So, the year of pandemic and the death of my parents is over, and I have the one novella to show for it; and a hundred pages or so of memoire, which I have no idea what to do with.
There are a few hunks of memoire here; most of it was donated to a billionaire friend of mine that is sad that he can’t afford his own personal space program.
I’m joking. It’s at facebook. He can afford a space program. Hah hah. Why in the name of God do I post there?
So, this is the best thing I’ve done in my life, pretty sure, and you should go read it. You can read a sample, linked to from the home page of Asimov’s.
ASPIRING WRITERS: I have a tip for breaking into this business. It worked for me. Take a look at the bibliography if you want to see this, but basically, the way I started my career in the 90s, and picked it up again in 2012, was to do this very strange thing…
Read SF magazines. I read the magazines I wanted to be published in. I wrote and finish short fiction. (I did not endlessly pick at a novel manuscript like a scab.)
Don’t run away!! Seriously, this is huge. I wrote for years without doing this… and got precisely nowhere.
It wasn’t that I didn’t read, or hadn’t read; it was just that I read a few dozen authors, and I wasn’t any of them. I couldn’t figure out, from that reading, what my stories were going to be. What my voice should be like.
The magazines expose you to, rub your nose in, a lot of contemporary genre voices. The stories fan out across a spectrum of stuff you are familiar with, and stuff you never personally got into… but you can see have appeal.
Some of that stuff you never read? Turns out, you can write it. And you want to.
The magazine? It gives you permission to; to write this thing you didn’t know existed, you weren’t sure if you liked, but which you find inside you, and low and behold, you have a voice and. you’re publishing a lot.
Magazine editors pour their lives into this. No joke. Their insights mean something. They don’t have time to mark up manuscripts or give you specific feedback, except, the magazine’s they curate… they are the feedback.
Read them. Get a few issues of each and read them cover to cover, including the online markets now starting to dominate the awards. Keep reading, but after that initial brain programming you can read stories across the field as makes sense to you.
Oh, the other thing? Write the authors and tell them what you thought of the stories. Unless you hated them. Then don’t.
Do this for a bunch of issues, go back and buy stuff by the authors you like, email them or DM them and or tweet their content, and you will end up people that will be on. your side as a writer; don’t demand free critique or beat reading or copy edits or award nominations or secret handshakes. This isn’t transactional. But some of these notes will turn into relationships that will help sustain you.
That’s it.
Please check out my novella. Read the beginning for free online.
It got me through a rough year.
Loved your novella. Loved the character & her sandwich making family. Interesting POV & science concept. Thanks – Asimovs is part of my pandemic reading, along w/the Psalms. They weirdly go together. 🤷♀️
So glad you enjoyed the novella!!! It means a lot to me to hear this. I lived in the story for a year or so, with that character, and it got me through some rough times. Thanks again.