Stupid Things I Believed When I Started Writing #4

I’m one of those writers everyone used to say were rare: I started writing long form. My very first attempt at writing something came out at forty thousand words and only because I hadn’t figured out yet that novels set in alien worlds need description even more than other novels do. The rewrite took it to 120 thousand words. The next book was two hundred thousand words. And I have written a six hundred thousand word opus – aka the doorstop – which has been fermenting in my subconscious since it was written and which can, probably, at this point be written as three novels. I think. I’ll do it as soon as I get a break in the schedule. Or at least I’ll do the outline.

Anyway, I wrote eight novels before I even thought of writing short stories. And then I wrenched myself away from novels (just when I started getting personal rejections, of course. And no, I hadn’t sent them out that many times – mostly because we were young and broke and postage was expensive) because I’d been reading advice books and all of a sudden I “knew” how one was “supposed” to get published.

I still think I’m excused on this one. Even if I wanted to go to workshops and cons and meet editors to break through the slush barrier, which at that time was the actual process to break in, I couldn’t have done it. My local cons didn’t get real editors/agents, and we simply couldn’t afford to travel. How poor were we? Well… let’s just say that sometimes the novel being sent out waited for three months before I could get the $8 to mail it in. We had to schedule buying saline solution for my husband’s contact lenses in as a recurring expense.

(In fact, about a year after I forced myself to learn to write short stories, one of the editors I submitted to, who was at the time teaching Clarion, told me to apply and – bless him – offered to pay half my fee. I have no idea why he did that. He never did buy me, even after I started selling everywhere else. Possibly because I turned his offer down – editors are human too – but I had no other choice. Even half the fee was so ridiculously beyond our budget as buying a beach house would be right now. No, possibly more. Though we have no intention of buying a beach house while strapped for cash, we probably could come up with a plan if absolutely vital. Back then we couldn’t. You see, we ARE a dying breed in that we paid for our own college, we got married, we didn’t go back to live with mom and dad, we got no contacts, no money for training, we just did it, step by step, hand over hand. And if we haven’t got particularly far, well… At least as far as we got it’s ours.) One of the things that has disturbed me for some time is that I wonder whether publishers are even aware that the “new new method” of becoming a pro weeds out not just those who don’t present well or are nuts, but also those who don’t have someone supporting them – their parents, or spouse – and don’t have anyone to support. (Later on I took the Oregon Coast Professional Writers’ Workshop in preference to Clarion because I couldn’t afford the time for Clarion. By then I had a five year old and a two year old, and my husband had to take time off work so I could attend. He only had two weeks vacation. Clarion was never a consideration.) The reason this worries me is not “justice” which would be nice but never happens in the real world. It worries me because it narrows the perspective of the “voices” getting in to people who are relatively well off, relatively young and/or living like they are. Since that’s not how most people live, this reduces the “connecting to audience” ability as well.

Anyway, after that lengthy digression – ahem – I was very naive and the book I bought told me the way to get in was to start at pays in copies and claw your way up step by step. For that, you needed to write short stories. So I learned to.

In retrospect, this was a four year digression that earned me nothing. It made perfect sense in the thirties or forties because short story publications also built your audience. They had such a widespread audience – more so than novels – that by the time someone published in novels it helped to be well known in short stories.

I never really managed to sell to pays in copies, either. My lowest sale was $15 for a story I wrote while I was tipsy (those who were at Denvention heard me read it under “juvenalia”). I tried, but pays in copies rejected me, over and over again. After that, my lowest sale was $50 for Thirst to Dreams of Decadence. And after that I started getting pro rates.

And now you’ll be going “But that’s how you got in.” Not really. I got in by attending the workshop with Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith and meeting the editor who published my Shakespeare books. That was pretty much it. Could I have got in if I hadn’t done that? I’d like to think so, but I probably would NOT have got in in with short stories.

About five years ago, at World Fantasy, myself and a bunch of other writers my “class” (i.e. came in the same year) – I’m thinking Ken Wheaton (?) and Leah Cutter, but I’m at a loss for who the others were just now) did a back of the envelope calculation based on how many stories vs. novels were being published then and how many submissions they got from their published accounts and we came to the conclusion a newby had three times better chances of selling a novel over a short story.

Now, of all the stupid things I thought, I regret this one the least. Why? Because learning to write short stories was useful.

It helped me sharpen my skills and my ability to grab a reader fast. It also helped me figure out what appeals to others and what doesn’t, without writing MASSIVE works to do it.

Short stories were also – until recently – the way to get money fast if you were in a hole (And might be again, if the subscription thing works.) I.e. you could write seven or ten, send them out, and get a couple thousand dollars for the mortgage within the month.

More important short stories were – and again, might be – a great loss leader. You would sell to an anthology that reached seven thousand people, and if even a tenth of those checked out your name and your latest novel, it helped you increase your readers, little by little.

So, it was a stupid thing, and I regret the time lost. On the other hand, I acquired a skill that has proven useful. No regrets.