Title: The rise and fall of a writing career

[lethargic_man]

Twenty years ago today I first set pen to paper, to get the stories that had been in my head for as long as I remember out of it. Of course, that was not the first time I had written fiction—I had been composing stories for school, of course, and at the age of nine I wrote^* a short story entitled "School Work"^†, but apart from that isolated endeavour, this was the first time I was writing off my own bat, and at greater length than the four hundred words we were to aim for at school.

* Or rather typed, the first story I ever typed, on a child's typewriter—scaled down and pastel blue—my father had got for me and my brothers. I reckon apart from people who learned to type at school I must be amongst the very last generation of people who learned to type on an entirely mechanical typewriter.

† One of only three dream-inspired stories I ever wrote. In my dream I stood on the flat roof of my school's dining hall, looking across to the likewise flat roof of the junior school, upon which a gigantic mass of spaghetti writhed, so large that bits of it spilled over the roof's edge. In the centre of the dining hall roof another such mass quivered. Next to me stood the headmaster, who turned to me and said, "Now look what you've done!" I never finished the story, though; I lacked a clear picture of the plot. It did, however, feature the line, "Nothing could be heard except the drip, drip, drip of coffee from the ceiling." Much to my chagrin, the typescript went walkies twenty years ago and more.

So, I put pen to paper to get rid of what I perceived, rightly, as the juvenilia in my head—and discovered that nature abhors a vacuum. Now I no longer had to go over old stories mentally to keep from forgetting them, I found new stories pouring in to take their place.

So began the construction of a mythos I called TFNFS, which, being both juvenilia and very derivative, counted toward the million words of rubbish every writer must churn out before they write anything worth reading. In this case, this included an 80,000 word novel capturing the saga ongoing in my head since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and a further <checks>32,000 word novella (entitled The Sorcerer and the Apprentice^*), plus an assortment of sundry shorter works.

* Which I was fortunate enough to write just before reading Terry Pratchett's Sourcery, or I'd have been forever spelling "sorcerer" with a U...

At the age of sixteen I wrote a novella entitled The Puzzles of Perepiton, and then at the age of eighteen launched into a novel, The Fires of Hell, which soon stalled due to lack of vision. Over the next seven years it grew, sporadically, to 50% completion and was renamed A Remnant Shall Be Preserved.

At eighteen, I went on my year off, and found myself with neither the time nor the inclination to write. However, being impressed by the portrayal of the decay of Roman Tiberias in the fourth century in James Michener's The Source, I dashed off five pages of plot summary, which over the following year I turned into a 105,000 word novel, Twilight Trails. Following that, I decided to expand The Puzzles of Perepiton into a fully-fledged novel, which ended up at <checks> 225,000 words.

Until I reached university, my writings had had an audience of no one but myself and my brother. At university I tried bouncing Twilight Trails off some friends, and got back generally positive remarks. The following year, I joined Jómsborg the New—Cambridge Fantastical Literature Society—and encountered for the first time critiques from people who knew what they were talking about—for, as I have since deduced, fellow writers excel at detecting the kind of faults only one reader in several might pick up.

So to the soul-destroying delights of adverse criticism. I didn't realise it was only that at first; in the beginning I took it personally, and vowed to ignore anything which didn't fit into my vision. But eventually I came to accept that any problem multiple readers identified needed acting on, and even those faults only a single reader did still at least necessitated serious contemplation.

It was at this point—the start of 1997—that a couple of friends suggested I send one of my stories to rysmiel—a casual acquaintance of mine on alt.fan.pratchett—who would be able to give me some useful feedback. So began an email correspondence that has continued to this day.

Under the tuition of rysmiel and the posters on rec.arts.sf.composition (Patricia Wrede in particular), my writing grew much, much better. At rysmiel's urging, I started submitting my stories for publication; wondering, after a while, why I had been spending so much time working on material almost no one ever read.

Around this time, I heard of one person who had had to make one hundred submissions in the course of a year before they achieved a single sale. I said I hoped it didn't take me that long; at my rate, that would take me years.

It did take me that long: I made my first sale after one hundred and two rejections, which took me seven years. However, my skin wasn't getting any thicker during this time; indeed, if anything, the reverse, as negative-laden critique after critique ground my optimism down^*. Rewriting my stories—murdering my babies—proved a torturous process, and I displaced endlessly from doing so. My writing might have been better by the time I finished with each story, but bringing a story to completion was now a much slower process, most of which, I was finding, I no longer enjoyed.

* Even if they had positive bits in them. By this stage, I had joined a writers' group, Writers Bloc^†; and proceeded on to join an online one, RECOG, after I left Edinburgh.

† Okay, technically it's the East of Scotland Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Writers Group, and Writers Bloc is the accompanying spoken-word group, but I found EoSSFF&HWG just doesn't trip off the tongue so well.

That first sale—of a seven hundred word vignette, to a webzine—perked me up a bit, as did the knowledge that, my writing being much better than when I started submitting, it should take me less time to achieve my second sale; but I nevertheless was now having longer and longer refractory periods not writing after each adverse critique, and was accumulating a pile of stories I was putting off revising, and therefore finishing and submitting.

Now, it's nearly a year since last I did any writing. My story submission has tailed off as well; I've lost the confidence my stories are good enough to sell (even if I remain convinced they're better than a lot of what I do see published). I used to call myself a willbe—like a wannabe, but with the determination to succeed. Now I'm not sure. What's the point in spending a lot of time in an activity I don't enjoy most of; and when you know each story must be followed by a soul-destroying process of rewriting? I look at writers like autopope and papersky and rysmiel, and, seeing how much faster than me they write, realise their speed gives them an edge I lack. In short, I now no longer think I have what it takes.

Becoming a published novelist was the most important to me of the targets I set myself for my thirtieth birthday. Having failed miserably at this, I've had to carve out a new raison d'être for myself—and, like with the second Tablets of the Law, it's not so easy second time round: I'm still trying.

I'm not saying I'll not write again; I tell people I'm only waiting for my muse to come back from sunning herself on a beach in Torremolinos. I suspect if my life were to take a strong turn for the positive that might indeed happen. But in the meantime, I'm not pushing it.

My only regret is that I wish I had not spent my twenties so driven as regards writing. There was always a balance to be struck between writing and socialising in my spare time, and during my mid and late twenties I got that balance wrong. For example, in 2003, I accompanied my family to Mallorca for Pesach: an ideal opportunity for meeting people my age—something I've not found easy since moving to London. But I spent the entire time working, instead, on my story A Symphony for the Death of the Universe—because I had the muse, and when you've got it, you don't ignore it: Come back a month later, and it'll be gone again. And so I threw myself at my story, ignoring outside distractions, until it was done; and that took the whole of the holiday.

Since then, the story has sat on the side, because whilst I can see it needs revision, I'm not sure how to do it. This is doubly annoying, not just because, until I do so, the time spent writing the story was wasted, but also because it means the time I could have been socialising was wasted, too, for no reason. *sigh*

Comments

[awful-dynne.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that you were a writer! How neat! Shouldn't you write because you enjoy it rather than write to have to revise to try and publish? Of the things you've written(completed or not) what has been your favorite to write? What have other people liked the most?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that you were a writer! How neat! Shouldn't you write because you enjoy it rather than write to have to revise to try and publish?

That's the naïve stance; once you've switched from that to the latter model, you can't go back: You can't help but think "what would be the point of putting all that time in if no one but yourself and a few friends are ever going to read it?"

Of the things you've written(completed or not) what has been your favorite to write?

Oh, that's tricky. I'm not sure. Possibly The Puzzles of Perepiton, as I was still writing blithely, if not so skillfully, away at that stage, and I remember being quite upset when I finished the novel and no longer had the characters for company in my head—they just froze at the point where they were when the novel ended.

What have other people liked the most?

Don't know. I've never got people to do a comparative! (I can tell you what I liked the most—the stories I'm the proudest of—but that's different.)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Goals change, and if your writing takes a back seat in your life for now, that's nothing to feel ashamed or upset about, life is like that. I can easily see how it could come to be that I'll give up riding - I don't want to do that, and it won't lessen my enthusiasm for horses, but it appears to work out that way, and I was probably far madder about horses than you ever were about writing.

I''m glad that you _were_ writing, and that you *did* go to the writer's workshop at DWCon at the Adelphi, because that was the first time i had the courage to step forward as a writer; and you also pointed me towards rasfc, for which I'll be eternally grateful.

Your short stories will remain in my memory. I understand how frustrating the submission game is - there are way more writers than open slots, and it appears to be easier to publish a novel than a short story, which is a rotten way to spend one's time.

My suspicion is that if you hadn't been busy writing, you would have been busy doing something else with equal enthusiasm. It's useless musing about the past, and quite frankly, beating yourself up for it won't make things better. You can't change the past. You can only work on the present, and try to improve the future.

When I'm back, would you like to be subjected to an endless slideshow ^H meet up? I am, as you might have noticed, a lousy e-mail correspondent, and it's ages since I've seen you in person.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your kind words. The sympathy does help.

I understand how frustrating the submission game is - there are way more writers than open slots, and it appears to be easier to publish a novel than a short story, which is a rotten way to spend one's time.

I wonder whether I should be trying to sell an anthology then...

When I'm back, would you like to be subjected to an endless slideshow ^H meet up?

Sure. Drop me an email when you're back.

writing

[bluepork.livejournal.com]

Most obviously, if you spent less time today blogging your life, perhaps you could spend more time exercising your muse and creating writing of greater longevity. I am sure you will tell me of the nonsensical alogic of this observation, but it works for me. That's the main reason I haven't embraced the blogging thing. I would worry that it would consume what little creative energy I am able to use for other endeavours at the moment.

BTW, am I really the only person who knows what TFNFS really stands for?

Re: writing

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Most obviously, if you spent less time today blogging your life, perhaps you could spend more time exercising your muse and creating writing of greater longevity. I am sure you will tell me of the nonsensical alogic of this observation, but it works for me. That's the main reason I haven't embraced the blogging thing. I would worry that it would consume what little creative energy I am able to use for other endeavours at the moment.

I find the two don't interfere with each other; when I need the time for writing, I make it. But there's no point forcing myself to sit down and try and write when my heart's not in it.

BTW, am I really the only person who knows what TFNFS really stands for?

No, rysmiel knows, and probably livredor too. I haven't done anything with TFNFS now in the last nine years.