Storytellersunplugged

by Brian Hodge

[Podcast edition available through iTunes, or here.]

It’s been an introspective year, 2007 has. Back in January — a month that doesn’t seem as though it should be coming around again so quickly — I felt compelled to spend some time really thinking about what I do, in the writerly sense, and how I’ve gone about it. The instincts and strategies that have helped move me forward to where I want to go; the blunders and bad habits that have done the opposite.

This seems like time especially well spent in a phase of transition, as I’ve worked lately to head in directions I’ve not gone before, or as much as I would like to, and slough off old skin as well.

And so: What continues to be relevant and helpful? Is there anything that used to be, but no longer is, yet I still do it anyway because that’s the way I’ve always done it? What should I never have done in the first place?

This month and next, I’ll be hitting much of what I came up with. If it has any value at all, it’s probably for newer writers still picking their way along. And even then, what worked for me won’t necessarily be right for someone else. The screw-ups, though? Those are probably best avoided on general principles. Bone-headed moves are always bone-headed, no matter who does them.

This month, the right of it all, and I hope nothing here comes off as arm-twisting back-pats of self-congratulatory wankery. I’ve lapsed on nearly all of them at one time or another. But they’ve at least been there like north on a compass, something to turn back to when I’ve gotten lost.

I concentrated more or less equally on short stories and novels.

This may be one of the top three questions beginning writers ask: “Which should I do: Concentrate on short stories at first? Or go right to a novel? Or both?”

The only answer, of course, is yes. Whichever you find most compelling. Whatever you’ll find the most creatively fulfilling. You might as well be fulfilled, because, to be blunt, when you begin nobody’s out there waiting for what you’re doing. Except maybe your mom. But if you’re at least doing what excites you most, that’s more likely to feed your momentum until someone out there actually is waiting for what you come up with next.

For me, it made the most sense to take parallel tracks. Short stories provided quick gratification, extra income, publishing credits, and early visibility. They were a home-study course in learning my craft, which couldn’t help but carry over to the novels. A few stories even grew into novels. Many stories have been resold, reprinted, translated … a source of further exposure and income that doesn’t require further work. I’ve rarely said no to an invitation to contribute to a book or magazine, because it’s a chance for more of everything.

Plus you never know who may be reading. The most longstanding relationship I’ve had so far with a book editor began when she read a story of mine in an obscure little magazine, and wrote to ask if I had a novel to send her. Within hours, by providential coincidence, a fellow editor brought her a manuscript of mine already under submission at the house, and said, “This seems more like your kind of thing.”

I put myself in situations where things could happen.

Writing is a profession whose business is largely conducted at long distances. Making living, breathing (not too heavily, though) contact with the people whose ranks you hope to join may be the closest thing to a fast track a novice writer can hope to find. It puts a face with a name, or at least connects to Woody Allen’s observation that most of life and success is just about showing up.

Getting my first literary agent came directly out of attending a weeklong writers conference when I had exactly one small press short story sale. I received the kind of encouragement there that can sustain a person through long, often discouraging struggle. Best of all, I made a couple of lifelong friends whose influence has been such that I can’t imagine life without having met them. Any one of which was worth infinitely more than the price of admission.

Quality control has always been paramount.

Near the end of his life, Orson Welles went stumping for budget vintners Ernest and Julio Gallo. He ended each commercial intoning the infamous line “We will sell no wine before its time.”

Wisdom doesn’t come from much cheesier sources than that, but something about it sunk in. Welles’s big, bearded face has hovered in memory like a scowling headmaster ever since.

Whether a project is on spec, or asked or contracted for in advance, I’ve always been loathe to send it out or turn it in unless I’m convinced it’s the best it can possibly be. That seems like a no-brainer, so fundamental it should go without saying. Yet more than once I’ve seen writers, pros even, admit that they’ve turned stuff in knowing it fell short of what they were capable of.

Personally, there’s no such thing as good enough if I feel it’s within my power to do better. That’s not to say someone else couldn’t have done it much better, or that I couldn’t have done it better myself at a later date … but at the time, it’s the best I can make it.

The most ludicrous example was a Shakespearian spoof. It took weeks to get the language feeling right, and the pay was miniscule to begin with, so I probably ended up slaving away for twenty-five cents an hour … but I’m still glad I did it.

I’ve tried to resist the notion that my words are too precious to benefit from editorial attention.

Every so often you’ll hear of a bestselling author who wrangles a contract that prohibits anyone at the publishing house from changing so much as one word of the manuscript.

Often, you can tell. And not in a good way.

Yeah, I went through an early cocky phase. What were those first few short story sales if not proof of gilded perfection? But then, to paraphrase Mark Twain, it was really quite amazing to see how much editors learned in the next few years.

I learned to love the revision process.

In the earliest days of my career, Robert R. McCammon told me that he disliked the rewrite phase; that once something was freshly done, further work on it felt to him like beating a dead horse. When I confessed that I honestly enjoyed revising, he told me this was going to serve me well.

I can only believe it has. Because, once something of mine is freshly done, I usually feel like I’ve just given birth to a dead horse. It’s hideous to behold: the stink … the five-and-a-half malformed limbs … and the faces, o god, its grimacing and accusatory faces! That repulsive scorched mass of king crab legs and Siberian Huskies in John Carpenter’s The Thing…? That’s my first draft.

But a funny thing happens. Some amputations and grafts, lots of cuts and suturing, an infusion of recombinant DNA and a few harnessed lightning strikes later, and that streamlined critter starts to twitch. It’s jolly fun, making order out of chaos. It’s alchemy and theurgy and sometimes the biggest set of Leggos in the world.

When it seemed relevant, I tried to work within the overlapping fascinations that I knew I shared with an editor.

More than once, when a story sale wasn’t a sure thing — I didn’t have a guaranteed slot in an anthology, say — I took a few steps toward securing that sale by trying to build the story around subjects and/or aesthetics that I knew would likely appeal to the editor.

Pandering? Not if what I’m writing about is something that cranks my passions as well. It’s more like trying to initiate a conversation that the editor and I can both participate in, with equal enthusiasm. And editors who really like what you have to say are more apt to come back to hear more. It’s worked out well, and in one instance a one-off story turned out to be an inadvertent proving ground that later led directly to a book deal.

If you were to ask my friend J.C. Hendee how to get published, you’d likely hear his standard answer: “Write something that someone will want to read.”

That starts with the editor. In other words, it never hurts to know your market, and your first market is the person who decides the fate of your work.

I try to remember to say thanks.

I don’t remember when, but at some point I got in the habit of sending notes to the editors of anthologies that had just come out with stories of mine in them, or magazines whose new issue had an interview, and so on. Just a quick note to say thanks. I read about someone else who did this and thought it was a good idea.

After one exchange, a prominent editor with a wall full of books to his credit, wrote back to say that “thank you” was something he hardly ever heard.

Time is a valuable commodity, yes, but it just takes a couple minutes to convey appreciation to someone, and a little goodwill can go a long way sometimes.

When online war breaks out, I turn Swiss.

Remember when you were in gradeschool and a fight would break out, and everyone scrambled over to watch? You can see that 24/7 on the internet.

Unfortunately, I’m one of those dull bastards who’d rather peacefully co-exist with others — or barring that, ignore them — than devote time and energy to ripping them new assholes … and thereby looking like one in the process.

Is this wise, since some writers seem to have successfully adopted hostile proctology as part of their promotional strategy? I don’t know. I can, however, guarantee there are writers I’m unlikely to ever read because of the way I’ve seen them treat other people.

It can be argued that one thing has nothing to do with the other. Here’s Orson Welles again, this time from a far better source, The Third Man: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Point taken. Still, my bookshelves are too full of writers about whom I feel favorable, or neutral, to turn space over to those whose countenances seem to have taken on an odd, puckered overlay of pinkish-brown. And I doubt I’m alone in that.

I let the pain and loss of others be my motivation.

Apologies in advance. This is one of those things that can make people who don’t do it feel they’re being badgered for their own good. So, sorry … really.

The earliest computer-oriented tale of writer’s woe I heard came from a guy who’d recently whipped his new novel across the finish line in a blistering white heat, writing the last 20+ pages nonstop. During this entire gallop, he never once hit Save. And right as he got to the end, the power went out. Gone. All gone.

Oh, he re-created what he lost, but the trauma was still palpable in the telling.

I couldn’t imagine a reaction that wouldn’t involve a razor or a noose. This was never going to happen to me, I vowed. And it hasn’t. But hitting Command-S so often as to constitute a nervous tic is just the beginning.

The methods and thoroughness have evolved over time, but by now all my work, e-mail, contacts, etc., are backed up to an external drive on an hourly basis. The rest of the system, weekly or better. It happens automatically. It has to, because I’m lazy and can procrastinate on drudgework to the point of barnacle growth.

But there’s really no excuse anymore. Hard drive space costs dimes per gigabyte now, and backup software is cheap, sometimes even free with the drive.

Yet writers still gamble with years of their working lives. I saw the worst-case outcome again just the other day, a writer posting about a hard drive crash devouring her contacts, ongoing interviews, and more … and the kicker, a quote of $1000 for recovery services to retrieve lost files. Why do hard drive recovery techs charge so much? Because they can.

The math is easy: $100 for a capacious backup drive and an hour or two of set-up time? A bargain. The peace of mind? Priceless. In almost 17 years since migrating from typewriter to computer, I can’t recall having lost anything more than a few minutes’ work due to the occasional power outage, and if I were really fanatical about it, I’d get an uninterrupted power supply, too.

Bottom line, if I’m going to be egregiously late in delivering work, it shouldn’t be due to some entirely avoidable reason like my computer ate my homework. Nay, let it happen for some far, far better thing than I have ever done — say, something involving a case of Bushmill’s, a couple of America’s Next Top Model washouts, and four or five llamas.

But that’s a story for another installment. If, um, it happens.

Next month, the flipside of this one: the self-flagellation.