Category Archives: Process

Short Stories Rock: Thoughts on a WFC Panel, 2002

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This is a rant, of sorts, triggered by my participation on a panel at the Minneapolis World Fantasy Convention of 2002. I wrote it soon after the event and filed it away. I don’t necessarily agree with everything the 2002 model thought. That was then and this…well, it isn’t. For instance, I like writing novels, too. I even like the idea of having a readership. But at the time this was where my head was at, for what little that might be worth.

The panel itself wasn’t bad, though it kept devolving into “Are short stories stepping stones to a novel career?” which rather annoyed me, but that’s what the audience was interested in, so you go with the flow. My bluntly-stated “If you want to write short stories, write short stories. If you want to write novels, write novels. Doing one isn’t going to teach you the other” wasn’t exactly popular.

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Love in the Time of Trunk Stories

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If you follow the field at all, every now and then you’ll hear disparaging remarks about something called a “trunk story.” An editor for a new magazine or anthology (or a new editor for an old magazine) will usually make it part of the submission guidelines: “Send me your best. I don’t want your trunk stories.” For the perhaps two of you at most who don’t know what that means, a trunk story is just one that hasn’t sold, and hasn’t sold in a persistent or dramatic fashion, to the point that the writer either loses confidence in it—if they ever had any—or simply, for want of another suitable market possibility, files it away. Sort of a “time out.” The “trunk” part was probably always metaphorical, unless one had enough manuscripts of that type that they required a physical trunk to contain them. Back in the days of paper subs, I found that a cardboard box worked just fine. Continue reading →

Let it Snow…Within Reason

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At the last writer’s group we got another assignment, but several people had to leave early and there wasn’t time to finish it, so we essentially got the challenge with a week to finish. So what would have been a piece of flash fiction grew into a 3300 word story that I wrote yesterday. I may want to do something else with this one, once I get the tweaks tweaked and the bugs debugged.  Working title is “Have a Good Day,” with a nod to Jerome Bixby. If you don’t get the reference, clearly you haven’t watched enough of the old Twilight Zone tv series. You’re also probably an infant. Continue reading →

Muse and Writer Dialogues #3

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FADE IN

A room that passes for an office. There are bookshelves on one wall, a motley assortment of carvings, signed storyboards, and framed magazine covers on the free wall space. On the far wall is a medieval-style heraldic display of a cockatrice with a motto in bad Latin that reads “Pullus non Est.” Horizontal files sit beneath the window , and on top of those a free-standing rack holds three Japanese swords. The computer desk is on the wall nearest the door, facing away from the window. Beside that is a printer on a stand. In the base of that is a PS3 and an Xbox on a lower shelf. Neither is in use.

Enter the WRITER, who finds the MUSE sitting in a rocking chair staring at what looks like a smartphone. He’s a slob. She looks like a statuesque Greek goddess most of the time, but her appearance keeps changing.

WRITER: What are you doing?
MUSE: What does it look like? I’m playing “Angry Birds.” Not that you care. What do you want?
WRITER: You have to ask, after that stunt you pulled?

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Beach Bum and the Drowned Girl

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This was a little quick. I got the notion yesterday, wrote the first half. Finished the second half today, since it was only about 1100 words in rough. Now I have to rewrite it so that what’s on the page has a passing relation to the vision in my fevered brain. You know, the usual.

I hear there are writers who get it right the first time. Like other things I’ve heard of, such as a black hole, or extra-solar planet. I’m sure they exist, but I’ve never met one.