Had a FABULOUS time at Norwescon. My fellow panelists were great, and it was terrific seeing everyone, including (but not restricted to): Alma Alexander, Michael Alexander and his lovely wife Sheila, K.C. Ball, Nathan Crowder, Janet Freeman Davis, Caren Gussoff, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nancy Kress, Nick Mamatas, Mary Rosenblum, Michael Swanwick, Stephanie Weippart, whose surname I think I have misspelled, and Duane Wilkins. Particularly loved the Beneath Ceaseless Skies reading, which featured so much very good stuff that it was alarming.
Your prose needs a good editor. The below is your opening on a story posted at Clarkesworld:
I glance in the glass wall’s reflection. [Why give a plural possessive to an inanimate object? And, are you really glancing in the Wall’s reflection, or are you glancing at your own reflection?]
I glance at my reflection in the glass wall. It faces me twenty feet away as I walk up the stairs [;] marble slab steps, showing grainy pink underneath my red sneakers. My fingers clutch the [again] chrome railing. I’m feeling shaky, that internal quiver where your body announces that it may not be up to this.
What any competent writer needs is a good editor. Unfortunately, you will probably not get to where you want to go by publishing in semi-pro zines; they don’t have the resources to make your work better””tighter””more publishers friendly.
Fellow writers might help, but nothing takes the place of a good editor.
Good luck with your secondary career. Or, if you would like to take a flyer””I can be bought! A penny a word and then perhaps your work might be expanded into professional magazines. Content counts for about half of what an editor considers.
Best-
Mike
P.S. Comma after the word “that” is never a good idea, and placing two “that’s” in the same sentence is a no-no. That said, that’s a shame.
Hi Mike, good luck with the editing career! I’d suggest that if you really want to use the web to drum up business, you might want to rethink your approach, which comes off more like an attempt to troll than a genuine effort to be helpful and thus ends up looking less than professional. You might also want to acquaint yourself with the list of what’s considered pro and what’s not when dealing with SF writers – I’ve found the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site very helpful and I often point people new to the field at that site.: http://www.sfwa.org I hope that’s helpful!
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
You may also like...
So I Wrote This Novella
Cover for Tales From The Fathomless Abyss, stories by Mike Resnick & Brad R. Torgersen, Jay Lake, Mel Odom, J.M. McDermott, Cat Rambo, and Philip Athans.I’m turning in something today that I’ve never tried before: a novella.
Back when I was first approached about the Fathomless Abyss, it involved an initial story and a later novella. Sure, I said, and whacked out a story for the first Fathomless Abyss book, TALES FROM THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS. It was “A Querulous Flute of Bone”, which I based on an O.Henry story, and which I think is one of my best stories to date. If you don’t believe me, spring for the 99 cent download and tell me if I’m wrong.
Then I started on the novella. The first thing I did was look up the length requirements. Wikipedia told me the official SFWA definition was 17500 to 40000 words. So just a long short story, right?
The problem with that was that…I write short. I excel at under 4000 words. So I turned again to a model. I’d been thinking about issues of addiction and so I decided I was going to write about that, and use William S. Burroughs’ JUNKY as my starting point. And I was going to throw in a touch of Lovecraft for spookiness and make the drug of my protagonist’s choice something a bit weird. And I wanted to reference some of the cool stuff the other Fathomless Abyss writers had added to the world.
I was telling a life story, from early days in an Abyssal village, through journeys to all sorts of points, culminating in some sort of…well, you know…climax. There was a chase for one thing, then another chase for what it turned into. I wanted to include something about the philosopher-king Nackle, whose teachings figured in “A Flute of Querulous Bone.” I wanted mushrooms and hallucinogenic wasp stings and pack llamas. I sketched out an outline and started writing. And I kept folding in stuff I wanted to include as I ran across it and then I reread Joe Lansdale’s THE COMPLETE DRIVE-IN and decided to not worry about being too weird and things all fell together…
And I became aware it was too long. Too, too, too long to finish on deadline. But I had the first half written and there was a good place midway to split the narrative, and so I said to Phil, “What if I do a pair of novellas, this first half, and then give you the second half for later release?”
So that’s what we have. I’m turning in A SEED ON THE WIND this time and A CAVERN RIPE WITH DREAMS will follow on its heels.
The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description.[7]
I know mine is focused on the development of a protagonist who I fear is somewhat unlovable. I’ve tried for interesting characterization and today I’m finishing up adding a layer of luxuriant description.
If you’ve come looking for advice on writing novellas, I’m not sure I have any. Perhaps you, the readers, can tell me what you think of them and what you’ve done when trying that form. I know Rachel Swirsky is a champ at writing them. What do you think – do you like novellas? What do or don’t you enjoy seeing in them? Can you think of anyone you think does them exceedingly well?
Well, the first of the mini-books is out, HALLOWEEN QUARTET. (Non-Kindlers, don’t despair. I’m working on the Smashwords version today.)
The description: A quartet of short horror stories by fabulist Cat Rambo. Follow the mystery of “Whose Face This Is, I Do Not Know,” weep with “Niobe in the Rain,” enjoy a spoof on reality TV with “So Glad We Had This Time Together,” and fear the ancient forces exposed in “Pumpkin Knight.”
If you check out the Amazon listing, feel free to click that Like button or agree with some tags…
Some thoughts and observations:
Because some of the content is available online, Amazon flagged it and made me write in to clarify that I had the right to publish it. It also meant I couldn’t enroll the book in the Select program. This is something I may want to take into consideration in future books, since that program has some advantages. If I want to be able to use the KDP Program, though, I’ll need to either only use stuff that isn’t available on the web or ask some sites to take stuff down (which I doubt I would do, that goes against the grain, somehow.)
The biggest pain in the butt? The cover. I’m going to look for someone who wants to swap cover design for story crits, because as you can tell, I’m not so hot at it. But it’s adequate.
I did the document in Word. Things like installing jumps from the ToC was pretty easy. In the future, I may indent less, since it ended up looking a little weird.
And, serendipitously, another e-book is out today. A SEED ON THE WIND is the first part of a two-part series set in the world of the Fathomless Abyss.
3 Responses
Dear Cat,
Your prose needs a good editor. The below is your opening on a story posted at Clarkesworld:
I glance in the glass wall’s reflection. [Why give a plural possessive to an inanimate object? And, are you really glancing in the Wall’s reflection, or are you glancing at your own reflection?]
I glance at my reflection in the glass wall. It faces me twenty feet away as I walk up the stairs [;] marble slab steps, showing grainy pink underneath my red sneakers. My fingers clutch the [again] chrome railing. I’m feeling shaky, that internal quiver where your body announces that it may not be up to this.
What any competent writer needs is a good editor. Unfortunately, you will probably not get to where you want to go by publishing in semi-pro zines; they don’t have the resources to make your work better””tighter””more publishers friendly.
Fellow writers might help, but nothing takes the place of a good editor.
Good luck with your secondary career. Or, if you would like to take a flyer””I can be bought! A penny a word and then perhaps your work might be expanded into professional magazines. Content counts for about half of what an editor considers.
Best-
Mike
P.S. Comma after the word “that” is never a good idea, and placing two “that’s” in the same sentence is a no-no. That said, that’s a shame.
Hi Mike, good luck with the editing career! I’d suggest that if you really want to use the web to drum up business, you might want to rethink your approach, which comes off more like an attempt to troll than a genuine effort to be helpful and thus ends up looking less than professional. You might also want to acquaint yourself with the list of what’s considered pro and what’s not when dealing with SF writers – I’ve found the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site very helpful and I often point people new to the field at that site.: http://www.sfwa.org I hope that’s helpful!