Short Stories

Vintage Links 002: Warren Ellis; Short Crime Fiction; Washing Pillows; Unproductive Days

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One of my projects for 2019 is clearing the archive of unread links tucked away in the “To Read” folder of my bookmarks bar. At time of writing, there are about 600 of them remaining, and I’m going full Marie Kondo on those fuckers: everything is checked, thanks, and cleared away so I don’t have to deal with it again. The stuff that brings me joy gets posted here, to be shared with others. 

You can see the first round of things I shared in last Monday’s post. When read alongside this week’s recommendation, it should be remembered that I have a very broad definition of joy.

I’m Warren Ellis, and This Is How I Work (Lifehacker, 2015)

Read the post on Lifehacker

I spend the first hour or two of the day at a table in my back garden, under a sloping roof, either just with the phone or with the Dell, the Pixel or a notebook, depending on what kind of day it is. (Am awaiting a Textblade, which might make some things simpler, particularly when away from home.) The rest of the day is in a small room at the back of the house that I claimed as my office twenty years ago. I’m at the same old, heavy wooden desk I bought from a junk store twenty years ago. I’m not sending a picture because it is currently a bloody mess that makes me look like a hoarder because a bunch more junk got dumped in here a couple of months ago and it hasn’t been processed out yet.

I’m a fan of Warren Ellis. Have been ever since he started writing Transmetropolitan, which was one of the first comic series I loved hard enough to pick up all the trades in a single swoop. I’ve loved the work he’s done since then, regardless of whether it’s in comics, television, or fiction. I’ve been subscribed to his newsletter for a few years now, and it’s one of the examples I look to whenever I feel like author newsletters are a bad and crassly commercial idea.

I admire the way the man thinks at the cutting edge of technological implications, yet has so many decidedly analogue methods to his process. 

And, of course, I love the little glimpses into other writers processes, so this entire post is catnip to me.  It’s one of the few links in the ‘to read; archive that is not going to be deleted, but rather transferred to the file in my archive marked “Writer Processes.” 

5 Crime Short Story Writers You Should Be Reading right Now (LitReactor, 2015)

Read the full post at LitReactor

Back when I was writing for Spinetingler Magazine on a regular basis, we ran this cool feature called “Conversations With The Bookless.” (The concept was borrowed from Jeff VanderMeer by Spinetingler head honcho, Brian Lindenmuth.) It was a very cool feature which highlighted short story writers who had yet to publish a book. It included writers such as Frank Bill, Todd Robinson, Chris Holm, Patti Abbott, Kieran Shea, and a couple of dozen others (myself included).

I’ve thought about revisiting the concept a time or two while writing for LitReactor, but the only problem is that with self and macro publishing being such a huge part of the landscape now, pretty much anyone with 5-to-10 short stories to rub together can put out a book. So there really aren’t that many bookless folks out in the world anymore. But there are still plenty of damn talented short fiction writers who’ve put out collections, novellas, or have written a novel or two, that still excel at writing short stories.

I still need to read the five writers on this list, but I flagged it when it first showed up on RSS because a) I don’t often think about the short fiction in the crime genre, and b) I’m fascinated by the idea that very few people are bookless these days, even though I’m aware of how easy it is to get a book out there. 

How to Recover from an Unproductive Day Like It Never Happened (Lifehacker, 2015)

Read the full post at Lifehacker

We all have unproductive days. Maybe an unexpected event throws your schedule for a loop. Maybe you’re not feeling well. Whatever the reason, it can be tough to get back on track. Here’s how to get past the dip in productivity and back into gear.

I’m generally pretty good at managing my time when everything is going well, but have a bad tendency to let every productive process in my toolbox fall by the wayside the moment that anxiety kicks in and I have a bad day. This post contains a lot of the things I use to help manage those expectations, but also throws in a handful of options I hadn’t considered. 

How (And How Often) You Should Wash Your Pillows (Apartment Therapy, 2015)

Read the full post on Apartment Therapy

Dry your pillows according to the care label. If you are able to put them in the dryer, place a few tennis balls in with the pillows to speed up dry time and to keep the fibers from clumping

This was saved alongside a whole bunch of posts about exercise, calorie counting, cleaning, and getting your shit together with regards to your health. This post was flagged because I drooled in my sleep, and have white pillowcases. The effects of my drooling is quite noticable.

They still are,  even though I spend the majority of my nights trapped behind a CPAP mask to combat the sleep apnea I wasn’t yet aware of at the time. 

That said, I still don’t take care of my pillows like a should, despite having this on my to-read list for nearly five years now. 

5 Reasons Rejection Letters are Actually Awesome

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Okay, so I’m aware that I’ve been a serious downer for the last two days. ‘Tis the curse of not blogging for a time – all the serious, angsty things bounce around my head and come out in a burst, instead of getting nicely spaced out between more palatable topics.

Today we’re going to talk about something fun: REJECTION.

It’s been on my mind a bit this week, ‘cause I’ve been finishing short stories and sending them out blind for the first time in…well, shit, about four years. As part of this process, I’m getting back into the swing of checking markets, putting together submission lists, tracking submission details, and all that shit. That means, in the very near future, I’m going to start getting all kinds of rejection letters, and I am fucking PSYCHED.

And,yeah, yeah, I know, writers aren’t supposed to be excited by rejection. A lot of writer-types love the Sturm und Drang that comes when a rejection letter rolls in. They talk about how much it hurts or stings or how disappointed they are that an editor said no. They like to mourn the lost opportunity. They like to…shit, I don’t know, it never made much sense to me. I’m a writer. I get rejected. It’s part of the job.

So instead let’s talk about the reasons having a short story rejected is actually TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME.

ONE: A MARKET THAT WAS OTHERWISE CLOSED TO YOU IS NOW OPEN

Most short-story markets that are worth getting your work into aren’t particularly open to seeing more than one story from a writer at a time. This means, once you’ve submitted a story there, you don’t get to submit another one until they say yay or nay to your current submission.

A rejection means that an exciting new goddamn business opportunity has just opened up, ‘cause an editor that wasn’t interested in looking at my next story is suddenly open to the possibility.

This is fucking awesome.

Now, one thing that I’ll grant, this feels less awesome when you’re at the beginning of your short story writing phase and you’ve got, like, one or two short stories doing the rounds. But if you’re a writer who produces a lot and has, say, eight or ten or twenties stories ready to send out, you start edging toward the situation where you’ve got more stories ready to go than there are good markets, especially since there are damn fine places to be published that can take a really long time to get back to you.

When you’ve got a lot of work ready to submit, rejection isn’t a bad thing – it’s a chance to get the next story into circulation.

TWO: A STORY THAT WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE CAN NOW GO TO THE RIGHT PLACE

Stories get rejected for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with their quality. Sometimes it’s ‘cause the editor has just bought a run of stories with a similar theme. Sometimes it’s ‘cause they don’t think the story will be a good fit with their market. Sometimes, lets be honest, the story just wasn’t to their taste.

Regardless of what’s written on the rejection letter itself, a story rejection is basically the acknowledgement that, hey, buddy, you submitted the wrong kind of story. Now you can go and find the right place for it, and, oh look, the market that was otherwise closed to you is now open, so you get another shot of submitting the right kind of story to the editor who just said no.

THREE: THIS IS YOUR GODDAMN JOB NOW AND YOU ARE GODDAMN ROCKING IT

Writers get rejected a lot. I knew that going in. My job isn’t to rail against the rejections, but to focus on the things that are actually important to my half of the writer/publisher equation. I produce the best work I can and put it in front of editors who may be interested in buying it. If they say no, I put it in front of a different editor. That’s my job as a writer. As you may note, it’s very low in certainty. It’s very high on hearing the word “no.”

Measuring success by the number of publications is a mugs game, ‘cause I’ve got no control over that. Measuring success by the number of submissions made is entirely up to me, and every rejection letter offers the opportunity for some forward momentum.

FOUR: IN THE WORST CASE SCENARIO, YOU’VE JUST BEEN SAVED FROM LOOKING LIKE AN ARSE

I’ve been pretty fortunate in that I’ve sold the vast majority of the stories I’ve written. The handful of stories that haven’t sold – and let me be clear, we’re talking stories that have been rejected by 30+ editors, at least – well, let’s just say there are *reasons* people kept saying know, and in retrospect I’m pretty thankful to said editors ‘cause they’ve kept me from putting out work that wasn’t ready for prime time.

These weren’t necessarily bad stories, necessarily, but they were definitely…lackluster.

I can handle bad. Bad is the risk that inevitably comes from trying to do something beyond your abilities. Bad is the brother of ambition, in many respects; there is often the nugget of something interesting in the heart of every truly bad story.

But the lackluster ones? The dull ones? The ones you look at and go, well, I wish that were better, sometimes you’re just glad enough people said no to keep those stories from going out.

FIVE: ‘CAUSE, ONE DAY, YOU’LL SHOW THEM ALL

There is a great Neil Gaiman quote about rejection. It does a little something like this:

It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn’t allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering “Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!” and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there’s nothing left to write.

Source: Neil Gaiman’s Journal

And truthfully, I do kind of thrive on being told no. My best writing has usually come out of me trying to prove a point. The more I hear no, this isn’t our kind of thing, the more invested I become in proving that, well, just this once, maybe it is.

Accept my stories enough and I get….well, kind of lazy.

Reject me enough times and I’ll up my game and come out swinging.

Exercise, Writing, Momentum, and Control

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I’m often fascinated by the psychology behind the way we do things, usually because there are all sorts of parallels between other things and writing.

Case in point: I was recently pointed towards Gretchen Reynold’s article about exercise while perusing  Lifehacker, and was immediately struck by the similarities between the way she talked about regular exercise routines and the way I think about submitting short stories.

Endurance…fades if you skip exercising for too many days in a row. The same is true, sadly, with motivation. In study after study, researchers have found that one of the primary reasons people continue exercising is that they enjoyed yesterday’s exercise or the exertions of the day before; they felt healthier and more physically masterful afterward and wish to relive that sensation. Longer periods between exercise sessions potentially could dull that enthusiasm.

Ask Well: How Often to Exercise, The New York Times

Now one look at my somewhat portly figure should tell you everything you need to know about the relationship between me and exercise, but that’s not why I latched onto this quote. ‘Cause it articulates something I’ve never really been able to nail down.

See, ever since I started submitting stories again, I’ve kinda noticed that things are…better. Over the last week or so I’ve been writing more, blogging regularly, and generally rocking my day-job with a little more energy than I had.

This isn’t a surprise; I knew this response would happen, ’cause I’ve been through this cycle before. When I’m not submitting work, I get all lethargic and it’s actually harder to start making things happen. The moment I get back into the habit of sending work out, things pick up speed. Submitting work begets more short-story submissions, which in turn begets more writing.

The longer I go between submitting stories, the harder it is to focus on writing. After fifteen plus years doing this, the act of putting words on a page for their own sake isn’t what gives me a charge (I know how easy it is to write without moving forward; it’s the latter that I’m chasing). Even having work accepted and published lacks the kind of energy that’ll keep me going, since that’s one of those aspects of the job that’s out of my control (outside of submitting the best work I can to the right markets).

Submitting new work is the thing that makes me feel productive and in control of my career, and it’s the sensation I want to relieve on a regular basis. Like most short-story writers, it’s one of those things I find hard to give up – the stretches where I’m submitting nothing, even if they’re filled with work on longer-form novellas or novel drafts, feel like dead spots in my writing calendar.

So, how about you guys? What are the psychological hot-spots that make you feel like you’ve got momentum and control over the things you love doing?