Short Stories

I have been writing off and on for nearly forty years. Wow. When I say it like that, I feel old. When I say ‘writing’, I mean writing for my own pleasure. I am not counting required writing in school; everyone has to do that. One of the first things I ever wrote was a play called “Revenge of the Ant men.” A friend of mine and I co-wrote this masterpiece in Walker Junior High School when we were probably supposed to be doing something else. As you can tell from the title, it was pretty high-brow stuff. To this day, I can still remember one of the lines the monster said: “ooooooooffff!” I can’t imagine why it was never performed.

But I started really getting serious about my writing in college. One tends to write in the genre that one reads. I was into science fiction, so that is mostly what I wrote. By the time I got to college I actually had aspirations to do something with my writing, so I tried to get my short stories published. There were only a few places you could get a science fiction short story published back then. There was Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Analog (which had at one time been called Astounding Stories), and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science fiction. Oh, there was also Omni Magazine, but your name had to be Bradbury, Clarke, Ellison, or someone of that stature to get into Omni. So, I concentrated on sending stories to the first three. They also included big-name writers but were more open to new writers. 

None of my stories from that time period ever got published. There was a reason for that: they were not very good. Some of them started with a good idea, a good premise, but a good idea will only get you about 5% of the way to making a good story. The rest of it? You have to craft a story. You have to make it believable. That means things have to happen in a logical and consistent manner. You need to write characters that the audience actually want to spend time with. And they need to talk like real people (or aliens, or bugs or whatever). You have to fill in the sensory details so the reader will feel like s/he is there, but at the same time writing efficiently (not overdoing it). Lastly, there has to be a point to it all. Writers, and teachers of writing, like to talk about conflict. Conflict can either be between characters, or it can be an event or challenge that a character has to overcome.  Nobody wants to read a story where it doesn’t matter what the outcome is.  Having a ‘good idea’ really means almost nothing. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s what you do with it that counts. Most of my early stories came up short in one or more of these critical elements. Also, my style of writing tended to mimic my favorite authors (like Heinlein). When you are starting out, it is okay to imitate the style of other writer, but at some point, you have to find your own voice.

After scores of rejections, I eventually lost interest in writing. I set it aside and didn’t pick up a pen again for years. I finally did take it up again, because I joined my first ever NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month), I rediscovered the joy of writing. Write for yourself first. Don’t try to please others. Some of my new writing didn’t seem half bad. So, I put it out there. Eventually my novel Star Liner got picked up by Copypasta Publishing. The point of this is that now I find myself shopping short stories around again. The market for short stories is different today than it was in the 1980’s. On the down side, print magazines are struggling, as everybody wants to be entertained for free. It is hard for publishers as it is for writers, and other artists to make a go of it, if nobody wants to pay for anything. On the other hand, there are new opportunities that were not there in the 1980’s. E-magazines are a thing now, and while they may not pay much, it is still a way to get your work out there before the public, if that is what you want to do. And somehow those magazines that I tried to submit to in the 80’s (Asimov’s, Analog, and the Magazine of F & SF) are still around.

Science Fiction and other genre fiction (fantasy, mystery, romance, westerns, etc.) tend to get looked down upon by the mainstream literary people. But who cares as long as people want to read it? The same rules apply no matter what kind of fiction you write. You have to engage your audience and make it true.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon, or the other usual online sources)

Star Liner