Category Archives: Writing

Guest Post by Patty Jansen: On Finishing What You Start

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Fire & Ice by Patty Jansen

You should finish what you start. New writers often hear this piece of advice, and there is a time when it could be the best advice a writer could get. There are also times when it is the worst advice.

It is all too easy, when you get bogged down in a manuscript without a clear way forward, to start the next new shiny thing, until that becomes bogged down, too, and you can start on the next new shiny thing. And so on and so forth. Rinse and repeat. Manuscripts build up in the proverbial drawer and none of them are finished. Sound familiar? Then you’re a serial non-finisher. The best advice for you is that you need some discipline and to grab the manuscript you feel most strongly about and finish it to perfection.

On the flip side, who doesn’t know at least one new writer who has spent the last five years churning out draft after draft of the same book? Often, the book is a typical first-ever-novel mess, the characters are Mary-Sue-ish and the plot meandering if not downright absent. And every time someone in the writers’ group says something, the writer goes off and does another draft, because member X said it could be about a conspiracy and member Z said that the characters are flat. So obviously the plot-less book needs a conspiracy and all the characters need lots of personal problems…

Hold the show.

Yes, you should finish what you start, but you should first learn to judge which of your unfinished works warrant finishing.

As a new writer, it’s likely you don’t know. I certainly didn’t. I didn’t have a feel for what makes a good story. I had no idea what was a fresh concept, or even what was required to write a good story. I could tell a good story when I saw one, but hadn’t the skill to see why. As your skills in that area continue to grow, you will see what ideas are snippets of interesting stuff and what ideas are complete stories.

Presuming you’re in a similar situation and have not market-tested any of your work, and you have this cool idea that you want to write about regardless… Well, write it, finish the story, and then move onto the next story. It may not be any good, and you may realize this by the time you’ve finished. You may not even be able to finish it because you realized that you made a mess of the plot (does there have to be one?) or that the book ended up being about something different from what you intended. Never mind, leave it as-is, finished or not, and write something completely different. Never mind the planned sequels. Just pick up something completely different, and, using the skills you’ve developed in your other manuscript, start something new.

If there is one thing I have learned in my time as a writer, it’s that once you stop working on a manuscript, it doesn’t somehow vanish or become unwritten. Those words that made you bang your head against the wall will still be there one, two, three or more years later. Presuming you continue to grow as a writer, you’ll be able to look at those early manuscripts and judge whether or not the story is worth picking up again. What is definitely not worth it is to keep banging your head against the wall with something that is not working under the guise of “finish what you start.”

If you find that you can’t finish any manuscripts, then it’s still worth abandoning those manuscripts in favor of some courses or tuition on plotting to work out what is holding you back.

Patty JansenPatty Jansen lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing science fiction and fantasy. She publishes in both traditional and indie venues. Her story “This Peaceful State of War” placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. Her story “Survival in Shades of Orange” will be published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
Her novels include Watcher’s Web (soft SF), The Far Horizon (middle-grade SF), Charlotte’s Army (military SF) and books 1 and 2 of the Icefire Trilogy: Fire & Ice and Dust & Rain (post-apocalyptic steampunk fantasy).

Patty is on Twitter (@pattyjansen), Facebook, LinkedIn, GoodReads, LibraryThing, Google Plus, and blogs at pattyjansen.com.

From First Draft to Year’s Best: A Conversation with Dave Hutchinson

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Dave Hutchinson

Dave Hutchinson was born in Sheffield in 1960. After reading American Studies at the University of Nottingham, he became a journalist and is now currently unemployed. He’s the author of five collections of short stories and one novel, and his novella “The Push” was shortlisted for the 2010 BSFA award for short fiction. He has also edited two anthologies and co-edited a third. He lives in north London with his wife and several cats.

Dave, thanks for agreeing to drop by for an interview. The last time I saw “The Incredible Exploding Man,” it was a rough but ingenious first draft freshly written for Jeremy C. Shipp’s Yard Gnome Army Fiction Writing Boot Camp. It was recently published in the acclaimed SF anthology Solaris Rising, edited by Ian Whates, alongside some of the biggest names in the field. Now I’m looking forward to getting Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology and reading it yet again, among a selection of the finest science fiction stories published throughout 2011.

What are your feelings in the wake of this tremendous success?

Not only that, but it’s now on the longlist for the BSFA’s short fiction award. It’s an odd feeling. I did Jeremy’s course — which I can heartily recommend to everyone — because I had a lot of time on my hands, I wasn’t writing anything, and I’d never done a writing course before. I’m completely self-taught — which in my case is just a euphemism for “hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s doing” — and I thought it might help point out the errors in my own writing. Somehow it didn’t occur to me that it would also involve writing a fresh piece of fiction, and when Jeremy dropped that bombshell on us I sort of panicked. You saw the extremely lumpy first draft and you know how bad it was; the fact that it went on to be sold, and then picked for Year’s Best, and then get longlisted, is entirely down to the comments of you and our fellow Boot Campers. It would almost certainly be a different story without all that input. So, how do I feel about it? Very pleased, obviously; I’ve had more people come up to me and say they’ve enjoyed this one story than I think all my other stuff put together. It just seems to have tickled a nerve somewhere.

The story features some pretty freaky science, showcased in the form of a pretty original militarized-superhero tale. Care to explain the basics of the scientific concept that inspired the work?

Hah! You know, even though it’s so recent I have no idea where the story came from. It sort of bolted itself together in my head spontaneously out of all kinds of junk that was floating around. Mostly I made it all up. There’s some stuff in there about string theory and a kind of quasi-dimension called Calabi-Yau Space, but I’ve only the vaguest understanding of that stuff; any half-bright physics graduate would shoot holes through the science.

After the other students and I gave you feedback on the story, how did you go about revising it? What pieces of advice from first readers were most helpful in the second draft?

Basically I realized I’d approached the whole thing wrong. The first draft was in the present tense and I think someone pointed out that it would work better if the central character was the narrator. So I took it to bits and did it again. The opening scene in the White House Situation Room — which incidentally I was quite pleased with — didn’t really impress anyone, so that went. After that was gone I needed a new opening, and once I had that the structure of the second draft settled down. I gave the narrator a sidekick, wrote some back story for the sidekick, and by the time I’d done all that it started to look like a proper story. Very hard work, though.

Was Solaris Rising the first place you sent the story? What was your reaction when you got the news that it would be published alongside works by the likes of Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, et cetera?

Yes. I got an email from the editor saying he had some room and did I have anything to send him. I had something finished, but it was about three times too long, so rather than let the opportunity drop I sent him the second draft of “Exploding Man” as soon as I finished it, and he bought it. It got a little tweaked afterward — the original was set at Fermilab and I suddenly realized that anyone who actually knew anything about Fermilab would tear the descriptions to bits, so I made up a fictional high-energy physics lab in a fictional town in Iowa instead. As for the book? Well, you dream about having a story in an anthology with writers like that. It really is very mighty company to be in.

It’s been about six months since I read the piece, but the overall impression is still very much with me — it’s sort of a frightening story, but the requisite sense-of-wonder that empowers so much of the best science fiction is alive in full force in “The Incredible Exploding Man.” Care to give your own summary of what the plot entails, without giving too much away?

Hm. How to avoid spoilers…? It’s really about an ordinary bloke suddenly being pitched into an extraordinary situation following an accident at a particle accelerator, and the choices he has to make after that.

Your writing is obviously very competent, which means you’ve no doubt been at this a while, honing and refining your craft, but also presumably reading widely in the genre. Who are your biggest literary influences, both within the science fiction section of the bookstore and beyond it?

Within science fiction, Larry Niven and Keith Roberts. I thought quite a lot of Niven’s earlier work had a kind of breezy So-Cal quality to it that I liked very much. Roberts, I thought, was one of our finest science fiction writers — his best stuff has an intense connection with the English landscape, particularly the landscape of Dorset. I would also love to write half as well as Eric Brown, Chris Priest, Charlie Stross, and Peter Hamilton, very considerable writers each in their own way. Outside science fiction, Raymond Chandler and Len Deighton. I just love their way with dialogue.

How long have you been writing, and to what author would you say you most owe the urge to scribble?

I’ve been writing properly since I was sixteen, so about 35 years. I’m not sure there’s one writer who prompted me to start; I read a lot of Heinlein and Asimov and Bester and Niven and E. E. Smith and many other writers when I was a kid, and I guess at some point it all reached a kind of critical mass and I decided to have a go myself.

What other influences have had an impact on your writing, literary or otherwise? Any particular band or artist whose music you enjoy listening to while writing?

I’m deeply fond of the English classical composer Ralph Vaughan Williams; his stuff has the same kind of connection to English landscape that Keith Roberts’s fiction has, and that’s kind of influenced some of the stuff I’ve done. I used to listen to talk radio a lot while I was working; for some reason it annoyed me so much it helped me concentrate on what I was doing. These days I’ll just put my Walkman on shuffle. I’m a big fan of Rush, which I suppose dates me a bit, but I’ll listen to pretty much anything for background.

I love Rush! They’re one of those rare classic-rock bands that only seems to get better and better over the course of their career.

What’s your opinion on the sudden surge of Hollywood-level interest in science fiction? Since the success of Avatar, we’ve seen a sequel to Disney’s Tron, a reboot/prequel to the brilliant classic Planet of the Apes, and Ridley Scott is in talks to direct a second installment in the Blade Runner universe following the release of his latest SF film, Prometheus; hell, science fiction seems to be just about everywhere in the mainstream. Would you say this is a good thing, and what project, rumored or confirmed, has your inner schoolboy-geek giddy with anticipation? (I know I’m most looking forward to the recently announced live-action TV series, Star Wars: Underworld, which producer Rick McCallum is describing as a blend of the Star Wars universe and The Godfather!)

It’s funny; to me there seems to have been a steady stream of big-budget science fiction films for years, going all the way back to Star Wars. It’s just that there are more of them these days. Which is good; I always think that films are a useful gateway drug for potential science fiction readers. What has heartened me enormously is the sheer quality of writing on genre television shows these days. Series like Battlestar Galactica and Carnivale had some of the best writing I’ve seen for a very long time.

Dave, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to drop by and have this talk. I look forward to getting my hands on Dozois’s Year’s Best for 2011, and I wish you continued success in this crazy but thrilling vocation!

Alex, it’s been a genuine pleasure. Thanks for the questions!

“The Incredible Exploding Man” can be found in Solaris Rising, ed. Ian Whates, and will be reprinted in Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection, available July 3, 2012, and also featuring fiction by Catherynne M. Valente, Robert Reed, Stephen Baxter, Lavie Tidhar, Jay Lake, Peter S. Beagle, Michael Swanwick, and Tobias S. Buckell, among others.

Follow Dave on Twitter, where he tweets as @HutchinsonDave.

Book Review: Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson at Digital Science Fiction

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Over at DigitalScienceFiction.com, my review of Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson is live. This is my first blog post written for Digital Science Fiction; and, hopefully, the first of many. Here’s an excerpt:

Take the trope of the cyborg, for instance. A symbol, a science-fictional image as well as reality, Gibson argues that in today’s world we fail to see the forest for the trees, so to speak — that our “literalist” sensibilities blind us to the truth of our existence: that the Net, or cyberspace, is itself a very real, very vital, and utterly enormous cybernetic organism.

Questions about the merit of ideas like the so-called Technological Singularity, or transhumanism, posthumanism, et cetera, are rendered moot in Gibson’s view, in light of the reality that we already exist — in a fully physical sense, whether we’re readily aware of it or not — as organic units within a larger cyborg (he employs the metaphor of the capital-B “Borg,” from the fictional Star Trek universe). That we are, quite literally, participants in a global, liminal state of being — transhumanist, if you prefer — that points to the inevitability of science-fictional concepts like human drones with a shared consciousness, or hive mind, and “a humanity where unaugmented reality will eventually be a hypothetical construct, something we can only try, with great difficulty, to imagine.”

First Reviews of “El Mirador”

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Two reviews of “El Mirador” have cropped up across the net, one by Writers of the Future winner and author Ryan Harvey on Amazon and another on a personal blog, and the general impression seems to be positive.

Harvey, who gave the story four out of five stars, writes:

It’s tough to write a story entirely in second person and not have it come across as an unreadable gimmick, but Alex J. Kane pulls it off in this high-tech SF thriller about a female assassin laden with cyber-enhancements tracking down a murderer in order to pay off her own debts. The future-noir setting is well-realized in the confines of the short story, and overall the work is a fast and rewarding read.

The other reviewer explains:

I was very much caught off guard by the story. I really didn’t have any idea what to expect based on the title, but I definitely had not expected a second person story, but that’s what I got. Interesting choice that. The ideas are good, the pacing is good, the story overall is good, although it left me wanting more. More depth, more detail, more Tzitzi. I guess realistically being left wanting more is definitely a better thing than wanting less. I also expect that it’s something that’s totally common among people who are primarily book readers, and even more so in my case as I primarily read series. So going from stories which typically are told in hundreds of thousands to millions of words, and instead down to something that’s more appropriately counted in hundreds of words. Odds are that it’s going to leave you wanting more. Even stories that very clearly have a completed arc are likely to leave you with questions like: but what happens next?

Bottom line, I enjoyed the story and would consider reading more work by Alex J. Kane, but at this point I’m not going to go to any particular effort to seek it out.

Hey, fair enough. I’m pleased the story has gotten a reaction at all, let alone a humbling bit of praise from a writer as fine and hard-working as Ryan Harvey. I’m honored.

Writing Goals 2012

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Okay, so 2011 was a year spent largely riding on the fumes of 2010′s few modest successes. Why lie? But, on a positive note, I must say that the quality of my fiction, while perhaps yet inconsistent, continues to increase, both in my own eyes and those of readers. I sold a short story from 2010 that I loved (“In the Arms of Lachiga”) to Digital Science Fiction at SFWA-standard professional rates (i.e. hundreds of dollars, praise the cosmos — and many thanks to Michael Wills, Christine Clukey, et al.!), and in doing so got my name on the cover of a pro publication next to none other than Nebula Award-winner Eric James Stone. I wrote fiction I’m proud of — “El Mirador,” which sold to Tom Carpenter’s Mirror Shards anthology springs to mind; as does the story “Prospect of a World I Dream,” which has yet to find a home. And, perhaps most importantly, I read some really great fiction: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, Choke and Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (and a zillion other books and short stories I can’t remember at the moment).

I can hardly call 2011 a failure…but it was a disappointment. I saw all the hard work I did in 2010, with the exception of a small press collapsing under its own weight and canning three of the books I was supposed to appear in, finally come to fruition in the form of books. These things were great. But I didn’t do the writing I’d hoped to do; what I did, I’m proud of, sure, but I could have accomplished so much more… Instead, I chose to bask in the glory of yesterdays, to dream and ponder instead of getting my hands dirty. For the most part.

So here it is, folks. My official declaration of intent for 2012. It’s modest, and extremely doable, but that’s the point. In the course of the next year, I will:

  • Apply to Clarion, Clarion West, and Odyssey
  • Complete and submit my current novel project, Doomster
  • Write, revise, and submit 12 new finished short stories
  • Continue to enter Writers of the Future every contest quarter
  • Follow Heinlein’s Rules henceforth without exception
  • Begin making lists of nouns, titles, concepts, and story ideas a la Bradbury’s essay “Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds,” from Zen in the Art of Writing
  • Graduate college with a B.A. in English
My “dreams,” then — and these can happen anytime before I die, not necessarily in 2012:
  • Sell a novel to a major SF/F/H publisher (i.e. Tor, Daw, Ace, Nightshade, etc.)
  • Sell a short story collection to a similar publisher
  • Get nominated for a prestigious award in the SF, F, or H field (i.e. Stoker, Nebula, Hugo, etc.)
  • Attend a workshop like Clarion, Clarion West, or Odyssey
  • Sell a story to one or several of my dream markets: Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Cemetery Dance, etc.

More on the Twisted Library Press Fiasco

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Over at a small-press blog called Books of the Dead, James Roy Daley elaborates on his own writing and publishing advice — namely, Yog’s Law — and cites my own discussion of the recent implosion of Twisted Library Press‘s anthology-factory business practice:

I did see one ray of hope while wading through the mess: a newbie writer named Alex J. Kane. Despite the fact that he has few writing credits to his name, he spoke words of wisdom that were – for the most part – overlooked by his peers. But they weren’t overlooked by me.

Glad to see that my post on the matter hasn’t been entirely overlooked. It’s an important example of what can go horribly wrong in this industry, and all the early signs of trouble were blatantly obvious for all to see. We were just too anxious and naive to see them. Traditional publishing is slow, but when the conditions of contracts are approaching their expiration date, it’s worth reconsidering whether or not you’ve submitted your work to a worthy market. Sad but true.

Still Alive

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Okay, okay: Quick update.

School is coming to a close. Not winding down, as the expression goes, not yet — but it’s getting close to being over. I have a ten- to twelve-page research paper I’m working on, I have two or three major essay-based tests to study for, a ten-minute presentation to do, but then I’m fucking done.

At least until next semester. (The last one, finally.)

After that? Well, okay. Here’s the official announcement: I’m writing my first novel. I’ve got a couple of short story ideas brewing in the back of my mind, science fiction stories, but I’m saving those for afterward. I don’t want to get in the way of what has the potential to become a really, really interesting dark fantasy novel. Or horror novel. Or weird transgressive satire. I don’t give a shit what people end up calling it, because chances are that no one will want to read it. It’s a first novel — maybe you didn’t catch that part.

I’m calling it DOOMSTER, but you can call it whatever you want. Don’t call it crap, ’cause that’s rude as hell. Just ignore it, if you think it’s crap. Please.

I’ve got a lot of brainstorming notes and a very broad outline written, with some truly inspiring characters and ideas, but I honestly have no idea what it will end up being. It may prove to be a trunk novel. It may end up self-published. It may sell to a small press publisher like Raw Dog Screaming Press, who I think are doing some fantastic work in the field of horror and the weird right now, or somebody bigger. I dunno.

I just want to write a novel, and have some fun with it.

To write the book — here comes that advice bubbling up again — that I would want to read.

(Meanwhile, I’ll also be filling out applications to Clarion, Clarion West, and Odyssey. Fingers crossed.)

So what have I been reading? That’s relevant.

First: Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk’s earth-shattering debut novel from 1996. My favorite book, well, ever. Must’ve read it a hundred times. It’s been instrumental in motivating my lazy, stressed-out ass to hunker down and get a novel done. Finally. Before that: things like Horns by Joe Hill, and Palahniuk’s Damned. More recently, Jeremy C. Shipp’s Cursed, George Carlin’s posthumous memoir, Last Words, and The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy. I’ve been watching my favorite childhood anime series, Robotech.

This is where my head has been, when it’s not at school. Doing schoolwork.

By the time I get around to diving headlong into the novel draft next week, my head is still going to be here. I think that’s okay, even a great thing. These are books I love. The myths I’ve built my life around, to put it boldly.

They’re the reason I’m managing to make my homework fun in this last, final stretch.

Here’s the block quote that opens my final Buddhism term paper, for fun:

I would put forward that the next thing is going to be a story, because right now, people really don’t have a big story, a big software… They don’t have a big meta-narrative story; they don’t have a big story like Christianity was a big story. So right now, we need a really big story… And that story doesn’t have to be in conflict or in reaction to the current story, because I would say, right now, you don’t change anything by protesting anything… You give people a more effective way of living their lives, they won’t give a shit about foreign oil, you know? You give them the right story, and you make their cars obsolete, it’s gonna be like, “We are just swimming in oil. What are we going to do with all this oil?” And you can do that within the culture without reacting to the government, the war, whatever. Because in a way, by reacting to it, you’re wasting energy…you are making it stronger by giving it this token little resistance, keeping it in place. So your job, I would say, is to come up with a story like that, that makes all of the things we worry about so much right now completely beside the point… We won’t even think about them, because your story will be so incredible. I don’t know what that story is, but that’s why…if I can make my case, somebody’s gonna come up with that story.

–Chuck Palahniuk (Postcards from the Future)

The paper is called Karmic Demons and the Power of Compassion: Buddhist Philosophy as a Basis for Modern Myth, and I’m hoping to craft it into a kind of short fiction-writer’s manifesto. A foundation for the rest of my literary career, at the risk of sounding presumptuous, or even pretentious.

Because I’ve come to love the ideas that lie at the heart of Buddhist thought (even though I’m not, nor will I ever be, a Buddhist), I seek to imbue my stories with them — but only if I can achieve that without growing deliberately didactic. In this essay, I’m going to explore Buddhist ideas in existing stories and the larger philosophical truths they represent, and then explain the utility of such ideas from a contemporary storyteller’s perspective.

To give you an idea of the paper’s meat-and-potatoes content, the preexisting basis for my argument, here’s my works cited bibliography:

  • Bacigalupi, Paolo. “Pocketful of Dharma.” Pump Six and Other Stories. San Francisco: Night Shade, 2010. 1-24. Print.
  • Dick, Philip K. “Beyond Lies the Wub.” Paycheck and Other Classic Stories. New York: Citadel, 1990. 27-33. Print.
  • Hill, Joe. Heart-Shaped Box. New York: Harper, 2010. Print.
  • Hill, Joe. Horns. New York: William Morrow, 2010. Print.
  • Loy, David, and Linda Goodhew. The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004. Print.
  • Mitchell, Donald W. Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
  • Okorafor, Nnedi. Who Fears Death. New York: Daw, 2010. Print.
  • Palahniuk, Chuck. Damned. New York: Doubleday, 2011. Print.
  • Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club: A Novel. New York: Henry Holt, 2004. Print.
  • Postcards from the Future: The Chuck Palahniuk Documentary. Dir. Dennis Widmyer, Kevin Kölsch, and Josh Chaplinsky. Perf. Chuck Palahniuk. Kinky Mule Films, 2003. DVD.

Total Geekout

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Over at i09.com earlier today, horror novelist Joe Hill — author of my all-time favorite novel, Horns — participated in a digital Q&A. Fortunately, I finally got the chance to ask Hill the very question that’s been burning in my mind for over a year now:

Hey there! Thanks for the great questions guys. So I guess I’ll just quote your questions, and see what I have (if anything) for answers. First up, from Alex J. Kane:

Q: “What I’d love to know is: How do you develop your characters? Do you write extensive sketches in place of a plot outline? Or do you craft them as you draft the story? I’d love to know where these folks came from.”

A: For the most part, I just sort of feel my way along. Every day, when I sit down to work, I hope I’m going to learn something new about one of my characters: what music they like, how they feel about their mother, what turns them on, what they won’t tolerate. Developing an extensive character sketch ahead of time would rob me of the most enjoyable part of the process.

At the same time, this is also the most challenging part of working on a story, and can lead to setbacks. In all three novels – HEART-SHAPED BOX, HORNS, and the new (unpublished) one – I wound up writing lots of material about certain characters, trying to find the right sound to their voice, struggling to find their emotional center. And most of that material never makes it into the book. I had to write it, for myself, but it isn’t inherently interesting to the reader.

Bad News and Troubling Reactions

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Every writer wants to be published. For many, it’s the Big Thing. It’s the external validation, the justification for continuing on with all this madness. But in today’s world, it’s also very easy, and writer exploitation is a rampant nuisance.

Like most writers starting out, the first paid fiction sale was my main goal. Not word count, not long-term project completion, not mastering the craft; I wanted, first and foremost, to be published.

And in August 2010, I received an acceptance for my first story, “Night of the Widow” — not a great story, but one I was proud of at the time. It was purchased — or at least contracted for — by Bill Tucker of the Library of Horror Press. Mr. Tucker is a great guy, so far as I’ve been able to tell, and has worked hard for the Library. I went on to sell three more stories to Mr. Tucker for various Library of Horror Press anthologies, one of which was paid for and published. The other three, I just read on the publisher’s forum, have been cancelled, for financial reasons. So they’re no longer listed on my bibliography page, and will likely never see print. I’m fine with this, despite my initial disappointment.

But what troubles me, aside from my own interests in the matter, are other writers’ reactions to this small press going broke and subsequently cancelling upwards of a dozen — if not dozens — of announced themed anthologies. Each of these books was conceived as a themed collection of stories, and then an editor (to be paid on release of the anthology, like the writers — the editors have been equally wronged) would read, select, and send out contracts for chosen stories. Then a table of contents would be posted, and a vague, tentative release date such as “Spring 2011″ would be posted.

Due to financial difficulties — i.e., poor sales — the projects were simply abandoned. And writers, editors, and cover artists were left unpaid (I’m assuming — cover artists were perhaps paid on completion of their work) and unpublished — which happens all too often in this industry. I’d read the horror stories more times than I can count, and yet I always assumed nothing like this would ever happen to me.

But the writers involved are fine with this! They’re disappointed, sure, as I am — but they’ve offered up propositions such as:

  • accepting a one-time advance of $5.00-$10.00 in place of the contracted 1 cent/word + contributor’s copy
  • attempting to use Kickstarter as a way to fund books that have already been compiled and contracted for
  • and even: paying for the publication of the books in place of accepting payment!

Are we so fucking desperate? Do we never want to have careers?

The writer is such a delicate artist, such an utterly senseless creature, that he is willing to look past simple business sense, accept no payment — which he was promised long ago, perhaps over a year ago, when the contract was signed — and be happy about it?

Involved parties have suggested that a penny per word is itself a problem, that the publisher wouldn’t be going broke if it hadn’t customarily promised writers compensation of 1 cent/word plus a contributor’s copy, and then only the editors and cover artists would need to be paid. Fuck… Aren’t these books of stories? Written by writers?

Anyway, my anger is not toward the publisher — a labor of love with a very passionate community surrounding it — and certainly not toward the editors, but toward the writers themselves, who are too stupid to recognize the seeds of exploitation, who are fully willing to forego payment of any kind, or even pay the publisher to fund the book’s release. This is not the way publishing works — it was never intended to work this way, and it shouldn’t ever work this way.

If someone is in such a big damn hurry to be published, he ought to take ten minutes to convert his document to .mobi format and throw it up on Amazon. Or put together his own pay-on-demand anthology project — and hell, don’t offer contributors any sort of compensation for their work. Maybe they won’t mind.

But dammit, writers, stop giving away your work for free. Writers get paid.