BOOKS & PUBLISHING
Read My Finger: How Not To Get PublishedSEATTLE, WA 08 June 2010 |
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Years ago I volunteered at a nationally distributed literary journal. My job was to read through blind submissions, a pile of unsolicited writing known as The Slush. The volume of slush at this particular journal was staggering. Un-read stories teetered on shelves, distended sofa cushions, lay moldering beneath take-out Kung Pao. It wasn’t that no one cared. In fact, the staff was resolutely earnest. It was because no matter how many we waded through, the envelopes continued to arrive, sack after sack, crate after crate, box after box, manila cattle thundering across the plain. They came unceasingly, like cannibal hordes, like Stalinist decrees, like tortured metaphors.
Desperate to be published. Begging to be admired.
And they never, ever stopped.
Except on Sundays.
Hey, let’s face it, everyone hates short stories. The quickest route to social leprosy at any kegger not thrown by Alice Munro is to mention you’re “working on a collection.” And while it’s possible George Plimpton was the coolest man on the planet in 1962, at this point The Paris Review might as well be an Amway catalog. Our entertainment delivery systems have either improved or devolved, depending on your taste, but at the Dawn of Kindle the short form belongs to true believers: black-clad girls who wish they’d been named Zelda and virginal boys with Raymond Carver posters above their fish tanks.
Not a subscription base coveted over at Maxim.
Around this time, an agent cold-called to tell me he’d read one of my stories. And actually liked it.
“That’s great,” I said, excited. “I’m working on a collection.”
He laughed. “Don’t bother. I’d have better luck selling sand to Eskimos.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no one gives a fuck. It means the only people who read lit journals are menopausal woman, vegan poets, and assholes who still wear Arafat neck scarves. It means get to work on a novel already.”
“But-”
“Preferably about lesbian vampires.”
“But-”
“A-B-C. Always Be Closing. That’s what winners do. Losers write stories about their cancer grandma.”
“As a matter of fact, my grandmother does figure heavily in many of my-”
Click.
I was not dissuaded. I continued to read The Slush and turn out stories with admirable industry, if not the requisite cynicism or accretion of skill. I guess I presumed this volunteerism was the first step to an industry-wide recognition of my talent. Or at least a recognition of my desire for recognition. Either way, it represented movement. And a sense of movement, whether real or imagined, is essential to sharks and writers in equal measure.
I initially found the piles of submission envelopes exciting. Each one, unopened, seemed to have the potential for greatness. I would grab a stack and cross my legs, like Maxwell Perkins ready to discover the next Big, Two-Hearted River. Or at least Alice Krige ready to buy a whiskey for the next Mickey Rourke. I was sure I’d soon be parsing the truly amazing from the merely great. I read a dozen stories. Not a stunner amongst them. It was mostly early workshop stuff, begging for the heavy red marker of a competent adjunct. So I read a hundred more. They were strikingly similar. Clotted. Unleavened. Overwrought. At the two hundred mark I began to doubt myself. Maybe I was being way too critical. Of course, there were good pieces, which I passed up to the editors, but the good were statistically insignificant. The bad were an omniverse, almost always falling into the gray area between hopelessly self-conscious and hopelessly not self-conscious enough. There just wasn’t enough sweat on the page. No awareness of the lineage of authors who’d trod the same ground. A principled rejection of spell check. By the time I read my five-hundredth story, I’d begun to sense a trend. It turns out the dirty secret of the lit world, like the notion that there are only twelve songs in rock-and-roll that continually cannibalize one another, is that there are only eight submission topics which endlessly repeat. And repeat they did. So frequently, in fact, I could tell what a story was going to be about by the handwriting on the envelope. I could spool out the plot before I’d finished the first paragraph. I started calling in sick so I could lay in bed watching the Sammy Hagar episode of Behind The Music all day instead. The dirty secret of Sammy Hagar is, although he Can’t Drive Fifty-Five, he can certainly drive fifty-four.
The Eight (8) Universal Unpublished Story Submission Plots:
1.Mom’s Very Sick-Maybe the form of sickness is spelled out, maybe not. Whatever it is, Mom’s leaving this coil soon. But not before a few childhood flashbacks. In the meantime, we find out what the ward smells like (bleach, vomit), what the nurse is like (brusque, efficient), what the doctor is like (toothy, golfer), what’s floating in shafts of sunlight (dust motes, hope) and what the Jamaican orderly does (spew accented wisdom, answer questions about dreadlocks). Hey, is mom breathing? No? Quick, get the doctor! Beep…beep….beep…..flatline. slight variant: Mom’s gonna make it, but while it was still touch-and-go, she confessed The Very Bad Thing. The family is stunned. Someone delivers flowers, but no one takes a sniff. Moral: Do any of us really know our moms? Apparently not. Conclusion: Whoever this lady is, she sure as fuck better not need any bone marrow. authorial theft guide: Amy Hempel, Mary Gaitskill, Anne Beattie.
2.Bar Fight-A guy just minding his business (over bourbon, always bourbon) is being hassled by a real dick. The old-school bartender says nothing, he’s got mahogany to wipe. Then a woman walks in. She’s got bee-stung lips, heavy breasts, and legs that (like the Sicarii at Masada) just won’t quit. Auburn curls fall down her back in glistening waves. Or rising tides. Real Dick says The Last Straw. Just Minding His Business roundhouses him out cold, and then asks Redhead if he can buy her a drink. slight variant: Dick wins the fight, in the way all Real Dicks do: by cheating. The last thing Just Minding His Business sees before unconsciousness, which will fall like a veil, curtain, or casket door, is the torn nylon stretched metaphorically over Redhead’s sculpted thigh. authorial theft guide: Bukowski, Hemingway, Thom Jones, John O’Hara.
3.Social Outcast Imparts Jesus-y Moral Lesson- An unfairly picked-on shlub, without the hope of a date, amazes all those who previously underestimated him by performing a small miracle, like reviving a child who fell down a well, or turning water into wine (preferably a mid-range Cabernet with hints of raspberry, moss, and oak). As he stands before an astonished, gathering crowed, the Shlub smiles beneficently, just like The Son of God might, if the Son of God were forty pounds overweight, worked at Sears, and had a half-eaten Kit Kat melting in his back pocket. The story ends with a sentence using some combination of judder, rapture, and roil. slight variant: A lonely but well-meaning guy watches the prostitutes beneath his apartment window each day, trying to come up with a plan to rescue the nice one. For his troubles, he gets beaten up by the Camaro-pimp. The girls laugh, with all the combined un-feeling of contemporary society, and then throw used condoms at him. authorial theft guide: Those guys who wrote Left Behind, that guy who wrote The Shack, the collected works of Kirk Cameron.
4.The Affair-Usually in the Midwest, although sometimes Florida, and almost always at an overly described shit+hole motel. To be fair, illicit, sweaty congress sometimes happens between good people with difficult situations at home. And then it’s over. Cue Marlboro softpack. Water drips in the sink. The AC clangs. There’s a knock on the door. Is it her husband? His wife? The police? An entire final page describes the agonizing uncertainty. Not revealing who it was is more a deliberate artistic choice than an inability to come up with a good answer. slight variant: Wealthy Manhattan-ites bone away the idle hours on 1000 thread-count sheets, each privileged, cold-blooded stroke an attempt to erase their moneyed self-loathing. authorial theft guide: Tom Perotta, John Updike, Charles Willeford.
5.Vampire, Alien, Cannibal, Were-trout, Ghost-Eternal longing. Flesh Rending. Probing the duodenum. Agonized reorganization of the physiognomy due to lunar cycles. Repeated use of the word slake. Asian girl emerges from television screen, eats face. Murdered wife returns to vacation cabin to re-arrange furniture. Captain Whoever barks commands while orbiting Alpha Prime. Screwdriver in ear. Incisors in thigh. Ancient-race egg buried in chest cavity. Decadent Berliners with unusual knowledge of 1880’s mores and customs lure nubile tourists deep into the night. slight variant: A wooded adventure, hunting or fishing along a lonely ridge, a crisis involving a lack of water or fire. There’s no hope of rescue. There’s existentialism in a dying realization, last breaths amongst the hooting of owls. Or wait, was that a bat? Now, hold on a minute, did that bat just turn into a pale young boy in a leather trench coat with unsheathed orthodontics and a five o’clock shadow that just upgraded to midnight? authorial theft guide: Mary Shelly, Poe, Gilgamesh, El Ron Hubbard.
6.What Wise Elderly Dude Thinks About His Grandchildren, Politics, And Baseball, Mostly After Naps-An old man looks back over his life with a mix of pleasure, regret, and Jello. slight variant: The Ten People You Meet in Purgatory, and the nine reasons they deserve to be there, eight of which are cynically cashing in on a demographic’s need to be comforted with visions of the afterlife as seen through Eisenhower-colored glasses. authorial theft guide: Mitch Albom, Nicholas Sparks, Sinclair Lewis.
7. Dad Felt Suzie Up-Yeah, he did. That time in the basement, and also once after class. Suzie started to wear all black and cut herself for a while, before majoring in performance art. Years later, she comes back for a big family Thanksgiving and, oh boy, the tension. Suzie makes a few veiled comments. Dad chokes on his Miller Lite. Someone’s sweater gets torn, Billy admits he’s gay, grandma snores through it all, and Mom goes into the darkened kitchen to gorge on a tray of stuffing. slight variant: Uncle Felt Billy Up, Suzie admits she’s a junkie, grandma weeps through it all, and Mom goes into the darkened kitchen to gorge on a tray of kugel. authorial theft guide: Mary Karr, Augusten Burroughs, Elizabeth Wurtzel, The Frey.
8. The Spoonful Of Dada-Is it a dream? Is it experimental verse? Is it an abstract tone poem? If you get it, you don’t get it. Hey, conservative automaton, haven’t you ever heard of pushing the envelope? It’s post-modern. It’s semiotic. It’s deconstructive. It’s what Foster Wallace was trying to do, man, but going way further. slight variant: So what if it seems unlikely, it really happened. The whole thing. The talking cow and the chick hit by the Ferrari. Last summer at my cousin’s. authorial theft guide: Ram Das, Thomas De Quincey, William Burroughs, Robert Coover.
So, yeah, I quit. It wasn’t just that a vast majority of the submissions were incremental versions of one another, or that most were basically first drafts. It was because, no matter its relative merits, each envelope carried with it a sincere and palpable belief in its own worth. It was not difficult to envision the authors in cafes and workshops, hunkered at kitchen tables, leaning over keyboards with the surety of their right to be heard. Their need to express themselves. And then the long wait by the mail slot for acceptance. It was this sense of expectation that I found emotionally exhausting. At first, I wrote rejection notices all more or less the same way, something like this one’s not quite right for us, but good luck! After a while they began to expand. With each rejection I became more maudlin. Every slip was an albatross, a reminder that I’d become a crusher of hopes. Soon I was sending back stuff like God, it’s hard, you know? This whole writing deal? I mean, what can any of us really expect to come of it? The form is dying, after all, is it not? So, I am sorry, my friend, I cannot accept this work. But I ask you, please, not to give up! Continue to forge ahead! Hone your skills! Remember the example of Pushkin! Of course, perhaps some of us were not meant to write. We are all who we are in the end, our elemental natures unchanged by a cursory perusal of Strunk and White’s Style Guide. But, you know, be that as it may, these days I mostly feel like lying down on the carpet here in our tiny sixth-floor office and pretty much never getting up again. But, hey, I won’t bore you with that. You’ve got paragraphs to render. Narratives to arc. Denouements to denouemo. So, let us make a fraternal toast! To literature! And with that, I say, thank you and good luck placing this elsewhere!
How is it that the faults in other people’s fiction are so abundantly clear to us as readers, while as writers we tend to be so myopic about our own? The thing is, while in the totally arbitrary position of judging other people’s work, the pieces I was submitting back then were pretty much crap, too. And deep down I knew it. But for some reason I kept sending them out. Who picks up the saxophone, learns a few notes, and then books a gig? Aspiring writers do. And I was bleating B-flats along with everyone else. It took me a long time to realize that a truly exceptional story is a result of either rarified talent or the long and arduous absorption of craft. How do you learn to write? You sit your ass down in a chair, in front of a laptop, for ten years. Period. But for some reason writing lends itself to the romanticism of the random genius, like standing around the roulette table thinking that just by the force of will or a benevolent god your 27 red is going to hit. There’s a cinematic ideal that good writing is often the result of a fissile brilliance that need not be sullied with years of discipline and practice. The sudden Fitzgerald. The Joyce-ian savant. Waking up with your hand on the next Da Vinci Choad.
But once I’d been away from The Slush for a while, I realized the experience had been incredibly beneficial. For one thing, it helped me start to get a grip on what I was doing wrong. How clearly misshapen, ill-formed, and lacking in subtlety my pieces tended to be. There were maybe a few good ideas in them, but none existed for a specific reason. I’d taken funny lines and tried to graft a larger story onto their backs, like a mouse with a human ear for a spine. A six-month immersion in the slush of your local journal is likely a more valuable teaching tool than sixty-thousand dollars worth of MFA workshops, if only to highlight the pure and dangerous arrogance of declaring This is done! It’s ready to be in print! Almost no short story is ready to be in print. Almost every one could use another run-through. A Truly Exceptional Story is a rare bird precisely because it’s so exacting to produce. A friend once told me he assumed any given piece of his would go through at least forty drafts. Another, after I asked him how long he’d worked on a story I particularly liked, frowned and said “Oh, I dunno. I guess since 1977?”
In the end, every art form has at one time or another had its death declared. Yet almost all of them persist, and even thrive, in leaner, more intentional states. I love short stories, and continue to read them regularly. I also buy lit journals all the time, as a matter of course, whether I really want them or not. I admire the true believers who helm what’s left of the journal world, not only for the impossibility of their task, but for the denial of cynicism their continued existence implies. And when you do crack a random chapbook, coming across an unknown story, one without artifice, that imparts pages of material in a single sentence, that takes you somewhere you might otherwise never go, and manages to resolve itself with originality, it’s a genuinely remarkable thing that can be achieved in no other format.
To read the story the Always Be Closing agent pretended he liked,and then have access to a comment box with which to assail my arrogance, negativity, lack of empathy, profound misreading of my own need for further drafts, and embarrassing overuse of simile, go here: Narrative Magazine-Night Dreams.
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Loved this, Sean.
The Masada and the Choad. Ha!
And the line about the sharks and the writers: too, too true. Stop moving and we die.
Isn’t The Masada and The Choad the sequel to The Pirates of Penzance?
Yes, I believe some of Gilbert’s lyrics survive:
With cat-like tread
They come steal upon us
We’ll soon be dead
But they can lick the area between our arse and pe-nus…
OK, that was bad. Groan away.
I chuckled through the first items on the Submission Plot list and laughed out loud at What Wise Elderly Dude Thinks About His Grandchildren, Politics, And Baseball, Mostly After Naps. My lit journal experience was decidedly more modest that yours, but the stories submitted were very much the same as those you mentioned. The best of the bunch often emerged with an attendant (okay, and imagined) Hallelujah chorus in the background.
Enjoyed this piece. Thanks.
Thanks, Ronlyn, for backing up my claim. I’m sort of waiting for someone to get huffy and tell me how wrong I am about the quality ratio. Yes, absolutely, a chorus of angels when even a decently crafted piece came in.
Like most of your stuff, there so many razor-sharp lines in here I can’t begin to pick one, though I’m tempted to refer to the Paris Review as the Amway catalog from here on out. You manage to pull off the astounding feat of making these hackneyed plots genuinely entertaining. Should be handed out at the door to creative writing workshops.
Hey, I appreciate it, Nathaniel. Maybe we can get a viral Amway Review thing going. What also should be handed out at the door to creative writing workshops: a tire iron and a job application to Pep Boys.
I loved this in so many ways. Your experience with the slush pile is gold and you’re right–every author ought to wade through that muck for a while to get an idea of what is out there, what works, what doesn’t, and the sheer competition for so few available spots.
I mean, yes, new media means the opportunity for everyone to publish their stories, but in this case you’re talking about the more traditional route of submission and selection and publication.
It took me about ten years, and even then I only sold a commercial fiction title. I’d say ten more years from that first novel might get me to a place where I can start to be proud of my work. And honestly, as you mentioned above, many, many authors, aspiring and published, have difficulty assessing their own skills.
I asked an agent’s assistant one time, with all the submissions she was forced to look through, what sort of method she used to knock the number down to something she could honestly really read. “One typo in their cover letter,” she said, “and they’re out. One misspelling. Any cosmetic mistake. It may sound harsh, I have to cut the submissions by half in order to have time to look at them.” Later I went into the agent’s office and the table behind his desk was piled with manuscripts. Hundreds of them. I knew it would be like this and still I was blown away. He said he would agree to represent maybe 1 in 20 of them.
Later I went to an editor’s office and saw a similar pile of manuscripts. All of them were agent-represented submissions. Each of them was already a 1 in 20, and the editor says the number he will make an offer on is even lower than 1 in 20.
That is just one publisher, and a big one, so maybe these numbers aren’t accurate for all situations. There are other big publishing houses and plenty of small press options out there. But still the sheer numbers can be terrifying for an aspiring author. That’s why you should never send something out until you can’t conceivably make it any better. And then in ten years you’ll still look at it and probably think, “How the hell did this load of crap ever get published?”
P.S. I loved your maudlin rejection letter, although if I received it myself I would probably hate you for it. Haha.
Yes, you’re absolutely right, Richard. Any excuse to get rid of one manuscript from the desk. I’ve heard that same story a number of times. It’s funny, though, that many of the worst stories we received were the best packaged. People would buy expensive Mylar covers and have fancy fonts and 20-bond paper, and it was almost always a sure sign the piece would suck.
I am really happy as well that some of my earliest stuff was printed in journals with such tiny distribution that no more than a dozen people could possibly have read them. It’s a cliche, but in 2 years you’ll think the stuff you’re writing now is terrible, and 2 years after that the stuff you were writing then was terrible, and 2 years after that….etc, etc. It’s cruel a cruel cycle. That’s why I try never to read anything more than 6 months old.
The sad truth, confirmed by this hilarious piece, is that there are more people writing short stories than reading them.
That really was one of my first thoughts….is it truly possible that there are this many people writing short stories?
Sean,
How wonderful, funny and sad this piece is. I see myself in it, in several places, and I won’t say exactly where. I’ve been writing since college and although I had enough sense to also get a real job, I never stopped hoping I’d find a place for my stories. Years went by, decades, and I never sold a short story. Over that time I managed to get four novels in print, commercially. But never a short story sale. I still think it had a lot to do with the gate keepers. Let’s face it, twenty-something college women aren’t going to resonate with the concerns and troubles of fifty-something-and over males… even if said males pander and write to them, as I’m sure some do. Cause, after all, they can get the real thing. And women, I don’t mean to single young women out exclusively for my lack of a Literary short story rap sheet. To be fair, probably thirty percent of those lit mag interns are young men, feminists, with washboard abs and shaved heads, nose rings, bling, boners, etc., hoping to score one of the seventy percent, and totally unable to relate to the things I write about.
Or maybe it was a class issue. “… bone away the idle hours on 1000 thread-count sheets,…”
Yeah, that’s probably what it was. My working class characters boned each other on 300-count sheets, not good enough for the preppy shit working as intern at the mags I sent my stuff to!
“not difficult to envision the authors in cafes and workshops, hunkered at kitchen tables, leaning over keyboards with the surety of their right to be heard. Their need to express themselves.”
Yes, yes. That’s what drives them, us, me — a long time ago, before I learned that nobody gives a shit. I recall a commercial for a pain killer. A young woman suffering with a headache glares into the camera. “I want this pain out of here… Now!” she declares. I’m sure God dropped the fifty folks he was pulling up out of that erupting volcano in Awfulstan and rushed back to help her out. Yeah, right, just like he heard my prayers and got me in the pages of … whatever.
But, to be fair to God, I did, finally get a story published in Rosebud, which was a thrill. Now I’m ready to die. But that kind of luck, like lightning, has since moved on to strike other luckier writers. But I still have stories… and I haven’t given up.
Best!
It’s always a class issue in the end, Paul. You should have definitely upgraded your characters to duvets.
It’s amazing with the novels under your belt it took you that long to get a story accepted. Especially since, as a reader, I was always looking for something that wasn’t about 20 year olds. Please, give me the concerns of someone whose paid their own rent for a while, you know?
It’s excellent you haven’t given up. Never pander. Especially since I can assure you I have never met a single reader at any lit journal with washboard abs. Noserings, on the other hand….
>>Desperate to be published. Begging to be admired.<<
This needs to be added to the list of sub-captions that appear beneath the TNB logo at the top of the page.
This piece was insightful to the point of being uncomfortable. Well freaking done. What really makes it hum is the inclusion of the “Slight Variant” and “Authorial Theft” qualifiers.
Thanks for imparting practical guidance in an intensely funny, helpful piece.
P.S.
George Plimpton was indeed way cool. I met him once at the 1997 adult film industry awards in Las Vegas. I was able to grab a quick chat because I don’t think anyone else there knew that the Paper Lion walked amongst them.
“I was at the 1997 adult film industry awards. With George Plimpton.” Hey, man, do you really need to pimp out your street cred any more after that? You should print business cards with just that sentence and wordlessly hand it to people: bartenders, doormen, editors, models, anyone questioning why you just cut in front of them in line. Talk about the key to the city. The only possible improvement might be “I was at Plato’s Retreat in 1974 with Gay Talese.”
Did George autograph one of his films for you? Actually, I think I just grossed myself out.
Yes, I got him to sign my VHS copy of “The Good-Year Plimp: 365 of my Favourite Shags.”
I can loan you the tape!
LOL!! You should totally write porn!
Awesome. I love reading about literary journals/magazines and the cultures thereof. It’s so . . . weird, I guess is maybe the best word. I’ve always gotten the impression that the only people who buy either issues or subscriptions to said journals are writers who want to get published in them, so it’s a neverending cycle of selling subscriptions to the very people who are sending submissions mouldering on sofas and acquiring rejection letters.
Not to mention what happens when a lit journal accepts a story. Because you can’t really say the writers sell their stories to said journals, given that they usually “pay” in complimentary copies of the issue containing the story. Sometimes writers even get two!
>.given that they usually “pay” in complimentary copies of the issue containing the story. Sometimes writers even get two!<<
But just so we’re clear, it’s socially acceptable to give these away as presents, right? Even several years after the fact?
This is sadly true. I cut out a line from the essay about the only people reading the stories are the intermittently paid staff and the moms of the authors lucky enough to squeak a story in. Also, old Russian men who claim a dubious connection to Vladimir Nabakov, people obsessed with green tea, those who knit afghans, first semester MFA students, and Colonial-era British eccentrics.
The pay thing hurts, too. But it’s hard to fault journals that are primarily funded by ever-diminishing donations and endowments. When you cash one of those checks, though, even for fifty bucks, it’s the best feeling in the world. Okay, maybe only the 30th best feeling, but still.
This was terrific. I can’t imagine there’s a writer on our roll—or anywhere else–who won’t relate.
A few years ago I found a whole stack of old short stories that I’d written when I was young. I had them in a drawer. My wife and I were getting ready to move. Cleaning house. I picked up the stack after many years and started reading. And was genuinely horrified. I threw them all away.
Then again, I tend to be genuinely horrified by pretty much everything I write. At least sometimes. Can’t really remember a time where I picked up something I’d written and thought to myself: Fuckin’ genius. I’m not capable of that. People who are capable of that sort of confuse me.
And yeah, I’ve had that same thought about writing. The one about the saxophone and the B flats and the booking a gig. I’ve talked about it with students of mine before, trying to be “realistically encouraging.” The reminder that writing is a craft, that it can be learned, much like cooking can be learned.
But for some reason—I think it’s because we all know how to physically write, pen to paper, fingers to keyboard—people somehow assume that they should be masterful from moment one. And then there’s the feeling that good literature often gives you, the feeling that it was all so very easy. (Easy reading = hard writing, etc.) You read, say, a Carver story and it tricks you into thinking it’s simple. Some of my earliest bad stories were attempts to be Raymond Carver. (Or Gordon Lish.)
I also think of Arundhati Roy. Her book The God of Small Things. First novel. Booker Prize. Massive success. The Indian equivalent of, like, To Kill a Mockingbird. I read an interview with her once. She said she didn’t revise a word of the book. That the thing just came out whole, like a hot turd, just as it appears on the page.
I used to always bring up this anecdote whenever I was telling my students about the whole “saxophone” thing. After breaking the news that it would probably require a decade of painful solitude to become even semi-proficient as a writer, I would allow that, yes, there are some Jimi Hendrixes in the world. There are some authors like Arundhati Roy, who are able to write a much beloved and critically acclaimed and massively successful Booker Prize-winning first novel on the first try, without revising. (Plus: She’s beautiful!)
“But,” I’d hasten to add, “nobody likes those people anyway.”
This isn’t true, of course. But it’s a pleasant thought, and it always got a laugh.
PS. I don’t believe the Roy story. I think she was probably working on that book for years and years, trial and error, subconscious brewing, and then, perhaps, a draft shot out of her in solid form. Just a guess. Sorta like Kerouac and the whole bunk On the Road myth.
Thanks, Brad. It’s funny, I had the exact same experience moving a year ago. Found these envelopes of ancient type-written stories and was genuinely frightened. Some had teacher’s comments on them, the poor guy trying hard to find something positive to say. Brutal. Couldn’t finish any of them. Binned with malice.
I totally agree about reading old work in general. All I can see are the faults, the thin moments, the stuff where I was fooling myself and hoping to fool the reader too. I keep thinking I’m past that sort of artifice, and then get a glimpse of some relatively recent piece and it depresses me enough that for a week I consider taking up archery.
The illusion of simplicity and space and breadth in very good fiction does lend itself to the idea that it can not only be quickly emulated, but that it came at little cost. I often wonder why this is so much more pronounced in writing than other art forms. People with even a cursory knowledge of music still sense that Gram Parson’s ease comes from an innate mastery, and that Steve Vai is just showing off, but neither of them would be easy to approximate.
I’ll check out Arundhati Roy. I feel like I should have heard of that book, or, if I did, excised it from my memory out of jealousy.
I refuse to be jealous of something as unverifiable as number of drafts. There’s always the possibility the Roys of the world are delusional.
There are plenty of great works out there worthy of my jealousy (As I Lay Dying in five weeks?!?) but only after I read them.
Re the Roy story, Brad, I think she just lied.
I just picked up the Roy book yesterday at my local tiny and haphazard used book store. I was sure there wasn’t a chance, and then there it was, on the shelf, staring at me guiltily, like even the spine knew it had been through many, many drafts….
HOOT, Sean, about what the book’s spine knew!!!
“It took me a long time to realize that a truly exceptional story is a result of either rarified talent or the long and arduous absorption of craft. How do you learn to write? You sit your ass down in a chair, in front of a laptop, for ten years. Period. But for some reason writing lends itself to the romanticism of the random genius,….”
It’s not just writing that’s like that. When I was playing music I refused to take lessons or learn how to write a proper song because I thought outside influences would pollute my genius. Hahahahaaaa. And like you, I knew the music wasn’t anything special. I wanted desperately to be one of those rarified talents. But they are rare IMO.
Interestingly, my first book came out almost ten years exactly after I started school for writing.
yeah, there’s a total analogue to this with music. Take a lot of acid and magically become the halting, shifting, genius of Syd Barrett. Don’t bother learning scales. Forget the circle of fifths. Just close your eyes and intuit. Pure expression. Self-taught is one thing. Self-delusion is another.
What’s the name of your book?
American Junkie. I was halfway thru my BA (approx 2004, although I began school in 2000) and going thru my ‘bad poetry’ phase when I decided to write it. I really didn’t see the point of another drug memoir (I was a junkie and heroin dealer for a good long time) but people kept seeing my scars or hearing about my past and saying “You have to write about that.” When even my professors began saying it, I finally decided to listen to someone else. Around that time I had also come to the realization that I either wasn’t a rarified talent, or was, but had no clue how to let it out, and that the solution to either was to buckle down and bust my ass for a good long time
Huh. That’s interesting. I just got to Seattle a year ago. I’ll pick up a copy at Elliott Bay.
It’s true the drug memoir genre is bloated with both genius and trash. And everything in-between. For my money Denis Johnson’s stuff is the rare example that transcends the subject matter. I also really enjoyed Alexander Trocchi’s “Cain’s Book.”
“Cain’s Book” is good. I dug it. Rarely run into anyone who has read it.
Read it when I was taking a literary history course years ago. Was recommended by the author of “Venice West.” Ah, my old hipster days in the mid 1990s…
You may not be able to find it at Elliott Bay. Last I heard, March-ish when the book came out the publisher approached them about carrying it and they were quite snobbish and said no. That may have changed, I dunno, but I would call first. The bookshop at SAM (Seattle Art Museum) is carrying it to coincide with the KURT exhibit and Third Place Books Ravenna has some. Arundel Books down by Pioneer Square had some awhile back as well.
No problem. I’ll pick it up at the SAM. I’ve sort of been avoiding the Kurt exhibit out of some half-baked principle, but I knew I was going to give in sooner or later.
Haha I have lots of half-baked principles. But hey, maybe you can see the Warhol thing
You’re a real writer. I like that. You’re one of those people I want to be. Sock puppet or no sock puppet. You’re a success. It oozes from every paragraph and confident word.
I love how you got into writing sappy letters back to the rejected. I bet those are the ones on the walls, framed, with pride.
Excellent of you to say, man. Really. You’ve almost got me believing it. If only I had a special sock puppet to help me cash some checks.
Funny, after writing this I started to wonder if some of the people who received those notes hated me for it as Richard (jokingly, but still) suggested above. I didn’t realize until later that a bloodless “No” was in many ways preferable to the inexplicable and infuriating “yeah, we really liked this, and it made the final cut, but in the end we just didn’t have space….” because there’s no one to scream SO PUT IT IN THE NEXT ONE at.
I don’t care what you say. I’m not removing my Raymond Carver poster from above my fish tank.
Art
That’s the way. Stand on principle. And then order a Tess Gallagher poster as a companion piece.
This is hysterical. I’m sitting in an Islands beside my son who’s obsessing over the Lakers-Celtics game and fries, and if this place wasn’t an animal house of alcoholics and overweight underclass sports fanatics, the chick screaming with laughter into her palm-held device might inspire a few *looks* from the management. I’d say something meaningful, but not with my thumbs. Totally enjoyed this, related to it and appreciate the wit, craft and ten fingers you put to work for it. Cheers. You’ve probably read some of my worst work.
Cool. I love that you read it on your palm-held device, the perfect subtextual irony. If I have read any of your submissions, Lisa, I hope I treated them gently.
Is Islands some chain P.J. McHooligans type place or something?
It’s a Hawaiian Burger Joint chain. Like Bennigan’s-by-the-Sea for Southwestern North Americans. I’d rather go to Paris, but the kids love it.
. . .hilarious post! i think i wrote every one of those stories but the vampire-lesbians . . .
well get to work, man. The market’s still white-hot.
I’m inclined to praise you, but won’t. You have received more than your share of affirmation… And you left out long suffering writers redeemed with social validation as their craft and desire transcends boorish gravity…
ah, Standard, you’ve tacked me to the wall next to my Ray Carver poster….
This is a seriously excellent essay. I edited a literary magazine (Other Voices) from 1997 until 2007, and launched the magazine’s book imprint in 2005, where I’m still the executive editor . . . I also guest-edited an issue of TriQuarterly Online, and of course am now also co-editing TNB’s fiction section, so it would be fair to say that I have had an almost ridiculous amount of experience editing lit mags. So much of what you talk about here is dead on, not to mention hilarious. It can all be so exhausting and demoralizing. The fact that 90 out of 100 stories that comes through the door (and we got several thousand submissions per year, via post, at Other Voices) was either not remotely right for the magazine or just plain not even publishable. The recycling of so many stories (you forgot Alzheimer’s! you forgot the Holocaust! you forgot older woman has an affair with a young foreign man while on holiday!) could become mind numbing and depressing . . .
And yet . . . wow, I don’t even know what the “and yet” is, exactly. For me, the thrill of finding even one amazing story that punched me in the gut always kept me going. Our subscription base was small, the circulation of the magazine only a couple thousand and some of those were libraries or people we knew really well–our own staff, our donors, our former writers–and I certainly was under no delusion that The World was going to be blown apart or away by the talent I had the privilege to occasionally find and publish. Still, I never got over the rush of seeing a new writer whose work had bowled me over actually in print on our pages, and getting even one card in the mail or email from a reader saying they had loved that piece. I never got over the fact that even though almost all the work we received was–well, amateurish and bad–still we managed to end up over-full with GOOD choices by the end of our reading year, and ended up with difficult decisions about what really strong, really resonant pieces we would have to cut, or bump to a future issue. When we got queries from agents, and the rare writer actually got a book deal after being noticed on our pages, it felt like the whole “team” of struggling writers out there had scored. I worked in that industry of lit mags for more than a decade, making at most 5 grand a year for my endeavors (so of course I also taught, wrote freelance journalism, tried to make money on my own writing.) My life was (and still, as an indie press editor) something of a cliche in earnestness–in a weird faith in the relevance of something that society long ago seemed to unanimously concur was NOT relevant, not in any widescale way, not in a way that translated into any economic value. But I have loved my work.
Let me be clear about that, because I think I mean something different (and less heroic) than what people often think you mean when you say you love working nonprofit for shit or nonexistent pay. Here is what I mean: while I’ve loved helping writers–and I do believe lit mags help writers and readers–the truth is, I have done this work for myself, not to be a “good person” or as philanthropic charity. I have done it because I dig it, plain and simple. I’ve built a life around it because it gives me a rush I can’t imagine ever finding in some other line of work. I’ve had many, from waitressing, bartending, working as a therapist, teaching, being a hotel maid, and so on, and this weird lit shit has been what made me tick most.
I also branched into book publishing precisely to give the finger to guys like that Agent who insist short fiction is irrelevant. Short fiction is what Other Voices Books specializes in, and while we certainly ARE irrelevant from the point of view of big advances and corporate marketing teams, our books get great reviews and have won some awards and gone into multiple (albeit modest) printings, and are not remotely irrelevant to their writers or to the small but passionate few thousand people who read them.
I could not agree with you more about the value of reading for mags as a much cheaper and probably more educational alternative to the MFA–though I will say that reading for mags can be lonely, and that MFAs provide great community (or should) and many writers meet their future longterm writing group members in their grad programs. MFAs are completely fucking useless when it comes to finding a job, and I don’t believe they can make a mediocre writer into a great writer, period. But they do offer a (really, really expensive) way of immersing oneself in a social culture of literature and creating work, and for some people, who can afford it and go in realistically, that may be a good reason to get one. I had a great time at mine. But if I had to choose it, or my decade and a half as an editor, in terms of what taught me more or has been more rewarding, grad school gets thrown under the bus no contest.
Anyway, really enjoyed this–thanks for writing it.
This is a seriously excellent response, Gina. Thanks for taking the time. Where to start?
For one thing, I submitted to both Other Voices and TriQuarterly within the time frame you were there, probably more than once. I wonder if any of mine got passed up enough that you might have read one? And then rejected it with malice. As it surely deserved.
It’s true, I did leave out the Holocaust. Also, the Civil War. The Western. The Lovably Nutty Magnificent Amberson’s-style family. The Up and Coming Rapper. The Boy Sucked Into A Video Game. The Talking Animal. The “I Just Finished Reading Something By T.C. Boyle.”…..
It would have required another, very different essay to get to the feeling of accomplishment and reward you speak of that’s the obverse of The Slush experience. And yes, I totally agree that it’s there, and in many ways finding that one story makes it all worth it. And toiling, for nothing of course, on the fringes of an “industry” widely dismissed as dead or dying, for a small group of enthusiasts, as a matter of faith in “art” or whatever, has incredible merit. Not to make it sound too noble, but we definitely felt like we were in a bunker, part of the resistance, and a lot of times it was really fun.
And I particularly appreciate your willingness to admit that a lot of the draw to that lifestyle is selfish. It’s easy. It confers a certain anti-career street cred. There’s little pressure, a generally amusing and eclectic group of misfits to work with, and a legitimate familial/social excuse not to be succeeding in any recognized way. Plus, waiting tables sucks.
And I do think it’s interesting, and relevant, that no one has yet mentioned reading the story I linked to at the end of the page. Not that I really expected them to. It was a long essay to begin with, and it’s definitely asking a lot. But even within this very supportive and writerly cocoon, do people really want to read short stories? If I were reading this essay, would I have clicked over read the story myself? Totally honestly? Probably not.
“do people really want to read short stories?”
Or, it could be that because of weird formatting and errors in internet explorer I didn’t even see the link to your short story. And now I don’t have time. Because you people are some prolific mf’s. PROLIFIC. Now. Must WORK. Must not return to TNB until work day is complete.
I hope you don’t mind if I’m totally honest about that, Sean. I saw the link and clicked on it and read the first few lines. Then the site asked me to register and I gave up.
One thing I’ve learned working in web marketing for the past ten years is people hate to register. They really hate it. And half the time, even following the link is too much trouble. When I wrote blogs on MySpace I had hundreds of subscribers, and I picked up 150 – 200 comments whenever I posted. But when I published a link to TNB and asked someone to read me here, only about 10 readers (or commenters, at least) would follow me over here. Even though it was a direct link and no registration required.
Web users’ attention spans are famously short. Their fingers are lazy. It’s absurd. I try to keep my posts here under 1000 words, and whenever I do publish a longer piece I always wonder if anyone is going to bother to read it.
If someone links me to a piece that requires registration–especially if they’re the ones asking to me to read it–I get subconsciously offended. Like, “How bad do you think I want to read this? You never said there’d be hoops! Harumph!”
Admittedly irrational, but what you’re saying, Richard, is absolutely true.
No, I don’t mind your honesty at all. I crave it. And, yeah, you’re both right. I hate registering for stuff too, free or otherwise. Besides, you mention the word “orchestra” in the first line, and you just cut off 93% of your potential readers. You add “cantilever” in the second one and even mom logs off and reaches for the remote. I never said there’d be hoops, I never promised jet-packs, I forgot to get ice and vermouth…
I’d like to comment on this essay but I have some denouements to denouemo.
It took me something like ten years before I published a short story. Looking back, I’m grateful for all the rejections. My work wasn’t ready. But the process of submission and rejection was helpful because it furthered my resolve to continue writing; it acclimated to the world of rejection so that my writing didn’t live or die by it. So maybe it’s a bit of a weeding out process as well.
“Not Very Grateful for The Dead, But Certainly Grateful For All The Rejections” would be a great bumper sticker. I have a pang of that feeling on an almost daily basis.
Brilliant! And so is Gina’s comment. I’m with you both on this.
Its no wonder you wouldn’t let me into your bedroom… Damn piss christ consciouness. I thought your moment of awakening was deciding to respond with your voice. And nurturing the world you you desired to occupy. Much like you do on this site. It also helps that you have an extra rib.
What’s the use of having an extra rib if you don’t have an extra Eve?
Very very cool, Sean, and as others have said, some of it cuts a little close to the bone.
What I feel coming on here is an irresistible impulse to create a piece using all 8 Universal Themes.
Tests are good. Strictures are good. I’m on it!
Thanks, Sean. I’ll submit it to TNB.
That is an excellent idea, Don. I hope you’re not kidding ’cause I can’t wait to read it.
Hilarious and true, Sean.
I had the good fortune (?) to serve as a reader or editor on a couple of small litmags during my student years, and much of that I spent eyeball-deep in the Slush. What was eye-opening to me was not only the quality of the rejected material, but also that of some that was accepted. The biggest lesson I learned there (and one that I try to keep in mind whenever a rejection slip turns up in the mail) is that sometimes quality has nothing to do with why a story gets rejected. The slush reader might just be having a bad day, or that particular story just might have not fit the reader’s particular aesthetic, etc. Slush readers are just as fallible as the rest of us puny humans, and are usually overworked volunteers, conditions that don’t always lend themselves to objectivity.
I was the assistant fiction editor of my student mag during my last year at the University of California. While we were moving offices I came across a manuscript I’d submitted as a freshman. Reading tt was….sobering.
It’s totally the case, Matt. Who knows whose lap your story first lands in? It certainly isn’t an editor. And, you know, as with any volunteer group, you tend to get a few….eccentric personalities. I would say most of the people I worked with were devout lovers of books regardless of their personal tastes, so it was just a dice roll if they might be inclined toward your style, but you’d at least get an honest read. A few of them, on the other hand, should not have been weeding through menus, let alone short stories.
this is so great.
i read the slush pile for a couple of literary agents when i was in college, and i noticed themes too, like “escaped Nazi now lives in Brazil.” there must have been half a dozen mss with that theme. and the grandfather one! there was one ms that pissed me off because it was just this guy spouting on about his opinions in basically bullet points, like (and i still remember this nearly 20 years later), “i like round butts,” and “Roots by Aldous Huxley was a lie.” dude, at least get the author’s name right! and do you really think anyone’s going to publish your crap? he probably has a super popular blog now.
and this line almost made me spit out my tuna: “Asian girl emerges from television screen, eats face.”
ha!
Wait, Huxley didn’t write Roots? Does that mean Levar Burton didn’t star in Brave New World?
You’re right about the escaped Nazi, Angela. Even worse than the ones that flee to Brazil, though, are the ones discovered at the Home Depot in Jersey. Why does the conclusion always take place in the lighting fixtures aisle?
Very pleased to have caused the spitting of tuna.
I never want to know what “judder” means, Sean. Thanks for the great, funny read.
I began to laff with “manila cattle thundering across the plain” and think I pulled a stomach muscle here:
“How is it that the faults in other people’s fiction are so abundantly clear to us as readers, while as writers we tend to be so myopic about our own? The thing is, while in the totally arbitrary position of judging other people’s work, the pieces I was submitting back then were pretty much crap, too. And deep down I knew it. But for some reason I kept sending them out. Who picks up the saxophone, learns a few notes, and then books a gig? Aspiring writers do. And I was bleating B-flats along with everyone else.”
And thank you for the tea-spit here: “I’d taken funny lines and tried to graft a larger story onto their backs, like a mouse with a human ear for a spine.”
Truly juddery, this post.
Thanks, Judy. Tea spitting! Excellent. I hope with the next article to upgrade to condiments.
It honestly has taken me years to get that mouse/ear image out of my head. And now I’ve let it back in for a cheap laugh.
Anything but a cheap laff, Sean, the mouse/ear image. And thanks for the comment laff: “I hope with the next article to upgrade to condiments.”
I regularly steal “tea-spit” from Matt the Genius; it sooo fits!
I wrote a (true)story about
barfights & lesbian vampires
about two years ago on TNB
and it was even sort of Dadabsurdist
in tone
and I bet I got not 8 comments.
8 back then was pretty good though.
Razor sharp indeed.
Maybe TNB needs a lot more Sammy Hagar fans.
I watched some of the Iron Maiden documentary last night
and it was so refreshing.
People long for the days before irony man.
My absolute best grade school memories are of playing
some improvised game at recess
with a tennis ball
or a knotted rag
with a bunch of squealing dudes
wearing Iron Maiden
or
Molly Hatchet
T-shirts, and then
piling sour-sweated
back into the molded
desks of another
dreary
math class.
I used the word denouement in a song…does that count?
…The feeding frenzy, the voyeur’s amusement
vicarious libel and false denouement…
what sort of rhyme is it when a line rhymes on the page but is nothing like a rhyme out in the air?
But anyway I’m SURE you will like my short story, which I KNOW is good because everyone I’ve shown it to has been very lukewarm in their attempt to find a noncommittal and neutral way to praise it. And if they don’t like it, well…it HAS to be good.
I’m reminded of an offhand paragraph in Hemingway’s “A Movable Feast,” where he mentions very casually about his wife losing a trunk full of original notebooks and manuscripts in the train station, never to be seen again. His nonplussed observation: “losing all his first attempts at writing is probably the best thing that can happen to a young writer.”
I think it’s known as “Monolingual Rapmetal Pentameter”.
brilliant.
You’ve simply made my day, Sean. Thank you. I used to write (and read and publish!) short stories. I taught writing workshops at a university and actually encouraged others to do the same. Suffice it to say that my next novel does have at least one lesbian vampire sequence. I am a much happier woman today.
Send that scene in, Karen. Can’t wait to read it. Do the vampires look like Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve? Hope so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6850CjhIzrY
Unforgettable scene, I agree. My lesbian vampires also look pretty good as they are the immortal lamia, those vengeful blood-drinking daughters of Lilith (and we know how good SHE looked from all those pre-Raphaelite paintings). I’m exploring the mythological roots of vampirism in my next book, Dracula in Love, coming to bookshelves in August, courtesy of Doubleday. Maybe we’ll use that lamia orgy as the excerpt on TNB. Just for you.
“How do you learn to write? You sit your ass down in a chair, in front of a laptop, for ten years. Period.”
Exactly!
Thank you for this piece. I edited a lit webzine for years and finally put it to sleep. The sense of entitlement of writers who have read bukowski, or [insert trendy author here] and think they’re next in line because they’ve written for six months and are drunks or into BDSM just drives me nuts.
Like every art form, you have to put in the time.
I’m glad you highlighted that sentence, Tony, because it’s the one that felt the most satisfying to get down out of the whole piece. Maybe it just feels the most unassailably true. I definitely spent a whole lot of Moron Currency to come to the realization.
Sean, thank you so much for the list. It’s given me a great idea!!
I’m going to combine two or three plot ides into a mega-blockbuster, heart warming sci-fi teen-angst murder-comedy in which Grandma saves the day just before being staked through the heart by her oncologist.
I’ll send it to you when I’m finished. If I start tonight, I can get it to you by tomorrow after I’ve had my morning coffee.
Don’t hurry with this, Jordan. I think you’ve already written it here: “heart warming sci-fi teen-angst murder-comedy in which Grandma saves the day just before being staked through the heart by her oncologist.”
But it’s a story that’s GOT to be told, Judy!! The public can’t be deprived any longer!!
Gotta confess that heart-staking oncologist has me curious, Jordan.
totally waiting for it to come rolling in, Jordan. I need something to read over the bowl of Pho I’m about to have for lunch….
Sean, enjoy this little tidbit. Let it be the sauce to your noodles.
Excerpt from “The Long and Sorrowful Voyage”
The cold, sterile halls of the hospital were aglow with desk lamps from the nurse’s station. Visiting hours were officially over, but how could anyone deny a sweet, young, virginal, all-American, cheerleader the last few moments with her dying Grandma.
Sparkle was barely a junior in high school, but after losing both parents in a still-unsolved disappearance, she had the emotional strength of a lumberjack on roids. Her agility as a cheerleader had garnered her some interest from the young Space Cadets Academy, and she had a will of steel.
But tonight, in her Grandma’s hospital room, she sat silently by the sweet old woman’s side holding her frail hand in her palm.
Transfixed on her barely conscious Grandma, she was unaware of the vampire outside the window…
Excellent. My Pho gargles with approval. But I think it should be titled “Sparkle Gets Fanged”.
Yes, that’s IT!!
About a month ago I bought “50 Great Short Stories” and sadly it moved me into previously unchartered territory – actually attempting to write one of those things. I’m not very good at it, and perhaps it’s because I’ve never really enjoyed reading them all that much. Of course, the book is filled with great stories, but it’s true – the editors that put them to print must have been swamped with shite.
Since starting Beatdom (yes – a literary journal) I’ve been mauled by a daily barrage of short stories. I think these taught me not to bother. They made me wonder if I would just end up writing the same nonsense.
Although whenever a good one came in – a really good one – it was a little inspiring. There’s something amazing about being able to put so much into such a short form.
Only someone running their own lit journal would know just how correctly the usage of the word “mauled” is in conjunction with the submissions.
TEN years to learn how to write short stories? Dude, you could learn to be a lawyer (or something cool) three times over in that time period. Sounds to me like you snorted the ’00′s right up Moleskin, Tolstoy.
It’s so true. I could have a mansion and a yacht by now if I’d put that time to real use and gotten in on the business ground floor. I could have been Bernie M’s right hand Ponzi Boy. Or, you know, even something practical. I should know how to fix a lawn mower by now.
I’ve definitely written #s 1 & 2 before with slight variation (though, after reading this, I never will again). I may frame your list in my bathroom.
Do it, Jeffrey. Frame that baby and send me a pic of it above the bidet and I’ll use it as my new Gravatar.
Sean — I still haven’t read your short story but I’m about to buy your book(s) based solely on the following from your bio: ” I hate the phrase “it is what it is.” When people say that, I tend to respond, in a much deeper voice than I really have, “NO, IT ISN’T.”"
High five!
Excellent, Dana. I do truly and deeply hate “It is what it is.” Back when I wrote that it was way more ubiquitous than it is now. In fact, I’m sort of thinking, now that you’ve brought it up, that the Culture Bending Machine that is my website is responsible.
I’m battling with a very depressing thought about this.
Is the problem that people are just writing those stories BADLY?
I ask this seriously. I was in the library yesterday, going by the sell-off rack…where for two bits you can toss the book in your bag and start a political movement or perhaps a fire with it.
In the non-fiction area were a solid wall of “how to CEO” where ‘CEO’ is a verb. The fiction area was entirely about how to solve crime with witfull banter and grammatical grit.
Granted, I’ve answered my own question, by mentioning where these books were found…these books, after all, were the ones that had to give up their shelf space to Laura Bush’s memoir.
This may seem reductive, but I think if you’re writing those stories well, you’re not writing those stories at all. Part of writing well is an awareness of what ground has already been successfully covered. It’s like on Project Runway (completely bankrupting my hip cred by using this example, but so be it), when the guy with the pointy glasses makes a dress that’s exactly like some iconic thing Jackie-O wore in 1959, and then the judges bust on him for it, and the guy is all like “Well, I’ve never seen that before” and then the judge who is completely orange rolls his eyes, and within his eye roll you can see he knows it’s pointless to try and explain something you shouldn’t ever have to explain, namely that if you want to ever make anything of genuine value, it’s up to you to familiarize yourself with the history of your medium. And if you don’t, or won’t, or haven’t, then you’re doomed to be on the remaindered shelves, where CEO is most certainly a verb.
Well, there goes my Pulitzer Prize worthy collection of stories; you’ve just listed them all!
Pulitzers are overrated anyway, Oksana. You can’t pray to a Pulitzer. You can definitely get down on your knees and bow before a three-book vampire trilogy contract, though.
Sean,
I really enjoyed reading this.
I’m also really glad that nothing I write sounds like your examples.
(Phew!)
Excellent, Irene. On both counts.
Nice piece, Sean. I think it should be required reading for those helping on a lit journal in school. Or for those not in school. I’m going to recommend it as such.
Doing this sort of thing helped me as well–you just learn so much from seeing crap! For example, a lot of writers are right there, and have it going well, until the last line when they say too much. Cutting the last line is a recurring suggestion of mine these days, thanks to lit. journal work.
It’s true, Aaron, axing the last line almost always improves things. I actually am a big proponent of getting rid of the first two pages too. Just kill all that exposition and backstory and open up during the conversation on the third page.
Yes! Killing the first two pages does the trick also. I’m so so glad I can do that to my own stuff now that I see it. Whew.
Serious contender for Best Post of 2010. The short story categories sting, they’re so true. Luckily also very funny.
I agree with that teenage novelist/plagiarist Helene Hegemann: “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity”
I guess what you’re saying is even those unoriginal stories had no authenticity. 0/2.
I’m going to have to go with the plagiarist as well, Megan. Everything is stolen in some way from everything else. And maybe artful theft is even worse the the obvious variety. I wonder what she really means by authenticity, though? It sounds like more of a justification than a philosophy.
In your view then, it’s like the difference between an escort that addresses you as “pal”, and constantly glances at a watch, compared to one that at least smiles and pretends to be enjoying it?
Both are prostitutes. But is the qualitative difference greater than all that?
There are no new experiences to be had. After 10 billion-odd souls have traversed the planet, we’ve pretty much explored all the dusty corners. However, there are new expressions.
At the risk of sounding like a bumper sticker, dwoz, I think my point was this: Steal Honestly.
I think the difference with an escort is that part of their fee is the expectation of reasonably convincing acting, whereas with writing, the price of the book buys you an expectation of a lack of acting, but a convincing ability to manufacture.
This is so funny! I’m reading Fade to Blue right now and loving it, and found this column circuitously. Now I’m racking my brain to remember the subjects of the two or three stories I submitted to journals back in the day. God. Can’t remember! Oh wait! One was about a neighbor’s suicide attempt. In Paris.
That’s great, Laini…I’m really glad you dig FTB. Yes, “Paris” could be it’s own subject heading for stories, but I’d be willing to say almost anything set in Paris is already 15% more likely to be interesting.
So funny. So great.
“God, it’s hard, you know? This whole writing deal? I mean, what can any of us really expect to come of it?” Particularly loved this line.
Sorry I missed this the first time around!
Thanks, Marni. Glad you found it on the rebound.
Great article! Anyone who’s ever gone to film school will instantly recognize these 8 universal plots as they seem to be the perennial themes that film students like to explore. Especially The Spoonful Of Dada. What makes film school worse is the fact that not only is the director/writer wasting their time but also that of all the people in the cast and crew. Imagine “The Affair” rendered as a 10 minute short shot entirely in extreme close-ups. In black & white. With subtitles.
Thanks, Ian. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought of that, but of course film school is exactly the same scenario, only with way more arty double exposures and nonsensical dialog poorly recorded in front of heavily graffiti’d walls. Yeah, that’s the great thing about writing, you don’t drag a whole crew of bored gaffers and comatose lighting guys around all day with you. Thank god I wasn’t in film school any time after the release of Pulp Fiction. That must have been brutal.
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Thanks for your hilarious and insightful piece, Sean. It made me very, very happy because not one of the stories in my upcoming collection (to be published next year) fits into any of your 8 story submission plots! Without knowing it, I guess I’m doing something right.
You’ve made my day.
Glad you found the column, Garrett. If none of your stories fit the Big 8, I will definitely pick up a copy of your collection.
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Just commenting on this piece again in case anyone forgot how awesome it is. I mean…El Ron Hubbard.
hey, thanks Nat. Cool of you to go back and check it out.
My brother suggested I might like this web site. He was totally right. This post truly made my day.
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I’m never quite sure what to make of these exposés of the sausage factory. The cynic in me thinks the author is merely trying to discourage writers to either staunch the flow of manuscripts (editor) or thin the competition (writer). The super cynic in me believes unsolicited manuscripts are _never_ read–there’s a reason, after all, it’s called the slush pile. And certainly I’ve never written anything like your archetypal eight. But even if the motive behind such articles is pure, the effect remains the same: I’m discouraged. Not discouraged from writing, mind you, only from submitting. I was going to add “to journals in the upper reaches of the literary Pantheon” to that last sentence, but I realize that this situation holds even for obscure journals newly launched. The end-around the slush pile, of course, is to work the “who-you-know” angle. If you’re lucky, you can graduate from the small clubs and honky-tonks in the sticks to legit joints in the B-grade convention towns. As you say, ten years working that circuit and _maybe_ an agent will deign to have a look. Meanwhile, there’s cold comfort in the memory of Franz Kafka, who wanted nothing more for his manuscripts than a trip as smoke and ash up Max Brod’s chimney.
Max–at last a comment that makes sense to me. Too bad it comes so near the end of the reply list. I’d _like_ to say I’ve never written anything like “the Eight,” but I suspect I’d be lying. In truth, the piece I’m working on at the current moment has an abuse in it, although that’s not the point of the story–or, who knows, maybe it is.
The further into this”humorous” piece I read, the more iritated I became with its ostensible message of “don’t even try it.” Even though I have been fortunate to have some of my work published by small online zines, I still felt like I was the butt of the joke. The rather bald unspoken truth in all these examples is that writers of stature have used these same story lines to create great work. _Nothing_ should be off the table–even for us lesser lights.
Finally I’m tired of editors whining–usually on a blog somewhere–about how tough their jobs are. They have feet and should know the door swings both ways, as Sean eventually found out. [BTW, Sean, did you really need to read _that_ many mss to know what bad writing was?]
To me the core message of Sean’s essay lies within this passage:
“How is it that the faults in other people’s fiction are so abundantly clear to us as readers, while as writers we tend to be so myopic about our own? The thing is, while in the totally arbitrary position of judging other people’s work, the pieces I was submitting back then were pretty much crap, too. And deep down I knew it. ”
I wonder if the difference between those who make it and those who don’t is the ability to accurately judge the worthiness of one’s own work. Because if you can’t, how would you ever manage to improve?
You are correct, of course, about the ability to judge oneself. I also think writers who have worked at it long enough and make a regular practice of trying to improve _do_ know when something is wrong–if they are honest with themselves. The key is being to step outside your writing long enough to see it dispassionately. At the same time, too much doubt and self-criticism may have a stultifying effect. It’s a delicate balance.
Max and Factotum – I am trying to discourage you from submitting. So, I guess the essay worked. But not from submitting entirely, just from doing so until you’re absolutely positive you’ve put the requisite time and sweat into your piece before sending it off. Yes, editors at lit journals do bitch, and yes, they do work extremely hard. Usually for little or no pay. And run a staff of typically earnest and well-meaning friends and volunteers. Who read through mountains of stories that simply are not ready to occupy their limited reading time. Which is not to say those stories won’t be ready in the future. And that gap is where my essay is intended to fall. Between the third draft and the twentieth. I am, therefore, not discouraging but advocating enthusiastically for those seventeen other drafts. Further, I encourage you to volunteer for a month at your local lit journal and see if my point resonates a little more.
Let me put it another way: Despite what anyone may legitimately think about whether my writing is any good or not, I do feel like I’ve invested the ass-in-chair time to consider myself a professional. A year ago, a guy I sort of know asked if I’d contribute a story to the journal he edits. I didn’t really have anything super polished lying around, but I had a new story I was really happy with, and so I sent it off. A few weeks later he emailed back letting me know they were rejecting the story. It pissed me off. They solicited me! I didn’t send it in blind! I mean, how bad could they have thought it was to reject it outright? But here’s the point of this anecdote: last month I looked at that story again for the first time since it’d been shot down. There was some good stuff on the page, but on the whole it was a mess. He’d done exactly the right thing in rejecting it. I simply had not spent enough time thinking the characters/scenes/overall point through. I’m actually grateful it wasn’t published in its previous form, because I would be embarrassed by it now. Also, I’ve since spent a month working on the piece, and I think I can objectively say, even if it still sucks, it is easily a thousand percent better than it used to be. So, in the long run, he did me a big favor.
The intention of my essay was not to make you feel bad or denigrate your writing–it was an attempt to possibly do you (or anyone currently submitting stories) the same favor this editor did me: just when you think your piece is done, print it out, hack it apart with a red pen, and do another two (or six or eight) drafts. And then send it.
Glad to see this one getting so much replay over in the Twitterverse (you knew this, right?) Genius, Sean.
Also, can I add the authorial theft guide to The Affair by suggesting Tom Wolfe?
Thanks, Gloria. And yes, ma’aam, you may suggest Mr. Wolfe. I’ll have to go re-read it.
I loved this. I just finished editing a story about cancer AND an affair (and a grandma in the distance). And set in the midwest. So go figure. But what I loved, beyond the writers as sharks, was how you touched on the deeper issue of how we bring our reader-selves and writer-selves into some kind of productive conversation. Sometimes I get so engrossed in my own work I don’t listen to anyone else’s–travel the path already trodden–and this, weirdly, when I’m being solipsistic, is when my writing feels like it’s already been done before, like it’s stale. But reading good writing inspires me to do what hasn’t been done before, or do it differently, or put enough effort into my work to be proud of it, or humbles me enough to give me a little patience. Thanks for this. It feels less lonely to be a writer when I read this kind of stuff.
Ha! Doubling up on the iconic themes may be a path to brilliance. Tripling might tear a hole in space-time. More, seriously, thanks. And I agree, you really do have to constantly read the form you’re wallowing in, if only to wallow a little bit less.
Very glad to help also with that lonely part as well. I feel it in my bones some mornings, just me and the blinking cursor.