Courage, my friend

Getting published, and other bad ideas

Posted on 27 January 2008

It’s been a weird couple of weeks.  I sent in a short story to a publisher, for the first time ever, and the lead up to it was an interesting experience.  Interesting in a purely scientific sense.  I didn’t enjoy it.

Several years ago, on the advice of a friend, I sat down to write something that was going to be purely for me.  A story that I could work on just for fun, that I would never show to anybody; a story where I could be free to try anything that came to mind.  To my recollection, I sat down at around 1:00 in the afternoon, one Friday in the summer, to write just that — something just for fun.  And when I got up around 6:00, that night, I had a first chapter written.  3000 words.  It was the easiest thing I have ever written.  And I had a ton of fun doing it.

And you know what?  It was the best thing I’ve ever written, too.

Of course, since realizing that about it, I’ve been unable to write a single new word on it.  I seem afraid that I will fuck it up.  These days, when I sit down to work on it, I’m not trying to have fun — I’m trying to write something “great”, something that lives up to the writing in that first chapter. 

It doesn’t seem to be a very effective strategy for me.

The short story I submitted last week was Dajoën, which some of you have read.  I did the first version of it for a contest in my writing group.  It was a short short story contest — stories were limited to 2000 words.  And I had this little idea — to write a story about the parting of two friends. 

Well, the very first version of it was . . . horrid.  But, fortunately, I started again, and wrote the first official version, which won the contest.  When I write from first person, I try to be the person I’m writing as, and for that character, he’s talking about a loss that was very important to him, and which he is still grieving.  To be honest, I don’t know how much of that made it to the page.  Probably not as much as I’d intended.

Anyway, the feedback on that version was very good — as far as it went.  The general consensus seemed to be that the story was too slight — that it needed more to be really effective.  And so, in the three years since, I have rewritten the story — from scratch — five times.  Three of those versions were . . . horrid, and have never seen the light of day.  The most recent version was written last weekend, with the intent that that would be the version I would send to the publisher. 

And here’s the problem: of the people who’ve read all the “good” versions, the general consensus seems to be that the original is the best.  It seems that every time I set out to improve the technique of the story, I do it at the cost of its heart.

So, after 3 years of rewrites, I sent the original version to the publisher.  It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made.  Because, after so long trying to fix them, all I can see are its flaws.

I’m not even sure why I want my stuff published.  It’s certainly not for the money: if Dajoën sells to this publisher, my advance will be $38.  Of course, if I’m being totally honest, the same little part of me as usual wants recognition, for something I’ve made.  And while that’s not a huge factor, it is a factor.  But, thinking about it while having all this angst for the last week, I think the publishing matters because it is a route to getting readers.  I write to share something — of myself, or of my experience — with other people, something that they might find useful.  I want to say with fiction the things I can never seem to say with truth, when it counts.  It’s the statement that “I know how you feel, and you’re not alone.”  It’s to say that to somebody else, in a way that they’ll hear, that I write the stuff I do.

The thing is, I’m not sure I need a publisher for that.  I wrote an article, a few days ago, related to a software project I’m working on, that I told 5 or so people about.  To be honest, I didn’t expect most of them to read it all of the way through: the article was long, and I didn’t think the writing was very effective.  So it came as quite a shock, two days later, when I looked at my web server logs and discovered I’d had over 80 readers of that article in one day.  (I hadn’t realized that you could get stage fright, after the fact, but I did.)  But it’s got me thinking: if I don’t write for the money, and the process of “perfecting” something for an imagined editor at a publisher causes me so much grief — and may actually cause the writing to get worse — then why the hell am I bothering?  I have a website . . . .

The truth is, my writing seems to be at its best when I relax and just write.  And every time I’ve ever rewritten a story, it’s lost that part that made it good, in the attempt to get something else.  But, even though I know that, as long as I sit on a story — as long as I don’t consider it “done” — I can’t seem to resist the urge to fuck with it. 

So I haven’t decided yet, but I’m seriously considering making Dajoën my first and only foray into professional publishing, at least for the foreseeable future.  That, instead, I’ll write stuff and post it to my website as soon as it is finished.  No rewriting, no perfecting every story to death.  No angst about flaws.  I’ll work on the projects that interest me, and stop worrying about which ones are “good enough” that they should be held for a real publisher.

I want writing to be fun again.  I want to stop thinking about technique, and start thinking about story and characters instead.  And you know . . . I have the strongest hunch, that if I do that?  The technique will take care of itself.

Thanks for reading.