First Line Magazine

I thought I would mention a fun market for short story writers, especially if you're blocked. The First Line Literary Magazine is an American market that pays up to $50 and does not charge reader fees. (The one catch is if you want a hard copy of the magazine and you're in Canada, you have to pay $15 for mailing, so if your's is a shorter submission and only earns $15, you might end up having to choose between a copy of the magazine or the $15.)

The two things that make First Line attractive, however, are (1) they're very nice, very professional (e.g., accepted authors are sent proofs before it goes to print so you can see any changes--they caught an embarrassing typo of mine, for example, and made some sensible line edits) and have been around for a long time, so you don't have any worries about dealing with them; and (2) they give you the first line of the story which cannot be altered in any way. That's the whole concept of the magazine. Every story in every issue starts with the same line and it is totally fascinating how different authors' minds take that line in totally different directions. Fun, right! It's a great way to give yourself a little writing exercise by writing a story to that one line, and see what comes out. Some times my regular cast of characters elbow there way into this spontaneous exercise and I suddenly have yet another story in their growing collection. Other times a completely new character /situation comes to mind, and I'm off and running. Either way, it's a break from my WIP and kicks any writer's block you may have to the side. And they are often wicked-good first lines! The sort of first lines you wish you'd thought of.

I've written four stories for the magazine so far: two have been accepted for publication, one is awaiting the submission period for that particular first line (they tell you the year's worth of first lines ahead of time) and one they rejected. I didn't mind getting rejected at all. Because my story was up against hundreds of other stories with the exact same opening! How could you take that personally? (When any magazine rejects your story, it's often because they already have a story for that particular niche, not necessarily that they didn't like your story. With this magazine, it's all that niche!) And, I was able to place that story (with just a very minor change to the opening line) to a different market a couple of weeks later.

As a writing exercise, it's hard to beat, and if they publish your story, you're in pretty good company and its great fun to see how other writers approached the same starting point that you had. It really opens your mind to possibilities.

If you are ever having trouble coming up with ideas or just want a break from your WIP, I highly recommend it.

Drabble

My first published drabble (a drabble is a story exactly 100 words long) is up at https://thedrabble.wordpress.com/2019/06/30/pillow-talk/

Writing Drabbles and other types of flash and micro fiction is a good way to 'tighten' one's writing. Editors and agents often say things like, "this is good, it just needs to be tightened up a bit" but it's not always obvious to the author what that means exactly. As I try to edit down my novel by 25% without actually cutting any scenes, paring down my verbose style to something a little 'tighter' is what's required. The discipline of writing a story in a hundred words, or even 1000 words for flash, helps develop the skills necessary to be more concise...

Try it! Harder than it looks!

Runner-Up in Pulp Literature's Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize

The Current Issue of Pulp Literature.

Very pleased that "Day Three", my second-ever piece of flash fiction, came in second in Pulp Fiction's Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize. I believe the story will appear in the Winter 2019 issue.

I am particularly pleased because getting published in Pulp Literature was one of the five writing goals I set myself for this year. Getting X number of stories written for the year was goal one, of course, and two was to see if I could get something published/sold each month (so far, four out of six, but still time to catch up), and the third was to finish polishing the novel and approaching agents—I'm lined up for a session with an agent in three weeks—fourth was selling to Pulp Literature; and fifth was writing an article for University Affairs, which is on my agenda as soon as I finish teaching for the year.

So, what are your writing goals for 2018?

Interview with Terry Fallis

Fabulous interview by Mark Leslie Lefebvre with Terry Fallis about going from self-published writer, to Stephen Leacock Medal winner, to bestselling author with one of the world's largest publishers. Terry talks about writing a novel no one was interested in publishing (a satirical novel about Canadian politics--well, duh!) but nevertheless reached the audience he needed to reach.

If you don't have time to watch, do what I did and listen to the audio podcast at the link included. It has the advantage that you can listen on your headphones as you do the dishes or vacuum or walk the dog, so you get two things accomplished in the time for one. Also, the audio version includes 15 extra minutes of Mark's commentary on HIS writing life, in this case, excellent advice on how to keep from being overwhelmed by too many writing projects or being discouraged when you (inevitably, in my view) fall behind self-imposed deadlines.

My favourite Fallis advice to writers from the interview—something I've also been telling students and clients for years—is not to chase trends:

For crying out loud, write something that you care about. If vampires are all the rage right now, don't write a vampire novel because of that. If you love vampires, by all means. But I remember meeting a writer, an aspiring writer, and she said, "Yes, I'm writing a novel about vampires because they're so hot now". (In the rise of Twilight.) And I said, "Oh, do you, are you interested in vampires?"
"No, not really."
"Do you know much about them?"
"No, not yet. But I'm just researching them now."
"Do you know any vampires?"
"No."
"Are you a vampire?"
"No."
"Are you touched in any way by vampires?"
"No."
So I could only imagine the challenge it would be to write a book that feels real, and powerful, compelling, authentic, when there is no connection at all between the subject matter and the writer, beyond the marketing imperative of the high profile of vampires at that moment in time.
So when people would say,"Why would you write a politcal satire of Canadian politics, that sounds like a terrible idea," and maybe it was, but at least it was something I cared about, and knew about, I'd lived in that world, I had some views on it and I had a story I wanted to tell to illuminate a different path we might take in how we practice politics in this country. And I think it's hard to write your best work when you're not writing about something that you care about.

I've seen this again and again: writers chasing a trend. Even those talented enough to write something half-way decent are wasting their time because by the time their book is ready, the market has been flooded by copycats, and the trend is over. Any book you can write fast enough to cash in won't be good enough, and any book that's good enough will take too long to write, have edited, go through the submission/or self-published process to appear while the trend is still there. The only authors who were able to cash in on Twilight's success, were those who already had a really fine vampire book in their bottom drawer before vampires were hot.

Similarly, there is no hope of predicting what the next big thing will be to get ahead of the curve—would you have expected Canadian political satire, for example? And even if you could predict, it still has to be something to which you actually have a connection. Certainly, every genre editor can spot when a mainstream writer has decided to "knock out a genre novel" on the grounds of "how hard can it be" and reinvents every cliché that died out 50 years ago—or worse, believes an SF or Romance novel has lower standards. No thanks!

The whole interview is awesome because Mark is a great interviewer and has known Fallis forever, certainly before Fallis was known outside of Hamilton, and because Fallis is a fascinating guy with an unusual career path. (And for older writers like myself, it's encouraging to know you can still make it as a writer after age 35.)

I'd also recommend Mark Leslie Lefebvre's Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing for not just this episode, but as an ongoing series. Mark was the founder and former director of Kobo's Writing Life program for independent authors, was a long-time bookseller and one of the first to install an Expresso Book Machine in Canada (i.e., print-on-demand before anyone else had heard of POD), and is an established author himself. He has an insider's knowledge of both traditional and self-publishing, and extensive experience as a bookstore manager. So...yeah, you need to be listening to this if you want to understand what's happening in the industry.

Highly recommended.

VidCon Report

This year, I attended my first VidCon, since that seems to be where the new center of cultural creation is these days. If you're interested at all, here is my VidCon Review.

Writing the Literary Novel

Excellent advice in Suzanne Reisman's Ten Tips to Write a Novel That's Literary as F—", amusingly expressed. The article does include a certain, um, Joycian quality—which is to say,
LANGUAGE WARNING: NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK.
But I've had to correct one or more of these issues in every manuscript across my desk. Including my own.

Is Good Grammar Racist, Sexist and Classist?

Here is a thoughtful two minute video from the Guardian newspaper on why Grammar snobs are patronizing, pretentious and just plain wrong", by Mona Chalabi.

Once one gets past the rather mean-spirited depiction of the 'typical' grammar snob, I'm more in agreement with Chalabi than not, though I think what she is missing is the question of audience. If I'm editing a novel and I miss catching that a character says 'less' instead of 'fewer', well, that's not as big a deal as if I miss that in a government paper which represents more formal writing; and if I miss that in an academic journal, I might actually be allowing a significant error through because precision of language is crucial in describing an experiment or scientific concclusion. The example Chalabi uses of how of the dictionary recognizes modern usage more readily than grammar snobs is the word 'literally', but her narration glosses over the fact that we can see in the video that the dictionary entry clearly identifies the updated meaning as 'informal'. So if my daughter uses 'literally' to mean metaphorically as she rants about her roommate, I'm not about to interrupt her with a correction. That would be mean spirited and silencing. But if she uses 'literally' metaphorically in a paper she's handing into her English prof, I'm going to point that out. I try not to interrupt speakers with grammar objections, and I'm okay with informal English in emails and blog posts or whatever; but if one is writing in a formal context, formal English is to be preferred, though clarity trumps all, always.

One reason to have editors is to help people express themselves in formal contexts when they have something significant to say and want to get it right: When speaking to power, it's sometimes helpful to speak Power's dialect.

But I agree with Chalabi that constantly correcting someone's grammar is silencing. The meaning of the phrase "I ain't never" is perfectly clear, even though grammatically incorrect for formal English. Recognizing that it is part of black dialect is important because, for generations, blacks underperformed in schools partly because every time black students spoke in their mother dialect, a white teacher (or assimilated black) would interrupt and tell them that they were wrong. I'm not sure the Ebonics movement is entirely the correct response here, but ignoring the issues of class and race and gender conflict inherent in language is worse. There are more English speakers in India than there are in England, so it's not entirely clear to me why only the Queen's English counts. If I am editing a novel by a Chinese Canadian, and the author's language usage shows vestiges of her Chinese heritage, I'm not sure I want to entirely edit that out. Maybe yes if it's a fantasy novel intended for a general mass (probably American) market; but if it's a novel about life in China, or about the Chinese immigrant experience in Canada, not so much! I want to retain the author's authentic voice, as if she were talking directly to the reader, though enough editing so that doesn't become a barrier to reader's comprehension. For me, clarity is always king. The reader should feel as if the author is speaking directly to her, but not with such a thick accent as to not be understandable. The trick is to find the right balance between reader effort (sometimes the reader should have to work a little to understand!) and reader comfort (but they have to keep reading!). That, in part, depends on the significance of the work (literature or escapism; is the reader trying to experience a culture or solve a whodoneit?) and in part on the intention/wishes of the author on dimensions such as critical acclaim vs sales....

So yes, interesting video expressing an important point. As an editor, I have a responsibility to help the writer fit the grammar to the intended purpose and audience, with the default as 'fix the grammar' because that's why clients seek out editors. But outside of paid editing work, if they don't ask, don't tell.

Query Letters

Here is a good article on query letters by Jane Friedman, though I am a bit skeptical about her comments on simultaneous submissions. I think that depends on the particular market you are in. Similarly, if a publisher's guidelines ask for something specific, then do that in your submission to that publisher, rather than what any advice columnist says: publishers guidelines always trump generic guidelines. But in general, Jane's column is a good clear discussion.

Story Cliches

I was considering submitting a story to Strange Horizons Magazine and happened upon this list of "Stories We've Seen Too Often" attached to their "Guidelines" page. I was laughing heartily at the hopeless hackneyed ideas of these unsophisticated and unimaginative beginners. . . when I realized that the story I intended to submit was #5 on the list.

*Sigh*

Clearly there is no point submitting this story to any SF venue if my plot is #5 (on a list of 51) SF cliches.

There is nothing for it but to throw it out. . . to CanLit markets. (Well, might be new idea to their editors!)

Being Strategic: Writing for Specific Markets

Cover for Playground of Lost Toys, edited by Connie Anderson and Ursula Pflug

My story, "Hacker Chess" which appears in Playground of Lost Toys scheduled for Dec 1, 2015 release, is a good example of writing for a specific market.

When the call for submissions originally came out for Playground I didn't have anything to hand, or even any ideas for a story I could possibly submit. It was pretty much a topic to which I didn't relate. So, I ignored the call and wrote a story for a different anthology that fit nicely with a couple of the stories on my "in-my-head-and-should-really-write-down-one-of these-days" list. I sent that story off, although I was not completely satisfied with it's ending.

I subsequently wrote a second story I liked even better for that other anthology, but when I ran it past my personal editor (naturally, I never submit anything anywhere that hasn't first been edited) she said, "Hey, this is pretty good. Why don't you submit it to Anderson and Pflug for their anthology, since you're already got that other one in for the first anthology?" And because it is always a good idea to listen to your editor, I did that, even though I didn't see how it even remotely fit their theme at all. And lo and behold, they rejected it by return email because, as they correctly pointed out, it didn't remotely fit their theme. But--here's where things start getting interesting--they thought the story 'clever' and asked if I would rewrite it to make it fit the theme.

I thought about that, and played around with the story a bit to see if I could make it fit. But every time I tried to change something, the whole thing fell apart. So, bad news was there was no way I could bend that story into shape to fit Playground; the good news was that in looking closely at that story again, I realized I could improve the ending to make it both more optimistic and more realistic. I then sent "Age of Miracles" off to the other anthology which bought it (though it's TOC hasn't been officially announced yet, which is why I'm being coy about calling it "the other anthology".)

Which left me with the predicament that I had a couple of editors who actually liked my writing (indeed, Ursula had already bought another of my stories for her previous anthology, They Have to Take You In) and no story for them. So I looked again at the initial call for submissions and at all of their subsequent posts talking about the kinds of stories they were getting as opposed to the kind they actually wanted, and I sat down and wrote the story they said they wanted.

I have to say, that was one of the fastest I have ever managed to write something, because having a specific target made it really, really easy to focus. And I was very happy with the result. Indeed, when I made my daughter read it she was sufficiently impressed to say, "Hey, this is actually really good." (Which, you know, I still can't decide if I should be complimented by her enthusiasm, or insulted by her surprise.) But thus reassured, and with the blessing of my regular editor, I submitted it to Colleen and Ursula.

Who promptly rejected it. They still wanted me to rewrite "Age of Miracles". I thought this one was at least as good as "Age of Miracles", and more on target, but the writer's opinion is not the one that counts in these situations. I had to confess to them that I couldn't make "Age of Miracles" work for their theme and had already sold it elsewhere, so that left me just a day and a half to come up with something else before Playground's final deadline for submissions.

Carefully analyzing what they had liked about "Age of Miracles" and what wasn't working for them in the second story (well, it did take awhile to get to the toy part), I wrote "Hacker Chess" in less than 10 hours. That's an all time record for me. But having a very clear idea of the target and a tight deadline seemed to focus the process wonderfully: no time for the usual angst, no wandering off message, no obsessive rewriting...just a quick turn around from my regular editor assuring me it was up to my usual standard.

I hope you like the result.

Writing for a specific market, then, has the advantage of knowing exactly what the target is, which may both speed and focus the process. The downside is, if you miss, there is nowhere else for those stories to go.

Let's face it, no one wants to publish a story someone else has already rejected (because what would that imply about one's standards?); and even if one were open-minded enough to realize that a story may be rejected because it didn't quite fit the editors' theme rather than for questions of quality, it's quite likely other venues in that genre are going to be inundated by stories on that theme from all the rejected submissions. An editor can only take one dinosaur or flying saucer or 'toy' story per annum, so when 25 toy-themed stories come in the month after Playground closes, only one of those has even a theoretical chance of seeing publication. In reality, once the editor realizes that 25 toy stories are not a coincidence, quite likely to have an allergic reaction to them all.

So I now have two stories in my inventory with nowhere to go. Luckily, the story I wrote specifically for Playground was sufficiently mainstream there's a chance I can pass it off as CanLit. Consequently I shot it off to a mainstream lit mag hoping that its editors sufficiently removed from the genre scene not to instantly recognize it as a Playground reject, and the market sufficiently removed that it won't be the first choice of other rejected Playground writers. If that doesn't work, I'll have to tuck it into a drawer for a couple of years until the flow of other toy stories has ebbed, and it's safe to bring it out again.

The leftover story from the other anthology is probably too odd to go elsewhere with ease. It is part of a larger world I'm developing, so I might just have to wait to incorporate in that collection/novel; or wait for the second volume in that anthology series, should the editors/publisher think there is potential market for a second collection. (I think there is, because fascinating topic, but having a story in hand on the topic may be biasing me.)

One's other option, of course, is to enter the leftover stories in contests, such as the Merril. The Friends of the Merril contest is particularly good one because it has (1) low entrance fees, (2) excellent judges, (3) significant prize money, (4) they accept simultaneous submissions (5) they aren't asking for publishing rights, and (6) the proceeds go to a really good cause, which I would support anyway. Oh, and you get a free Lovecraftian e-book just for entering this year, which is pretty sweet if you're into that at all. Again, danger of the judges being overwhelmed with stories addressing the same theme, but at least my Playground reject has the advantage of being off topic rather than being yet another doll story. Downside, of course, is a lot of tough competition for the one winning spot.

Front and back covers, with backcover blurb.

I would, on the whole, count the experience of targeting specific anthologies a positive one. Two sales to top anthologies (seeing the TOC, I'm pretty happy with whom I am rubbing shoulders!) feels pretty good, and I was slightly amazed at how much easier and faster my process given a clear target. Instead of being a constraint, writing to a theme turned out to be strangely freeing. I recommend giving it a try next time you see a call for submissions, even if the topic at first glance is not one for which you have an idea to hand.