The rules of the first page critique game are in detail on the Electric Spec blog, and it basically boils down to ‘send in the first 200 words (ish) of a story that you want some feedback on and they’ll comment publically on their blog’.
The comment is always erudite and helpful and I shall be digging out a first page as soon as I get home.
I was a bit busy over the weekend so I just pasted a story into a post and let that be it. I wanted to offer some explanation and to have it in a separate page of it’s own, but I had a train to catch. At some point I’ll have a play around with blogger and see if I can present it differently. I can sort out the explanation part.
On Thursday last week, I was having trouble getting the Hub website to load, so I followed a link to their old wordpress website. The penultimate post, from 2007, was a lengthy discussion of the declining readership of speculative fiction magazines and it touched briefly on the model of giving work away. Which got me thinking.
My goal is to eventually publish novels. I write short stories for fun and as vehicles for working on writing technique. Most short story markets don’t pay in actual cash and those that do, don’t pay much. Even the highest paying markets don’t pay at rates that really reflect the hours that go into writing a short story. Black Static, for example, I believe pays £20 per thousand words (although there’s nothing on their website about paying at all; I will check) and is one of the highest paying markets. Is £100 fair remuneration for the amount of time a 5000 word story will take?
Ok, maybe I’m a slow writer and maybe each story needs a lot of work. And I should say my basis for comparison is what I earn in my day job – £15 an hour. At that rate, in order to make a living I need to be writing and editing 750 words per hour, thirty five hours a week. Probably more, because I won’t be getting holiday or sick pay. Maybe some people can do it, but to me that feels like an exhausting and unrealistic pace.
So, if I’m not making money with my short stories, what is the purpose of trying to get them published? Partly, it’s about getting feedback and partly it’s about raising my profile.
I want some feedback on my writing and I want it from people who know what they’re talking about. That can come from a writers’ group or you can pay for it, but there’s nothing that says ‘yes, you’re good enough’ like getting accepted for publication. But what if that says more about my beliefs about validation than it does about the standard of my work? Many editors acknowledge that they reject plenty of stuff that is ‘good enough’ but not right for another reason. These days I feel that my critical faculties are better – I can objectively judge my own work and rely less on the opinions of others.
Profile raising is really the key reason I want to publish short stories. It’s all about getting my novel off the slush pile and read. It’s about having a readership. Several authors have shown that there are other ways to do that, such as putting stories online and giving them away for free. So, there you go – Hell is a free to read story. And I’d love to know what you think.
I’m not eschewing traditional publication totally – it’s still a great feeling when someone likes your work enough to publish it – just expanding my options.
I followed Tanya across the crowded cafe to the table she’d spotted. A plastic pot of chicken salad and a bottle of sparkling water rolled around on my fake wooden tray. It wasn’t so much about being healthy as it was about wanting an empty stomach later.
“So, what’s the plan for tonight?” I said as I eased into the chair wedged between the table and the wall.
“Troy and Daniel are coming at about eight, although knowing them they’ll be late. I have a couple of decorations still to put up.”
She paused to take a big bite of her sandwich, chewing thoroughly. I pushed around some limp lettuce and fished out a tiny piece of chicken.
“Then we have a traditional Halloween activity.”
“Like bobbing for apples?”
“A bit like that.” Tanya smiled mysteriously and changed the subject.
We finished work at five thirty. Tanya was ready to go at twenty five past and came to hover by my desk. I felt a wave of irritation start to surge and ruthlessly repressed it. This job was new and although everyone was welcoming, Tanya was the only one who’d been friendly. I wasn’t sure I liked her but it’s not like I have so many friends that I can afford to be picky.
Her car was a flash little two-seater in British Racing Green, low and uncomfortable in the rush hour traffic. Still, it was better this way. I could get settled in and have a glass of wine before her friends arrived. Not for the first time that day I wished I’d said no and was going home to my comfortable Friday night routine of pizza and movies.
Tanya’s house was bigger than I expected and full of little Gothic touches, a bat mirror in the hallway, a skull candleholder in the downstairs loo. You’d never tell from the way she dressed at work.
“What do we need to do in the way of decorating?” I said.
“It’s mostly done really. I want to change out of my work clothes. What about you?”
“I brought a change of clothes.”
“Great. Come upstairs and I’ll show you the spare room.”
Tanya pointed me into a box room with a single bed and then disappeared into the bathroom. It was dingy. A dark purple shade prevented the lightbulb from doing its job. I put my overnight bag on the bed and sat down beside it. This room was obviously for junk. The rest of the house felt cared for.
I really wished I’d stayed home. I drank half a glass of wine without tasting it. When I put the glass down my hand shook and nearly knocked it off the bedside table. I stripped down to my underwear and got clean clothes out of my bag. As I was freshening up with a cleansing wipe, I felt a chill. The hairs on the back of my neck, my shoulders and arms stood up and I couldn’t control a convulsive shudder. Quick, shallow breaths of cold air rasped in my ears and I knew there was someone standing behind me. I tensed in anticipation of his touch.
When it didn’t come, I picked up my top and pulled it over my head. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around although I knew I would have to, eventually. I wriggled into my jeans. Material between my skin and questing fingers made me feel safe enough to half turn and reach for the wine. Once the glass was empty I turned again, warmed from the inside.
BANG, BANG, BANG. The door shook and I yelped and jumped as the knock was followed immediately by the door opening.
“Did I scare you?” Tanya laughed. “I was coming to see if you needed a top up. Looks like you do.”
“I got really creeped out a minute ago.” I held my wine glass out.
“Mmmm, this room has a draught and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.”
She left again and I brushed out my hair and made up my face. Then I went downstairs with my wine. Despite having been in a bathrobe when she’d come into my room Tanya was already in the hall, hanging plastic bats from the ceiling.
“You didn’t say we were dressing up.” Looking at Tanya’s black lace gown I felt underdressed.
“Would you light the candles in the pumpkins please? There should be a lighter on the windowsill.”
There was a pumpkin on the kitchen windowsill where anyone coming to the front door would see it. Another, more grotesquely carved, was in the living room. There was a stick of incense in holder on the mantle so I lit that too. A jumble of crystals and halloween knick-knacks were littered amongst the candles on the black marble hearth. Then the overhead light went out. I jumped and dropped the lighter. There was a throaty laugh from the doorway.
Tanya was silhouetted in the light from the hallway. “Wow, you’re really jumpy. I thought it would be more atmospheric in here with just the candles.”
“It’s certainly that. I didn’t hear you moving.” I started to rearrange the folds on my top. I loved it. The red was the perfect shade for me and it had a low scooped neckline with loose drapy folds of material. The long, bell sleeves hung loosely from my shoulders. It looked amazing until I moved and then everything needed adjusting.
Tanya disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bowl of funsize chocolate bars which she placed on a small table by the door.
“The guys will be here any minute,” she said.
She bought the bottle of wine through and filled our glasses again. It was working its magic and I was more relaxed. I wondered if I should slow down. There wasn’t much in my stomach and I didn’t want to be drunk too early, but then the doorbell rang and my nerves took over. Tanya shoved a CD into my hand as she went to answer the door. I put it in her player; the doomy notes of Paradise Lost were at odds with the noisy, excited greetings in the hallway.
Daniel and Troy were nice. For a while I forgot why social situations fill me with dread. Daniel was in love with Tanya, hanging on her every word, gazing longingly at her with big, brown eyes. He sat cross-legged on the sofa watching her. I’d expected that someone called Troy would be rather fey. He wasn’t. He was blond and tall, understatedly pretty.
“Ok, let’s do this,” said Tanya.
“Do what?” I said.
She just smiled at me. “You’ll see.”
Troy moved furniture, taking little tables to the side of the room and pushing the sofa and chairs back to make a big clearing in front of the fireplace. Daniel gathered up all the dead beer bottles and nibbles. I grabbed my wine bottle before he could remove that as well. Tanya killed the music. The sudden emptiness of the air was strange and threatening. She turned into the room and stood by the fireplace.
“Amy,” she looked at me. “As it’s Samhain we’re going to contact the dead.”
Daniel and Troy sat on the floor to either side of her. In her black lace gown she looked like a priestess with her neophytes. I didn’t want to do it but I didn’t believe in ghosts. The spirits of the dead don’t talk.
I joined them on the carpet. Tanya asked us to close our eyes. The sweet, cloying incense tickled my nose. I had a sense that I was the only one who didn’t know what we were doing.
“Breathe deeply in through your nose. Hold it for a count of three. Now breathe out through your mouths. Hold for three.”
Tanya’s voice was warmer and deeper than usual. We breathed like that for a while. I began to feel spaced out and I had a weird sense of stillness. The first stirrings of a screaming panic rose in the back of my brain followed by an angry, judgemental voice that told me to get it together, reminded me not to embarrass myself.
“Now, there is a ball of white light in the centre of your body. Feel it there, get an idea of its size and weight, see how it glows, this pure light energy.”
I struggled to hold the image in my mind. My ball of light wanted to change shape and colour. It was flickering and disappearing, red one second, blue the next.
“The ball of light grows bigger.”
When I had wanted it to stay one size it had been happy to grow and shrink. Now I needed to enlarge it, my multicoloured ball of light stayed resolutely the same size.
“It’s surrounding your whole body.”
My ball was nowhere near that big. I opened one eye. The three of them sat still, eyes closed. I tried again. This time I started with the light surrounding my whole body. I still couldn’t get the colour right.
“Your ball of light grows bigger and merges with the people either side of you.”
I fastforwarded my light expansion. Once again I wondered whether I really liked Tanya. But if I was arrogant enough to reject her friendship I’d never have any friends and the thought of the rest of my weekends alone was too much. I hadn’t been paying attention. Our collective ball of light was supposed to be encompassing the whole house.
“When you’re ready, come back to the room and open your eyes.”
I wasn’t the only who was spaced out. The room felt warm and there was a tingle in the air. Tanya hadn’t said who we were trying to contact. Even if I’d believed in ghosts I wasn’t so close to my family that I wanted to talk to the dead ones. At the thought of my family I felt a surge of anger and disappointment. I reached for my glass to quell it then panicked that I was getting too drunk to control my emotions. The others shuffled round so we were now in a half circle and the hearth was visible.
“This is Samhain, the night when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. The night that we can converse with those that have moved on,” said Tanya.
“I call on Anubis, Lord of the Dead, to open the gates of the underworld.” Troy reached to the side of the fireplace for a small statuette of a dogheaded man and placed it on the hearth.
What I had thought was a random collection of vaguely Halloween related objects amongst the candles on the hearth was actually an altar. This had been planned in detail and Tanya hadn’t told me anything.
“Hecate, Crone Goddess, give us your blessing tonight. Allow those who wish to speak to the living to pass.”
They began to chant. Daniel and Troy set up a deep, droning wordless sound. Tanya began to weave a haunting dirge over the top. I thought I should try to join in but I’m no singer. My wine glass was empty so I reached for the bottle beside the sofa and filled it up.
I shuffled backward to lean on the sofa watching them chant. Tanya smiled at me and I began to suspect a cruel trick. That somehow the whole evening had been orchestrated to achieve my humiliation. I felt sick and tearful. My heart pounded in time with the chant, speeding up as they got faster. Soon my heart was racing so fast I thought I would collapse.
And then they stopped, clean, like they’d rehearsed. My heart banged in my chest and I was breathing as hard as if I’d been running for my life. It wasn’t warm anymore. The room was cold, a taste of ice on the air. I looked up. Our little circle was surrounded by fog, glowing whitely around the candles.
“I think someone’s here,” whispered Troy.
We all looked around. I couldn’t see anything or make out how the fog and the cold had been achieved. Tanya’s face was flushed and she smiled widely.
“Someone is with us,” intoned Tanya. “Step forth and speak with the living if that is your will.”
Daniel’s eyes went wide. Whatever he was seeing now was a surprise. I turned my head to look.
I didn’t know that he was dead. No-one told me. A cocktail of hurt and disappointment and shame filled me. I should know better after all this time, but every time they let me down it hurts more than I can bear. And like salt on the rim of a marguerita glass is the loneliness of knowing there’s no-one in the world that’s on your side. They should have told me that he’d died.
Through the white fog drifted the translucent figure of my father’s brother. He was dressed as he used to when he babysat me, in a black silk kimono, loosely fastened so he flashed his skinny thighs as he walked.
“Step forward, spirit,” said Tanya. “Tell us what your message for the living is.”
I was six years old again, watching my parents leave. I couldn’t understand then that they didn’t know how scared I was. Later, when I discovered that they’d known all along and hadn’t done anything, I didn’t understand what was so wrong with me that it didn’t matter.
“Tanya, please,” I croak, but it’s not enough.
She waved her hand to shut me up. There was a slight smile on her face and she leant forward toward the spectre. The words stuck in my throat and all I could say was “Make it stop.” She didn’t see my distress. I knew the only way to make her hear me was to scream and shout, but I had no voice. It was taken years ago and so I suffered quietly.
He smiled and it frightened me just as much as it always used to.
“I’ve missed our special times, Jenny.”
Tanya looked at me, her brow screwed up. Amy is my middle name. I can’t stand to hear anyone say Jennifer or Jenny. I wanted to ask her to stop but my vocal cords failed. There was a part of me that believed I’d been betrayed and it wouldn’t let me beg. I bowed my head to hide my eyes.
An icy draught on my cheek made me look up again, eyes tearing. The spectre was crouched in front of me. I tried not to look at the open front of his kimono but I didn’t want to look at his face either.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said. “Just like this. When you die, it’ll be just like it used to be.”
I have my hard drive back. I have all my stories and bits of writing. I am so happy.
It did cross my mind that the hard drive was completely dead but time and money (thanks to very generous parents) have brought my stuff back. I now have two external hard drives and proper back ups.
I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve read writers exhorting other writers to back everything up, usually because they’ve lost years worth of work themselves. I know, as a reasonably technology-literate, fully paid up member of the 21st century, that copies are vital. I’ve even watched the Blackadder 3 episode, Ink and Incapability, with horror, imagining what it would be like to write without a PC. Just imagine, if you had to start from scratch if your dictionary got burnt. The horror; the despair; the finger cramp.
And yet…. It remained an item on a to-do list. And if the hard drive hadn’t died, it probably would still be an item on a to-do list.
I’m not pondering this because I want to celebrate the return of my stories or punish myself for procrastination. I’m doing it because it reveals to me something about how caution, or the lack of it, informs our behaviour and therefore that of our characters. In most cases our charaters will know what they should do but that doesn’t mean they will do it.
I’m on week four of the new job. It’s pay day on Friday, woohoo. I’m still not in much of a routine with writing in the evenings and weekends but I am pleased that I have done something in the last few weeks. At the end of last week I was noticeably less tired so I remain positive about my ability to continue to write.
What I have been doing is posting blogs and I’ve noticed that the time pressure is not good for my writing. Reviewing Electric Spec last week felt rushed and as if I hadn’t given enough thought to what I was saying. As it was, it took me several days to read the whole magazine.
That led me to thoughts about commas. Most of the stories I read seemed to have an overabundance of commas and there was only really one in which it contributed to building the atmosphere. So, what’s the problem with commas? I think it stems from the gap between written and spoken english.
When people speak they rarely form good sentences; they hesitate, they use fillers, they repeat themselves and they go off on tangents. Accurately transcribed speech might appear to require the use of a lot of commas because of all the pauses. It’s a common myth that the comma is used to show where a person should breathe if they were reading out loud.
There are three separate issues here. One, how accurately should prose in fiction recreate the spoken word? Two, what are commas for? And three, what effect does overusing commas have on prose?
Personally, I think prose in fiction should not attempt to recreate how people speak. Even in dialogue you’re really aiming for an idealisation of speech. Written english benefits from being much more thought through than everyday speech. We can be more eloquent and more effective. I have found that working on my skills in terms of using punctuation and grammar has increased my power and control over my writing. I am better able to say exactly what I mean to say and better able to identify what feels instinctively wrong.
Commas have four purposes; listing, joining, gapping and bracketing. One of the most useful online resources I’ve found for punctuation is Larry Trask’s Guide. I don’t think I can say anything about the uses of commas more clearly than this.
Which brings me to my third point, what does the overuse of commas do to prose? There are two types of overuse: liberally sprinkled commas where the writer would pause if speaking and correctly used bracketing commas in sentences overloaded with weak interruptions or parenthetical clauses. Both have the same effect. The prose is choppy, especially if the clauses are short, and has a feeling of breathlessness. This can be used to great effect where the writer wants to create an atmosphere of tension. The sense of breathlessness is reminiscent of the fight/flight response and the accompanying hyper-alertness. Coupled with a first person POV, it it is a useful technique for establishing empathy with a character. Or it can convey dislocation and disorientation if the commas are used to create convoluted, disjointed sentences. The reader shares the overload of input without the reassurance of structure.
The comma is not an everyday, throwaway piece of punctuation. Using it with care and thought has dramatically improved my writing.
So tomorrow I return to getting paid to do something other than write. About twenty months ago I ignored the one piece of writing advice all the professionals seem to agree on and quit my day job.
The plan was that I would write a novel and get it published and that nearly two years would be more than enough time to do that. I still haven’t finished the novel. I’ve abandoned two and am now working on the third. I have high hopes for this one.
It has been an amazing time. I am so much a better writer for it. When I left my day job I had a first draft of a novel I’d written during NaNoWriMo. I thought I would rewrite it and turn into something good. I spent weeks reading through it, marking it with a red pen, until I realised two things:
1. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when it came to rewriting.
2. There was something fundamentally wrong with the story but I didn’t know what that was.
I decided to focus for a while on short stories to learn about rewriting in small chunks. That went well. I had a story in my head that needed to be told and Pantechnicon liked it enough to publish it – Innocent. I had a go at writing articles and found I didn’t like it so much and for a couple of months got paid for blogging.
Then I started on a second novel, working from an idea I’d had years ago. This time I had piles of character sheets, timelines, outlines, research and even a map. It was loosely based on a real period of European history and so I was able to get lost in the research. The writing wasn’t coming easily at all. And in the back of my head I wondered if there was the same fundamental flaw in this story as there had been in the previous one.
Last summer I took a part time job and switched to working on another short story. The second novel wasn’t going anywhere and I’d reached the point where I needed some success. I returned to the strategy that had worked before. This story never seemed to be done; it just grew and grew. The part time job ended in September and for three months I worked flat out on what was now my third attempt at a novel.
Then something unexpected happened. I stumbled across a feminist critique of one of my favourite TV shows and it shook the way I’d been thinking about things. After a few weeks of re-educating myself on matters of prejudice and privilege I realised what had been wrong with my previous two novels. They portrayed relationships and characters that entirely reinforced the status quo and I had been under such a false consciousness that I’d failed to see it. It was also true of the third novel but in this case was fixable. This novel will get finished and I will be happy with the result, but I may sweat blood doing it.
Of course, I have also read and critiqued and studied writing. I’ve learnt what my process is and I’ve learned to view my own work more objectively. The last few months have been mostly dedicated to job hunting and now I’m returning to work. I’m happy about that – I like to pay the mortgage and have nice things – and I’m looking forward to it. But I would absolutely quit my day job all over again. Just as soon as I find a big pile of money.
I’m almost caught up. This is Issue 86 of Hub. There’s only one more in my Inbox, although I’m expecting another one tomorrow.
There are two stories this week. Wink by Lucy Kemnitzer is a surprisingly affecting story. She packs a lot into few words. It starts out with the idea that puberty can be controlled, thus it need only be started when required and packed into a couple of months. This is well told through a character embarking on puberty in response to meeting another character. Then the story abruptly twists into an exploration of gendered communication, misunderstood expectations and ultimately rejection and disappointment. It’s really good.
Tastes of the Dark is by Malin Larsson. Something about this didn’t work for me. It has the well used twist of leading the reader to believe that the POV character is the prey when they are actually the predator. Generally I don’t object to using a structure or idea that has been done before because a good story is a good story. I guess what I’m learning from reviewing other people’s work is that the telling matters more than the tale. And in this case the telling lacked tension.
3,100 words on Sacrifice today. My typing must be improving.
I went to my folks over the weekend, so no other writing activity for a couple of days. And I’ve spent this afternoon writing a job application form. That’s it.
Merely to give myself some accountability…
Today I typed up 2,300 words of Sacrifice. On the way I realised a scene was missing and added it to my list of scenes to write. I also realised one of my main characters needs a life of her own, rather than as an appendage to the other main character, so I gave some thought to her life and have decided her sister needs to become visible. More scenes added to the to-do list.
My process is a little strange I think. Certainly none of the ‘how to write’ books I’ve read describe a process like this. I write some scenes in no particular order, fresh, raw material, until I run out of steam. Then I run them together and start rewriting. This suggests more scenes which I make a note of, and throws up problems which I try to solve. Then I get stuck and go back to writing new scenes. And it goes back and forth like that until I eventually come to the end. When I got to about 30,000 words with Sacrifice I decided I needed scene cards and notice boards to make sense of it all, but before that point they wouldn’t have helped at all.
Discovering my process has been hard. I always want to think I’m doing the ‘right’ thing and if I’m doing something different to the books or the people in my writers’ circle I think it must be me that must be wrong. And I cling to the fantasy that if I was more organised, more disciplined, then the writing would just flow. Which is of course, nonsense, but very seductive nonsense.
For the last few months, I’ve been prioritising job hunting over writing. I’ve just missed out on a job that I had two interviews for and I haven’t found anything to apply for in over three weeks. It’s getting me down a little.
It feels like my life is on hold until I get some income. My hard drive got fried some time ago and I lost a lot of stuff, including most of my writing. It is possibly recoverable but I haven’t sent the disk away yet. In the meantime I’ve been copy typing my novel, Sacrifice. I prefer to edit on paper, so luckily I have a hard copy. It’s been quite a useful process and has allowed me to resolve some problems I was having with it – and to create a new list of problems!
I haven’t been socialising much either. There were some changes in my friendship group at the end of last year and normally I would deal with that by getting out and meeting new people. But that costs money so I’ve been putting it off until I got a job. But that’s been taking a bit longer than I expected.
So – new plan. Instead of life being on hold until I get some income, I’m going to make some changes. Mornings are for writing – working on Sacrifice, blogging and other bits and pieces. Since this is supposed to be a blog about writing, I will keep a record of my progress. Afternoons are for jobhunting and chores.
As for my social life, well, I’m sure that I’m shutting myself away unnecessarily and not everything has to cost lots. There’s a committee for regenerating my local park that I was interested in getting involved in, but didn’t because they met on a Monday and I was going to dance class on a Monday. I’m not going dancing for a while – it’s expensive – so I will go to the next meeting on the 19th.
Writing progress for today – typed up 2,300 words of Sacrifice. Wrote this post and a couple of Hub reviews for future posting. Yes, sometimes I prepare stuff in advance. Mostly the reviews.
Boudica Marginalia 