“The reason 99% of all stories
written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts
that are left on the closet shelf at home.”
- John W. Campbell
Nothing beats the irrevocable “send” button for
unleashing the flaws in your latest story. Only the act of slipping an envelope
into a mail slot can equal it.
You send your story out into the world, and
your unconscious hits you with a two-by-four, and sometimes the two-by-four has
a couple of rusty nails sticking out of it.
This just happened when I sent a story called
“The Home Run” to Charlie Finlay’s guest-edited issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. For the first time, the magazine will
be accepting electronic submissions. When last I checked, Charlie had received
nearly 600 submissions. The race was on. It seemed fun. I’d already suggested
to my students that they join in the pile-on (poor Charlie!). And the deadline
was a great incentive to finish a story that wouldn’t leave me alone and kept
getting in the way of my other writing projects. If I don’t try for the
deadline I might be diddling with this story for months. Hey! Ho! Let’s go!
Not long after I sent the story out (thirty
minutes before the deadline for submissions) I discovered what might be a flaw
in the structure of the story – a flaw for me, at least.
The story takes place almost entirely as a
conversation between two people. One is the narrator. The other is, for lack of
a better term, the protagonist. The protagonist in this story is Louis H.
Sullivan, the famous architect. The story takes place just a few weeks before
his death in 1924. He is penniless, obscure, forgotten. Worse, from his
perspective, he is plagued with doubt – “the darkest color of all.” By the end
of the story he will be delivered from that darkness.
But has he done so through his own actions?
Maybe. He has at least worked out the meaning of his “vision,” as he tells the
narrator, Cornelius Hooper. Sullivan has been given the opportunity to glimpse
the future, at least as far as the neighboring building to his Auditorium offices.
Sullivan is famous for coining the phrase, “Form must follow function,” but he
admits he cannot comprehend the possible forms and functions of constructions a
century ahead of his time. And yet he does come to a resolution – one he can
live with for the brief time he has left. On that level, the story works,
perhaps not admirably, but it holds itself above water well enough to qualify
as a story rather than an episode.
But what about Hooper? Have we presented his
“problem,” his “conflict” sufficiently? Has he found a resolution to this
problem by the end of the story? I’m not so certain. Do we have to? A story
needs only one protagonist. Two is nice, if you can manage it. Three? Now we’re
getting complicated.
Two characters in a story, even when they’re not
opposed to each other, seems to call for a kind of complementary effect – the
problem of one should reflect the problem of the other. Somehow, the two inner
conflicts (or outer conflicts, I’m not picky) should reflect each other. The
solution for one should suggest the solution for the other – or in a more
conflicting relationship between characters, the key for one should be the
padlock for the other, and maybe vice versa.
I’m not sure I managed it in “The Home Run.” I
think I managed to save Louis Sullivan. I’m not sure if I saved Cornelius
Hooper. What I do see, however, is where I need to work on the story if/when I
get it back.
And had I not sent the story out, I’m not sure
this potential flaw would have been revealed to me.
The other day, I heard from one of my students.
He loves writing and says it’s the thing that makes him happiest. He’s also
afraid of sending out his work.
I thought about it. Of course he’s afraid. Sending your work to editors is a scary
thing. It can’t not be scary, if
you’re doing it right. It will always
be scary. And yet, you must do it.
Really. You must. It is of
existential importance. If you are going to be a writer you must learn how to
make that leap into what may be (very likely) the void.
Well, maybe you can be writer and avoid this part of the process – and with all the
electronic self-publishing going on these days, many people do. You can be a
writer, but you’re missing the opportunity to become a better writer. First,
simply enough, because those editors more often than not know what they’re
doing. You can learn from them, even when all you get is the standard
boilerplate rejection. Second, because every time you send your work out into
the Great Void, you have to ask yourself, “Is it good enough?” Some writers
will say yes, it is. Others will say no. It doesn’t matter. It’s an opinion, an
educated guess. Opinions are good things to have, but they’re dime-a-dozen.
When you are willing to submit your work to editorial scrutiny, you’re backing
up that opinion with a positive act.
And, the added bonus: the unconscious always
kicks in and tells you what you did wrong after it’s too late to haul the
manuscript back. And there are times when your unconscious is the toughest
editor in the world.
Submission: there’s nothing like it to teach
you about writing, if you’re concerned with learning it. And even if you’re
not, you can’t win if you don’t play. If by the time you’re about to hit that
“send” button you’re not thinking the story isn’t good enough, you’re not concerned
about the quality of your writing. You know it can be better, because it always can be better, but you still have
to hit the button if you’re going to learn the next lesson.
So, to all those writers sitting on the fence –
Come on in! The water’s ice cold, or boiling, or both, and there’s a deadly
whirlpool in the center, and it may be filled with a dozen toxic substances –
but it’s fine.
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