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Today’s wordcount:5008
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 95071
Total word count for the week: 5008
Total word count for this retreat: 22085
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “District of Brass”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes
10263 steps, 67 flights of stairs

From today, the beginning of a Serendib story, “District of Brass”

In Serendib, there is the District of Brass, and there the traveler can find marvelous machines, made not just of that metal, but many of the lesser metals, like iron and aluminum and the first degree of steel. The tinkerers of the District of Brass can make any machine, but always after their fashion, which is cogs and gears and wheels within wheels, not the crystals and lights of other lands.

Once there was a tinkerer there, who had not come from elsewhere, but was native to the city, which meant that anything could happen with her. Her name was Pye and she was a clever girl, who loved to puzzle things out, and by the time she was six, she had created mechanisms that performed not only all her own chores, but those of her slower siblings. She was an innovator, and many disliked her intensely for her habit of looking at a design and saying, in the most reasonable of tones, “Yes, that’s clever enough, but what if you did it this way?” before pointing out any number of improvements.

This dislike was exacerbated by her main failing, which was that she was incapable of puzzling out people as expertly as she did machines ““ in fact, people were mysteries to her, always saying one thing and then acting another way. There were rules to existence, and they seemed to change so often, or at least be conditional and dependent to the point where there was no telling what to do at any given moment without standing and thinking for a good ten minutes about it.

While her family was fond enough of her, though most preferred not to spend too much time in her company, since the designs she was improving were so often their own, Pye had no friends, only acquaintances among her age-mates and other school friends, and the nurse who had raised her between the ages of eight and fourteen, and now lived in an elderquarter of a more advanced age, where the medical care was far better.

Pye would have liked to have said that she didn’t care about her lack of friends, but the truth is that she cared in two ways: one, she would have liked to have had friends, and two, she thought it an abnormality in herself not to have accumulated such things already.

I find that when I read short stories, more short stories of my own come to me and I believe Delany when he says that you can’t write anything better than the best stuff you’re reading. Here’s ten of my most accessible favorites, mostly speculative fiction, but with a few lit writers in there as well.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – Vonnegut is the best of the best, and I don’t just say that because he’s a fellow Hoosier. Welcome to the Monkey House is a great collection to start with and one that I read over and over in high school, but I’m also fond of Look At the Birdie, published posthumously.

Carol Emshwiller – Also amazing, also doing things so skillfully that plain language manages to become part of such a lovely construction that the grain of the words seems ornamental as well as story material. I just love Emshwiller, and getting to publish one of her short stories during my time at Fantasy Magazine was a highlight. I particularly recommend I Live With You and Report to The Men’s Club.

James Tiptree Jr. – For some of the most wonderful titles around, for some of the most subversive and interesting spec fic ever, look no further than Tiptree, aka Alice Sheldon, who shaped the field to the point where they named an award after her. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever and Brightness Falls From Air are both good starting points. (Julie Phillip’s biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, is a fascinating read that brings even more to the stories.) And the award anthologies are FULL of good stuff that shows some of the best in the field.

Philip K. Dick – Dick does ideas, and amazing ones, but he’s also a really solid writer. Start with the volume edited by Jonathan Lethem, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. Like Tiptree, this is one of the people who didn’t just subtly shape the field of spec fic but banged their name into the side of it with a sledgehammer.

Donald Barthelme is one of the writers that falls into the literary side of things, but spec fic readers that like slipstream will find him well suited to their tastes. Sixty Stories should be sitting on your shelf.

Grace Paley is also literary, but holy cow, just go buy her three slim little books of fiction (which is all we have, sadly) and read them. Enormous Changes At the Last Minute, The Little Disturbances of Man, and Later the Same Day are the titles. Having Grace at my dinner table asking for a second helping of the pumpkin cheesecake and warning us all that at some point of the meal her false teeth might fly out of her mouth and that if that happened, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to pretend it hadn’t happened, was one of the greatest moments of my time at Hopkins.

O. Henry is a classic, prolific short story writer. Some stories have aged better than others, but going through his collected works is a good use of time for a short story writer. Three things he’s good at: plot construction, pulling on the heart strings, and dialogue.

Joan Aiken did more than write some great YA fiction. She’s also got a ton of good short stories. Many are adult, but The Serial Garden, which contains all her Armitage family stories, is full of good fantasy.

Theodore Sturgeon was prolific and has done some amazing speculative stories t. The nice thing if you’re a bibliophile is that North Atlantic Press does a complete edition of his short stories (which I covet and wouldn’t mind for Christmas if any spouses named Wayne are reading this), starting with Volume I, The Ultimate Egoist.

James Thurber is another writer that I hit in high school and who I read over and over. His letters are actually one of the books that shaped my life: his good humor in the face of adversity shines in them. Flash fiction admirers should check out Fables for My Time.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.