I should have said

There are times in our lives when we experience events for which we're not quite prepared. An hour, a day, or a week later we have that smack-the-head moment when we think, "What I should have said was--"

That's the nice thing about being a writer. Even though we can't go back in time and rewrite reality, we certainly can recreate that moment in our fiction and make ourselves--um, er--make our protagonist say the things we should have said. We can cut our antagonist to the bone, prevent our lover from walking out the door, or get that promotion.

From first submission to sale

Among the many things new writers want to know is how long it takes/how many submissions it takes to sell a short story. While there is no clear answer to that question, here's some info on my first 10 sales of the year.

In no particular order:

Story 1--first and only submission 12/23/7

Story 2--first and only submission 11/28/7

Story 3--first and only submission 1/10/8

Story 4--first and only submission 1/20/08

Story 5--first submission 4/17/4, two submissions

Story 6--first submission 4/2/3, four submissions

Story 7--first submission 11/2/3, two submissions

Story 8--first submission 2/27/00, seven submissions

Story 9--first submission 1/31/91, 23 submissions

Story 10--first submission 6/6/5, three submissions

Six stories sold to the first or second editor to see them. That's good.

Two sold to the third or fourth editor to see them. That's not bad.

One sold to the seventh editor to see it. That's dedicated marketing.

One story sold to the twenty-third editor to see it, 17 years after the first editor rejected it. That's just masochistic. How much rejection can one poor writer take before he gives up on a story?

6, 7, 8, 9, 10

I woke this morning to find e-mailed acceptances for five short stories,

Novel filler

During the past few days I've pushed the current novel up to 185 manuscript pages, but I stopped work on it last night to work on a short story, and I may stick with short stories and other projects for the next few days.

Why?

I felt like I was writing filler and not substantially adding to the work-in-progress. This was brought home to me by a page or so of dialog in a novel I'm reading that is little more than:

"You did it."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

It's written a little better than that, of course, and there's some description mixed in with the dialog, but it truly is filler material. The author is spinning her wheels and going nowhere. In a good short story, that same page-plus of bad dialog might be reduced to and summarized in a sentence or two:

After he accused her of stealing the money, she denied it. They argued for fifteen minutes, but came to no resolution.

(Note: I'm not advocating replacing dialog with summary, but I am advocating replacing bad dialog with good summary.)

Creativity breeds

I woke up this morning long before the alarm clock rang and wrote the opening page and some notes for a new novel. I basically know what needs to happen in the first several scenes, and I basically know how the story needs to end.

While being flush with ideas is beneficial in the long run, it's sometimes frustrating as well. I seem to generate the most ideas when I'm least able to use them. Because creativity breeds, the more creative I am, the more ideas I generate. Then I get frustrated because I don't have time to use all the ideas and write all the stories I want to write.

I guess it's better than having no ideas at all.

To novel or not to novel, that is the question

I am not a novelist. I am a short story writer. I feel lucky that the four short novels I've written have been published (two to good reviews), and, after placing more than 800 short stories since the beginning of my writing career, I feel confident that any short story I write has a strong likelihood of seeing publication.

But I also realize that short story writers, no matter how prolific, are often viewed as the red-headed step-children among creative writers. Novelists are the anointed ones.

I often wrestle with the realization that truly advancing my writing career will require me to write another novel. Or two. Or more.

But taking the time to write a novel means not writing short stories. So I must give up immediate income to work on a project that may or may not ever see publication and may or may not ever generate income. Despite occasional attempts to write another novel, I inevitably set aside whatever I'm working on and go for immediate gratification. After all, if I don't pay the bills I soon won't be writing anything.

Earlier this week, after e-mail discussions with a couple of fellow writers about projects we never finished or never sold, I decided to reassess one of my novels-in-progress.

In early 2006 I wrote 113 pages of a novel. I stopped work on it because a sudden influx of assignments kept me busy for the following several months.

Thursday and Friday I reread the manuscript and found that the first 100 or so pages held up well and that the last dozen pages were partial scenes, snippets of dialog, and notes on what was still to be written.

Because I am caught up on all of my assigned work, and because I had no social or family engagements scheduled for this weekend, I gave myself a challenge: Could I lock myself in and add at least 30 pages to the manuscript?

Apparently I could. I now have 169 pages--an increase of 56 pages in two days of non-stop writing. I haven't gone back to reread the new material, but my initial impression is that I've written a few great sentences, a line or two of snappy dialog, a couple of compelling scenes, and a whole lot of other stuff.

The first 148 pages are pretty much written straight through. The rest of the pages, as before, are partial scenes, snippets of dialog, and notes on what is still to be written. I now know how the novel ends and have notes on how to wrap up the primary plot and most of the sub-plots.

But I also have to face tomorrow, when I will once again find myself dealing with clients and assigned work that will fill much of my time for the coming weeks. I also have social and family obligations in the next few weeks that will further interfere with progress on this novel. I don't know when I will be able to devote more attention to this project.

What have I learned or what can I infer from this weekend?

1. If I devote three more weekends to this novel, and if I have the same level of productivity during each of those weekends, I will have a complete draft of a new novel.

2. If I do this again I will ensure that my kitchen is appropriately stocked with healthy food. I found myself drinking too much Mountain Dew and eating too much junk food (much of it left over from Super Bowl Sunday).

3. Music selection is important. For whatever reason, I found myself writing more while Matchbox 20 was blasting through the CD player than when Alanis Morissette was playing. The Moody Blues, Marilyn Manson, Deep Blue Something, and a compilation album containing rock'n'roll hits that feature cowbells all proved to be good background music, but not quite as effective as Matchbox 20.

4. When I wasn't writing, eating, or walking the dogs, I read. I alternated between a variety of magazines and a novel from the same genre as the one I'm writing. Reading in the same genre helped me maintain the voice I was striving for while reading the other publications kept me from becoming too insular.

5. I didn't answer the phone and I only responded to a couple of e-mails. I used the Internet to research things I needed for the novel and restrained myself as much as possible from surfing. Limiting distractions was clearly beneficial.

That's it. That's what I learned.

Now I need to find out what happened in the world while I was locked in.

Writing and Selling Confessions

Brazos Writers Workshop
March 8, 2008
Brazos Writers Workshop
Saturday, March 8, 2008 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
Location: College Station Conference Center, 1300 George Bush Drive, College Station, Texas
Tuition: $25 for Brazos Writers members, $30 for non-members
Check in, registration and continental breakfast at 8:30. Snacks throughout the morning.

Writing and Selling Confessions
Confession magazines publish hundreds of short stories each year and editors are hungry for new talent. Published in True Story, True Confessions, True Romance, and similar periodicals, confessions represent an ideal genre for beginning short story writers to break into publication and for experienced writers to expand their sales.

Michael Bracken, author of more than 150 confessions, will provide an overview of the genre at the Brazos Writers workshop scheduled for March 8 in College Station. He will describe what makes confessions unique and will lead workshop participants
through the steps necessary to generate appropriate story ideas, develop ideas into believable plots, draft genre-appropriate scenes, and, finally, prepare manuscripts ready for submission to confession editors. Many of the techniques described in the workshop can be applied to writing in other genres.

“Writing and Selling Confessions” is a hands-on workshop and participants should come prepared to actively participate in the process. For more information on the workshop or Brazos Writers, go to www.brazoswriters.org.
-------------------------------------------------
Please print:
Name __________________________________________________________
Street __________________________________________________________
City, State, Zip____________________________________________________
Phone __________________________________________________________
Email Address ___________________________________________________
Brazos Writers Member $25 ____________________
Non-member $30____________________
Join Brazos Writers $24____________________
Total____________________
Please return this form to Fidel Fernandez, treasurer, with your check.
Or mail to: Brazos Writers, PO. Box 4025, Bryan, TX 77805-4025
Registration will be taken at the door as well.

5

Yesterday I received my 5th acceptance of the year, so I'm only one acceptance behind my goal of one acceptance a week.

Anthologies dead

Earlier this week I learned that Wildside Press has decided not to publish my anthologies City Crimes, Country Crimes; Fedora 4; and Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes.

I just finished e-mailing the contributors to those anthologies, letting them know the bad news.

It wasn't fun.

Textbook on Writing

I was recently asked to contribute to a college textbook on writing, and I've spent more time on it this past week than I have on writing new fiction. Before I begin writing my section of the textbook, though, I'm trying to complete two tasks:

1) Provide a 75-word bio. This is tough. By cutting a little bit each day I've gotten my bio under 400 words. Only 325 more words to cut.

2) Answer seven questions about myself/my writing that the editors can combine with the responses from other contributors to create call-outs and/or sidebars. The editors have asked some thought-provoking questions, and I've been answering one question each evening as my last project before bed. Reflecting on why I do what I do and how I reached this point in my writing career has involved some unexpected and intense self-discovery. Kudos to the editors for challenging me like this.

4

I received my fourth acceptance of the year today, this one for another Easter-themed confession story.

Understanding rights

I'm constantly amazed at how few writers--especially beginning writers--comprehend copyright. Earlier today I posted the following simplified explanation as part of a discussion about anthology rights among members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society:

A "work-for-hire" situation means that the author NEVER owned any rights to the created work. All rights belong to the employer. For example, if you are employed by XYZ Corporation and part of your job is to write the company newsletter, the company owns what you wrote.

If you are an independent contractor and XYZ Corporation hires you to write their newsletter you may, or may not, enter into a work-for-hire agreement. If you do, the company owns what you wrote.

In an "all rights" situation, the author owns what she created and chooses, for whatever reason to sell ALL of those rights to another entity. Once the author has sold all rights to something, the new owner of those rights may use them in any way he sees fit without ever consulting the creator.

In many cases, writers sell or lease certain rights to another party. For example, the author might grant another party First North American Serial Rights. In other words, she grants a publishing company the right to be the "first" to publish a particular work in "North America" (that's Canada and the U.S.) in a "serial" publication (that's a usually magazine, but may also be a newspaper). Note that author retains a plethora of other rights, ranging from "second" N.A. rights (the right to reprint in North America), to "first," "second" and subsequent rights in other countries (Brazil, Australia, Japan, etc.) or regions (South
America, Europe, etc.) or languages (Chinese, French, Spanish, etc.) or formats (anthology, electronic, TV, radio, etc.).

Note that nothing in the quoted post mentions what rights are being transferred from the writer to the anthology editor or publisher. To presume that the examples are "work-for- hire" seems a bit extreme given the lack of information provided, and given the wide variety of rights exchanges that may, in fact, happen between a writer and an anthology editor or publisher.

First steps

I posted this in the comments section of Dennis G. Jerz's blog (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/) yesterday:

"I suspect one of the hardest things to teach beginning and early career writers is the difference between the 'art' of writing and the 'business' of publishing. I learned long ago--and much to my own dismay--that I was never going to be an 'artist' that other writers hold up as an example of literary brilliance, but I could be a 'businessman' who produces clean copy, meets deadlines, and works well with others. If I do all that on a consistent basis, my primary 'audience'--editors--will ensure that my work is seen by a broader audience."

Jerz teaches "Intro to Literary Study," "a course [...] designed to introduce students to the writerly and scholarly virtues (critical thinking, self-motivation, the writing process) they'll need to develop as English majors and as college students," at Seton Hill, so my comments took the conversation a few steps beyond the intent of his original blog post.

Even so, learning these things are important steps in the development of a writer, and steps that all of us who teach new writers--whether we teach in a formal classroom setting as Jerz does or in informal workshop settings as I do--need to keep in mind.

Good writing begins with clear thinking, or a strong ability and willingness to revise what muddled thinking has created until it becomes clear.

Good writing comes from self-motivation. For many people, writing is a chore that is assigned by others (a theme assigned by a teacher, a term paper assigned by a professor, a report assigned by a supervisor) and it is accomplished in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort. Writers, though, even when working on assigned material, find ways to self-motivate because the writing itself is what provides them with joy.

Good writing comes from established processes. While a million monkeys with a million typewriters working for a million days might accidentally create a work of sheer genius, it is more likely that a single writer who has mastered the processes of writing will do so. While we don't all use the same methods, we all have a process for generating ideas, a process for outlining our ideas, and a process for transforming our outlines into articles, essays, short stories, or novels.

As important as they are and as hard as they are to take, learning these things are only the first steps for someone whose ultimate goal is to become a professional writer.

And these steps cannot be skipped.

Recycled

MysteryNet continues to recycle stories, and one I sold them back in 1999--"Peas in a Pod"--recently reappeared as the January "Twist." It holds up pretty good.

Read "Peas in a Pod" at http://www.MysteryNet.com/twist/twist282/

Keynote Kudos

Seton Hill University is seeking a keynote speaker for this year's Writing Popular Fiction conference in Greensburg, PA.

The call for potential speakers includes this note: "Last year, Michael Bracken was the speaker and they absolutely LOVED him!"

If you're looking for a good conference to attend, try Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction conference. If you're looking for a good speaker for your conference, well, you know who Seton Hill would recommend...

2 & 3

My second and third acceptances of the year arrived in the same envelope today. One of the acceptances is for the story I wrote last Thursday.

Published

My story "Perfect Stranger" appears in the February True Love, which should be on newsstands now.

Leading workshop?

I am tentatively scheduled to lead "Writing and Selling Confessions," a 2-3 hour workshop, in Bryan/College Station, Texas, on Saturday, March 8. As soon as all the details are confirmed, I'll post more information.

1

I received my first acceptance of the year today. Since this is the 14th, it means I'm already a week behind schedule. I should have had two acceptances by now!

Rejections are good

I just received my first rejection of the year, and I see it as a good sign.

Early in a writing career, a rejection can mean most anything from "it wasn't right for us" to "your work sucks; quit writing and get a paper route."

But later in a career, a rejection is just as likely to mean "you tried something different and it didn't quite work" or "you're submitting beyond your skill level." And both of these are things we should be doing. We should be trying new things--different genres, different POVs, etc.--and we should be submitting to publications beyond our current level of accomplishment.

If we're consistently placing work with non-paying publications, we should be submitting regularly to the penny-a-word markets. If we've broken into the penny-a-word markets, we should be submitting to the nickel-a-word markets, then the dime-a-word markets, then the half-dollar-a-word markets, then the dollar-a-word markets. We should never be complacent with our status.

Me? I'd tried both at once--a story with a type of protagonist I don't usually write about submitted to a publication that represents the top-end of its genre. And my story was rejected.

In this case, the rejection is a good thing.

Even so, a sale would have been better.