Submissions, Interviews and Connie Willis

~ Nadya Duke

First, welcome Stuart, my first commenter whom I don’t know, and almost the first to whom I’m not related. Yea!

I have a theory that submitting stories to markets is a lot like interviewing. For some interviews, it will be clear you are a very nice person, with lots of skills, and not right for the job. Editors, like hiring managers, have to make the cut based on what they need. As someone who’s hired a lot of people, I can tell you that I remember a lot of nice, skilled people I didn’t hire. Some were just barely beat out by a more suited candidate. Some were wrong for the job but I wished I’d had something for them because I knew they’d be a great addition to the team. Some were just fascinating and I wished I could give them my card and go have a beer with them.

The difference between writing and interviewing is that I believe almost every person being has many jobs they’re suited for. But many stories should never see the light of day. I have a decent track record hiring talented people. With writing, I’m still learning to tell the difference between a dud and a winner.

On a different topic, I found the article I referenced in my comment on my last post. Connie Willis and Persistence The Connie WIllis bit is the twelfth paragraph down.

Thank you, Blog

~ Nadya Duke

Writing really does help me think. Yesterday I realized what the problem is with a story I’ve had on hold. It’s “Law and Order in Space.” Whoops. Off to a rewrite session!

Freddy the Pig School of Plotting

~ Nadya Duke

It occurred to me today that there is a slippery slope in science fiction writing. It is easy to make up a premise by simply asking “What if we had X  . . . in Space?”  (Please insert dramatic pause for the ellipsis.)  Some examples, drawn from actual movies or books:

    “What if we had High Noon … in Space?”
    “What if we had fox hunting … in Space?”
    “What if we had Nazis … in Space?”*
    “What if we had Santa Claus … in Space?”**
    And of course the classic: “What if we had pigs … in Space!”
I am henceforth going to call this trap the Freddy the Pig school of plotting.   It was, after all, the Freddy the Pig series that early on posed the question “What if the detective … is a pig?” and eventually progressed to “What if we played baseball . . . with Martians?”
If you stay on the high side of the slope you can use this trick to find an interesting story. Maybe you can retell a classic in an interesting way. Or, in exploring the idea you find something about X that IS different when it takes place in a different environment – whether space or time, or some other fundamental shift.  But, if you start to slide, you just end up with pigs in space.
What other examples can you think of?

*I can think of at least 3 of these without really trying.
**This one is so bad it feels like cheating.

It turns out I can write a first draft in a day

~ Nadya Duke

Of a short story, that is. Where I pretty much had the idea already, and, OK the first page too. And it’s not very long (3000 words). But still. Thanks, Ken, for telling me you can write a shortish story in four hours. That got me off my ass.

Next week: the editing session from hell will begin. It turns out that when I’m creating I don’t even look at the screen, just stare out the window, imagine the scene and touch type. And in those circumstances, I touch type really poorly. Some of what’s there isn’t even spell checkable, my friends. (People who know me will know that I touch type pretty well when I’m actually LOOKING at the screen/keyboard.)

The Story I’m Not Writing. You’re Welcome

~ Nadya Duke

I saw this call for submissions today for an anthology about were-creatures. Thinking it might be fun to write a story about a werecat, since I’ve had twenty years experience with cats, I promptly plotted a story that no one wants to read. But it made Jim laugh, so I’ll share.

There is a man who is a werecat. Once a month he turns into a cat, and being a proper tomcat, goes out and gets himself in all manner of trouble, always waking up to find himself bloody and bruised. Eventually he decides this can’t go on, so he does the logical thing. He goes to the doctor and gets himself castrated. Now, every full moon, he curls up on the couch and takes a nice long nap.

Jim laughed and agreed that it was not a story people would enjoy. It would make men wince, and make a lot of people wonder if I hate men. I don’t. I just have big sleepy retired gentlemen cats.

Jim then wondered if I could get away with telling the story by having the narrator himself be a werecat trying to write a story explaining what life is like as a werecat.

“Isn’t that just like a programmer,” I said. “There’s no problem you can’t solve with another layer of abstraction!”

It had to Happen

~ Nadya Duke

Last night I dreamt that I had mailed a version of my story that had so many typos it was incomprehensible. Let the stress dreams begin!

I also dreamt that two VPs I used to work with were being jerks to me. Which was actually kind of in character for them. Maybe I can blame the Jiffy Pop I made while Jim was working late. The last Jiffy Pop I’ll ever have: I saw the trans fat content as I was making it. It had been a total impulse purchase and nostalgia item: we used to always take it on camping trips. And it did seem to taste like I remembered it. But I’ll stick to Jim’s homemade popcorn from now on. It’s much better and hopefully angst-free.

Memories of Big Brown Envelopes

~ Nadya Duke

I mailed off my first story to a publisher today. Yes, I know I said I printed it a week ago. But I woke up the next morning realizing that one scene was completely cheesy and had to be rewritten. And when I took out the cheese I had to think about what to put in instead. It’s good now. (What is the opposite of cheesy? Meaty? Or maybe real, as in “Keeping it real, man.” But that’s cheesy. Never mind.)

Surprisingly, the submission process these days is the same as it was thirty-five years ago. I put my double-spaced manuscript in an envelope, weighed it, stamped it, and mailed it to New York City.

Although it was my first submission, it was a very familiar experience. My childhood was full of these envelopes. My mother is a writer, a very good one. (No, you haven’t heard of her. Getting published is hard, damn it. Especially when you write mainstream fiction.)

When I was a kid some big magazines (Atlantic Monthly, Mademoiselle) still published short fiction, and accepted unsolicited manuscripts. Out would go the big envelopes, and six to twelve weeks later back they would come. Then a new cover letter would be typed, and the story sent on to the next market on the list.

The rejection letters were usually small, and short. Occasionally there would be a brief hand written note.

I’m not sure when my mother stopped submitting short fiction. When I was in college she studied film making and made a short silent film about a writer. The writer, played by a fellow writer my mother met at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, waitressed by day and wrote by night. The most memorable shot was when the camera panned up from her typewriter to the wall above, covered with rejection letters.

“How depressing,” whispered my boyfriend at the screening.
“Those are real,” I whispered back. “They’re hers.”

I should have my own stack of letters soon. They’re the mark of a writer. I hope it helps to know that going in.

First submission

~ Nadya Duke

I just printed out the final copy of a story for a magazine submission.  I don’t think I’ve been this nervous and excited since  I sent out my CalTech application.  It would be nice if this ended as well as that did!