Do the Duck!

Okay, with this post, belatedly (I’ll explain this later) I institute the great and magnificent order of the rubber ducky.

Below I’ll explain where it came from, the thought behind it and how to enter into our hallowed and awesome company.

First let me tell you a story.

Imagine me as a young writer – a very young writerling indeed – about fourteen years ago. Oh, I wasn’t young in age, I was in my early thirties. But every time I’d started applying myself to writing seriously, I was blown back by a storm of rejections and cowered into research and “development” and “study” and all sorts of substitutes for actually sticking my neck out again.

I had made progress very slowly, because I’m an emotional (though not a physical) coward. As Kate Paulk and I have been batting about back and forth, there is an unclean attraction to writing, if done right. There is a dancing so near madness it takes squinting and using a high definition lens to see the difference. I don’t like that. Perhaps because it is so easy for me, it sends me careening back to stand on solid rock and saturate myself in reality: science, economics, history, politics. It’s telling I think that of all of those my favorite is economics, or that when I’m really depressed I read paleontology books, all about examining the bones, cataloguing the bones, being logical about the bones. Yeah. I’m an emotional wussy.

But I’d got to the point where I had a writers group, and one of the members of that writers group was Rebecca Lickiss – her books are available electronic on Amazon. If you like my work go and buy one of them to thank her. Go now, I’ll wait till you’re back – who took a notion in her head to go to the Oregon Coast Professional Writers Workshop.

I didn’t want to. Besides that wussy thing, I’d seen the work of writers who’d gone through workshops. I used to edit a small press magazine and there was a certain workshop that appeared in cover letters and that GUARANTEED the author’s work read like pap. (I don’t think that’s true anymore. At the time that unnamed workshop had fallen in the grasp of minimalists, which were, back then, at the top of their ascendency. Maybe they still are, but no pros seem to take them seriously anymore.) On top of that the workshop was expensive (I don’t remember how much anymore, but it ran into thousands of dollars) and worse of all, it was two weeks. This was a serious issue because at the time I had a seven year old and a three year old; I lived away from all family; I had no babysitter. Oh, yeah, and it was over Easter, which as you know – or maybe not – is sacred to the mother of small boys who look unbearably cute hunting Easter eggs and whose faces light up when they see baskets with stuffed elephants and monkeys. (Bunnies? Ah! It should be so easy.)

But Becky, bless her stubborn heart, is one of the most determined creatures in the universe, and when she wishes to get her way and is sure she’s in the right, one of the most stubborn. She has an approach to life based on lowering her head and charging – as she herself says – although in this case it was nagging. And poking. And prodding. And she got our husbands (I know where you sleep, guys!) on her side. They’re best buddies and at the time worked in the same company, in the same group. They were going to take vacation and watch the kids and geek out while the kids played. (Yes, we left six small children with two computer geeks. Weirdly they all survived. Even the geeks.) And my husband said we had the money.

With all my excuses yanked out from under my feet, I was forced onto a plane, and to the Oregon coast – where Becky and I arrived, tired out, sleepless, having eaten almost nothing because we couldn’t find a place that was open on the way and served food.

So… we get to the first meeting of the workshop. There are six of us (in that first workshop there were only six) in this vast room and first Dean Wesley Smith plays a country song about bananas. By this point I’m staring at Becky with the “It’s all an elaborate plan to annoy me, right?” and then… and then he tells us about the bathtub of publishing. By which time I wanted to put my face in my hands and cry.

However, it turns out, the man was right about the bathtub of publishing (corny metaphor and all) and the workshop did kick me out of the gate with force enough I haven’t stopped writing and publishing since.

So, here goes the metaphor. Publishing is a bathtub. Not a particularly clean bathtub, since there is a ring around it. In that bathtub there is a rubber duckie. The water pouring into the bathtub is the stories you write.

At first, while water pours, nothing hits above that ring. But then as more and more and more water accumulates in the bottom of the tub, some drops will jump above the ring. Dean explained this was “publishable” level, but in the days of self-publish, we’ll say that’s “commercial” level – the level at which your writers will think “wow, I must get more.”

When the first drop hits above that level – trust me, I did this – some people try to figure out what made it bounce that way and, paradoxically, reduce the flow of water and try to get it to bounce just right. Don’t do that. Instead, turn the water on full force. You see, at some point the base level of water climbs to where it will always be above that line. (And you’ll find other more subtle lines to aim for.)

The moral of this story is something I was always very reluctant to believe: “trust the process.” Yes, of course, study and read, so you know where you’re aiming (we’ve talked about the problem of your stuff always looking great to you and of not knowing how or where to aim. You must understand that first.) But at the same time, you have to write. The process of writing is not passive. It’s like learning to move muscles you never knew you had. You might completely botch a novel or a short story, but you will learn from each of them. (Trust me on this.)

I was very reluctant to believe it, because it’s almost like believing in magic. And yet, it’s true. Now, if you don’t bother knowing how to structure a novel or a short story. If you don’t study how to make it commercial, writing won’t help you. You can pour out pages and pages of stuff and you’ll be stuck at the same place. Your faucet is not connected. What pours out is maybe a little dust. But if you’re struggling to improve, if you have half a clue, if you set your stuff aside and examine it objectively in a few months, you’ll see you’re improving.

Now, Kris and Dean proposed something radical. You know how I said you have to fill the tub as fast as you can? They advised a short story a week, regardless of what else you were doing. I thought they were nuts, but you see, by that time I was ready to try anything – so I tried. While writing novels. I wrote sixty short stories over the next two years. (And I’m sorry I ever stopped.) Then novels got… more demanding and our group broke apart (support is important in these endeavors) and… I haven’t done it since.

Last November I stumbled by accident on short stories from early in that period, and then late in that period. Friends (Romans, Countrymen) the difference hit me in the face like something that hits you in the face. It was that blatant. At the beginning I was at best “beginner with half a clue.” At the end I was a pro. So I issued a challenge on Mad Genius Club. Anyone writing 10 (you count on half the possible) short stories in the next twenty weeks would get a rubber ducky from me.

I meant to do it, truly. But life got in the way. (It usually does.) And I let it. The only person who finished it was Annie Reed, who has a Super Hero Duckie coming to her.

I meant to do it, because I still have more to learn. A lot more. And I meant to challenge others because it goes better in a group.

In retrospect what I did wrong was ALLOWING myself to only do half the weeks. That meant I kept putting it off because I could always catch up. Not anymore. In the original challenge, I tried to do it every week, and after a year I woke up on Saturday and I was ready to go. I craved writing a story. It’s like an exercise program.

Now I need to for other reasons. One of the things paralyzing me is the economic uncertainty as it applies to me, and I’ve already told you I intend to have a short story subscription service. Now I need to write the stories, right? And you have your own reasons, though I’m sure the most important is to get better as a writer. You’ve always wanted to do this, now do it WELL.

So, I’m throwing down the gauntlet again. Anyone who writes ten or more stories over the next six months (but you should aim for twenty!) Will get a super-hero ducky from me. And to keep myself honest, I’ll report on my progress (Neither gloom of night nor Mrs. Cake, nor impending trip to Portugal shall stop me) every Sunday, at the same time I post a Blue Plate Special. (There’s gonna be some changes around here starting in June – more on that later – and Sundays will be BPS day. BPS, in my conference, the Diner, both on Facebook [ask to be let in! It’s a private group. Yes, there’s a public one too, but you wan the private!] and in Baen’s Bar, is a free short story. Usually a long-ago published one, but hey, free.) And any of you going along with me, can report on yours in the comments.

One thing I didn’t have before and which might help you. Go to Amazon and buy this. Read it. Stay with it even if it seems crazy. It’s not.

The Rubber Ducky waits, and in the future, we’ll meet each other in public and go “quack” and we’ll know we’re in the presence of an equal who took the challenge. Then we can sit down and quaff a pint and compare how many duckies we have achieved.

Clear a space in your house, a vast shelf for all the rubber duckies.

We few, we happy few, we band of quackers…