My muse has been holding out on me. For weeks I've suffered from ennui, a lack of enthusiasm, a debilitating absence of inspiration, courage, and wherewithal.
But man oh man, am I ever in the writing mood today!
I felt it coming on in the afternoon: a sudden, mastering urge to get back on my computer and write, dammit, finish rewriting this damn novel, because the whole thing is just too awesome to describe and it needs to be done and published and sent out there so other people can enjoy it.
And boy, was I right. As soon as I got home and sat down, the effluence started pouring off my fingers like it'd been stored up for months, which, in retrospect, it probably was. I've been so scared, so reluctant, so uninspired lately...my shortcomings staring me in the face, my lack of ambition gnawing on my backside, my intimidation from the professionals riding high.
But all that went out the window today. I started fixing my stilted, drab and puerile first chapter, and
SHAZAM!!!
It was like I actually knew what I was doing! Characterization? Easy as pie! Pacing? Think nothing of it, my man! Tone? Precisely, PRECISELY the way I wanted it. I was channeling Arthur C. Clarke's wondrously descriptive, refreshingly approachable, and wryly humorous style. And it was almost better than sex, for Pete's sake. I'm sure you know the feeling, fellow writers. That burst of inspiration comes (a cloudburst, more like it) and down come the words like rain, flowing together into delightful puddles and tributaries and streams. Feels grand, doesn't it? Like a literary version of the Midas touch: everything I turn my mind to turns to gold. Characters sizzle and pop, the pace advances with intoxicating fervor, plot and premise transform themselves from ragged threads into a majestic double helix, the DNA of a completely new and fantastic organism.
So here I am, rattling along. I've smashed through two (out of twelve) chapters, where before I could hardly be bothered to correct a paragraph or two. This feels wonderful. I'm wondering what's different today that wasn't there all the other days I tried to revise. Maybe the perspective I've been slowly garnering via meditation (and tactical amounts of whiskey) has finally sunk into my subconscious. Maybe I've encapsulated all the hard-won wisdom I've shared with you over the past few weeks. Whatever the reason, it's working. And it's danged effective. This is the first time since my novel's completion two years ago that I've looked at it without disgust. Hell, this is the first time I've ever looked at it with raw excitement. I see potential now. I see effervescence. I see mellifluousness. I see marvelousness (that's a word, isn't it?). I SEE. All the possibilities and angles and contingencies (and more importantly, what I need to do to attain them) have all become nakedly visible. My muse zapped me in the eyes with some literary LASIK surgery, and abruptly the world has become limitless. I can see for miles.
This is the first time I've experienced anything like this, so I'm going to take advantage of it while it lasts. Goodness knows when it'll ever come again. I just took a quick break from revising to tell you about it; if you'll excuse me, I'd like to dive back in now. Ten more chapters are calling my name. I might just bust through all 51,000 words tonight, so help me. It'd be worth it. Then maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and start the publishing process without reservations or misgivings.
When asked, "What do you read?", Stephen King replies, "Everything I can get my hands on."
In truth, King does a lot more than that. He buys audio books and listens to them in his car whenever he drives somewhere. "Come on," he says, "how many times do you need to listen to Deep Purple's 'Highway Star'?"
Good thing I'm not all that fond of Deep Purple. I suppose Led Zeppelin would hardly make an adequate substitute, though.
I suppose it makes good sense for a writer—even a published, internationally famous one—to immerse himself or herself in reading material. Even stuff that isn't strictly related to the author's preferred genre can help. By constantly reading (and writing), King is keeping his skills sharp. He's seeing what's out there. He's getting a feel for his craft. He's learning from his fellow authors and their scribbles. Constant exposure never hurts when you're trying to learn something and/or stay good at it.
Apparently I don't read enough science fiction, then.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Postman has received his first rejection slip.
Well, okay, it wasn't my first. More like the second. Okay, third. Okay, eleventh. (Nah, I'm kidding, it really was only the second slip I've ever received, honest.) But it was the first one I got from a fiction magazine, and that's what counts. Fiction is where I intend to make my mark. And on September 30, 2010, Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine sent me a wake-up call. My short story, entitled "Wrong Life-Form, Genius" has officially been rejected.
The editor, good man that he is, wrote me a personal note instead of sending a form letter. He explained that though my story was "a good try" and that F&SF is "always looking for humor," my story was "too obvious."
Okay, I could see that. My story concerns two Earthmen assigned to make contact with the sentient crystalline life-forms of a nearby exoplanet, only to discover, at the end, after spending twenty pages trying to communicate with a chunk of crystal using interpretive dance and impressionist art, that it's actually the sunflowers of this world which are the sentient ones.
Puerile, yes, but I had a lot of fun writing it.
This was a test shot, anyway. I'd read an issue or two of F&SF, and had heard plenty about their submission standards on the Internet, but I wanted to assay the market in person. I thought I'd whip up something short and sweet and submit it before I sent them any of my big honking novelettes. I thought "Wrong Life-Form, Genius" might have a decent chance of being published, so I put the finishing touches on it, packaged it and sent it off.
Well, here's my answer.
It wasn't as though I didn't approach the writing seriously. I was earnestly attempting to construct a character-driven story, with a point, premise, purpose and plot, and all those other P-words which the best sci-fi stories possess. What I've noticed about my favorite sci-fi writers is that they were observant. They perceived the faults and oddities of the civilizations they were a part of, and satirized these societal shortcomings in their stories, using clever and creative metaphors. H.G. Wells lampooned the inherently bestial nature of human beings with The Island of Dr. Moreau; John W. Campbell, Jr. explored trust, survival instincts and collaboration in crisis with his spine-tingling "Who Goes There?"; and Poul Anderson had a great deal to say about identity, freedom, interpersonal relationships and independence in "Call Me Joe."
What I had with "Wrong Life-Form, Genius" was the form of a dramatic, metaphorical, quote-unquote "deep" sci-fi story...but not substance, nor the subtlety to conceal it. I had a story, simple as it was. I had a climax. I had a conclusion. I even had a sort of metaphorical premise, though poor and underrepresented. (The story was intended to show up humanity's abject lack of knowledge about extraterrestrial life, and the futility of attempting to predict the nature of said life...or plan the methods by which we might interact with it.)
But I failed to develop matters fully. I wrote it on the spur of the moment, focusing on the humor and dialogue instead of the story itself. Without planning things out, without taking time to brainstorm the methods I would use to tease the meaningful elements out of the basic tale, I wound up with a substandard bit of drivel. The result, naturally, was "obvious," as F&SF's editor put it. I'd written an anticlimactic and pointless story, with no underlying meaning and a sadly predictable outcome.
I will admit to being...let's see...moderately bummed out by the rejection letter. It was my first (well, second), after all. And I'd honestly thought that "Wrong Life-Form, Genius" had had a shot. It curdled my insides to hear some stranger judging my precious little story. I was embarrassed, discouraged, disconsolate.
I didn't stay that way for long, though. I hadn't been too emotionally invested in the work. (I wrote it on the spur of the moment, remember? In a coffeehouse, sitting across from my best friend to boot. I wrote it basically to make him laugh.) It was just a silly little chunk of humorous fiction, sent off on a whim. That made the rejection easier to take.
And easier to learn from. It wasn't but five minutes before I was analyzing my story, my writing process, examining the manifest of my train of thought, sussing out what I'd done wrong and what I could do better next time. I still had four or five longer stories I was working on, which I did seriously hope to get published. This was no time to be feeling down in the dumps. It was time to start perfecting my other works, based on what I'd learned from this rejection. After all, what are you supposed to when you fall down?
That's right, guys. You get right back up on the, uh, horse.
What do I lack? I asked myself. I sat around and drank alcohol and puzzled until my puzzler was sore. Then I made up my mind. I lack focus. I'm fine with actually writing the story, but I'm getting too hung up on the minor mechanics and ignoring the big picture, the story as a whole, the grand design behind the veil. I'm so blinded by the details that I'm overshooting the inspiration necessary to create a unique and multifaceted masterpiece, and as a result, my stories are turning out to be puerile and obvious. They lack meaning, worth, complexity, subtlety. They don't have the deeper context, the satirical punch, the masterful sophistication of story and plot and character which make better authors' work sizzle.
In short, I need to practice more. I need to write more, and I need to read more, too. Good science fiction will diffuse into my brain through my eyeballs, be analyzed by a crack team of discerning neurons, and then fall down the dusty chute to my fingers, where it will flow back out of my body and onto the blank pages on my laptop screen where it belongs.
No, no, I'm not going to start plagiarizing, smarty-pants. I mean I'm going to get a better feel for my craft, keep abreast of what constitutes "good" and "bad" writing, inspire myself to try for new heights, inundate and imbue my brain with good science fiction, and, like Stephen King, become (and remain) a better writer for it.
By coincidence, I located The Best Science Fiction Stories (Volumes IIA and IIB) in a used bookstore behind the corner gas station a couple of weeks ago.
I also picked up U-Boat Commander, a factual account of a German submariner's service in the Atlantic during World War II; A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess; Winged Pharaoh by Joan Grant; and a couple other miscellaneous novels.
Oh, snap.
Training my inner writer is going to be a blast.
I intend to read through these stories (penned by known and unknown authors) and consider them carefully. And then, employing their best elements and most effective devices, I'll revise my own nascent projects.
My muse has been holding out on me. For weeks I've suffered from ennui, a lack of enthusiasm, a debilitating absence of inspiration, courage, and wherewithal. 
