s reasons would be, especially when it comes to short fiction.
It’s all about time management and cost/benefit analysis. Because stories are purchased not based on the time it took to write them but how many words they contain, the actual hourly wage you make varies depending on how much time you spend on a story. And the more time you spend, the less money you’re making.
For example, I generally write first drafts at a speed of 1000-2000 words an hour. At a moderately decent payrate of 5 cents a word, that puts me at $50 an hour, if I were to sell my first draft. That’s a very nice hourly wage. Each draft you do, and each hour you spend reworking your draft, is reducing your potential hourly income. Spend as much time revising as you did writing the story, and now you’ve cut your hourly in half. Spend three times as long revising the story as you did writing it and now we’re talking working at McDonalds wages. I guess it’s better than digging ditches.
However, I personally am not a writer who can churn out a sellable first draft. I find the story in revision, much like Pixar does. Partly this is because I often start writing a story before the idea has fully fermented. Partly this is because I write so fast when I am on the first draft that I miss good opportunities. It’s only in subsequent drafts that I can tweak the machinery of story into a form that actually runs.
When I first started out writing, I was with Heinlein all the way. One draft, and be done with it. And I sold a couple. I also never sold dozens. When you think about it, was that really making me any more money as a writer? Almost certainly not. It’s probably a wash, if I sat down to figure it out.
These days, I not only redraft and redraft, I also sit on stories for months or years. Yesterday, I broke out a story that I wrote almost 2 years ago and began revising. It’s probably now on draft 5 or 6. And it’s most likely still not there.
These days, I’m much more concerned with making money from my writing than I was before. That’s because I have no regular source of income. So I’m looking at the Heinlein way again. It’s wishful thinking though. I’m not a first draft writer, and that’s okay. Even if my hourly wage works out to be something akin to minimum wage, it’s still better work than just about any job that actually pays minimum wage. Unless that job has health insurance.
What’s your approach to revising? What’s the longest you’ve ever tinkered with a piece before sending it out?
