Ramblings of Jeff Somers, author
Jeff Somers (www.jeffreysomers.com) was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and regrets nothing. He is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series published by Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket Books. He sold his first novel at age 16 to a tiny publisher in California which quickly went out of business and has spent the last two decades assuring potential publishers that this was a coincidence. Jeff publishes a zine called The Inner Swine and has also published a few dozen short stories; his story “Sift, Almost Invisible, Through” appeared in the anthology Crimes by Moonlight, published by Berkley Hardcover and edited by Charlaine Harris. His guitar playing is a plague upon his household and his lovely wife The Duchess is convinced he would wither and die if left to his own devices.
As I may have already mentioned 1,000,000 times, I have a book on the craft and business of writing coming out in May. Here’s a brief teaser trailer I cooked up that gives you the spirit of the book:
If that doesn’t make you burn with the desire to preorder 500 copies, I don’t know what will.
Writing is a messy business. You might imagine that as you progress along your artistic and professional path things get cleaner and simpler—that you’re able to bang out clean, powerful prose at any moment without all the mess of false starts and revision, but you’d be what Literary Scientists call ?wrong.’
Yes, you get better at certain things. Organizing your thoughts, jump-starting beginnings, crafting thesis statements and arguments. Research, process—there are plenty of things you get better at, including recognizing when the words you’ve just put down on the page or screen are absolute hot trash (note to self: Absolute Hot Trash is a great band name). But you’ll probably never hit a point where you can bang out a draft of a novel or story quickly and nail it every time. Maybe sometimes. Maybe when motivation or inspiration really smacks you. But in general you have to give yourself permission to fail.
This can be difficult to accept when you’ve attained a certain amount of experience and success. After all, if you’ve written and sold novels, been anthologized, won awards you must know what you’re doing! And yet you’ll still write stuff that is the aforementioned Absolute Hot Trash. You’ll still get a novel 66% of the way and then watch it fall apart. You’ll still review yesterday’s work and be dismayed that your sentences have all the flow of a high school kid rapping for the first time after drinking an entire bottle of Jägermeister by themselves.
The best thing—the only thing—you can is to give yourself permission to fail. Permission to write Absolute Hot Trash. Permission to delete 10,000 words and start over.
The important thing to remember here is that failing in a creative endeavor is not only not unusual even for veterans, it’s healthy. It’s necessary. It’s like a controlled burn that clears out the dead underbrush and old growth so new saplings can emerge. It should be embraced.
Most importantly, recognizing that you’ve screwed the pooch on a piece of writing means you’re still able to tell the fucking difference between good work and bad. If you ever feel like you’re in some amazing Zone where everything breaks your way and you haven’t done shitty work in a long time, get suspicious.
Of course, don’t make my mistake: Remember to also give yourself permission to succeed. Whew, the wasted years!
My wife, The Duchess, often gets irritated with me due to my reaction to celebrity sightings. We live near New York City, and are frequently there, so there’s a non-zero chance we’ll run across a famous person. When we do, invariably The Duchess doesn’t notice but I do, and my reaction is to wait about three blocks and then whisper to her that someone famous was hailing a cab or being raptured or something back there. The Duchess curses my name, turns, and races back to see if she can still see them.
I do this for three reasons: One, my wife’s rage and antics are amusing to me. Two, I think people are The Worst and thus cannot think of anything worse than strangers intruding on my life. And three, I don’t give a shit about celebrities, and there’s an unreasonable, ornery part of my personality that doesn’t want to feed their famewhore machines with my attention unless they’re performing for me like some sort of court jester or pet monkey.
I carry this attitude to the Internet, where the famewhoriest of famewhores all live. This translates to a truculent refusal to click on things that are very clearly designed to make me click on them—and this goes triple for things that are Outrage Machines, the sort of video or blogger presences that are there to be controversial and upsetting solely so middle aged idiots like me will rush to click on them and see what’s so terrible. So that we can then rush back to our own Internet backwater and write up breathless condemnations, defenses, hot takes, or other reactions. In an attempt to scoop up e second- and third-hand clicks in the wake of the flagship controversy.
The problem with my obstinate refusal to give these folks clicks is that it means I can’t actually see what’s casuing all the fuss.
In the past, if you watched some controversial thing or gave in and listened to something, you could often do so without rewarding the jackass that created it. These days, however, if I click on something just to find out why everyone’s so pissed off, I am in fact rewarding that jackass with a Click. But if I refuse to bestow that Click, then I can’t really judge for myself. It’s a very strange place to be, especially since I myself am out there with my virtual tin cup, begging for Clicks just like everyone else.
Does this mean we’re all living in an episode of Black Mirror? Probably. But as long as I don’t have to fuck any pigs, I’m okay with that.
One of the best pieces of advice any writer can receive is the admonition to read constantly and widely. There’s no better writing class than the brilliant writers who have come before you—that’s not a revelation, it’s the sort of advice we all kind of know instinctively, I think.
The writing world can be a little insular. Once you start following agents and writers in Twitter and keeping up with all the spilled tea behind the publishing scenes, it gets a little echo-chambery, and part of that effect is the reading list. Every week there’s a new batch of book you’re “supposed” to read because it’s the new hot thing in literary circles, or because of its back-story, or simply because everyone on your feeds is talking about it.
You can’t go wrong reading anything, really, but sometimes you need to step back from the “must read” hot lists and read some book just because you want to.
One of the most depressing things about life is that someday you will be gone, but people will continue to produce books, films, and other art. Yes, someday they will release a Star Wars movie and you will be dead, and thus unable to see it. And someday a novel that you would absolutely love will be released, and you will not be able to read it. Again, because in this scenario—in case it isn’t clear—you are dead.
Trying to keep up with the current hot takes in the literary world can be a bit exhausting, and it also means you’ll wind up reading a lot of books that just don’t do it for you. Nothing wrong with that; you can learn about your craft from any novel, good, bad, in your wheelhouse or so far out of it it’s not even in orbit around your wheelhouse.
But sometimes you need to feed your soul. Maybe that means taking a break to read some classics. Or some history. Or some trashy thrillers. Whatever your secret sauce, sometimes you have to put aside the new hotness out there and stop worrying about being able to jump into every single hashtag and just read for, you know, pleasure.
Me, I’m currently reading a history about restaurants in America. Will that ever be useful to me as research for my fiction, or teach me a better way to write a fight scene? Probably not. But damn, I’m enjoying it.
I know that in the field of writing advice, push yourself isn’t going to win any awards for originality. But there’s some advice that’s so important it’s worth repeating—a lot.
Growing up, I read epic fantasy almost exclusively. This was largely due to the fact that the first books I ever read obsessively were the Chronicles of Narnia. I loved those books so intensely I re-read them for months, and when I was finally ready to read something new, I sought out similar experiences. For a long time, if it had a sword, dragon, or wizard on the cover, I was there.
That reflected in my writing, too. My early work is all fantasy. It’s all wizards and swords and dragons and hand-drawn maps of imagined worlds. A lot of people get into these sorts of writing ruts, and for many those ruts last their whole lives. Even folks who jump between genres and styles fairly often can get trapped into writing the same things all the time. But it’s essential to push yourself, to force yourself to explore different genres and styles, to experiment.
I started working on a sci-fi novel last year. Titled Rough Beast, it’s 100% in my SFF wheelhouse as a writer, and there’s a certain joy in working inside a framework you find familiar and comfortable. I’m having a blast working on it.
Then, in the midst of working on Rough Beast I had an idea for a completely different kind of story. Not SFF, not mystery or crime, not weird in any way. It’s a concept for a novel that’s completely different from just about anything I’ve ever worked on before.
I didn’t wait to finish Rough Beast. I started alternating between the two novels, working on a chapter in one and then jumping to a chapter in the other. Working outside of my usual comfort zone has been pretty exciting and a lot of fun. Will I finish this other novel? Will it be successful? Will I sell it? Who knows? And right now, who cares? Because I’m enjoying working on it, and it’s opening up channels in my head that haven’t been opened before. That’s why pushing yourself is important.
If the book turns out to be an enormous disaster, of course, I’ll deny it ever existed and sue anyone who mentions this blog post.
Behind all the questions writers throw at each other about process and where you write and all that is the fundamental concern of finding the time to work. Sure, some writers Have Money, or supportive spouses, or the perceived invincibility of youth, and thus can eschew things like paying bills or working for a living in order to work at their novel like it’s a job. And some writers have achieved enough in their careers that they earn their living from past work and can now focus on new work exclusively.
But for many writers, that’s not possible. We have to have Day Jobs, or we have to write 500 freelance pieces every day to support our five hungry (always so, so hungry) cats. The question of how you find the time to work under those conditions isn’t a small one.
In 2017 I completed four full-length books (three novels and Writing Without Rules) and 20 shorter works—while also producing hundreds of freelance pieces and drinking, like, a lot of whiskey. When I make appearances writers often ask how I manage my time, and the simple answer is, I don’t.
Now, your mileage might vary. We are all different people, raised differently and baked with different obsessions and brain chemistry. So if you need to micro-manage your schedule, don’t let me tell you otherwise. But for me, the best way to find time to write is to not look for it.
Now, I have one advantage here: I write for a living, so I am literally always in front of a keyboard of some sort. So if I have a random moment of inspiration in the middle of a freelance project, I can jump over to the WIP and tap out a few dozen or a few hundred words, then jump back to paying the bills. And that’s how I approach writing: I just wait for opportunity and inspiration to line up, have at it, and at the end of the day I usually have a bit of work done without any sort of schedule or conscious effort.
A mistake some writers make (again, your mileage will vary) is to force themselves to have a schedule, whether because some other writer told them that it was the only way or because winging it hasn’t worked for them. But having a schedule shouldn’t mean you force it. Too often writers imagine that the dreaded word count is all that matters—in other words, if you end the day having written your word count goal, it was a good day, and it’s totally normal to delete all those words later in the process.
I disagree. Word count is meaningless. Produce good words. Words you’ll fight yourself to keep. If that means waiting to feel inspired, that’s OK. The key is to remain connected to your WIP, to think about it, to always be ready to dive into it, not necessarily to pour 5,000 shitty words into it every day no matter what.
At least that’s how I see it. Or maybe I’m just justifying the sheer amount of time I spend drunkenly playing Portal 2.
There are a lot of writing exercises you can take on in order to challenge yourself and push your personal creative or technical boundaries, and there’s a lot to be said for writing that isn’t about earning a fee or even finishing a major project like a novel. Sometimes writing just to write is the best way to focus on the mechanics of it; in other words, remove the exciting idea and the thrill of creativity and you can really look at that sausage being made.
Of course, for those of us who do a lot of freelance writing, that’s already pretty clear. And believe me, once you see that sausage being made it’s impossible to get the image out of your head: Every preposition, clause, and simile haunts you.
Here’s an exercise I often find useful: Write about something boring.
Look, most of us started writing fiction because we wanted to create. We had ideas, and no one else was offering up exactly the kind of book we wanted to read, so we started making one up ourselves. It’s often that simple. Our desire to write was often born from a thrilling idea we simply had to explore.
That’s great! It also means we can sometimes lose sight of the actual writing because we’re so dazzled by the ideas.
To counter that, try an exercise wherein you write about something 100% boring. Write about brushing your teeth. Or sitting and staring at a wall. Or your job. Find ways to make that incredibly boring subject dance off the page, but also pay attention to your sentences, your phrasing, your vocabulary. Since you’re bored by the subject, you’ll be able to ignore it in favor of those mechanics, and your flaws and weak spots will be easier to see.
And heck, if you do manage to make something terribly dull interesting solely through the power of your words, that’s an achievement. Sadly, no one is hiring writers who can make the boring interesting (or, possibly, that’s what everyone is hiring us to do). Believe me, if they were, I’d be rich.
Writing is a terrible way to live your life. It’s frustrating, it pays poorly, and 90% of your efforts will be what literary scientists call “utter shit.” Those are facts.
Most writers start to figure this out when they begin to listen to the advice they get, most notably the whole “write every day” mantra. We’ve discussed the dubious value of this advice before, but in general there’s value to working on your craft on a regular basis, of course. The problem with writing every day is that you become very painfully aware of how often your writing is flat-out terrible.
Look at it this way: If you only write when you’re fired up with inspiration and energy, it will seem easy and be quite fun. All writers know that magical moment when the stars align and you have a great idea burning through you and the time and energy to work on it. The problem, of course, is that if you spend your life waiting for those magical moments you’ll die with just a small handful of short works completed, because those moments don’t happen often. You have to find a way to work consistently in order to produce work on a reliable basis, and that means you’ll discover just how often your work is confused, poorly-written, and dull.
That’s fine. It’s good for you.
It’s easy to imagine that other writers are effortless geniuses. They can dash off a brilliant novel over lunch, they can summon a perfect bon mot in any situation, their sentences are minty fresh in the first draft. This is almost certainly not true; all writers have to work at it.
Seeing your own crappy writing on a regular basis is how you learn to do better. It’s that simple. In the rush of delirious creativity you often overlook clunky sentences, logical fallacies, and overuse of clichés because you’re riding high on that creative energy, sort of the way a drunk driver ignores stop signs, traffic lights, and human beings in the cross walk. You’ll learn a lot about writing simply by reviewing your own daily work and realizing that it’s absolutely terrible, then figuring out why it’s terrible.
Trust me when I say that all writers create terrible prose, all the time. The key is learning to a) recognize your terrible prose and b) how to fix, replace, or otherwise mitigate it. Embrace your bad writing.
Of course, sometimes a writer can actually sell bad writing. Not that I would know anything about this. Look, over there! A unicorn! <throws smoke bomb, runs away>
Most writers pursue verisimilitude, that magic effect that sparks suspension of disbelief and gets your reader on board with the lies you’re slinging. Sometimes it’s effortless, sometimes it requires a lot of heavy lifting, but once you achieve it you can take your story—and your reader—just about anywhere.
One major mistake writers make is assuming—wrongly—that if aspects of your story really happened you don’t have to work too hard on getting your readers’ buy-in. The logic is simple: No matter how insane a story or detail is, if it actually happened (whether in your direct experience and discovered through old-fashioned research) then it will be believable.
The fact is, things that actually happened are often the hardest aspects of your story to sell a reader.
This usually has nothing to do with the craziness of the concept. After all, readers are often perfectly willing to accept dragons, genius criminal investigators, and other fantastic literary ingredients without fuss. The problem is the unfounded confidence that a real story gives you, the writer.
Trying to sell the reader on a magical or otherwise fantastic idea? You subconsciously put in the work. You make sure you’ve got the rules worked out. You depict it carefully on the page so the reader buys in. You think through the ripple effects and details, the unintended consequences and the cheats. By the time your reader encounters it on the page, it’s fully-fleshed and able to withstand a good tire-kicking.
With real events, there’s a tendency to be lazy. After all, it really happened, so you don’t have to work so hard. The problem is, your reader doesn’t necessary know it really happened, and you’re (probably) not going to provide them with a link to a reliable source proving that it did. What you end up with is something incredible that feels fictional to the reader, and if you haven’t done the support work to sell it, they won’t buy it.
For example, I once drank sixteen Tequila Fanny Bangers and lived. No, really.
As regular readers of this blog (or, you know, old-fashioned stalker-types [waves cheerfully out window]) well know, I’m a big believer in short stories, as art, exercise, and commerce. A lot of writers avoid short stories, for a variety of reasons. Some just don’t like the constraints, preferring to spend their time working on a 5,000,000 page fantasy epic they expect to finish about 35 years after they have died. Some think that short stories don’t pay well enough to be worth the trouble.
Self-promotion is exhausting.
Neither of these folks are wrong, per se, but personally have always found short stories a lot of fun, useful in honing my writing skills, and surprisingly lucrative (sometimes). It’s true that most short story sales will result in token payments that don’t even begin to cover the blood and treasure of your imagination used in its writing. But they actually pay better than you might think. I discuss short stories a lot in my upcoming writing book Writing Without Rules (order 75 copies today!), because I think they’re a fantastic tool for all fiction writers, but here’s the specific breakdown for 2017.
So, every year I write at least 12 new stories (one a month as an exercise), and submit as many as I can to markets. This year I wrote 21 short stories. I submitted 71 stories to markets (note, that isn’t 71 separate stories, it’s a small number of stories submitted to multiple places). I sold 1 new story (Arthur Kill) and saw 4 published (The Kendish Hit, Last Best Day, The Bonus Situation, and Nigsu Ga Tesgu). I earned $1722.95 from short stories in 2017.
Sales-wise and money-wise, not my best year. Publication-wise, much better; any time you see 4 titles in print or digital, it’s not a bad year. By comparison, in 2016 I submitted stories 54 times, sold three, and earned $4,227.52 from short stories. Then again, in 2014 I earned $34.93 from short stories. Every year is a financial adventure when you’re a writer.
The thing about short stories is you never know how long the Long Tail might be. Other writers have made this point, but I’ll echo it: In 2005 I gave a short story to an anthology for $0. Ringing the Changes was chosen to be in Best American Mystery Stories 2006 and ultimately I earned $765 from it. In 2009 I placed the story Sift, Almost Invisible, Through in the MWA anthology Crimes by Moonlight, which paid royalties to the contributors, and earned $620.14 over a few years. These aren’t huge amounts of money, but the point is you never know how long or how well a short story sale might earn out.
Most importantly, of the 21 stories I wrote this year, I think 7 have potential. That’s an unusually high number, actually. Many years I write 10-20 stories and don’t think any of them have legs. So even if I’m fooling myself and only 3 or 4 of the new crop are worth submitting, it’s still a pretty good year, creativity-wise. And since I am always on the look out for signs of mental decline and encroaching decrepitude, this is encouraging.
Unless I’m already disconnected from reality and the new stories are all gibberish. Happy New Year!
