Tag Archives: Writing

Bookmaking

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In March of 2017, I started to write again, ending a two-year drought. I wrote stories to submit to magazines and anthologies, and I wrote stories for the writing contest I love to play in. When I got booted from the contest, and when I got tired of rejection letters, I came to a crossroads. I was finding that I really love to write, but I couldn’t just write for no reason, I needed a goal. I needed a story idea. And so, a year ago, I decided I was going to write a novel. I didn’t know what it was going to be about or what was going to happen in it, but I figured I’d work through that as it became necessary. 

Four months later, I found myself at another crossroads. I was almost done with my novel, and I really loved the act of writing. What should I do? It turned out I should write the sequel. And again, three months later. And so, as of this writing, I’ve got four completed novels, and I’m well into my fifth. 

They’re not very good. I don’t mean that the writing’s bad or that I’m a bad writer in general (I happen to think I’m pretty good at it), but writing my way, i.e. not knowing how a chapter is going to end when I start it, has been described in every article, blog, and podcast as the wrong way to write a novel. I don’t really do recognizable character arcs—my main character does the thing because it’s the right thing, and she’s the most qualified to do it, and she doesn’t really change. I simply think of something that fits the characters and situations and might present a challenge, and I run with it.  

Also, I have too much dialogue. Every editor I’ve ever encountered has told me I write too much dialogue. So fuck those guys, I’m writing for me. 

I’m considering publishing on Amazon, but that’s a lot of work for what will ultimately be very little reward. And I’m utterly incapable of promoting myself, so that’s something I need to figure out before I take that leap. 

So, long story short, if you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to, it’s been me and my fountain pens living in an urban fantasy world with spirits-demons and fairies and gods and the corporation that secretly controls the country. Who knows, maybe you’ll get to see it someday. 

YARGH!

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So about a year ago, I stopped sending query letters out for my novel. I had a lot of reasons for this, like, for example, LJ Idol, but mostly it was because the rejections were getting increasingly discouraging. A few months later I began to send out short stories in earnest, and have lately begun to get positive results. 

Recently I have been encouraged (long story) to query a particular publishing house with the full-length book. I’ve written a killer, double-triple-quadruple-checked cover letter and included the first five thousand words in the e-mail, as per the submission guidelines. 

And I got the yips, bad. The e-mail is in my drafts folder right now, waiting for me to hit the [send] button, but I physically can’t bring myself to hit the [send] button. This is such an important, personal project to me, and another rejection—particularly after all that (long story) encouragement is going to break my heart. 

But if I don’t hit the [send] button, they won’t have the opportunity not to reject it … 

YARGH! I am driving me nuts! 

Who Writes This Craps?

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So I’ve been thinking about gambling. For example, there’s craps. I’m not 100 percent certain of the rules, but I do know that it’s a game of chance: you throw a pair of dice, and they need to land with a certain series of numbers facing up.  

So let’s say you’re in a ritzy casino, and you’re wearing your finest tux or gown—whichever way you swing, really. You clutch the dice in a loose fist, shake your wrist, and toss them onto the table.  

It comes up exactly as you want it.  

The crowd cheers, you do a little fist pump, place another bet, do another shake, and toss another toss. 

Again, you get exactly what you’re shooting for. 

You do another fist pump, make another bet, shake, and toss. 

For a third time, you win. 

You’re on fire. You scoop up the dice, blow on them for luck, and throw. 

That little gust of wind from your lips has to control the movement of your arm, the ricochet of those little cubes off of your fingers, and the angle it flies out of your hand. It has to guide the distance and number of tumbles it takes, factoring in wind resistance. Once on the table, it needs to balance the pressure of impact, followed by the amount of bounces and turns until the friction of the table brings the dice to a halt. Long story short, luck has a lot of work to do. 

This occurred to me this morning as I received a third acceptance letter (yay me!) for a short story. To understand how awesome this felt, you have to be aware of the way I treat publishing. For the past year, I’ve been sending out to magazines and anthologies about a submission a week, and I’ve been getting responses a little less frequently than that. My first acceptance letter came in August of 2014. My second came six weeks ago, after dozens of rejections. And now I have a third, with only one rejection between it and the last one. So when I received the “We’re very happy to say you’ve been accepted …” email this morning, I said to myself, “I am on a hot streak, baby!”  

My second thought was, “Easy there, buddy.” 

I currently have eleven stories out there in the ether, and two (almost) back-to-back acceptances don’t change the odds of publication for any of them. “Well, what does change the odds?” I asked myself. 

Well, assuming I’m a decent enough writer (I like to think I am), then the answer is nothing. An unsolicited piece of writing is affected by any number of factors. 

My pieces tend to run humorous—but what if the editor had been looking for something more serious? I write almost exclusively female protagonists—but what if the editor is a tiny bit misogynistic? I’m not crazy about fairies—but what if fairies are cool at the moment? What if the editor is in a bad mood? What if the editor checked his or her email after a liquid lunch? How many other entries are there? What if mine gets caught in the spam filter? I have no control over any of this. 

And so, when I sent out another piece today, I thought of it not as an act of talent and skill, but rather as a die-roll. And oddly enough, this makes me feel pretty good about it. 

When the Abyss DOESN’T Gaze Back

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I was asked by an agent, whose curiosity was piqued, to send in my full manuscript and give her six to eight weeks to read it. Nine weeks later, I checked in. I was told to wait a couple more weeks. And so, about five days ago, which wrapped up week twelve, I followed up again. This time: nothing. 

Getting a rejection is one thing. It hits you like a punch to the gut, but it only lasts seconds. After that, you have to decide to do next: give up or get up? Does nobody care about your baby, or does somebody somewhere—just not this particular person? How much pain are you willing to endure*? 

I’ve had a few rejections of my writing. Quite a few, actually—professional and personal. Most of us creative types don’t have a lot of confidence to begin with. A large percent of why we do this is validation**. Rejections often make me question my talent and my purpose. And when it stings really, really badly, I still continue to put myself out there, even if it’s just out of sheer momentum.  

But this… this is new to me. And I don’t know what to do with it. I’m frustrated, disappointed, and heartbroken. I just need to let this agent go. Someone somewhere wants to love my baby, I think—just not this person. 

_____ 

* This isn’t a rhetorical “man-up” pep-talk question, by the way. There does come a point that soaking up these blows to the ego is just plain unhealthy. Walking away when you can’t take anymore doesn’t make you any less of a person, no matter what Hollywood says. 

** The rest is “We just kind of have to.” 

An Open Letter to a Freelancer

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As you may know, I, along with ten others, am being featured in a crowd-funded fiction anthology. More than enough money was made to get it printed and pay the authors, and so The Editor got the idea to hire illustrators to do their takes on each of the stories. The talent works with each other at their own discretion, because really, it’s the publisher and not the author who contracts and pays The Artist. 

There appears, in my story, a small “twist” that feeds into what I believe is the overall theme of the work; the problem is, it’s actually kind of a challenge not to spoil that twist. I reached out The Artist and mentioned that this was something I was worried about. The Artist didn’t respond to me … well, The Artist sort of did respond, but only sort of … more on that below, in the text of the letter. 

The completed piece arrived, and it was a snapshot of a scene, with a major error, as well as a flagrant blowing-off of that request I’d sent off a day or so earlier. I sent an e-mail that reads (edited for secret content):  

I like the style of the piece[*], but I have two problems with it. 1) the first scene takes place [not in the setting you’ve presented]; and 2) I’ve gone through a lot of trouble—including the story description I wrote and the short excerpt I picked out for indiegogo and my Facebook campaign—to hide [the spoiler]. [This] is a very important part of the story for me. 

The first half of the response I got from The Artist consisted entirely of quotes from my story—not even a hello—followed by an explanation of why I was totally wrong about [spoiler] and the setting of the scene that I wrote. In the story. That I wrote. The letter wrapped up with: “Lastly the editor is the person who contracted me on this project and she has given the final stamp of approval and paid me for the work.” 

This really upset me, like, a lot. I told The Editor that I refused to work with The Artist, and I demanded that this piece not be associated with me. The Editor handled it like a boss, so it’s not my problem anymore. However, that e-mail pretty much ruined my day, so I wrote a letter I have no intention of sending to make myself feel better. And it worked. 

***

Dear Artist; 

I’m a freelance illustrator. I get what it’s like when you turn in a piece and the client isn’t happy with it. I get that I’m not your client. And I get that this is a work-for-hire piece that doesn’t pay very much.  

Clearly you don’t care about the piece you just completed. It was a paycheck. This much was expressed in the way you answered the email I sent you while you were still working on it, in which I made a request about the content—a request I considered “very important.” Actually, you had your spouse answer the email by asking if I was being sarcastic, and letting me know that both of you had barely read my story. 

Here’s the thing: I care about this project, and I care a lot. I spent countless hours writing it, and I am personally invested in how the art turns out. It’s not your job to care, but you could at least pretend. 

You had three options to respond, all of which could have made you look like a professional: you could have changed the art in some way to reflect the concern I had expressed to you before you turned it in (from a freelancer’s perspective, this is the least desirable option, but it still is one); you could have explained that we had different interpretations, but the art was approved and you can’t make any changes; or, if my criticism pissed you off enough, not respond at all. You chose a fourth option, which was to behave like a thin-skinned tween.  

I don’t expect this letter to affect you in any way. You have a business, and it has somehow continued to function despite your communication skills. More importantly, your response to criticism leads me to assume that you don’t like to consider the perspectives of others. I don’t think you’ve even made it this far, unless you’re rage-reading. 

I’m writing this for me, because my feelings were genuinely hurt by your thinly veiled contempt for me. I’m trying to soothe my anger at your behavior by spelling out just what it was about your email that pissed me off. And now that this is out of the way, I can express my initial reaction much more succinctly: 

Grow the fuck up and be nice to others for a change, you narcissistic prima donna. 

Sincerely, 

Jeremiah Murphy 

Writer and Artist 

_____ 

* I actually didn’t, but I wanted to work with the person, because The Editor seemed to think it was a good match. 

Sometimes Stuff Just Doesn’t Make Any Sense …

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People make even less sense than that. They don’t owe me answers, or an explanation, or even forgiveness. Likewise, I don’t owe anybody anything, especially forgiveness. 

And that’s okay. 

I have regrets, and that’s also okay. I am thoroughly happy with the way my life has gone so far, but doesn’t mean that I can’t wish I hadn’t sold that comic book; or that I hadn’t said that one thing to that one person at that one crucial moment. Anyone who claims they have no regrets are either lying, or inhuman. 

I’m thinking about this now for a couple of reasons: for starters, it’s the overriding theme of my novella, Clear Spirits, especially as I get into the second half. Also, I’m soon going to be in a place where I will be physically reminded of my mistakes, as well as of my unwillingness to forgive. 

I need to remember that certain things will never be resolved. Loose ends will remain loose; the characters and plot of a prior chapter won’t be the characters and plot of the next chapter; and that things will not be tied up into a neat little bow. I may never forgive them, and I may never forgive myself. 

And I need to know that that’s okay. 

Block Party

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I hesitate to call this feeling writer’s block, but the effect is the same. I’m not sure what to do anymore. This always happens to me. I know where the story’s supposed to go, but I’m not doing a very good job of getting there. I start out strong, and then, within ten pages of an ending, I choke. Whenever a friend or lover has had a similar problem, my solution is, “Write—it doesn’t matter how bad it looks, just write. The hard part is putting the words on the page, and the editing is easy.”  

But really, who can take their own advice? The words I put down are pretty weak (i.e. “He walked over to the door and then he waked through it and then he saw someone and he said, ‘Hey.’), and so I try to compensate by strengthening them a little (i.e. “He staggered over to the entrance, and once he propelled himself through it, his eyes were filled with the silhouette of a figure, to whom he spoke when his voice, husky from a half-decade of smoking, rang out with the following ‘Hey.’”) and kind of give myself a headache from trying too hard. 

So I thought it would review the source material. This made it worse. It’s widely known that artists are their own worst critics. Even someone who thinks himself the finest genius the world has ever known (i.e. Quentin Tarantino or Pablo Picasso) will look at their own work and turn a rancid shade of green. The passage of time between the creation of said art and its reevaluation only makes the green greener. All we want to do is use the skills we’ve picked up since then to create what we had originally intended. Most artists can avoid this revisionism by unleashing their piece upon the world; an act that kind of freezes it in amber. Some artists (I’m looking at you, Mr. Lucas) have amassed enough power that they can continue to poke and prod their work until the world has come to an end. Either way, we’re a notoriously difficult bunch. 

This in mind, I discovered in that the 1999 “Week in the Head” was a tiny, elegant piece of poetry. It was kind of a bittersweet haiku; five syllables of regret followed by seven syllables of delirious longing followed by five syllables of hope. The 2009 “Week in the Head” is turning into a sonnet of regret and longing, but without the hope. 

Let’s be honest, this rewrite is some pretty depressing shit; almost Dickensian in nature (not the Christmas Carol Dickens, either. I’m talking about the Dickens whose original ending of Oliver Twist left the titular character frozen to death in a gutter). I should have called it “Bleak in the Head.” I had no idea how dark it was until I got about 75 percent through the rewrite. There’s a reason I didn’t notice, and that’s because everything the main character has experienced is some variation of something I’ve experienced. Having lived through these traumas, they don’t seem so bad. Hell, I’m using this story as a way of walking off some of the pain. My problem is that I’m not giving him anything to walk toward. 

Originally he had been much more like me, a boy from a medium-sized town for whom New York was the Emerald City. To extend the metaphor a little, my last week in Hastings, Nebraska was my poppy field. As for the flying monkeys … well, there were a lot of drugs. I made it to my Emerald City because I knew that’s where I’d find my future; I’d have to be a grownup to make it there. Having tied the main character’s history to that place, I took away New York’s mystique and replaced it with dread. 

And now, thanks to the magic of writing and rereading (specifically, writing and rereading this journal entry), I’ve finally realized why I’m having such a hard time with this ending: I’ve been missing the single most important ingredient. Now I need to figure out how to fold it into the mixture without disturbing everything I’ve posted online so far. This is going to be tough, but now that I’ve got an Emerald City of my own to find, I think I’m ready to move forward. 

Thank you, blog!