Skip to main content

Drafty in Here


Maybe you’ve noticed it too.  You finish a story and you’re impressed.  It came together better than you had imagined it would.  You might’ve even surprised yourself with how nicely it fell into place.

Excitedly, you send it to publisher after publisher.  In their various polite ways of writing pinhead letters, you know you see something they can’t.  You start rewriting.  Changing things.  Some carpentry here.  Some cosmetic surgery there.  Better now?

Once again they yawn and say no.  This just doesn’t interest or excite them.  They’re looking for something you just haven’t got.  Meanwhile, you’ve marred your original piece, the one that spoke to you in a way that made you certain you had something to share.

After a while you turn to other things, leaving it in your drawer of unpublished gems.  I read a biography of L. Ron Hubbard once—don’t worry, I’m not a Scientologist.  Hubbard got his start as a science fiction writer.  He’d keep a roll of butcher paper rolled into his typewriter.  When he finished a story he’d rip off the paper and send it in.  Publishers loved it.

Now, I’m no L. Ron Hubbard.  (If I were would I be living in a place like this?)  But I know good stories when I see them.  I’m an editor too.  I’ve got to wonder if the endless editing, polishing, and rewriting that we do is somehow draining the life from the newborn, unwashed story.



Today few people remember Hubbard as primarily a sci-fi genius.  His world is long gone.  Send things in on butcher paper and they’ll tell you to revise and resubmit.  And by the way, only use Submittable.  

Sometimes I’m tempted, I’ll admit, to going to Submittable, clicking my cursor in the submission box, and start typing.  The worst that could happen is what already happens after endless revisions, refinements, and long agonizing over the ending.  Or the beginning.  Hell, even over the middle.

This blog post, I have to admit, is only a first draft.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe Okay

  A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers.   I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks.   As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying.  Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine.   And it’s likely true.   But the stories:   “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing.   JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher.   I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology.   Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game!   A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast.   Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted.   It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Working Through It

  The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time.   Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot.   Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group.   Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday.   I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare.   I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run.   And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined.   One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful.   They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only.   Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away.   They also met on Saturdays.   Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creative Righting

  Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world.   That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week.   That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press.   The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor.   She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher.   I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions.   I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor.   That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it?   You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify.   It’s got speculative elements to it.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more