Write Drunk, Edit Sober (Also, TURN OFF THE INTERNET!)

Okay, Hemingway said that. Not the TURN OFF THE INTERNET thing, but the write drunk, edit sober thing. He had a point, honestly, since sometimes loosening up a little (not a lot, mind you) helps silence the inner editor and get us past the blocks that stifle our creativity and turn our prose all stilted. And who wouldn’t want to sit in a cafe in Paris drinking cafe creme and then switching to a nice Pernod sometime around midmorning? Nobody, that’s who.

Except…the times they have a-changed, haven’t they? I bet Hem wouldn’t get nearly as much done if he had an iPhone on the table next to his notebook. Just sayin’.

So. Here’s a comparison of Hemingway’s drunken writing and my drunken writing. Or put another way, why I should turn off the internet when I write.

(This post is for educational purposes only. Don’t try this at home, kids.)

One Drink

HEM: Now where did I leave off last night? Ah, yes. In the middle of a sentence. As usual. Crap. I forget how I was going to end that sentence. I’ll just make another ending up and keep going.

 

ME: Let me just clear my Inbox and make sure I’ve responded to all my @ replies on Twitter and then reread the last few paragraphs of what I wrote last night and line edit them, and then I can get to the writing.

Two Drinks

HEM: Oh, look. That’s pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. Six pages of new writing. I’ll call the first page “A Very Short Story.” The rest of this stuff I’ll fit into A Farewell to Arms, I suppose. If not, it’ll go in A Moveable Feast. Oh! Pretty lady just walked in. I’ll watch her for a moment before getting back to writing.

ME: 500 words! W00T! I should go tweet about my progress. I’ll use the #amwriting hashtag so everyone knows how serious I am about my writing. *nods* And look! Someone responded to one of my earlier tweets. LOL! Just a quick @ reply. And oh hey! An email! Blog comment notifications FTW! Okay, I’ll mark that as unread so I remember to respond on the blog. I should start writing again now. Hey, who’s pinging me on chat?

Three Drinks

HEM: Well, that story ended up shorter than I expected. Ehh…that’s life. Hey, that’s what I’ll call it! “The Short Life of Francis Macomber.” No. Needs something else. “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Yes, that’s the trick. I think I need another martini. Then I’ll write about fishing again, perhaps.

ME: Well, that chat conversation went on longer than expected. I should get back to the writing now. Where was I? Uh…hm. No idea where I was going with that sentence. What’s happening on Twitter? And oh! More comments on my FB status. Nice! I should be a good Facebooker and “Like” some people’s statuses, huh? That looks like an interesting link…. *clicks* Now that was interesting. I should blog about that. Let me just start a new file in my blog authoring program to remind myself….

Four Drinks

HEM: Dammit. I’ll have to fix this in the morning or I’ll never win the Nobel Prize for literature. Another pretty lady. Well, hello, mademoiselle! I shall write about you. What if you were rich and we went on safari together and I got an infected cut on my leg and we were waiting for a plane to come rescue us before I died. That’s it! I'll write that, then go home. Let’s see…I’ll have to mention Kilimanjaro. It’s not a real story about Africa without a mention of Kilimanjaro….

ME: Meh. I’m getting tired. Let me check Twitter one more time before I quit trying to write. Ha! That’s a good one. I’ll respond to that. Hang on. Let me finish this sentence in the WIP. I totally know where to start up again tomorrow. Dude, I love this song! *turns up volume on iPod* *headbangs* I haven’t watched the video to that in a while. YOOUUU-TUUUBE! Oh, awesomesauce! *headbangs more* Hey, who’s pinging me on chat?

Five Drinks

HEM: Well, that’s enough writing for one morning. Wonder what Ezra Pound’s doing tonight? I should have him over for boxing practice. We can strip to the waist and punch one another in a totally manly, non-homoerotic way. That’s the ticket. Maybe Scotty Fitzgerald will come over too. Hope he leaves that wife of his behind…. *exits cafe*

ME: ZZZZzzzzz….

* * * * *

Yeah…I should totally turn the internet off when I write. I’m distractable after a couple drinks.

Of course, I could always just not drink while I write. But that would seem like too drastic a step at this point. I’ll get back to you on that one.

*cough*

"Silence Like Deep Water" goes live!

Just a quick note to say that my story, Silence Like Deep Water, went live this morning over at Short Story America! Surf on over, writer-friends, and don’t stress about having to register to read; it’s free, and you get access not only to the SSA archives, but a whole host of classic, public-domain fiction in a nifty, virtual-book type format (everyone from Louisa May Alcott to William Carlos Williams).

Go click on the Story of the Week tab at the top of the main page, won’t  you? I’ll totally heart you a bit for it if you do. :)

(And I promise I’ll stop shamelessly self-promoting after this blog post. Well, at least until I sell another story, that is….)

How to sell a short story in 44 easy steps.

1. Write a story.
2. Think to yourself that this is the best damn thing you’ve ever written.
3. Reread the story, editing as you go.
4. Think to yourself that this is still the best damn thing you’ve ever written.
5. Decide to submit it to paying markets, ‘cause by hell, someone will buy this puppy, right?
6. Think perhaps you should get some feedback on it first.
7. Email it to your former fiction writing teacher and ask for her thoughts.
8. Have a half-hour phone conversation with your former fiction writing teacher (despite having graduated almost a year earlier) about the story and possible edits.
9. Think to yourself that your former fiction writing teacher is a pretty awesome lady.
10. Send the story to Nicole Ducleroir to make sure your French is good and that you haven’t made any insensitive cultural assumptions, since you’ve never set foot in Paris and were only in France for one afternoon 9 years ago (she did offer to crit for you that one time, after all).
11. Heart Nicole a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
12. Send the story to Michelle Davidson Argyle because she owes you a crit after you won one of her blog contests and anyway you like her.
13. Heart Michelle a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
14. Send the story to Carolina Valdez Miller because you’ve been critiquing for her recently and damn she’s good and you’d love for her to take a look at it as well.
15. Heart Carol a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
16. Send the story to Harley May because she asked to see what you were working on.
17. Heart Harley a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
18. Submit the story to the first seven paying markets that spring to mind.
19. Think that mailing submittals is for the frackin’ birds, since it’s a major pain in the nether regions.
20. Wait.
21. Wait more.
22. Write other stuff.
23. Have your RL critique group look at the story, just to make absolutely certain you’re not deluding yourself as to its quality.
24. Heart your RL critique group a bit  for their excellent and supportive comments.
25. Keep waiting.
26. Wait a bit more.
27. Get rejected by the first set of markets.
28. Read too much into a major market’s typed note saying “despite its evident merit” they’re rejecting your story, trying to convince yourself they don’t write “evident merit” on every form rejection, do they?
29. Submit the story to more markets because Mercedes and the #10bythen crew on Twitter are pushing to submit 10 stories a month, and you’re not one to be left out of that kind of fun.
30. Take a month off submitting cuz you’re suddenly feeling hella lazy.
31. Start to see personalized rejections on the story, encouraging you to submit again.
32. Get a rejection slip in an SASE you addressed to yourself over six months ago, which feels oddly like you’re rejecting yourself.
33. Think the best response to rejection is to send the damn thing out again, since that policy seemed to work for Tawna Fenske.
34. Send the damn thing out again to some more markets.
35. Get a call on your cell the next morning from an unfamiliar number.
36. Proceed to have a 25 minute conversation with one of the editors of Short Story America, who was apparently reading his slush pile WAY out of order, since you just submitted to him last night.
37. At about minute 14 of the conversation, hear him say he’d like to accept your story.
38. Strive mightily to keep from doing a happy dance, since you’re at work and the customer whose facility you’re inspecting is standing not too far away, and might wonder what’s wrong with you.
39. Agree to retitle the story.
40. Tweet the news as soon as you get online.
41. Heart everyone who congratulates you, just a bit.
42. Retitle the story, and send your short bio and headshot to the editor.
43. Facebook the news on your personal and author accounts.
44. Blog to tell people they should go register for free at Short Story America so they can read the archives and all the classic short fiction they’ve reposted, and can read your story when it’s published.*
45. Wait for this Friday, when your story will appear online!
46. Pour a celebratory drink and plan on running around screaming when the story’s published.

*Yes, writer-friends, if you go register at Short Story America by tonight, you’ll get an email from them announcing the publication of Silence Like Deep Water when it goes live. Which I believe is tomorrow. I hope you check it out! After all, it’s free, yeah?

And if you don’t happen to catch this and register by tonight (Thursday night, 11/11), you can always register whenever. My story’ll be the featured Story of the Week for the next 7 days, and then will live on in the Contemporary Archive indefinitely.

The moral of the story? Submit, submit, submit! Also, get smart readers/writers to critique for you. This story went from 3,600 words to 2,400 words, based on some really, really good feedback from my betas. It wouldn’t’ve been nearly as good if I hadn’t had my lovely critiquers give it the ol’ once-over.

Write on, friends!

There’s nothing to writing….

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

- Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

Well, it wasn’t a typewriter, and it wasn’t a vein, but I cut my pinkie finger the other day and bled all over my notebook as I was writing. 

See how I suffer for my art?

And yes, my handwriting really is that bad. I’ll prove it again next week, perhaps, since Alex Cavanaugh tagged me in the handwriting meme. Till then, the above will have to suffice as proof of my godawful penmanship. :)

Erm…can you tell NaNoWriMo is leaving me with very little brain to blog?

Oy.

Things I said on the elevator at WFC…

I gotta tell you, writer-friends: World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH was pretty damn awesome.  Not only did I get to meet some long-time blog and Twitter friends in actual, 3D, technicolor, real life, but I got to meet and place faces to some authors I’ve read or known of for years.

Maybe when I have a bit more time on my hands and a brain that’s not caffeine-fuzzed with my attempts to compensate for insane amounts of sleep loss, I’ll recap some of the highlights of the conference. In the meantime, I’ll just be all random and rambly with shout-outs and inane comments and such.

Online friends I got to meet and have drinks with

Carolina Valdez Miller, Sara McClung, and Karen Amanda Hooper. Yes, they’re precisely about as nice as you’d expect them to be from their online personas. Also, they put up with my silliness a lot, and not one of them smacked me, so apparently they have the patience of saints.

Livia Blackburne and her husband came out with us for sushi on Friday night. Livia keeps posting amusing snippets of conversation between she and her husband in her Google Chat status, so I informed them both that if they didn’t have at least one funny exchange over dinner, I’d be mightily disappointed. I forget whether they did or not, but I don’t recall feeling disappointed, so there you go.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt recognized me from Twitter, and introduced himself at one point on Friday, and we chatted on and off for the next few days. Awfully nice fellow, he was.

Jaym Gates and Erika Holt, editors of the Rigor Amortis zombie love anthology, were very cool. I learned more about horse diseases from Jaym than I wanted to. No, don’t ask. Just don’t, or I’ll send you the YouTube link. You’ve been warned.

Ricki Schultz and Gina Penney also joined us for sushi on Friday. Gina was the only other person at the table who wrote adult fiction, making me feel a bit less alone. And Ricki made me choke on a California roll with one of her stories.*

There were more…oh, but there were more people I met, and to list them all would take forever. But I figured a few representative shoutouts would do it.

Authors I got to talk to/insult/entertain

I developed a slight crush on Esther Friesner, despite her being my grandmother’s age or thereabouts. She’s really, really funny on panels.

I told Nancy Kress she didn’t look a day older than 19. She didn’t believe me.

Stephen R. Donaldson was signing books, but I didn’t have anything for him to sign, so I just told him he was awesome. He gave me a button.

I missed Travis Heermann’s reading, despite having met him the first night in the bar. This is me offering a guilt-link as propitiation.

Blake Charlton’s grandmother is Scottish, so clearly we got along well. He also likes scotch. Another point in his favor. He withstood Jaym’s death stare quite manfully, too, I must say.

Again, there were tons more, many of whose names I don’t remember. I do recall David Drake being entertainingly curmudgeonly on a panel, and Peter Straub being bald, though, so there’s that.

Things I said on the elevator…

(To Karen Hooper beside me): Karen, that’s not your pocket.

(Loudly, to no one in particular): I’ve been a lifelong Republican.

(Medium-volume, to no one in particular): This would be a really bad time for the dysentery to flare up.

After that, no one wanted to get on crowded elevators with me. Not sure why.

Other things that happened a lot

• Awkward hugs
• Me talking about awkward hugs
• Awkward handshakes
• Vodka refills
• Saying, “Oh look, there’s [insert author/editor/agent name here].”
• Saying, “Who’s that?”
• More vodka refills
• More awkward hugs
• Sara McClung pointing out that I say “awkward” a lot
• Ricki Schultz pointing out that I say “awkward” a lot, but it’s okay, because she says “weird” a lot

Things that didn’t happen very much

• Sleep

And that, writer-friends, is my hazy recollection of WFC as it stands. Anyone who was there can feel free to correct me on any essential details.

And now it’s time for NaNoWriMo.

*I didn’t choke on a California roll. I think it was a tuna roll.