Storytellersunplugged

by Brian Hodge

[Podcast edition available through iTunes, or here.]

I promised you a beating this month. My own.

As sketched out in Part 1 last month, I turned 2007 into a more introspective year than usual. The schema was to be as honest with myself as possible while sorting out where I’ve come from, where I am now, and where I intend to go. A crucial part of this was qualifying the instincts and strategies that have helped move me forward, along with the blunders and bad habits that have done the opposite.

The overall objective should be obvious: to identify what’s worked so I could increase my commitment to it, and to put the boneheaded screw-ups in the rear-view mirror while still being mindful of their consequences … if only to make room for a whole new crop of boneheaded screw-ups. I’m only half-joking. Nobody gets very far in life without realizing that failures often end up being a lot more instructive than triumphs.

So, this month, for your dancing pleasure, some of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned.

But first, there’s one last item that belongs in the positive side, which only occurred to me the other day. It’s so integral that I can’t believe I overlooked it last month. It’s not a works-for-me-but-may-not-apply-to-you thing. I feel safe in declaring this to be of universal merit.

I got anal-retentive about turning in the cleanest manuscripts I could.

This goes beyond the mechanics of formatting and eye appeal. Before a manuscript goes anywhere, I try my best to scrub it of every typo, grammatical lapse, inadvertent homonym, and every other brain fart that I can chase down.

Say so we all? I’m sure we all do. I can’t fathom anyone knowingly turning in sloppy work. Well, on second thought, I can, since I’ve been a contest judge, but I believe most writers take enough pride in their work to present it in the best form they can.

Still, consider this: I’ve received compliments on the cleanness of my manuscripts from editors at small press outfits, computer/electronics monthlies, and on up to Simon & Schuster. I don’t say that for self-aggrandizement, but to point out that if I’m getting complimented for clean manuscripts, that can only mean they’re standing out from what the editor usually sees.

You’ll never catch every mistake. When you’re so familiar with your own material, the eye can see what it expects to see rather than the blooper that’s actually there. Editors understand that. And, in the end, story trumps all. But anything you can do to make your editor’s life easier, while at the same time demonstrating pride in your work, will be noticed and appreciated, and that never hurts the future of a working relationship.

And now, finally, the flipside: those things that make me whack my forehead and say “If only, if only…”

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

Waaaait a minute … wasn’t this the leadoff item in the plus column last month?

So good of you to notice. What we have here is a blatant example of someone trying to have it both ways. Nobody ever said writers have to be consistent in their outlooks — in fact, it helps a lot to be able to look at the same thing from opposing points of view.

Last month I listed many positive things that short stories had done for me. Nothing’s changed since then. It all still applies.

And yet…

The plain truth is, in this era, a writing career generally isn’t built on short stories. Novels count the most. Novels get the most prestige. Novels get the most attention. Standard publishing wisdom holds that readers aren’t nearly as interested in short form fiction, and that story collections don’t sell nearly as well as novels, and contracts tend to reflect that.

I can’t say that short stories haven’t been artistically satisfying. I’ve written and published around 100 of them. I have a handful in progress now. I’m proud of them. Proud of the three collections I’ve compiled, and am happy to be nailing together a fourth.

Yet I can’t help looking at my bookshelves and wondering what the impact on my career to this point would’ve been if the time and effort that went into those collections had gone into three or four other novels, instead … and another three or four more in lieu of the stories that remain uncollected.

There are no do-overs, no chances to try it two ways and see which works out better. There are only fences, and grass on the other side that looks greener, or not, depending on the light.

For a period, I skidded into a mindset in which I felt one novel had to be in place before I could really commit to the next one.

There have been times when a novel didn’t sell right away, and instead of doing the smart thing and moving on to the next one while waiting for time and circumstances to catch up to the orphan, I found it almost impossible to look ahead, let alone step ahead. It could reasonably be diagnosed as a paralysis brought on by a lingering sense of unfinished business.

I honestly don’t know how that happened. I certainly didn’t start out that way, and in fact had early proof that when time and circumstances do catch up to the orphan, things can turn out even better than what seemed likely before. And I’m pretty much past it now.

But I’ll never get that time back.

I let one significant setback defeat me for much longer than it should have.

I’ve debated whether or not to use numbers here, even in the most general sense, or if metaphors wouldn’t be the more polite way to go. Screw it. Numbers it is. No metaphor can convey the degree of the blow half as well.

A few years back, I went from a six-figure book to cold zero on the next. Reactions to such a turn of fortune can be complex and evolving, but for starters, “gutted” is as good a description as any.

I’m a boxing fan. Awhile back I read that George Foreman said he went through a two-year depression after he lost the heavyweight title to Muhammad Ali in Zaire in 1974. This stopped me. I thought, Yeah … that sounds about right. Not that I was the heavyweight champion of the world. I just felt on top of it.

Climbing out of that hole took its own time, across a landscape of ups and downs, and the one thing I couldn’t begin to think of attempting was probably the one thing that could’ve sped the process along: the occupational therapy of getting another novel going. But the fear of repeating what happened was just too great.

I’ll never get that time back, either.

Worse, in fact, the whole situation may have been avoidable, if I’d used better foresight. May have been. There’s no way of knowing. But it makes a better lesson if I believe that it was. Because…

I thought there was time to coast.

Once that lucrative book was in place, and slated as the publisher’s lead title for its month, I felt exhausted by what it had taken to get there, and just wanted to curl up for a year or so and write short stories.

They’ll wait for me, I thought.

And they may have. Except they weren’t there anymore. By the time I delivered the option novel, the publisher had been taken over and everyone I’d dealt with had been fired in wave after wave of corporate bloodletting. I was part of the clean sweep too.

I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t waited. I like to think I could’ve had one more go-around, at least, with the editor who’d fought hard to win the earlier novel, who got what I was doing, and with whom I’d hoped to have a long and fruitful association. I’ll just. Never. Know.

But I do know this much now: Coasting only works on the downhill side of the slope.

I have an Xbox 360.

You may have picked up a recurring theme by now, about the importance of how one chooses to spend one’s time.

If there’s a bigger, more crack-headedly addictive waste of time than a high-def gaming console, please, I beg you, please please please don’t tell me about it. And don’t show me any pictures, either. Especially don’t send them to my web site e-mail address, brian [at] brianhodge [dot] net. Because that would be wrong.

Admittedly, I bought the Xbox because I needed it to write a magazine article. I could’ve, should’ve, sold it immediately afterward. But I didn’t. Because I’d already itched for one even before the article came up.

And please don’t offer to buy it from me now. I’ll have to find an excuse to say no, and that will make me an even bigger hypocrite than I already am.

What — you thought I was going to go out on a downer?

Sorry, I don’t see the point of that. As the man said, there’s no crying in baseball. In writing, maybe a little, but we can get away with it because we spend so much time behind closed doors. Writers are, by-and-large, self-made men and women, and on occasion we may be the obvious products of green and inexperienced labor.

We blow it sometimes. Blow it a little, blow it in an epic way. But if we know our strengths, and what we’ve done right, they’ll always be there, a core foundation to turn to when we need to regroup, take stock, and put ourselves back together again.

The main thing: just turn the page. Even when, especially when, you have to write it yourself.