Bev Vincent

– Bev Vincent

I received a surprising e-mail a few weeks ago from a grade eleven student at a magnet school in Nashville. As part of an English class on critical thinking, their teacher had assigned them my short story “One of Those Weeks” from the anthology From the Borderlands (originally Borderlands 5).

This isn’t the first time one of my stories has been read in an English class, but it’s the first time where I have absolutely no association with the teacher, the students, or the school. A couple of years ago, I was invited to speak to the Creative Writing class at the local high school. My daughter graduated from that school, so I knew the teacher. There was a connection that led to that speaking gig. In that case, the class read “Harming Obsession,” and I enjoyed the opportunity to speak with them about the story and answer their questions. In this recent situation, however, I have no idea whatsoever what led the teacher to pick my story.

Here’s the part of the essay where I digress from my message and harp on something we repeat over and over, often without feeling like we’ve conveyed the message. From the Borderlands was a Time Warner paperback. I don’t know its sales figures, but it spent one glorious week on the USA Today Top 150 Books list, coming in at #82. I used to see the book in airports all the time, and even found it on the shelf at our local grocery store. In brief, it got serious distribution. I’d be willing to bet that more people saw this story than saw all of my other stories at that point combined. Though none of us got rich off that project, this was an instance of real exposure. An editor called me up to ask whether I had a novel.

And a class several states away studied my story in their class. The students were asked to come up with theories about the meaning of its ending. They presented numerous interpretations of the story, some of them intriguing to me because they certainly weren’t in my conscious mind when I wrote it—but whose to say that I wasn’t thinking that way at some level?

The student who volunteered to contact me believed it was possible that I had written the story primarily to create the type of discussion and thinking they were undertaking. That gave me a lot more credit than I was due—though I didn’t tell them that.

I was more than happy to take some time to respond to the e-mail and subsequent letter to discuss the story with the class. However, in formulating my answer, I discovered that the story meant something different to me now than it did at the time I wrote it. I identified a subtext that seemed obvious, but one that I’d never considered before.

My daughter is an English/Creative Writing major at university so, over the past few years, I’ve had the chance to read her essays on the subject of interpretation, and on the various intents of works. There is the author’s intent, and the interpretation that each reader assigns to the text, all equally valid, and finally there is the abstract notion of the story’s intent, as if it had a consciousness of its own. Until recently, I dismissed that concept as effete intellectualism, the realm of lit. crit. researchers looking for high-minded concepts to make themselves seem important.

By revisiting “One of Those Weeks” several years after it was written, edited, revised and published, I discovered that the story might indeed have its own intent as an entity separate from me, the author. One of the best encapsulations of the story I read came from a reviewer, who was able to summarize its essence in a cleverly crafted and insightful sentence. I liked that analysis so much that I’ve often used it when discussing the story.

However, in 2008, five years after the story first appeared, I see in it something completely different. Things that I’ve experienced in the interim opened my eyes to new interpretations of something I wrote before having those experiences. It still all sounds a little artsy-fartsy to me, but I’m more of a believer in the story as an abstract entity than before.

Try rereading some of your older works, even if you think you’re completely familiar with them. You might discover that your past self can send a message through time to your present self. It’s surprising and delightful when that happens.

 

 

– Bev Vincent

I have published something on the order of fifty short stories since I began writing seriously at the beginning of the millennium. Some of the early stories appeared in what are disparagingly referred to as “for the love” (or “4theLuv”) markets. A few were published in “royalty only” anthologies (which are but a smidgen better than 4theLuv markets in that in rare cases some of them have delivered a pittance in revenue—my current record is about $18). Most of the recent ones have appeared in professional markets, some with distribution to tens or hundreds of thousands of readers.

Every now and then, someone asks me when I’m going to release a collection. Choosing from among those fifty stories (plus the twenty or so that are currently seeking homes), I could probably put together a decent volume of my short fiction. Over the past few years, I’ve been approached by reputable small press publishers to do just that.

A couple of years ago, when I was in New York on vacation with my family, I had lunch with my literary agent. Among the topics on our agenda to discuss was a then-recent proposal to do a collection. When I broached the subject, he asked me what I thought it would do to grow my readership. In other words, who would buy this collection beyond people who already knew of my work, either by direct exposure or by reputation?

As much as I would love to see a handsome volume, artfully designed by a specialty press, with an eye-catching cover illustration and a signature page for my John Hancock, I got his point. He was looking at the big picture of a career in publishing, versus the quick and easy gratification of a limited edition.

Single-author collections are a hard sell, especially for an unknown author like me. No mainstream publisher is going to release a collection of my stories, and few people are going to splurge on a $30-$50 small press edition from someone they’ve never read before—assuming they hear about the book in the first place. The total print run would logically be something on the order of 250 copies, enough to satisfy the people already familiar with my writing and maybe a handful of others. As my agent asked, how would that expand my readership? The book might satisfy readers looking for more of my work, but what would it do for me?

Instead of rushing into faster but lower-reaching deals to get a novel or a story collection in print, I’ve decided to be patient. I’m not young—but I’m not exactly old, either, so I have time to improve my skills and come up with something that New York wants to publish. Maybe it will be the novel my agent is currently reviewing, or maybe it won’t be until three or four more manuscripts down the line. Maybe ten—who knows?

Perhaps I have delusions of grandeur, or think more highly of my writing than reality might suggest, but I have decided, for better or for worse, to aim as high as possible for my books. Perhaps I have the luxury of doing this because I’ve already had my ego fulfilled by publishing one book through a mainstream publisher. If I never succeed at that level with my fiction, at least there’s that.

If I were to achieve some success with novels, then it might be time to think about a story collection, when it could actually appeal to a wider group of people who’ve heard my name, perhaps read things about my work, and want to test out my writing in smaller doses than committing to a novel. That could actually benefit my career. All in a best-case universe, of course. There are many hurdles to leap before that joyous day. I accept the possibility that some of these hurdles may be insurmountable.

This essay was inspired in part by a recent discussion about authors who may have published too early—writers who appear content to only publish in the small press, or who seem too impatient to try to break out at a higher level. I’ve given the subject a lot of thought over the past few years. Robert McCammon ultimately withdrew his first four books because he felt he had been published too soon, when he was still learning his craft. I’m not sure I agree with his assessment of his early novels, but I respect the high standards he has decided to set for himself.

As I said, maybe I’m deluding myself about the potential for my writing. My agent doesn’t think so, which is encouraging. Everyone in this business has different goals, different reasons for doing what they do. Different needs they want to have met. I already have a shelf full of anthologies that prove to my ego that I can be published. My goal at this point (subject to change without notice) is to continue to be published well.

A few weeks ago, I read the submission guidelines for a small press anthology. I’d never heard of the publisher, but a superficial search told me they’d been in business for a couple of years and had published some books, including one by an author whose name I vaguely recognized.

It wasn’t a pro-paying gig, but they offered moderate compensation in advance, and the premise intrigued me enough that I started adapting an old, uncirculated story to suit their guidelines.

Then I did a little more research. I visited the publisher’s website and was dismayed at what I saw. The introductory sentence was a disaster, both structurally and grammatically. The pages were riddled with poor grammar, misspelled words and amateurish writing.

Worse, the layout of some pages was horrendous. In one place, there was a narrow column of fully justified text down the middle of a page, leaving abnormal gaps between words.

If their web content was this poorly edited, what type of editorial oversight would stories in their anthology receive—let alone simple proofreading? And what would one of their books look like if this was someone’s idea of an attractive design? Not having seen any of their books, I can’t say. Maybe the web site was an anomaly. However, I wasn’t encouraged.

I dug deeper to see what others were saying about the press. I stumbled across some unflattering information that made me decide I didn’t want to be associated with that publisher. Was I being overly judgmental? Perhaps. I just knew that I had this queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and when that happens I pay attention. It’s like the situation I found myself in several years ago when I received an acceptance letter from one of those agents we all learn through experience or lore to avoid. Tempting as the offer was, my instincts told me something was rotten in Denmark.

A few months ago, I learned that the publisher of an anthology containing one of my stories had agreed to publish works that I considered of dubious merit and questionable taste. I was displeased at the thought that our anthology might be lumped together with this other work simply because they came from the same publisher. Guilt by association. In that situation, there wasn’t much we could do to distance ourselves from the publisher. We were already part of the stable. We could only commiserate, and request that the publisher not use our names to promote his business.

A character in a novel I read recently had four rules for success. The final one was: “Never go into business with someone you wouldn’t want to wrestle naked in bed.” That’s a little extreme—and easy for him to say since he was working with his wife—but pithy sayings like this often reveal an underlying truth. Though a short story sale is essentially a financial transaction between two people who know absolutely nothing about each other, does or should personality or character enter into it? Should an editor refuse a story from an author who says atrocious things on a message board, for example? Are there publishers you wouldn’t want to be associated with because an employee has a questionable past or because they’ve purchased stories from someone with a dubious reputation?

I have a reputation. We all do—and we probably each have different reputations with different groups of people. We don’t always actively seek to create these reputations—they’re a consequence of our actions and statements—though some people do go out of the way to generate a certain reputation, especially people who like to be thought of as edgy or controversial.

As a writer, I try to always meet deadlines, respond to editorial requests promptly, return galleys corrections on time and be generally easy to work with. I never want to be the reason something falls behind schedule. I want to cultivate a reputation as someone easy to work with so that editors will be favorably inclined to work with me again in the future.

Online, I try to avoid getting involved in messy fights and flame wars. I have opinions about a lot of things—I just don’t feel compelled to share them very often. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve been tempted to respond to something, have actually gone so far as to compose a response, and then canceled out of the editor.

That probably makes me a little invisible and unmemorable on message boards, but that suits me just fine. Better that than to stand out because of something lame, annoying, thoughtless or volatile I’ve said. That might turn me into the kind of person other writers would feel uncomfortable appearing with in a table of contents.

–by Bev Vincent

I’ve written about this subject before in On Writing Horror as part of an essay on marketing myths. However, I thought a real-life example might help drive a message home.

Four years ago, I read a call for submissions for a royalty-only e-anthology. If there’s anything you should run from faster than a royalty-only anthology, it’s a royalty-only e-anthology.

“Royalty only” means you don’t get paid up front for your story. You are promised a pro-rated percentage of a fraction (typically 50%) of the total proceeds from sales. In theory, that sounds promising. If the book sells a thousand copies at $10 each, you’ll be getting a cut of $5000. Assume twenty authors in the book and all stories roughly the same length, and you’re looking at about $250, not bad for a short story.

The problem is, very few anthologies sell a thousand copies—especially those from the small press. A hundred copies is more like it. My largest royalty check for this type of anthology is $18.00. Not quite as attractive as $250, right? And that’s the largest check by an order of magnitude. I have received two checks for one anthology in the amounts of $1.05 and $0.87 respectively. Laughing all the way to the bank, I tell you. And when you translate that into the number of eyeballs on the page, well, it’s a sad, sad situation, as Elton John once said. I’m not going to get into the debate between writing for art or for visibility versus filthy lucre here. (If you want to read a recent debate about pay rates and professionalism, read through this recent thread on Shocklines.) Suffice to say that I like getting paid for my work. It’s one of my favorite things. I also like to have my stories read.

If print anthologies are a tough sell, e-anthos are worse. The rumored wave of online readers has yet to materialize, and the demise of books—printed books—has not yet come to fruition. People are staying away from electronic books in droves. If an e-anthology falls in the wood, no one will read it. (At least no trees were sacrificed.) Your precious story will be “lightly published” at best, and first serial rights are gone forever. Any subsequent appearances will perforce be as reprints, and you’re not likely to get $250 for one of those.

Naïve as I was, I wrote a story for the anthology, submitted it, had it accepted, and had the gumption to feel proud of the accomplishment. I wish I could plead youth and foolish innocence, but the truth is, I wasn’t all that young. Foolish, perhaps. Innocent, arguably, at least in the ways of the publishing world. Desperate, more like—desperate for publication credits and willing to sacrifice any number of things to get there. I bought into the belief that you had to work your way up the ladder by starting small as you learned your craft instead of learning your craft and then aiming high.

However, as it turned out, fate had other plans for my story and me. The publisher behind the e-anthology closed up shop and the editor returned the story rights to me. What was once accepted became unaccepted, and I had the story back in my grubby little paws, unviolated.

Remarketing stories written for theme anthologies can be problematic. I didn’t know what to do with the story, so it stayed in my filing cabinet for a while. Dormant, but not dead. A year or two later, I saw the guidelines for a no-entry-fee contest (the best kind) that I thought the story might fit, but only after some fairly major reconstruction. For one thing, my story was set in the wine district of Australia. The contest mandated that the stories be set in New England. I needed a wine district, mountain overlooks and a beach. Fortunately, after a little research, I was able to find all of these where I needed them. A complete rewrite also removed many of the elements I included in the original version to make it fit the anthology theme. A complete rewrite also improved the prose. A different story went off to the contest. I had high hopes—I always do.

Unfortunately, the story didn’t win. However, the contest organizer informed me that several judges had rated my story highly. That gave me more confidence, so I printed out a fresh copy and aimed high.

Last week, I received an acceptance letter from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I have a list of top-tier markets, places I’ve dreamt about being published. Cemetery Dance magazine was one, and I’ve had the good fortune to publish both fiction and non-fiction in that periodical. Others on the list include Asimov’s, F&SF, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine…and EQMM.

What do these dream venues all have in common? They’re pro markets, true, but there are a decent number of those around. These are pro markets that have been around for years. Decades in many cases. And they have significant circulations. That means visibility. That means exposure. Don’t let any other type of market seduce you with the promise of “payment in exposure.” The only place where you’ll get serious exposure is in a book or magazine that appears on the shelves in your local bookstore or is sent to a large subscriber database. Your readership will instantly expand far beyond the people who read only small press publications. People from Seattle to Key West and San Diego to Presque Isle (look it up) who like crime fiction will have the opportunity to read my story. Tens of thousands. EQMM, launched in 1941, is the longest-running mystery digest of all time and has a circulation of nearly 200,000.

That’s so much better than the six people who might have paid to download the e-anthology that never was. Including four friends, a guy I work with. And me, of course.

In 2000, I was just getting underway as a writer. I was a member of an online critique group and starting to gain enough confidence to submit my short fiction. I heard that an online magazine called The Harrow was having a Halloween contest with $50 and publication as prizes. A few days later, I saw an episode of 60 Minutes or 20/20 when I saw a segment about an obsessive compulsive disorder called “harming obsession.” While I watched, all I could think was: What would happen to a person with this disorder if he was out driving on Halloween night? And thus was born the story that follows.

The story took first place in the contest, and was published online with a neat illustration by GAK. It was later reprinted in the anthology Octoberland (Flesh and Blood Press, 2002) and was my first fiction appearance in Cemetery Dance magazine. It’s one of the stories that has generated the most response from readers of all my short works. I thought it was time to share it for Halloween.

Without further ado, here is “Harming Obsession.” A podcast version, read by me, is also available at Podango. Comments appreciated.

Harming Obsession

By Bev Vincent

It had been a gentle bump.

A small jolt.

Surely too minor to have been caused by a child.

So many small children were running around on this dark night, though. What if it had been a child and not a pothole or a cardboard box?

It could have been a child. In the darkness, the trick-or-treaters were well camouflaged by their black vampire and witch costumes.

It could have been.

What if it was?

What if?

This wasn’t the first time Victor thought he might have hit someone with his car. Every time—and there were days when it happened on a dozen or more occasions—he had to go back to the scene to convince himself it was only his imagination.

His compulsion.

Sometimes he spent fifteen or twenty minutes combing through ditches and hedges, adrenaline rushing through his veins, awash in guilt at the possibility that he might have carelessly caused a death. Often he returned a second or third time to reassure himself that he hadn’t overlooked something.

Victor stopped the car in the middle of the road. He had never struck anyone. Every time he went to look, there was no evidence of an accident.

What if it had been real this time? All those other times didn’t matter. What if a child cloaked in a dark costume, too preoccupied with tricks and treats to pay attention, had gotten too close to his car? What if—even now—he or she lay in the road behind him, a small body surrounded by candy that had tumbled out of a plastic orange jack-o-lantern?

Bleeding, suffering, dying?

The more Victor thought about it, the more convinced he became that it hadn’t been a simple bump in the road. It felt different.

It must have been a child.

So many of them out tonight, and they weren’t paying attention. They never did, but especially not tonight. It made driving nerve-racking.

He swore under his breath as his heart throbbed in his ears. Why was he out here on a night like this? It was crazy. Eleanor knew how he got when he was driving, but she had insisted. They were running low on candy, and it was up to him to get more.

His hands clutched the steering wheel while sinews stood out on either side of his neck. Sweat beaded on his brow, even though it was one of the coldest autumn nights yet. Risk of frost, the forecast had said, and here he was sweating in his car.

Resigned to the inevitable, Victor opened the door and stepped into the brisk night. His flashlight was in a pocket on the driver’s door where he always kept it. This wasn’t the first time he had needed to search the roadside in the dark.

It probably wouldn’t be the last.

It’s just my OCD talking, he chided himself. His therapist encouraged him to stop fighting the obsessive-compulsive disorder by talking back to it to remove its power over him, but that hadn’t worked. “Harming obsession” was the official diagnosis. “Hit ‘n Run” disease. He knew that a chemical imbalance in his brain was responsible for his feelings of guilt over something that hadn’t happened.

Probably hadn’t happened.

But what if? It was possible, wasn’t it?

And the bump had felt . . . different.

It could easily have been a small child, crushed beneath his back wheel, now lying mangled on the roadside.

Victor turned on the flashlight and swept its intense beam back and forth across the street. He looked under the car to make sure that the child wasn’t trapped beneath, caught in the muffler or the axle.

Nothing.

Nearby, a gaggle of costumed kids trick-or-treated from one house to the next, a jumble of legs, candy sacks and laughter.

No one paid attention to him as he continued his search, flashing the light over the median strip, which was covered with bushes and plants. The deep shadows among them could easily hide a child’s crushed figure.

No blood, no body.

He pushed his way through the hedges to the other side of the median for fear that he had struck the child hard enough to throw him or her all the way across the street.

Nothing.

He searched the same places again from the opposite direction, in case he had missed something. Back at the car, he looked underneath again.

Nothing.

His heart rate gradually returned to normal and a chill seeped into his bones. He chuffed a lungful of air and watched his breath vaporize.

Another false alarm. He got back into the car and slipped the flashlight into the door pocket.

An automobile horn beeped gently behind him as lights flashed across his rearview mirror. He was blocking the lane. Victor waved into the mirror, started the engine and continued down the street toward the convenience store.

The return trip was excruciating. Children scurried everywhere. Victor drove at a crawl, trying to focus his concentration on the street and his driving, but was continually distracted by the small people milling around on the sidewalks and at street crossings. They were so close to him. The exterior of the car chassis felt huge while at the same time the interior constricted around him.

The convenience store was a little over two miles from Victor’s house—not so convenient as all that, he raged—and it had taken him fifteen minutes to cover only half the distance back home. Walking might have been just as fast. He had stopped four times so far to look under his car, to sweep the road behind him after feeling a bump.

His mind raced. Still another mile to go. He was tempted to pull over, leave the car where it was and walk back home. Eleanor could come and get the blasted thing herself in the morning. It was her fault he was out here, after all.

Damned candy.

Huge raindrops ricocheted off the windshield, increasing rapidly to a steady drizzle. Victor shivered as he imagined spending the next twenty minutes or more plodding home through the frigid rain.

The windshield wipers scraped and moaned as he reduced his speed further and continued down the dark street.

Ahead, lights gleamed. In the darkness, compounded by the streaking rain on the windshield, Victor couldn’t be sure of their color. They seemed to be flashing. Red and blue. An accident?

The lights came from the opposite lane, across the median. As he drew close, he recognized the surroundings. It was where he had first stopped earlier this evening to search for an accident victim.

He had been right!

Deep inside, he had known he was right this time. Vindication gave him a perverse feeling of elation. All those times, stopping and checking, searching, crawling under the car, poking in the bushes, were suddenly validated. He wasn’t crazy after all.

He pulled onto the edge of the road and sat behind the wheel with the engine running, his wipers dragging across the windshield.

A fire truck, an ambulance and a tow truck had gathered at the scene in addition to the two police cars. Automobiles were backed up as far as he could see in the opposite direction. It had been over half an hour since he’d passed by this spot, so traffic had been tied up for a long time.

What should he do? Part of him wanted to go to the police, turn himself in, proclaim his guilt. He could see himself doing that. He could also see the crowd turning on him. He had left a small child to die in the cold, dark street, rain pelting off her foam-rubber Halloween mask. He could picture rain puddled around her little body—he was sure it was a girl—as dissolving candy dyed the water red and purple.

He couldn’t see how he had missed the girl’s body, though. He had searched thoroughly. Three times, no less. Still, what was done, was done. He’d hit and he had run.

Now he needed to see if he was going to get caught.

Sitting on the roadside was probably not the best strategy to avoid the attention of the police. He put the car into gear and eased forward again.

As he drew even with the accident scene, he tried to adopt an appropriate mixture of interest and indifference. If he ignored the accident altogether, that would certainly be noticed and marked. If he showed too much interest, that, too, would be suspicious.

Only when the wrecker maneuvered to hook up to a damaged car did Victor realize that this was not a hit-and-run scene but rather a routine traffic mishap. One car had rear-ended another. Quite solidly, from the look of it. The hood of the rearmost car was badly buckled. Someone—perhaps the driver—stood on the roadside holding a towel to his forehead. In the brilliant beam from a police car floodlight, he thought he could see blood on the towel.

The scene gripped Victor’s attention. His mind raced. He hadn’t run anyone down!

He was so obsessed with the accident scene, a scene for which he was not responsible, that he wandered from his lane and brushed against the median curb. The front wheel scraped along the prominent concrete ridge, twisting the steering wheel in his hands. He fought to maintain control as the car jerked suddenly toward the ditch. Finally he straightened out, thankful that there had been no vehicles in the other lane. He had probably scraped the hell out of his front hubcap, but he was back in control.

He looked back at the accident scene, watching it as he eased along in the rainy darkness. The flashing lights reflected in his side and rearview mirrors, growing fainter in the gloom.

The car didn’t handle well on the rest of the trip home, but at least he didn’t have any more illusions that he had run someone down. The road was slick but smooth and there were no potholes or speed bumps to induce that gripping, inescapable certainty that he had hit someone.

He had likely inflicted significant damage on his car, though. Thrown the front end out of alignment, perhaps even ruined something in the undercarriage. His muffler, maybe, or the oilpan. He surveyed the array of gauges around the speedometer, but no warning lights were illuminated.

Tomorrow would be plenty of time to worry about that. He could take the car to the garage and get it checked out in the light of day.

He pulled into the driveway, slammed the transmission into park, grabbed the sack of candy from the seat beside him and locked the door as he got out.

The cold, unforgiving drizzle made Victor clutch his coat tightly around him as he walked the ten feet to the back door and its protective canopy. Jack-o-lanterns grinned back at him ghoulishly from the railing, the candles within fighting to stay alive against the rain and growing wind.

He opened the front door, stripped off his wet jacket and greeted the warmth within the house.

How good to be home after such an excruciating ordeal.

In the driveway, rainwater gathered around the wheels of his car.

The puddles on the driver’s side were slowly turning purple and green as candy spilling from the shredded pumpkin pail caught in the undercarriage dissolved.

On the passenger side, the water slowly turned crimson.

– Bev Vincent

Ever try to push a rope? Much more difficult than pulling one, isn’t it?

Several years ago, Stephen King conducted an experiment. He picked up a long-dormant story and started posting it in installments on his web site. The hype around the story of The Plant focused on the marketing aspect: King sold it on the honor system, $1 per installment. If a high enough percentage of downloaders didn’t pony up, he would stop publishing the story, which he figured was sufficient incentive. The message for those who took the story without paying: oooh, you stole a dollar. Big time thieves.

Publishing a story while he was writing it wasn’t new to King. He’d done the same thing a few years earlier with The Green Mile. The first installment appeared in print before he had finished writing the final installments. He was on a high wire, and everyone was watching to see if he’d fall.

He didn’t. Not with The Green Mile. But The Plant was a different story. In that case, he simply ran out of inspiration. In an interview he later said that instead of the story pulling him along, he felt like he was pushing the story.

Last weekend I started a new short story. It was for a loosely themed anthology with an impending deadline. I’d had the guidelines on my desk for weeks and had already gathered research material for what I thought the story was going to be about. Discovering how close the deadline was, I decided it was time to get my rear in gear and write something.

On Saturday morning, I sat at my desk and did the usual tomfoolery before starting to write (including playing backgammon against a fiendish program that snickers at me when it gets a good roll—it cheats, I swear). Then I launched Word.

I had a vision of the opening scene, nothing more. That didn’t bother me. I often start stories with nothing more—and I have the detritus of dozens of failed attempts on my hard drive to prove it.

I wrote about 250 words, then allowed myself to get distracted. I read e-mail, and browsed the news online. Played more backgammon. Went back to the document, read what I’d written, tweaked it a little, and added another hundred words or so. Moved a few sentences around. Got distracted again. And so on.

By the end of the afternoon, I had maybe two pages. All bad. I couldn’t figure out where the story was going or what the characters were doing. I felt like I was trying to goad a reluctant teenager into doing yard work when he wanted to go out with his friends. If it had been homework, I might have awarded myself a D for effort, though it would have deserved nothing better than an F.

After I went to bed that night, I had a flash, inspired by something I’d just read. I saw a new way to approach the story. I crawled out of bed, fumbled in the darkness for my ledger and went to another room to jot down a few notes. However, instead of simply writing notes, I ended up composing the first two pages of the story. I went back to bed and immediately envisioned the next few paragraphs. Afraid they would vaporize in my dreams, I got up again and jotted them down as well. The story got me up four times that night before it allowed me to go to sleep.

The next morning, I transcribed my scrawled prose and liked what I saw. I made some revisions, and then I was off. No procrastination. No backgammon. By the end of the day I had 1500 words and, after another round of revisions, a total of 2500 words within 24 hours.

Monday night I experienced another bout of pre-sleep inspiration and got up at least six times to jot notes on the ending of the story, as well as writing specific sentences and paragraphs. By Tuesday, I had a 3500-word first draft.

I realize now I’d been trying to push the rope instead of pulling it. Trying to force a story I didn’t particularly care about. Said another way, on Saturday morning I was on the outside of a story trying to look in to discover what was going on, whereas from Saturday evening on, I was inside the story, occupying the main character, and looking out at the fictional world through his eyes. In one case I was voyeur; in the other, participant. Saturday was pure frustration; Sunday was bliss.

That I was still constructing my fictional world on the fly didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was letting the story tell itself to me—an act of discovery instead of an act of conscious creation.

When I find myself wrestling with a story, I step away from the computer to figure out what’s going wrong. More often than not, the answer is that I’m trying too hard to tell a story rather than getting inside the characters and letting events unfold around them. The process works much better when the reluctant teenager wants to help instead of being forced to do something he hates.

When I understand the situation and the character dilemma, it’s easier to decide what’s going to happen and how the characters will react. They have a firm grip on the rope and drag me along with them. I simply take notes and chronicle their journey, which is much more fun than trying to push that rope—and far more satisfying, too.

(Note: This essay is also available as an audio podcast from iTunes or direct from the Storytellersunplugged podcast channel )