The short but incomplete answer seems to be “everywhere.” Or as Ursula Le Guin once remarked, turning the question back on her interviewer, “Where do you not get them?” They’re all around, all the time. Despite this, show me the beginning writer who has not, at one time or another, bemoaned the fact that they want to write so very badly but don’t have the slightest clue as to what to write about. This makes them feel stupid and resentful. I know. I remember. One could pile on like a rat bastard by simply saying “If you can’t think of anything, then you’re probably not a writer. Give it up.” That not only shows a meanness of spirit but, more to the point, it’s simply not true. Beginners, like almost every other sentient human being, have lots of ideas. The actual problem is they don’t know which of them are stories. Continue reading
Author Archives: ogresan
In-Depth Interview Fail
I’ve decided that I want to interview me. Because, to be blunt, there were things I’ve always wanted to know about me, but I’d never asked.
Question: Where were you born?
Answer: Newton, Mississippi, Newton County Hospital. The hospital no longer exists. Newton, last time I checked, does.
Question: Where did you go to HS?
Answer: Hickory High School. It also no longer exists. Probably for the best.
Question: College?
Answer: Copiah-Lincoln Jr. College, University of Southern Mississippi, and Mississippi College. I have undergraduate degrees in Polymer Science and Math and Computing Science. I have no idea why.
Question: Enough biographical background that no one cares about, but we interviewers just ask to be polite. Can I ask something serious now?
Answer: Go for it.
Question: What was your first published story?
Answer: It’s in the bibliography. Honestly, do you guys even know who you’re interviewing?
Question: That tends to cloud our judgment. I like to keep an open mind. What about you?
Answer: Like a steel sieve.
Question: What’s your personal philosophy? Are you a Determinist?
Answer: I haven’t determined that yet.
Question: Fair Enough. Boxers or briefs?
Answer: The Boxer Rebellion was fairly brief, yes.
Question: You really are a silly git, aren’t you?
Answer: That’s the first intelligent question I’ve heard today. Would you like to try for two?
Question: I’m asking the questions here. You’re written a series of stories about a ghost hunter. Do you really believe in ghosts?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Why?
Answer: Mostly because it annoys the Baptists.
Question: Weren’t you raised Baptist?
Answer: My point.
Question: OOO-kay. Moving on. What are your current religious beliefs?
Answer: I firmly believe that this is no one’s business but mine and any deities involved.
Question: You’re not being co-operative.
Answer: I’m sorry, but you forgot to phrase that in the form of a question. I’ll take “Bored Audience” for a thousand, Alex.
Question: Do I look like a game show host?
Answer: Yes. Sorry.
Clearly, I suck at this, but if anyone has any actual questions, I’ll be glad to answer them. Or not, as the whim takes me. Otherwise, I’ll be spending some quality time with the Complacence Fairy.
Patience, Grasshopper
Patience. Probably one of the most ignored and overlooked items in a writer’s toolbox. Not unrelated to the subject of stubbornness (see persistence), but a different commodity. New writers especially don’t have much use for it. On another board a new writer asked, “If I send in a story now, does it appear in the next issue? How soon do I get paid?” The sound you doubtless heard was a thousand shiny pins forming a queue to pop that lovely balloon. After the realities were explained, you could practically see the fallen crest. “Oh. I didn’t know it was so complicated.” Continue reading
The Sky is Falling – Not
Or: “Rumors of the short story’s death are greatly exaggerated.”
It’s obvious to even the casual observer that the print sf/f magazines are holding on by the skin of their metaphorical teeth, but as I’ve pointed out before, that’s been true for a long time. When I was starting out as a wannabee, the Ted White Fantastic Stories was my holy grail, and it probably never had a circulation greater than 20,000. It’s fair to say that the situation is not getting any better. Are the current print magazines tenable long term? Probably not, and I’m not happy about that, but people who should know better constantly confuse the decline of the traditional magazines with the death of short science fiction and fantasy. Which is equating a particular delivery system with the product, to use the cold capitalist designation. Or to put it another way, a lot like saying the death of the stagecoach meant people could no longer travel.
Magazine circulations are declining in general. This is not confined to the fiction magazines. This is across the board. There are a lot of reasons for this: time, competition, distribution…. I’m sure you can think of your own. If you love a magazine that still appears in physical paper form, subscribe. Heck, if there’s an online magazine that deserves support, do your bit there, too; it’s all good. Regardless, the short story form will be around. Maybe book publishers will sponsor them to draw attention to their book lines, as Prime did once and Tor is sort of doing. Maybe they’ll go to NPR fundraising models like Strange Horizons. The point is that venues will remain, and people will write short stories to fill them. For that matter, people will write stories solely to collect them in books, and self-publish if they have to. There may or may not be any money in it, but other than Howard Waldrop, almost no one has made any kind of living off short fiction for half a century or better. Hasn’t slowed things down in the least.
The reason is simple. People tell stories. That’s what we do. And until someone invents a true full-immersion VR (don’t hold your breath) there’s simply no other medium that can do what narrative fiction does: puts you in another time and place. Makes you see through another’s eyes. Lets you see through another’s eyes. Lets you feel, taste, smell the world of the story, experience it in every sense of the word, not simply observe. Reminds you of things you didn’t realize you knew. Tells you things you never knew. We’re a species of storytellers, and story listeners. That’s not going to change. The short story form itself will be around simply because not every story is an epic, but every good story is important in its own way. They’re part of what we are.
Does that sound a little self-satisfied? Arrogant? So be it. I think it’s true. While I may now mourn Realms of Fantasy just as I still mourn Fantastic, Galaxy, SF Age, et too many ceteras, I know the short story will go on. I’m not the least bit worried.
A little more problematic is the notion that only short story writers actually read short stories these days, that there are no actual readers any more. Kinda like poetry. Which to me rings false immediately because I read poetry. Not in any organized or systematic way, but I do it. And I am not now and never will be a poet. Yes, of course short story writers read short stories. It’s part of the job to study a form you’re trying to master, and the writer who did not start out as a reader is a rare bird indeed. Yet even a cursory examination of the premise that there are no readers proves it simply isn’t true. Even a quick informal poll in an online f/sf discussion board showed that writers were at most about %25 of the readership. Granted, that was a self-selected sample, but telling for all that. The readership is and will remain fragmented, simply because there are so many competing mediums, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. It many not be enough to sustain short story writers commercially, but this is nothing new.
As someone who loves the short story form I suppose I should get all worked up about its so-called death. I would if I believed it for even a moment, but it just ain’t so. All the rest of it, as the zen Master Yogi Berra once said, is just déjà vu all over again.
Rejectomancy for Fun and Profit
Ok, I lied. There’s no fun in it and certainly no profit, at least directly. What there is, perhaps, is the chance to avoid wasting time, and depending on the market, money.
I know I’ve touched on this before. Heck, everybody has put their oar in on the fine art of Rejectomancy. The consensus is “Complete waste of time, typical amateur mistake of trying to read things into a rejection that simply aren’t there.” Or as Mike Resnick likes to say: “The key word in ‘personal rejection’ is not ‘personal.'” He’ll have no argument from me here–a rejection means “no” and that’s all it means.
So. A rejection means “no.” We all agree on that, yes? However, what it means is not all that it says, and what it says is not always merely a variation on “no.” Sometimes it’s a “tell.” Continue reading
Richard Parks 