Howdy folks!  And happy Saturday!

A while back, it was suggested that I write a series of Genreality posts about short fiction.  I’m still getting my feet beneath me when it comes to blog series and I’m never really sure if I’m giving you all anything new to work with, but I’m happy to oblige.

So for the next several weeks (excepting our theme weeks here, of course) I’ll be talking about short stories, how I write them…and why.  Please know going in that this is really for you all, so if you have things you’d like me to speak to please drop me a note or comment below and I’ll incorporate it into the Living Document that this meandering series is bound to turn into.

I get asked pretty frequently about whether it’s better to break into print with novels or with short fiction and, really, the answer is going to be different for every writer.  I think both paths can work just fine but I think which path works for YOU is something only you can sort out.  Queue music for my first digression….

DIGRESSION ONE:  A lot of times, this question is being asked along with a whole pack of other questions that come down to that Mystical Quest for the Magic Bullet of How to Get Published Quickly and Well.  And there are really aren’t any magic bullets.  Most of the time, it’s a simply LOT of writing in the midst of rejection, learning in the midst of trying, meeting people who help along the way because of their experience or their work in the biz, and just staying at it.  Eventually, you write the right story for the right market and the right editor at just the right time.  And sometimes, you get to the point beyond that where the editors ask YOU for stories.  But the hard truth is, some just won’t get there.   Others will.  There’s no way to tell which one you are until you either achieve your goal…or quit (and even quitting is sometimes just a long break.)

END DIGRESSION MUSIC.

So that aside, I broke in through short fiction.  I had sold probably a dozen small press sales before I won Writers of the Future in 2005.  I had probably twenty or twenty-five stories out by the time my first novel came out in 2009.  Why did I go that route?

I can assure you that it wasn’t a well-crafted strategy on my part.  It started back in 1982 or 83 when I read Ray Bradbury’s essay “How to Keep and Feed a Muse” and knew I had to be a writer.  I idolized Bradbury, and he’d broke in during the pulp age with…short stories.  And many of the other gods in my pantheon were also short story writers.  So in my youngish Trailer Boy brain, it seemed to me that Real Writers started out with short stories.  It’s obviously not true.  But that’s what I thought and I started writing out short stories, first in longhand and then, later, with my little blue Royal manual typewriter.  I’d already amassed a handful of rejections before I wrote my first stories on my Dad’s TRS-80 and his Apple computer.

I used the library’s Writers Market and even ordered sample copies of some of the magazines.  I read Writer’s Digest.  I wrote, revised, submitted, wrote, revised, submitted.  Then, at 17, I gave it all up to join the ministry, sometime after burning my D&D books (gasp) and before tossing my S&G LPs (oh my).  By the time I quit, I’d gotten my first  rejection that read “if you can find a way to address the issues in this story, I would like to see it again….” (a rejection that stung at the time but in later years, I saw it for the rewrite request that it was….)

So initially, I came to the short form because it’s how my heroes did it.  Later, I stayed because I enjoyed the trick and game of it.  And even later, I stayed in those comfortable waters because I was TERRIFIED of anything longer and was convinced that I couldn’t write novels.  Now…I do it because I enjoy it, can use it to point toward my longer works, and– from time to time — make a little money from it.  In the beginning, though, it was just the love of storytelling.

So if you enjoy it, I think it can be a great way to break in.  I don’t know that your goal need to be so focused as that initially, but I do think the extra time I spent in short stories really did help sharpen my novels.  So I say write them if you love them.  Invest the time in learning how to do it as well you can.

QUEUE MUSIC FOR SECOND DIVERSION:

But…when you’re just starting out, you really can’t expect much in the way of money.  I think most of us out there know that already, but just in case….  I came back to writing as an adult in 1997.  That year, I invested very little — paper and stamps and ink cartridges and time — and made nothing but gained skill.  In 1998, I wrote even more but also invested in attending two conventions — World Fantasy and Orycon.  My investment grew but no sales meant no money; I gained skill.

I made that first sale in late 1999, followed by a second and third in 2000 and 2001.  A fourth in 2002.  All the while continuing to invest in hitting local conventions, giving readings, being on panels, meeting people, making friends.  I spent far, far more than I made in payment, but what I gained in relationships and experience was priceless.  And the cash side of it stayed pretty much the same until Writers of the Future.  After that, better paying markets started buying my work.  In 2006, I wrote my first novel on a dare, riddled with anxiety and convinced it was The Worst Novel Ever (TM).  And in 2008, I signed my contract with Tor for all five volumes of the Psalms of Isaak.  The writing provides pretty regular income now as long as I’m producing and these days, I write far fewer short stories but when I do, they’ve nearly always been asked for by an editor.  But I absolutely still need a dayjob and I’ve invested myself in my writing career for fifteen pretty solid years.  I have no idea when I won’t need that dayjob.

This isn’t a complaint whatsoever.  And money can be made by writing.  But the love has to come first because that’s what keeps you at it before you’re seeing much return on your investment.

END DIGRESSION MUSIC

So if you enjoy short stories, write short stories.  Invest the time and energy — the practice — to get good at them.  And if you don’t really know, you might tackle both.  Spend half a year writing a novel and half a year writing six short stories…or a dozen if you can.  But for the next several weeks, let’s pretend that you’re going to write short stories for a while.

Here’s YOUR homework:  Post a question to comments that you’d like me to tackle.  Or if you’ve read any of my short fiction, post which story of mine you’d like me to dissect as we ease our way into how and why I do what I do when I’m writing a short story.

That’s all for now.  Trailer Boy out.

Howdy Folks and Happy Saturday!

Last week, I shared my goals for 2012 and talked a bit about how I arrived at those goals.  I mentioned in passing that I’d talk about the goals I didn’t meet last year…and what to do about them.

Here are the goals I missed:

• Finish Requiem, Volume 4 of the Psalms of Isaak
• Start planning/researching for Hymn, Final Volume of the Psalms of Isaak.
• Complete two short story collaborations (both lined up).
• Write one tie-in P0I story or novelette.
• Write and market one writing-related article.

The first thing I try to do is get a sense of the why.  Why wasn’t I able to pull these goals off?  Was I missing a tool or a bit of knowledge?  Was the reason within my span of control or beyond it?  Were they the wrong goals?  I take that inventory as honestly as I can.

In this case, all of the missed goals had to do with productivity.  And I know now that my productivity was beset by three rather big issues in 2011. First, the PTSD Stuff.  True, I was treated in February.  But my writer brain didn’t creep back online in a way that I could count on until nearly six months later, after it had a chance to process everything that had happened to it over those particularly awful 18 months or so.  Second, having two toddlers and learning to write in the midst of that certainly had an impact.  Everyone warned me about how hard it would be to write with small children.  Twins are hard work.  I’m an older parent with different energy levels than I would’ve had in my twenties.  And there are those things you don’t factor in, like being sick for months on end with the long string of bugs they pick up in their first few years of life.  And then, third — just as things were finally back online again and I was racing down the slope into the second half of Requiem — we took more family losses with Jen’s Grandma and Dad, derailing the tail end of the year.

So there were reasons…good reasons…but not excuses.  I’m still a writer with obligations and a contract that I’m behind on.  It does not please me.

So regardless of the reasons, part of being professional is taking ownership of the situation.  Without self-bludgeoning, which nearly all writers are especially good at.  I did not achieve my goals in 2011.

Notice that the goals I missed are all around productivity.  And then go back and look at my 2012 goals from last week.  See where I put my emphasis for the upcoming year?  Yep, I put it in productivity.  Because if at first you don’t succeed…try, try again.

I don’t know where I picked this up.  Somewhere along the way, back when I was managing nonprofit organizations.  But whenever I face a failure in my performance, I try to conjure up the memory of the three best bosses I’ve ever had — CW2 Chris NMI Nelson, Phil Fleming, Dona Gaertner — and I ask myself how they would coach me around my failure to achieve those goals.  Inevitably, they treat me far better than I would normally treat myself and I try to emulate that.  I focus on what I did accomplish that went beyond my goals (like hosting the Hugo awards or helping out at Cascade Writers when Jay wasn’t able to go).  I focus on what I learned from the failures and on how to incorporate that learning.

And I keep moving forward because looking over my shoulder at what I didn’t do in 2011 isn’t going to move me forward into 2012.

• Maintain Facebook presence; expand Twitter presence
• Attend Orycon and Norwescon
• Attend SF in SF
• Participate in 3 foreign language interviews
• Answer all reader email personally and promptly

Encouraging Other Writers (Pay It Forward):

• Participate in Cascade Writers Workshop
• Teach “Evolution of a Writing Career” with John J.A. Pitts at Orycon and Norwescon
• Participate in at least one other writing conference if invited
• Participate in Ooligan Press/PSU event
• Present in at least 3 middle/high school classrooms
• Continue Genreality blogging
• Maintain open door policy for writers with questions

So those are the goals.  Why did I pick these and not others?

Well, under writing and marketing, my production has taken such a hit the last two years that I really need to keep my focus there.  It’s been two and half years since I delivered a book.  It’s been fifteen months since I’ve had one come out.  I’m later than the White Rabbit…and for lots of reasons.  But the bottom line is I’m late, late, late.  And not producing consistently for so long has really put me behind, impacted my budget, etc.  I can’t market what isn’t written.  And connecting to readers only works if I keep growing readership.

So my biggest goals for 2012 are to finish Requiem which is just painfully close to done.  And then jump right into Hymn.  I can outline on it while I’m drafting, so there’s overlap that can (and should) happen.  And really, when I say research Hymn, I really mean read the first three books again with a notebook nearby and have some regular meetings with my trusty Research Scout T’Erick Y’Zir to talk about what pistols I may have left upon which mantles and other miscellaneous loose ends in the series.  I think this is aggressive but doable.

In addition to the books, I am already on the hook for two anthology invites and I anticipate potentially up to five short stories this year — possibly some as work-for-hire.  I’ll collaborate on at least two.  And since short stories take me roughly a week to write and revise, this feels like a pretty realistic goal.

And the website is just something long overdue.  I’ve already written most of the new content.  It’s just a matter of taking care of a few things and then turning it all over to my newest volunteer.  The goal this time is to create a site that is ridiculously easy for me to maintain.  Low maintenance.

It’s here in the next section, Connecting with Readers, that I’m cutting back a bit.  You’ll note that I have no major cons in my schedule.  That’s for a few big reasons.   First, I already know that this year’s focus needs to be production.  So spending time and money to go off to a big convention — even though they’re fun and often rewarding business-wise — makes no sense this year when each major con costs me 2-3 weeks of production so that my little introverted self can recover.  Add to that another important point:  Lower productivity last year equals less budget for travel this year.  But ultimately, the primary consideration is that I’ll get more work done, writing-wise, if I sit this year out.

Facebook is easy; Twitter has been a tougher one for me to get into.  But I’ll focus on that and blogging through the new site.  And if we can sync up schedules, I’ll go do SF in SF.  They’ve asked me several times and I love the Bay Area.  So we’ll see.

I want to expand my Encouraging New Writers/Pay it Forward area.  I’d hoped to be ready to roll out my short story adult continuing ed class this year but it’s taking a back seat again.  Instead, I’m going to stay the course with last year’s goals, add another workshop if invited, and get into some more classrooms.  Late last year, I met with the assistant principal at my old high school.  I’m really hoping that at least one of this year’s pay-it-forward goals involves White River High up in Buckley.

And of course, I’ll be blogging here.  And maintaining my open door policy.  I answer lots of questions from newer writers both by email, on Facebook, and sometimes over lunch.   If you see me available for chat in FB, it’s open season.  I’ll always tell you if I don’t have time (and that just means send it up in a message or email.)

So 2012 is going to be mostly about…writing.

Next week,  I’m going to talk a bit about how to handle unmet goals.  Until then, Trailer Boy out!

Howdy folks!  Happy Saturday!

It’s hard to believe that 2011 is behind me and 2012 is stretching out.  What a year…a mixed bag for sure.

2011 saw me safely out of the PTSD woods thanks to Dr. Lipov and his fine crew back in Chicago…a huge win to be sure.  But 2011 was also the year we said goodbye to Jen’s grandmother and father in the darkest October I’ve ever known.

I saw no new books out here in the US but several came out overseas and one even picked up the Prix Imaginales in France for best translated novel.  The writing itself struggled back to life with about 80k of new words (far less than my normal capacity) but throughout the year, kind words rolled in from all over the world about the words I’d already written.  And though I cut my appearances WAY back this year, I still managed to co-host the Hugo Awards Ceremony with my best pal.  And I got out to do some teaching and speaking both in my dayjob and in my writing life.  My highlight there was a few middle and high school classes I got to work with.

And because of the hit in my productivity, we saw a pretty sizeable hit in our finances.  But 2011 marked the end of my wife’s position with one company and 2012 starts with her in a brand new, much better (and better paying) position.

And then there are the brighter patches in my garden of relationships.  Jen and I hurtle towards 9 years of partnership and 3 years of parenting…and we’re amazing together.  And this year, I’ve picked up some new friends met in various and sundry places, some old friends coming back into my life, and of course the constancy of Team 3J and the rest of my posse of pals.  And the brightest patches of all:  My amazing daughters.  Watching them grow and stretch and learn and be the little people they are has been the high point not just of 2011 but of my life overall.  But gosh-wow twins are hard.

Next week, I hit my birthday.  I call it the Season of Kenika and I always get introspective as that day approaches.  How am I doing?  Am I living my own life or someone else’s?  Do I have any regrets or course corrections to deal with?  Etc.  And I also do my goal setting for the next year (which I’ll share NEXT week).  So in that inventory, I see 2011 as a year that I’m grateful came and went.

So with 2011 behind me and 2012 ahead, I turn now to YOU and ask:  What would you like to see more or less of here in my Saturday posts?

Just so you know, I’m considering a series of posts on dealing with writer’s block and a series on writing short stories.  I’m also going to participate in some monthly themes here at Genreality with my blog-mates.  But what else?  I hate presuming and assuming.  So tell me below in comments what you’d like to hear about…or not hear about…and I’ll put it into my processing  kettle for the upcoming year.

We’ll be back on January 2, 2012 with new Genreality authors Diana Peterfreund and Helen Kay Dimon joining us!

Meanwhile, here’s a bit of a holiday snack for your enjoyment, taken from my second collection, Diving Mimes, Weeping Czars and Other Unusual Suspects….

What Child is This I Ask the Midnight Clear

By

Ken Scholes

It could have been snow, gently drifting down.  It could have been virgin white and cold as cold.  But it wasn’t.

It was ash and the night wind was hot upon me.

That’s what I remember now when I go out.

That first year when the world was on fire and we slipped over the broiling skin of it, we brave nine.  We ran the course all night but found nowhere to land.  For the first time ever I did not stop.  Not one place.  And all the while, as we slid through that broiling night, I kept humming that song.  The one about the star, the star.  Dancing in the night.

Tail big as a kite.

The end had come suddenly and they’d managed to do it to themselves.  I’d always known they would.

#

I’m airborne now and the past falls away.  The ash has long settled and it’s really snowing again.  We’re not as loaded down as we’ve been in the past but that will come in handy later.  Times have changed.  The list has changed, too.  And so has my work.  Naughty and nice are blurrier now so I’m less meticulous in checking.  I do the right thing, instead.

I don’t have to crack any whips or give any whistles.  We build speed to bend time around us.  We’ll do a year’s work this night and then we’ll sleep a while.  I check the ammunition in my assault rifle and loosen the strings on my sack.

Then we start landing here and there and I’m out doing the right thing.  Books for a library in Vancouver.  Needles and a whetstone for a circuit rider in Laramie.  We haul a starving family out of a dead mountain town in Oregon and assassinate a white supremacist who was building a skinhead army in Maine.  A handful of twelve-gauge shells for Leonard in Saskatoon.  A bottle of aspirin in Bo Phut, Thailand.  And so on.

We’re just turning north for home when we see the light.

A star, a star, dancing in the night.  Tail as big as a kite.

It builds and then blooms, a piercing white over the horizon to the east.  I shield my eyes and look homeward, then back into the light.  Is it a bomb?  Another crazy moving the world deeper into the hole it has fallen in?  Or a satellite falling from orbit?  Either way, it’s worth looking into.

I steer east and take us low.  As I draw closer, the light shrinks to a concentrated point of brilliance and I aim for it.  We pick up speed and rip open space-time for a split second.  Then, we bear down upon the town that sleeps beneath that unexplainable, spontaneous star.

There in the glory of that bright light, a child screams.

#

She is not on my list.  I’ve made no stops in this feral country in over a decade.  But I hear her screaming and it is as piercing as the star above.  I unsling my rifle and we drop right there to hover over what used to be a schoolyard.  I don’t know what I was expecting.  Someone being harmed.  Someone being carved up into pieces by primates gone horribly wrong.  I work the lever and feel the solid clunk of a chambered round.  Slipping my gloved finger around the trigger, I use my thumb to move the switch to three-round-burst and then I hit ground with a thud.  I race across the open concrete, stepping over the frozen clumps of gray weed and watching my breath billow into the cold night air.  The screaming stops.  I hear heavy breathing instead now.  Panting.

What are they doing to her? I feel a rage coming on as the screams start again.  I push it down and use it to feed my focus.

Do you hear what I hear, the song asks.

I hear it, I answer.

They rape the world the same way they rape each other.

They kill the world the same way they kill each other.

No list to make or check here.  I am bent on violent righteousness when I kick down the makeshift plywood door propped up to keep the wind out.

Someone has turned the old lavatory into shelter but it has gone badly for them.  The boy lies cold and still and bloody.  The girl’s screams change from pain to terror when I storm into the cluttered room and I suddenly know that things were not what they seem.  I see her, in the corner, squatting in a nest of blankets.  Her brown hair is long and dirty.  Her brown eyes are wild and frantic.  The blankets are stained with blood and I understand why.  Pale and shaking, her eyes go wide as she sees me standing over the cold body of her dead mate, light spilling around me into the room.

Another contraction and she screams again.  I turn, run for the medical kit beneath the driver’s bench.  When I return, I go in slowly with my rifle slung and my hands up showing the kit.  “I can help you,” I tell the girl.

Her eyes roll and she tries backing away from me but falls back into the corner.  Her breath heaves out in ragged gasps.

“I’m a friend.”  I keep my voice low and assuring, just like in the old days.  Only this time, it’s not a frightened child approaching me from a long line in the mall, nervous at the presence the myth of me has become.  This frightened child huddles in a frozen elementary restroom  at the end of her tether, trying to shove life into a dead, cold place.  “I can help you,” I say again but this time I hear the doubt in my own voice.  There is too much blood.

I crouch and move closer, opening the kit and finding nothing at all that I can use.

Then behind me, in the schoolyard, a clatter arises.

The eight snort and stomp and when the howling starts outside, the light winks out.  The moon, hidden behind a layer of clouds, offers little visibility.

Pushing the first aid kit towards the girl, I draw my rifle again, thumb off the safety once more.  I never unchambered the round.  Too smart for that.

More stamping and snorting but no ringing.  I took the bells off their harnesses a long time ago.

“Dashing through the snow,” a voice whispers from the edge of the schoolyard.

“O come all ye faithful,” another says.

“We wish you a merry Christmas,” sings a third.

I look over my shoulder at the girl panting in the corner.  “Just stay put and keep quiet.”

Donder screams and bucks.  Dasher bleats and kicks.  I hear the whir of stones in slings, the distant clatters of shots gone wide.

Then, I’m outside and running at a low crouch.  I’m fast for a big man, even without laying my finger to the side of my nose.  I whistle and I hear the eight lifting off; I hear the labored breathing of the two who’ve been hurt.  I hear the disappointed grunts and hungry sighs.  I don’t wait; when one of them takes shape in the darkness, large and wide, I put a three-round burst into the center of its mass and listen to the rush of escaping air as that rush twists itself into a shriek of surprise.

Another shape forms beside it, this one bending to see to its friend.  I put another burst there.  I’ve done this before.  I do the right thing.

Then I stop.  I smell the burning powder on the midnight air.  I listen for my eight, moving in a slow, widening circle above me.

A third takes shape near the others.  I move closer, rifle raised.  It moves to the left and I tap the concrete with bullets near his foot.  “Hold,” I tell him.

I can see him now and he might’ve been human once but the traces of it have left his face and eyes.  He’s wearing a red hat like mine, only tattered and dirty.  He’s dropped his sling and one of his suspenders is loose and dangling.  Barefoot with wet trousers, he trembles before a vision he may have dim memory of, from a childhood spent before the world heaved its last sigh.

“Remove the hat,” I say, “and look to me.”

He pulls it off slowly.  Our eyes meet and I’m pleased at the fear I see there.  “Life is your gift this year,” I tell him through gritted teeth, “but it comes with a string.  Tell the others what you have seen and tell them to be afraid.  Every other night belongs to you but this one.  I ride on this night with justice and grace.”  I raise myself to full height.  I fire the rifle over his head.  “Now, run like a rabbit.”

He does and as he fades, the night becomes silent and holy for a heartbeat before a new cry, muffled and straining, greets its new home in a broken world.

I turn back and enter the lavatory and in that I am both too late and just in time.  The girl is fading fast and in her arms she holds a sticky, bloody bundle packed into dirty cloth pulled from her makeshift nest.  I see the cord that still connects them.  Her eyes are wide and her nostrils flare when I draw closer but she doesn’t flinch.

She points to me.  “Ho, ho, ho,” she says in a quiet voice before making the sign of the cross.  She passes the squirming bundle to me and says one final word:  “Charis.”

Slinging my rifle, I take the baby.  I do the best I can with the tools I have, cutting the cord, closing the mother’s glassy eyes.  I remove my jacket.  Then I clean the baby and wrap her carefully in it.

I want to stay and bury my dead but I know better.  I have not prayed in years but I manage one there beside the fallen mother and father, victims of a nativity gone wrong in a world that struggles between death and birth.

Then, I whistle for my eight.  We lift off into the night and I hold Charis close to me, giving the reindeer their heads to take us north and home.

As we fly, I ponder — I wonder as I wander — and I call up my list to see who on this night had wanted the gift of a child.  I weep at what I find.

“It’s no place for a child,” I tell the eight as we soar.

“I’m far too old for this work,” I say to them again.

“I am afraid,” I finally admit.

But a vision unfolds to me of a tiny girl in red with elves for her friends and family, raised up with the deer and the sleigh as humanity’s orphan, taught from their books and their art and the better parts of a species tremendously blessed and terribly flawed, trained to go out into that broken world and do the right thing.

And in that moment, the light returns but it is inside me and inside of the baby in my arms, and that light threatens to swallow me whole and I beg it to because within that light is hope and promise and I recognize that tonight was the night upon which the universe — or whomever ran it — gave back to me and did so with a holy charge.

Home arises to the north and we pound sky for it.  As we fly, the clouds lift and the starshine falls like a mantle of jewels over the crown of the world.

I feel the peace on earth within my chest.

Goodwill towards men lay sleeping in my arms.

“What child is this?” I ask the midnight clear.

“Yours,” it says, and weeping, we fly home.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

(And if you need a bit more Trailer Boy for Christmas, go check out this year’s holiday story at Tor.com!)