Bev Vincent

Several years ago, I wrote an essay for the HWA handbook On Writing Horror titled “For Love or Money: Six Marketing Myths.” While I called them “marketing” myths, in fact they were really publishing myths.

Recent events which you may already have heard about via the blogosphere inspired me to write this entry. The moral of that story is the thesis of the above-mentioned essay.

The concept isn’t new, and I’ve written about it in various ways over the years, but it bears discussing again. Novice writers (and all of us were novices sometime) share a burning compulsion. Perhaps more than one, but one applies here: the need to see our name and our work in print. (These days the definition of “in print” is a little different than the classical definition, but there are analogies to be made: some e-zines aren’t so different from the typed, mimeographed zines of a few decades ago.) We’re willing to do almost anything to see that happen (deals with the devil aren’t out of the question), and this desperation can lead us to make bad publishing decisions.

Neil Gaiman writes about Yog’s Law on his blog, inspired by the same event. The law is simple: money flows toward the writer. In one form, this is a warning against paying to get published: paying for representation, paying the publisher for editing services, etc. From another perspective, though, it is an admonition to insist that you be paid for your work, regardless of the venue in which it is published.  Among the six myths I wrote about, two are particularly applicable: 1) Payment in exposure and 2) Royalty-only markets.

Novice writers believe the myth that simply having something “published,” and the concomitant exposure they will receive, has some intrinsic value. They will no longer have to write cover letters where the paragraphs listing previous publications are blank. Now they can write, “My story, Title of Story Here, was published in Slapdash eZine.” This will guarantee that editors will give submissions extraspecial consideration because, after all, they’re reading something submitted by published authors. Editors might even remember those previous publications and the new submissions will get gold stars and go to the top of the stack. Woo-hoo!

Chances are: 1) The editor didn’t see that publication because it’s nothing more than a post on a blog in a dark and rarely frequented corner of the internet, or 2) Even if the editor is aware of that publication, it won’t have any impact whatsoever at best and, perhaps, a negative impact at worst. Being poorly published isn’t better than not being published at all. If your resume is a list of non-paying markets that have come and gone like the spring rains, it will make you look unprofessional.

Here’s the second sad truth: Royalty-only markets are non-paying markets 99% of the time. These books (usually anthologies) sell so poorly that they never recoup their publishing costs, let alone generate any income down the line. If they do bring in a few dollars, that will be split 10 or 20 ways, usually with half of the profits going to the editor off the top. Expect pennies at best.

Desperation—a force as strong and nearly as irresistible as gravity—allows us to delude ourselves. The only exposure that is worthwhile is appearance in a market that people 1) see and 2) respect. With the exception of literary magazines, these are almost always paying markets. Almost always pro-paying markets. Why? Because these are the markets that have major distribution channels and (generally) good reputations. With so much material out there, who do you think reads Slapdash eZine? The contributors and a few of their friends, that’s who. And that royalty only anthology that contains work by previously unpublished authors? Who will pay $18 for the trade paperback (did you ever notice how pricey those books tend to be?) or $9.99 for the e-book? Your friends and relatives might be counted on the first time or two, but even they may stop ponying up after a while.

Another issue with exposure/royalty markets is that they won’t teach you anything about your writing. In the best case scenario, your story will be published exactly as you submitted it. If you’re lucky, someone may catch your typos, grammatical errors and continuity flaws. In the worst case scenario (see above), the editor may decide to do something abysmal to your story, and you’ll have no recourse. Those of us who’ve been around a while probably would have smelled something bad about the market discussed above. One look at the web site, replete with typos, bad grammar and questionable layout, would have been enough to tell us that we wouldn’t be dealing with a pro.

With a pro market, if your story has a few flaws it will either be rejected (with or without comment) or—best case—the editor will accept the work and offer some suggestions to make it even better. Experienced writers learn the value of a good editor, one who encourages a writer to improve (not one who arbitrarily rewrites a story in his own image).

There are many codas that attach themselves to this message. For example, if, in your desperation to be published at all, you aim low and submit to a non-paying market, you’ll never know if you might have done better by sending it to a pro-market.

I know it’s hard to have the level of patience required to develop to the point where you can be professionally published. I was in my late thirties when I scored my first pro sales. I made a few mistakes in the beginning. Not many people are totally immune to the temptation to settle for something less in order to satisfy that gravitational pull, that vanity appeaser. My message is this: resist with all your might. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it will be different for you. Listen to and learn from the experiences of others.

If you’ve ever read an author’s blog for any length of time, or followed his or her Facebook feed, you will no doubt be familiar with the tradition of posting sporadic or daily word counts. It is, perhaps, the only metric that writers have available to measure our productivity.

My favorite anecdote comes via Stephen King in On Writing in which he recounts of a possibly apocryphal encounter between James Joyce and a friend. The friend finds Joyce in a posture of utter despair at his writing desk. Being familiar with Joyce’s issues, the friend asks, “How many words did you get written today?” Joyce answers, “Seven.” The friend is impressed. “That’s good…for you.” To which Joyce responds, “But I don’t know what order they go in!”

People comment on how prolific certain writers are, producing two or three books a year, even more. When I stop to do the math, I’m astonished that more writers aren’t that prolific. On a typical day, which for me means an uninterrupted writing window of no more than 90 minutes, I can write 1000 words. Some days it’s 750, some days it’s 1250, but 1000 is a good figure. If I did that every day for a year, I’d have the total word count of three decent-sized novels. If I were able to write longer, I could imagine writing 3-4000 words per day. I think my personal record is something on the order of 8000, which I cranked out at a beach house while on a working vacation during a NaNoWriMo marathon.

Of course, not all “writing” involves producing new words. On another sort of productive writing day, I can crank out -500 words. Yes, that’s negative five hundred, which means I’ve cut that much fat from a manuscript. I tend to write long on the first draft and it’s unusual if I can’t remove at least 10-15 percent of the total word count from a short story upon revision. How does one measure that type of productivity? It’s a different type of accomplishment, one that is at least as important as the one that created those words in the first place.

An efficiency expert might look at my process and tell me how much better off I’d be if I hadn’t written those 10-15% extra words in the first place, but I simply can’t. To do so would require editing every sentence as I wrote it and that would interrupt the flow, that mysterious gush of words that comes from a source I can’t define. I wouldn’t dare place a governor on that lest it slow to a trickle and stop. I don’t mind editing yesterday’s work before I start today’s—that’s one of my favorite ways to get that gusher going again—but I have to write things that I know deep down won’t all survive. At least not in that shape or order.

What about the days we spend on the internet doing research, or driving around a neighborhood to pick up local color, or reading a book to gather information on a particular subject, or simply sitting in a dark room or taking a walk to think about the work and where it’s headed? Our word count meters don’t record that creative homework, but it is part of the process, too, and contributes to the end product. Those words that we count don’t always just spring into our minds. We have to feed the mind with information at times.

The ritual of posting word counts is one way that we assure anyone reading our blogs—and ourselves—that we are hard at it. Doing the work. If too many days pass without anything substantial to show for them, we start feeling nervous, like a batter in a slump. At the end of the day, though, all the research and ruminating in the world is for naught if we don’t get AIC (ass in chair) and produce words. Because words count.

P.S. In case you’re interested, I wrote 2000 words today. Nearly seven hundred in this essay and a little over 1300 on my current work in progress. A very good day indeed.

No one can tell you when to start a short story.

People can give you all kinds of advice about how to write one, but only you can decide when you are prepared to start.

This is something I deal with all the time. I’ll have a window of opportunity where I can work on a short story, and I’ll have a market in mind, and all I do is spin my wheels when I try to think about the story itself.

Case in point: I want to submit a story to an anthology that has a submission deadline fast approaching. When I first heard about the theme back in 2010, I did some relevant research, created a file, scribbled some notes and put it aside to gestate. Now that several months have passed, I’m only a little bit closer to having a story than I did back then.

That’s not entirely true. Last weekend, I started doing some location research. I have a scenario of sorts in mind. In fact, I plan to resurrect a couple of characters from another story, and I know why they are where they are and how the story opens, more or less. I stumbled around looking for a setting and I found one that is absolutely perfect. So, for the past couple of days I’ve been learning everything I can about this place. I wandered its streets on Google Earth (and isn’t that an impressive tool). I found news stories and a few videos that give me an even better sense of the location and the scenario that forms that background for the location and the story.

But I still don’t really know what is going to happen to the characters after they make a significant discovery.

Sometimes, a story happens like this: anthology theme, “clever” take on the theme, figure out who the main characters are and what they want, start writing.

Right now, I have the anthology theme, my twist on the theme and the characters, but I still don’t feel ready to start writing because I haven’t come up with the consequences of the twist.

It is possible, on occasion, to start with these elements and let the words flow from that mystical source from which they come. The characters do things and the story develops. I don’t know where the story is going, but it goes.

And yet, when I get to the computer these past few days, I can’t bring myself to create that new Word document and write the first words. That tells me the story isn’t quite ready. I’ve plowed ahead and hit brick walls often enough to believe that this sort-of block (something akin to Mike Noonan’s block in Bag of Bones, though not nearly so severe) is telling me I’ll be wasting my time if I go that route. I just need to think about the story a little more. I can see over the first hill or two, but there’s at least one more hill I need to crest before I begin. I don’t need to see all the way to the end—I rarely do with short stories, but I need to see far enough to build up that momentum that will help me get there.

That being said, though, there’s nothing like a looming deadline for motivation. At some point, if I really want to submit to this market, I need to stop dithering and start writing. And hoping the story comes…from that mystical source from which they all come.

Though my field of expertise is in chemistry, I hold a minor in math. I’m not sure that there has ever been a study to confirm or refute this, but I maintain a strange calculus: one acceptance letter is equal to any number of rejections. That is to say, an acceptance wipes the slate clean. I feel good about my writing again and I even feel armored against the next few inevitable rejection letters that will follow.

Another way to say this is: you have to develop a thick skin in this business and be persistent. I saw a beginning writer comment somewhere about a phenomenon described as “submission terror.” The condition was so disabling that the writer couldn’t convince himself to send anything out. In other words, he’s taken to writing his own rejection letters.

There is much to be said for persistence. I had a short story published recently by a pro-paying market that was originally written for a themed anthology in 2007. It didn’t make the cut (the editor told me he might have considered it if he’d received it less close to the deadline, and there’s another lesson to be learned there, assuming he wasn’t just sparing my feelings), so I de-themed it and started it on its rounds. Until the day it was accepted (I repeat, by a pro-paying market), the story had accumulated nine rejections, not including the original one. Each time I got it back, I updated my submission log, found a new market, and sent it right back out again.

That’s by no means a personal record. A fairly recent story found a home on lucky submission number thirteen. I published another that had been written eight years previously and accumulated 15 rejections, in a glossy magazine with national distribution.

When do I give up? Rarely. I have one story that I really like that has been rejected 20 times. I’ve rewritten it a few times over the years and, though I’ve yet to find the right home for it, I think it’s out there. It’s just a matter of keeping at it and researching the marketplace. I’ve never truly trunked a story, though some are in submission hiatus because I can’t think of any viable place to send them at the moment. I will occasionally consider a semi-pro market if it has a reputation that appeals to me, and I often give literary magazines a shot even though they rarely pay more than a pittance. I favor print over electronic publication, too, though I have published a number of stories in electronic media.

I still hesitate a moment before opening an e-mail that I know is a response to a submission. I feel myself cringe. I know the odds are against me, still, despite having published over sixty stories. I haven’t done the math, but I suspect that rejections lead acceptances by at least 3:1. Maybe higher overall, but in recent years that feels like the right number. But every one of those acceptances carries with it enough weight to overpower a number of rejections. I celebrate every one of them.

Rejections are rubber bullets. They may bruise but they damage no internal organs.

– by Bev Vincent

Last month’s essay would be difficult to top. The piece had more than triple the average number of views of an average Storytellers Unplugged essay, and it has garnered over eighty comments to date. That doesn’t take into account the number of other blogs where people used elements of the essay as the launching point for other discussions. It didn’t quite go viral, but it was at least mildly contagious. I think I would be safe in saying that it inspired more vigorous response than anything else I’ve ever written, and the scope of the topics that developed amazed me. Gender bias can be extrapolated to other kinds of prejudices and assumptions about people based on preconceived categories. 

Like I said, a hard act to follow. I wish I had something equally profound to write about this month, but I don’t. At first I thought I would write a review of all of the interesting blogs that referenced my piece, but you can easily find those yourself if you’re interested. This link should get you started. Those other people express their opinions better than I ever could in a synopsis piece, and their points of view are worth reading, if you have the time. Suffice to say that the little hitch I encountered with one short story and one editor is small potatoes compared to what some people face regularly and persistently. 

August is a lackluster month here in Texas. It’s hot, oh boy is it hot, especially this year. It’s usually already over 80° when I get up at 5 am for my daily writing session. Most days, when I leave work at 5 pm the digital readout on my car’s thermometer reads something in the 100-105° range. Hot and dry. It takes something out of a person, all this heat, even though we are air conditioned to the hilt. At least there haven’t been any hurricanes to worry about. Not yet, at least. 

August is also a month of transition, though people don’t always make that association. For many, the real summer is coming to an end. School starts a week from today around here. Even though I no longer have school-age kids, that creates a subtle shift in my reality. Speed zones that I’ve been safely ignoring for a couple of months are reactivated. The loose, less scheduled existence that many other people around me have fallen into during the summer months all of a sudden snaps back into a more rigid state defined by the comings and goings of their children. Summer television series wind down in preparation for the fall season. 

When I look back on July and August, I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished very much. I got everything done I was supposed to—I even got a few things in early. I still have over fifteen short stories circulating, so I haven’t fallen asleep at the switch, though editors seem to be a little slower to respond during the summer so it hasn’t exactly been arduous keeping up with submissions. I’ve written or revised a few short stories, penned several reviews and essays, read a bunch of books, whittled my to-do list down to two or three items (and, once this essay is finished, it will be shorter still), but I feel like I’ve been treading water. I’m ready for the next big thing. 

I have a new book coming out this fall, but it’s finished and copies should arrive from the printer within the next month, so there hasn’t been much to do with it lately. I’ve been spreading the word, but since the publisher, Barnes & Noble, isn’t yet accepting pre-orders, I’ve been holding back. Closer to publication date I’m sure I’ll be promoting it more aggressively, but the B&N model for their readers’ companions is to position them in prominent places in their stores and let them sell themselves. They don’t produce galleys and don’t seek advance reviews. It’s a completely different process than for my previous book, one that seems to contribute to the doldrums of these summer months. 

I planned to start work revising a novel at the first of August, but that date has slipped past as other short-term obligations came and went. I had a long conversation with my agent about the book over a month ago. I have a strategy and several pages of notes for the rewrite, but I haven’t opened the Word document once since that discussion. I wanted my desk to be clear of distractions so I could focus on it exclusively, but I’ve discovered that such a state of nirvana, the clutter-and-obligation-free desk, doesn’t exist. 

So, it’s back-to-school time for me. Time to put away the summer toys, the figurative beach balls and inline skates and picnic baskets, and get back to work. Anticipate that school bell each morning and show up with my pencils sharpened and my homework ready to hand in. Maybe even strive for some of those extra-credit problems I always used to like to do when I was a kid.

It would help greatly if it wasn’t still so hot out, but we writers have to create our own weather. If we wait for the dog days of summer to be over, we’ll never get anything done.

– by Bev Vincent

I’m including my picture in this month’s essay. It’s somewhat important to the piece, especially if you don’t know me other than as a name on the screen or on a piece of paper. If you don’t know me from Adam (or Eve), in other words.

In 2007, I was invited to submit to an anthology by an editor with whom I’d worked in the past. The general theme was near and dear to my heart and he was offering pro payment so I was willing to participate. I had a story that I thought would be a match. We spent a few weeks going back and forth, with me performing significant rewrites to satisfy his requests, and ultimately we arrived at a version that both of us were happy with. (Note this fact—it’s also important.) The editor sent me a contract, which we both executed. End of the story, right?

Wrong.

The editor turned the manuscript in to his publisher (you’ve never heard of them, so don’t worry about who it is), and it languished on someone’s desk for months. Finally they got around to it and did something unexpected. They sent the manuscript out to another editor for review.

Now, if I was the original editor, I’d be somewhat miffed by this, having turned in a finished manuscript that I was happy with. A few weeks ago he received a set of editorial comments back from the publisher, which he then had to distribute to his stable of contributors. This is six weeks before the book is supposed to go to the printer, mind you, and over eighteen months after the last time any of the writers have looked at their stories.

If you think all this is unusual, I haven’t gotten to the best part yet. The notes on my story consisted of two full single-spaced pages of text. It was savage. Among the first comments this editor (and I do not know who he or she is) offered: “It’s quite a challenge for a writer of one sex to explore writing from the perspective of the opposite sex. Bev Vincent has not done a convincing job.”

The protagonist in my story is a man.

I’ll sit here for a few seconds while that sinks in.

Me, the guy who’s pictured above, failed to do a convincing job of writing from the perspective of a man.

I’ve heard female writers talk about gender bias in the industry before, but it’s always been an abstract concept to me. Not something I’ve ever experienced. Oh, sure, people often think I’m female based on my name—it’s a common enough mistake, which I’ve had to deal with all my life. I like to tell the story about how I was almost assigned to the women’s dorm at university. However, I’ve never before had an editor criticize my writing based on a false assumption concerning my gender. Or make blatantly biased statements about the male perspective. Read on.

The editor says: “The story seems far too personal, introspective and emotional for a man . . . It is hard to imagine a fellow from a place like [the setting] uttering the following line.” The editor then provides three sentences from my story as examples. He or she continues, “And I can’t think of many guys from [setting] who call home every Sunday afternoon to talk to their family” [Emphasis his or hers]. Another brilliant insight: “Most men don’t think deeply about the dewy greenness of nature.” The ultimate conclusion: “She [sic] needs to write more convincing [sic] from a man’s perspective.”

I pause here to note that this was the most autobiographical story I’ve ever written, and all the things that the editor complained about were my real observations and my real thoughts cast into the mind of a fictional character participating in fictional events. I did, in fact, call home every Sunday afternoon to talk to my parents, while they were still alive.

To compound his or her arrogance, the editor claims that my prose is “overly elegant,” which is presumably his or her way of saying that a man would never write or think in elegant terms. Guess that means I write like a girl.

He or she goes on about other matters, but by this point I’ve lost all faith in anything this editor has to say. Some of the other criticisms—the ones not based on assumption about my gender—might have been perceptive, insightful and accurate—but it was impossible for me to credit any of it given his or her obvious wrongheadedness concerning a man’s perspective. My perspective.

The editor who invited me to contribute to the anthology tells me that this is a “very well respected editor,” without disclosing his or her identity. He apologized for the “gender confusion” as if it was simply a matter of the editor mistakenly referring to me as “she.” He didn’t seem to get the point that a major part of the critique was based on a faulty and biased impression about the way men think.

I’ve gone back and forth between laughing about this and being outraged. As you might suspect from the tone of this essay, indignation is winning. The original editor asked me to make the changes this unidentified editor requested. All of a sudden, my story had serious flaws that needed to be addressed—even though the acquiring editor had accepted it after revisions in 2007. I could have two weeks to completely rewrite the story.

Usually I’m pretty agreeable when editors request changes, but this time I balked. I reread the story for the first time in over a year and a half and I liked most of what I saw. I told the acquiring editor that I would fix a few clunky sentences if he wanted, but I wasn’t going to re-imagine the story at this other editor’s behest. That wasn’t the story I’d wanted to write . . . and it wasn’t the story he had accepted and contracted. It was the proverbial line in the sand, and neither of us would cross. End result: a 4000-word hole in their manuscript six weeks before publication for them and a pittance of a kill fee for me.

However, this essay isn’t about a contract issue that led me to withdraw a story from publication. For me it was a real eye-opener that a supposedly “well-respected editor” could make such an utter fool of him or herself and still be taken seriously. What I wouldn’t give to know who it is so I could present myself to him or her face-to-face and wait for realization to sink in.

I checked. Undid the zipper and looked, just to be sure. I think I am reasonably qualified to write from a man’s perspective.

– by Bev Vincent 

In the introduction to The Green Mile, Stephen King talks about his unique treatment for insomnia. When he lies awake in bed, he tells himself stories. Each night, he starts at the beginning of the current tale and takes it little farther. After a while, he grows bored with one of these remedy stories, abandons it and starts a new one. The Green Mile was an exception.

Most writers are reluctant to talk about stories or novels we’re thinking about or are currently writing. It’s a kind of superstition. We believe that if we talk about a story, it will lose it magic, the wind will go out of the story’s sails, and the whole thing will collapse at our feet. Or we’ll grow bored with it and lose the motivation to put the words down on the page. Writing is about discovery, we say, and if we discover the story before we write it, what’s the point? By the time Alfred Hitchcock got behind the camera, he had already mapped out a film so clearly in his mind that he reportedly found the final part of the process boring. The actual making-of-the-movie part.

The other reason we don’t want to talk about plots under development is that we don’t want anyone else to make suggestions before an idea is fully formed in our minds. People love to make suggestions. How about if he does this? What if she did that? Another superstition—we’re scared that another person’s input will steer a story in a direction other than where we intended to go, as if our own intent isn’t strong enough to hold the course. 

I’m usually reticent about talking about stories, for these very reasons. However, I had an experience recently that made me reassess my position. 

I was invited to contribute to a loosely themed anthology by an editor who had previously accepted one of my stories for another project. I had an idea that melded the themed situation with another genre that is near and dear to my heart, which made me think I could come up with a story that would be different from most of the other contributions. As the scenario developed in my mind, I saw a subtext that added what I considered to be a significant level of meaning to the story. I don’t usually write with metaphors in mind, but this one was too good to ignore. 

The invitation came several months ago, when I was deep in the throes of working on a large project with a short deadline. However, since I’m an agreeable guy, I accepted the invitation, which had a three-month deadline. I was confident that I’d have plenty of time to work on the story once I finished the current project. 

The closer the deadline came, the greater my anxiety level. I’m not usually subject to stress, but I was feeling it. I had made a commitment to submit something, and it just wasn’t happening. The idea still seemed solid, as did all of the elements I foresaw, but the words weren’t coming. I wrote the first page or two, which set up the situation, and there it sat. With a little less than a week to go before the story was due, I was faced with a business trip that was going to take me away from my normal writing routine for four days. 

On the day I was scheduled to leave on the trip, I went out to breakfast with my wife, part of our weekend routine. As we sat in a secluded corner, sipping our tea, I decided to tell her about this story I was contemplating. At that point, I knew the main character and the general setup, along with the high concept, but not the plot. As we discussed the metaphor, my wife’s enthusiasm for the story was infectious. Her suggestions were not about the plot but rather helped me gain a deeper appreciation for the symbolism.

I didn’t get any farther with the story during that discussion, but when I got back home, I opened my document and wrote two single-spaced pages of notes to myself. Thoughts and ideas that arose out of that conversation and the general thrust of the plot poured out. In essence, a loose outline, although I didn’t get to the climax of the story–that was still unseen to me–and some of the details ultimately changed. However, I had about 2/3 of the story dancing around in my head. 

Later that afternoon, on a three-hour flight, I rewrote the first two pages of the story in longhand in a blank journal and then took off. By the time I landed I had a cramped hand and fifteen pages of the story, approximately 3000 words. I typed them up after I got to the hotel and, by the end of the week, I finished the story. Submitted it after a couple of intensive editing sessions and had it accepted with revisions a day later. 

As always, I’m not sure there’s a take-home message here, just a window into one incident in my writing life.The story might not have been finished on schedule without our little tête-à-tête. I’ll probably still be reluctant to discuss my stories as I work on them, but I now know that talking about one isn’t a death knell. After all, storytelling started out as an oral tradition. Where would we be today if stories couldn’t survive being told before they were written down?

– Bev Vincent

There’s a scene in Amadeus where Mozart has just finished playing one of his new compositions for Emperor Joseph II. After a few generalities (“ingenious,” “quality work”), the Emperor concludes (at the prompting of Mozart’s nemesis Salieri), “There are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.”

The movie version of Mozart, who has the benefit of a good script to feed him a comeback, retorts, “Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?”

Several years ago I wrote a short story for a themed anthology. Although the editor expressed an early inclination toward accepting my story, the anthology (it may surprise you to hear) failed to materialize. I submitted the story to a few markets in the aftermath of that implosion, but never reread it or paid much attention to it. One editor, bless his soul, took the time to write a lengthy critique, almost two full pages. He saw a lot of good in the story, but felt that it needed major work. I filed the story and the critique away without taking further action.

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to a broadly themed anthology. For some reason, that story came to mind. However, when I perused the invitation and brought up the story document, I saw a problem. The guidelines specified “no more than 4000 words” and the story’s word count was 6200. Ah, well, I thought. I’ll just have to write something new.

A day or so later, I was struck out of the blue by a question. Why was the story so long? That’s a pretty beefy tale and the plot, as I remembered it, wasn’t all that complex or involved. The entire story takes place over the span of an hour or so. I brought up the document again, wondering if I might be able to trim it back a little. That seemed a tad optimistic—after all, 2200 words represented 35% of the story’s total length. If I could just get it back to 5000 words or so, I rationalized, maybe the editor would consider it despite its length. (We all know that guidelines are meant for everyone else, never for us!)

I didn’t get very far into the text before realizing that there was a lot of extraneous material. The tale barely got started before I was sidetracked by a lengthy “essay” about the nature of the protagonist. All very valuable insight for me as the writer, but overkill in terms of the story. It was so bad that at the end of that diversion I had a space break to remind me it was time to get back to the plot.

Instead of a scalpel, I wielded a machete. The floor around my computer became littered with excised text. Adjectives, sentences, paragraphs, huge swaths of pages all went. Some of the writing was very precious. I remember writing those gleaming passages, but with several years of distance I found I was able to trim them with only slight twinges of regret.

By the end of my first pass, I was down to 4600 words. Well, then, I thought. Close, but no cigar. I told myself, “Self, it’s going to be very difficult to trim much more than that.”

Two days later, I took another whack at it, after rereading the critique from the helpful editor who had had enough faith in the core concept of the story to send me such detailed notes. As of this writing, I’m only halfway through the second revision, and the word count is at 3600. I’m sure that more will be cut before I tackle the next phase, which will be a procedure akin to plastic surgery to repair the grievous wounds I’ve inflicted on the prose. My machete left gashes and gaping holes. Coarse sutures are holding paragraphs together. My scalpel will come into play to trim, shape and mold, to remove the scars and join the text back together seamlessly, I hope.

Okay, I think I’ve stretched the medical metaphor as far as it will go. When I’m finished with the story, it will probably have crept back up a little, perhaps verging on 4000 words again, but whatever I add (post-op, so to speak) will be subtleties and nuance that give the story depth and—I hope—impact. No more blather.

Is there a take-home message? So often I’m not sure when I start writing one of these essays. It’s a vignette from my writing life. Take from it what you will. I had this lumbering story occupying my hard drive that was so bloated (too many words) that I couldn’t find many places to send it. With a little distance, I saw the skinnier, zippier, edgier story hiding inside and I hope that I’m managing to tease it out.

–by Bev Vincent

Whenever the subject of writer’s block comes up, I usually say that I don’t believe there’s any such thing. The answer to writer’s block is, quite simply, to write. Write something. Book reviews, essays, blog entries, anything.

However, I do believe there is such a thing as Writer’s Doldrums. The original Doldrums are regions in the oceans near the equator where the prevailing winds are calm. Sailors who ended up in the Doldrums could find themselves becalmed for days or weeks. They were also known as the “horse latitudes,” because mariners often ditched any livestock that might compete for dwindling food supplies aboard the stranded ships.

I’ve been in the doldrums for the better part of two months now. It’s not that I haven’t been able to write—I’ve completed an essay or two, several book reviews, and at least one short story. However, my output has dwindled compared to my norm.

Hurricane Ike was where it all began, ironically, since hurricanes originate in the Doldrums. For the better part of a week, our world was upended. We had no electricity or telephones for days. The place where I work was closed. We cooked meals outdoors on our gas stove and waited in long lines to get gasoline. Communicating with anyone proved difficult. We found creative ways to fill our waking hours, and retired when the sun went down rather than mess around with candles or gas lanterns. We listened to the news on the radio and marveled at the destruction.

Once the power returned, we gradually returned to our normal routines, except everything had been knocked off kilter. The wounds from that storm are still visible in the region. The root system of a massive tree that was unearthed in a neighbor’s yard remains visible. Office buildings downtown still have boarded up windows.

The election and the economic cataclysm have contributed to my listlessness. A medical situation involving a family member also turned things upside down for a while. It’s hard to concentrate on fiction amidst such turmoil.

Except for the days during the Ike aftermath when we had no power, I’ve dutifully gotten up each morning at the usual time when I do most of my writing, gone to the computer, and found numerous other things to do to occupy the time besides writing. I let two anthology deadlines slip past without getting anything together to submit to them, metaphorical horses tossed overboard. I didn’t miss any real deadlines—anything I was supposed to do, I did—but I wasted a lot of hours, too. Since my window for writing each day is comparatively small, it doesn’t take much of a distraction to have it whittled away to nothing.

I’ve been working on a new novel but, since it’s predecessor has been in limbo for a while because of my agent’s schedule, I couldn’t get myself motivated to tackle it with much enthusiasm. I’ve managed to write the first three chapters, but I’ve spent more time pushing those words around than in adding anything new to them. The plus side is that those three chapters are in pretty good shape but, given the amount of time I’ve spent on the manuscript, there should be more.

Last Saturday, I went to the Mystery Writers of America Southwest Chapter monthly luncheon, where the guest speaker was David Morrell. I’ve met him on a few occasions in the past, including sharing a table with him at the Stoker banquet a few years ago, and at NECON. His writing seminar at the Stoker weekend in L.A. was both inspirational and motivational, and his writing book—reissued with new material recently as The Successful Novelist—is also worthwhile reading for any practicing writer. I figured that if anything could put a little wind in my sails, it would be a pep talk from David Morrell.

I was right. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t come home from that luncheon and add more to the novel manuscript, or write a new short story, or outline the great novel. But I feel reinvigorated and ready to get to work on a number of projects. I have a short story under consideration for an anthology where an editor asked me to reconsider the ending. He didn’t give me any specific guidance, just an option to give it another shot. Given the theme of David’s talk this weekend—writing the books and stories we were meant to write based on the dominant emotions governing our lives that we need to come to terms with—I have a new appreciation for what that story is really about, and a new way to tackle the ending. After a suppertime discussion with my wife about another short story I’ve been ruminating over for several days now, the big picture concept fell into place, and I’m champing at the bit to start on it. And I’m looking forward to retackling my most recent novel, once I hear back from my agent with his report, hopefully in the next week or so.

I’m not completely out of the Doldrums, but I feel the winds stirring and they’re pushing me in the right direction. I don’t think I’m going to have to toss any more horses overboard. I’m going to do my best to take advantage of the trade winds while they’re being supportive.

by Bev Vincent

In his endnotes for the short story “N.” in Just After Sunset, Stephen King postulates that “everyone suffers OCD to one degree or another.” What does that have to do with submission tracking? I’ll get to that shortly.

I concur with King’s theory, though I would add that most people’s version of the disorder can be written off as mere quirks. I, for example, have a mild obsession with numbers. Even before the recent roller coaster ride on Wall Street, I monitored the Dow Jones values each day, and I keep tabs on the exchange rate between the US and Canadian dollars. When I’m at the gym, I watch the calorie counter and the heart rate monitor as much as I watch the TVs hanging in front of me.

Back in the 1990s, when I was cycling seriously, I kept a log that recorded my daily distance, time and calculated average speed. While I was riding, I focused on my rpm, changing gears to keep it in the 90-100 range.

Here’s one I picked up from my father: I keep a logbook in the car where I record the mileage and amount of gas at every fill-up. At one time, I used to enter that data into a spreadsheet and monitor mpg trends. It told me when I needed a tune-up clearer than anything else. My wife has given up asking me why I still keep track of that information. I can use the “tune-up” excuse, but that’s probably not the complete truth. I simply have a mild fixation with numbers. It doesn’t interfere with my life.

So, this is where it gets a little odd—if it isn’t weird already. I track my short story submissions four different ways.

The first thing I see when I enter my office is an erasable white board. It lists the short stories I currently have seeking homes, and the market they are with. I can tell at a glance when a story is fallow. When there are too many gaps in the right-hand column of that table, I make myself go on a submission spree. I usually try to get a story right back out again, as soon as I receive a rejection note, but sometimes other business makes me fall behind.

On the computer, I use a free download called Sonar 2. It allows you to enter markets, along with contact information, editor names, URLs, full guidelines, etc. and even has a feature that will print mailing labels for you, though I haven’t used that yet. I have my own special formula for preparing a postal submission, and haven’t found reason to deviate from it. The second part of the database lets you enter short stories. You can specify word count, genre, a synopsis, etc. These two lists meet when you match a story with a market. The front panel of the program displays a list of stories (sortable by different criteria) that shows how many days a story has been out or if it has been accepted/rejected, based on your latest update. If you make a sale, you can enter the amount and keep a running tally of income that way.

On the left-hand pullout tray on my writing desk, I keep a small spiral notebook. On each page I list a short story, its word count, and each new submission by date. When I get a response, I note the date. On the left-hand pages, I list possible markets for future submissions for that particular story. When I get a rejection, I can tell at a glance exactly where the story has been already so I don’t make the stupid mistake of sending a story to a market that has already rejected it.

Finally, I use Duotrope’s online submission tracker—but not for myself. I contribute to the database of response times to help build up that resource, which I use quite often to research new potential markets for stories. I never refer back to anything I enter.

Each of these tracking methods serves a different purpose, but it seems like overkill, doesn’t it? Perhaps a tad obsessive?

All I can say in my defense is that it works for me, and I never mind that I have to update information in four places each time I hear back from a submission. I wipe the market off the white board (or, in the happy case of acceptance, erase both the story and the market). In my spiral, I put a check or an X after the submission date and write in the current date. On my computer, I click the title of the story, click on the submission record, and check a box saying I’ve had a response. And, finally, I go online to Duotrope and add the submission and all pertinent information.

Many people develop their own homegrown ways of keeping track of submissions. If you’re looking for your own solution, maybe one of these methods will suit your purposes.

Or two.

Or three . . .