Writing

…it’s a pret­ty good one.

I sub­mit­ted a short-sto­ry pro­pos­al for a forth­com­ing anthol­o­gy in hon­our of Sir Ter­ry Pratch­ett. I knew going in that it was a long shot — they’re look­ing for humor­ous writ­ing, and the sto­ry I pro­posed is about a 9‑year-old child deal­ing with his father’s can­cer diag­no­sis — so I was­n’t ter­ri­bly¹ surprised.

From the rejec­tion let­ter² itself:

The rea­son we didn’t select your work on this occa­sion was that

• It did­n’t quite have the humor­ous char­ac­ter­is­tics we’re look­ing for.

• The sam­ple was occa­sion­al­ly a lit­tle con­fus­ing.³

• We both enjoyed your sto­ry, and it was a close call as far as sub­mis­sions went.

• Please don’t judo us for the rejec­tion, and best of luck in your future writ­ing projects.

Please under­stand that while your mate­r­i­al does not fit the bill for our cur­rent project, we encour­age you to con­tin­ue writ­ing, and wish you the best of luck in future. 

So… I will con­tin­ue with this lit­tle tale, and find a new mar­ket for it. (Any­one inter­est­ed? It’s about the col­li­sion of fan­ta­sy worlds and real-life pain.)

There’s an arti­cle in The Guardian by one Natasha Pul­ley which posits that prop­er fan­ta­sy world-build­ing can’t be accom­plished in a short sto­ry, and that’s why so many fan­ta­sy nov­els these days are a) hefty and b) con­tin­ued in mul­ti-vol­ume series.

I offer the fol­low­ing counterpoints:

• the short fan­tasies of Michael Swan­wick (for exam­ple, “The Drag­on Line” or “Radio Waves”)

• the very exis­tence of the Mag­a­zine of Fan­ta­sy and Sci­ence Fiction

• …and Beneath Cease­less Skies

• …and Fan­ta­sy Faction

• …and so forth.

Update: Well, today’s the day. “Per­son to Per­son” is now up on DSF’s site.

On May 18^th, my short sto­ry “Per­son to Per­son” will appear in Dai­ly Sci­ence Fic­tion. When it’s post­ed, I’ll be sure to add a link to his post.

Here’s a teaser:

Jake called from Heav­en again.

That’s the first line, and it just came to me, a gift from on high¹, and I knew I had to use it. I spent some time decid­ing whether I meant it lit­er­al­ly or not; once that was set­tled, the sto­ry essen­tial­ly wrote itself (which is in itself anoth­er gift).

I’ve become skep­ti­cal of the unwrit­ten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same fea­ture, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to por­tray a slight­ly dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship, one where the two mutu­al­ly inspire each oth­er to live — if I’m able to, then per­haps I’ll be clos­er to por­tray­ing a true expres­sion of love.
— Hayao Miyaza­ki (source)

On the short­est day of the North­ern year, take some time to enjoy some short fiction.

You can thank Pix­el Hall Press for the idea.

Here’s some of my short fic­tion, free every day for you, but high­light­ed today as the sol­stice approaches:

Some of these sto­ries fea­ture strong lan­guage and adult situations.

• City Kid, a brief amuse-bouche to get you into the swing of some real­ly short fiction.
• Res­ur­rec­tion Radio, my first pub­lished fan­ta­sy tale. (Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in On Spec, 2004)
• Heat Death — at the end of it all, a begin­ning. (Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Tesser­acts Four­teen, 2010)
• Sev­en Very Short Sto­ries — what it says on the tin, as they say. Sto­ries in 1024 char­ac­ters or less. My per­son­al favourite is “The Trick”; a lot of peo­ple seem to like “The Wait”.
• And in clos­ing, some­thing amus­ing — Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One — nev­er pub­lished, though not for lack of trying.

This past week­end I spent 2½ all-too-short hours with ten oth­er Man­i­to­ba writ­ers in a round­table with Man Book­er-prize win­ning author Yann Mar­tel. There was a great deal said about writ­ing: the whys and where­fores, the hows, the fact that no one real­ly writes for mon­ey. (Mon­ey’s nice, but you write to write. To exor­cise demons, to enter­tain, to process the world — all these come long before mon­ey, assum­ing that mon­ey ever comes.)

There were at least three genre writ­ers there, and the dis­cus­sion came up of lit­er­a­ture vs. genre. I was pleased that Yann was­n’t the snob­by type that gazes down his nose at the appar­ent ghet­to of genre. (In fact, I may be snob­bier — he read The Da Vin­ci Code to its end, where­as I gave up on it at about page 60.)

One point that he made, how­ev­er, kind of stuck in my craw. He claimed that lit­er­a­ture can wring emo­tion from a read­er far more effec­tive­ly than SF, or fan­ta­sy, or mys­tery ever can. He posit­ed that in 100 years’ time, Stephen King will be large­ly for­got­ten, but Dick­ens will live on, because the read­er con­nects on a deep­er, more emo­tion­al lev­el. He said he can’t think of a sin­gle SF nov­el that’s made some­one cry.

Well, here are two nov­el that suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing me tear up:

• Cir­cuit of Heav­en, by Den­nis Dan­vers — It’s Romeo & Juli­et for the mind-upload­ing set, in essence. Star-crossed lovers, sep­a­rat­ed by the life that may come after death.
• The Dark Tow­er, by Stephen King. The chap­ter that did it for me is “In This Haze of Green & Gold”. If you’ve read the saga, you know why. (Also, “ ‘Olan” kind of got me, too.)

…cour­tesy of an io9 arti­cle about Hell­rais­er.

[…] I think what the mon­sters in movies have to say for them­selves is every bit as inter­est­ing as what the human beings have to say. That’s why in stalk and slash films I feel that half the sto­ry is miss­ing. These crea­tures sim­ply become, in a very bor­ing way, abstrac­tions of evil. Evil is nev­er abstract. It is always con­crete, always par­tic­u­lar and always vest­ed in indi­vid­u­als. To deny the crea­tures as indi­vid­u­als the right to speak, to actu­al­ly state their case, is perverse—because I want to hear the Dev­il speak. I think that’s a British atti­tude. I like the idea that a point of view can be made by the dark side.
—Clive Barker
(empha­sis mine) 

I think it’s a Cana­di­an atti­tude, too. Or maybe I lean more to the British than the Amer­i­can point of view on such matters.

I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of hor­ror films, and so I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly seen Hell­rais­er. Now I sort of want to.