Writers And Their Work: Who Creates Who?

I don’t ever want to stop learning. So I still attend workshops on writing whenever I can. It’s a great way to learn new perspectives, like a few I encountered at a recent workshop given to my local writers’ group by a long-time university English professor and small press publisher named Laurence Steven.

Laurence believes that, as writers create our fiction, we are also created by it. Think about that. Unless you’re the world’s most formulaic hack, there will be many elements of your fictional universe that appear from somewhere you can’t explain or control. Call it inspiration, or the Muse—it doesn’t matter—the result will surprise you, in ways big and small. And in doing so, it will change you, too. You aren’t the same person at the end of a project that you were when you began it.

We always want our writing to affect readers that way—why should it surprise us that a creation of imagination will also reshape its creator? I say, “Bring it on!” (Just as long as it makes me a better writer.)

Related to that, Laurence feels there are two main approaches to fiction writing. Aesthetic writers are those of us who work in a very structured way: modeling characters and situations and working out detailed plots before ever starting the prose process, using discipline to marshal our resources and capture a vision. Inspirational writers essentially wait for inspiration to strike, and hurry to get it all down while the spark is hot, believing that good writing can’t be forced.  Aesthetics seek to capture; inspirationalists wait to be possessed. You may see yourself in one of those categories. Or you may see yourself in both, because the truth is, both approaches are present in all writing processes to varying degrees. Something has to happen to grab the writer’s attention before the process can even begin. No matter how disciplined you are, you have to depend on ideas coming to you all along the way. And no matter how much you depend on inspiration, you have to exercise discipline or you’ll never get anything done. Too much rigid adherence to structure can lead to formulaic writing and even copying others. Too much dependence on inspiration can lead to sloppy writing, and ignoring the culture of the genre you’re writing in.

Both approaches are necessary for significant writing to happen. It’s ultimately our interaction with something (Inspiration? Possession?) that results in the story.

And that’s how our work creates us.

Cancel the exorcist. Fire the life-coach. The keyboard’s really in control.



Does A New Year Make A Difference?

At the change of the year it’s the tradition to examine the past twelve months and develop a new strategy for the next dozen, in the form of New Years Resolutions. I’ve never gone into that in a big way. If there’s something I think needs to be changed in my life I don’t wait until January 1^st. Every day is just as valid as any other for the beginning of a new me.

So how do writers evaluate the past and plan for the future? Especially somebody just getting a career rolling?

For me, 2010 was a productive year in terms of the amount of material I created—I finished a first draft of a novel, polished another, completely rewrote a third (an earlier work), and began a fourth. Plus I wrote at least a half-dozen short stories. But it wasn’t so productive in terms of publishing credits. I only sold one fiction piece during the year. (Thank heaven I’m not counting on that income for survival!) Instead I aimed higher—I took a shot at the bigger, hardest-to-crack markets, reasoning that they’d be more impressive publishing credits when it comes time to solicit interest in my novel-length work. For my daring, I got some encouraging rejections from some of the most influential editors in the biz. Close, but no cigar.

So what should I resolve to change?

Thanks to some tips from Robert J. Sawyer, I’ve already begun to strive for more deeply meaningful stories, with significant themes. Writers like Sean Costello have taught me how to polish and cut and trim and polish some more. Each time a story is rejected it goes back under the knife for reconstructive surgery, to some degree. I’ve also taken greater pains to ensure there’s a real scientific basis to my SF stories. It didn’t help them sell.

As other writers before me have noticed, there’s been a shift—in the short fiction markets, at least—toward well-written stories with striking prose and SF-style premises, but no real science backing them up. In that sense they’re reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s fiction. Don’t get me wrong—Bradbury was a terrific writer, and I’m a fan. But at the risk of sounding like I’m crying sour grapes, I think having the whole genre skew that way is unfortunate.

So will I change my style? Chase the markets? Aim lower, just to see my stuff posted on somebody else’s website?

I don’t think so.

I will crack those big markets. I will get an agent, and a book deal (though maybe not in that order). I think 2011 will be the year.

Come along. It should be a good ride.