A Short Story Experiment

I recently had an email conversation with my publisher, Jay Hartman at Untreed Reads, and learned that the short story market is suffering.

Jay told me that the stand-alone short story market is mostly dead, outside of those few that are published in magazines, but we don’t all fit on the pages of the New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly.  For Untreed Reads short stories were their bread and butter for many years, but with more and more people self-publishing books and pricing them at or below the price of a short story, people tend to buy a book over a story. As if 200 pages is always better than 20 pages?

Untreed Reads first picked me up based on a short story, which was later rolled into a novella “Tales from the Fountain Pen”, which is one reason I continue to have a love for short stories. 

The truly sad part about this trend is the loss of short stories as a form of writing all its own. A short story requires a different approach because the writer is constrained by a size limit, or a desire to try something different, to experiment, on a smaller canvas. Short stories are a medium used by many authors to explore different genres and voices. A place to play with characters different from ones we normally put in our books. 

For instance, I can’t quite see myself writing a full-on 300 page murder mystery - just yet - but I have had the opportunity to explore the genre in short story form. The first one was published in an anthology: Moon Shot; murder and mayhem at the edge of space. 

The second one is “Tulip Craze” which I am offering for sale on my website. 

It’s an experiment to see if people are willing to step outside of the big online retailer(s) where it can be hard to find something, or to see if people are interested in short stories by an emerging author. 

If this experiment is successful, then I will add more short stories to my line-up at www.elynnhwriting.com. 

Payment is handled through a respected and safe 3rd party, SquareSpace made it easy to set up a web store on my site.  

All personal information will remain confidential.

All sales are final. 

I ask that you please respect copyright laws. Writing is my bread and butter.

Reviews are welcome in the comment section. Enjoy!

Books, but no review

I know it’s been a while since my last book review and you might think I haven’t been reading, but that is not true. Reading still happens daily, except that I’ve been reading only old favorite books at night before going to sleep to decompress from all the research reading.

My novel “In one Night” (working title) is now done and in the final editing stages. My friend with the sharp red pencil has very kindly marked where I’ve missed commas, skipped a word - it’s those little ones like ‘at’, ‘on’ and ‘the’ that sometimes the fingers and eyes skip over - and I’m making the corrections in the manuscript. 

This book, a family drama set mostly in WWII Strasbourg, blossomed into a far greater story than I initially imagined it would and now I find I need to write a sequel! 

Great news, you might say. Well, yes, it is, but I’m having trouble finding good sources of information - books - on what life might have been like in WWII Morocco. I have the basics, and I have found a few books that might give me information I can use, but there aren’t many. 

And what about information on Operation Torch? The first Allied attack on Northern Africa that was to signal the beginning of the US entering the European theatre of war, taking back Algeria and Morocco? 

I could tell you in great detail why I want this information, but then I’d be giving away too much of the book. 

I’ll keep digging, but if any of you knows of a good resource, not just on wartime Morocco in broad strokes, but also the simple details of daily life - the food, the drink, the culture - please let me know in the comment section or email: elynnh2write (at) gmail (dot) com. 

In the meantime maybe I’ll watch Casablanca again …

The writer’s toolkit, or the messy desk

And now for something a little lighter.

I thought I’d list the essentials found in a writer’s toolkit, or on and around her desk. 

* Pens, fountain pens preferred and a few jars of ink in different shades of blue

* Notebooks: I prefer the Moleskine ruled notebook 13 x 21 cm

* Curiosity

* Empathy

* Quiet time and space

* Functioning technology; I recommend having tech-savvy offspring in the house

* Friends who will pull you away for a much needed coffee break

* People to talk to/email with/write to in different parts of the country and the world - it helps broaden the perspective

* Books!! Lots and lots of books. Different genres, subjects, even comic books

* Truly good coffee or tea

* Spell checker, but NO autocorrect! A proofreader with a sharp red pencil helps a lot too

* Life experience

* A love of travel

* Child-like wonder (see ‘Curiosity’)

* Imagination

* Only a loose grip on reality (see ‘Imagination’)

* Sense of humor, especially in handling rejections

* Good snacks, for the purpose of this blog we’ll pretend they’re healthy

* A daily walk, preferably with a dog

* A good cat to warm up the keyboard or your chair for you on cold mornings

* A candle

* A chunk of raw amethyst

* Small vase with a white rose

* Sharp red pencils to give to your editors and proofreaders

* Patience, lots of patience

* Lots of bits of paper (including paper napkins, envelopes and post-its) with notes, story ideas, snippets of dialogue, and reminders to schedule mundane things that are part of ‘real’ life

If I’ve missed anything, please feel free to add it in the comment section!

This blog can now also be found on my website: elynnhwriting.com

Diversity

Writing about diversity turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I gave the subject considerable thought, which is why this blog post is many weeks later than I promised. 

Much has been said and written in the past couple of years about the need for diversity in books, children’s books in particular, in order to reflect our diverse society in a more realistic way. However, it’s not just a matter of tossing in a few ‘diversity candidates’  and calling it good. It requires far more than that.

Each character an author places in their story comes with its own background which is - or should be - known to the author who created that character. 

By adding characters of different colors, religion, sexual or gender orientation, the author needs to understand the culture this character might have grown up in, not just the meta culture of say, the United States or Europe, but the subculture. What was home like? What are the nuances of the character’s subculture that inform that character’s decisions, drives and motivations? What has formed the character’s psychological make up?

If all that is missing in the author’s creation of characters then you end up simply putting a few more stereotypes on the page. 

Characters need to be woven into your story, yet retain their individuality and come across as authentic. This is why life-experience and travel is a valuable tool in any writer’s toolkit. But that’s for a discussion on what makes a writer. 

All this brings me back to the superhero comic books (from the previous post) - and now TV shows - where I first noticed a more diverse cast. The young artists at DC and Marvel in the 1960s didn’t shy away from including characters of color. In some ways they were the first to bring diversity, along with Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, to the mainstream during a tumultuous time of redefining a culture. A process that continues as more and more people gain recognition and acceptance, even if at times that process feels like it’s moving at a snail’s pace. 

As I grow and learn as a writer and as a human being on this spinning, blue ball hurtling through space, I will strive to make the characters in my books more diverse, to mirror the world around me. 

Guilty Pleasures (a golden oldie)

No book review this month, I'm still re-reading old favorites while I swim upstream through migraines, car troubles and the stress of end of year testing for my high school student. However, this reposting leads into the next blogpost coming next week about diversity, so stay tuned!

I know what you’re thinking, guilty pleasures must mean sex, drugs and rock & roll, or at the very least chocolate. But you’re wrong. For me a guilty pleasure is reading old superhero comic books.

Yep, Superman, Batman and the Justice League. Preferably from the 1940s and 1950s and some from the early 1960, with an occasional one from the early 1990s.

I do branch out into the Martian Manhunter, the Flash and others as well, but Superman and Batman were the first, and a girl never forgets her first.

For me they continue to provide a cultural history lesson into this country I choose to live in. The early stories of both Superman and Batman were started in the 1930s at a time of great economic uncertainty and much social injustice, not just in the US but across the world. The rise of Nazi Germany created another opportunity for superheroes to flex their superhuman muscles to protect the innocent and the downtrodden.

Throughout the stories you can see the progression of ills befalling society that require clean up. The old stories so clearly illustrate the desire of young men (they wrote and drew these stories and also read them) to believe that there might be someone out there, a little different, a little stronger (okay, a lot stronger), and with unshakable moral convictions of what was right and wrong, who could make their lives better.

For example it’s been speculated that one of Superman’s powers, the fact that bullets can’t hurt him, was put into the story because one of the creators of the hero lost his father to gun violence. (Superman was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students living in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1933.)

But the actual super powers are less of what draws me to the stories. The earlier stories show me a country in turmoil trying to find its identity in a world teetering on a precarious cusp between good and evil. The stories, as they progress, show me how America found its place in the world, for better or worse. From almost cowering isolationism, to -initially reluctant - hero of WWII, to ebullient economic super-power. With the launch of the space program stories joined in and added more threats from outer space.  I’ve not read many of the more recent comic books as the extremely exaggerated muscles and profusion of blood and gore are a bit of a turn off, and a distraction to the story for me.

The recent movie trilogy of Iron Man has made me curious about the progression of his story, so I shall delve into those starting at the beginning. Time permitting of course.

Of course, reading these books is also a great way to stay connected with my offspring.

The spy craft of writing

Many writers will tell you that they build their characters from people they know, have met or have observed and eavesdropped on out in the wild. 

Not long ago I had the opportunity to sit in a chain coffee shop far from home for several hours. I spent it observing the many people coming and going - discreetly, I wouldn’t openly stare as I was bent over my notebook most of the time. 

I would imagine what their lives were like based on various clues I picked up about the clothes they wore, the way they used their cell phones, how loudly they would share information with the barista - you’ll note people will either say something for which they want sympathy or praise - what method they would use to pay for their beverage, how they talked to their kids, etc. You can learn a lot about a person just by observing. 

One individual in particular stood out. 

The more I listened in on his conversation with someone he had just ‘recruited’ for his ‘how to build true wealth’ program, the more he started to sound like the archetype conman, the trickster. 

Since he had set up shop at a table behind me, I made a point of not looking around and only listening. Piecing together the clues from only sound, such as the nervous shuffling of paper when his latest recruit told him about a stint in prison. The rushed breathing and hurried talking when he realized he was losing his recruit’s attention. 

The story as it unfolded was fascinating - for a writer - and using deductive reasoning and a very active imagination, I filled in the blanks of how this story would unfold based simply on an overheard one hour conversational sales pitch. In my story things did not end well for the trickster and judging by the way he rushed out of the coffee shop I suspect he may have thought that as well. 

I imagine spies use similar techniques to piece together information and puzzle out stories, but instead of a high level, secret report, this story might end up in one of my books one of these days. 

Spinning Straw into Gold

Well, that is the hope, intent and desired outcome anyway.

A renegotiation of the original agreement with my now 81-year old screenwriting client; that shrewd, hardcore minor real estate mogul, has resulted in my have carte blanche to rewrite the screenplay. 

I’ll keep the core idea, but will build a different, more engaging story around it. 

But before I can do that, I will need to go over the notes written all over the original screenplay and sort out what was good, what was deemed mediocre, and what was just plain bad. From there I learn and rebuild. As I mentioned in a previous post, the comments by Wendy Kram, Script Consultant, are like a master class in screenwriting. I just need to take them on board and learn. 

I will create more multi-dimensional characters, like I do in my books. I’ll take the story down to its essence and build out from there. Make the dialogue pop, and make sure there’s far less telling and much more showing. (Watch for future blogposts on “show don’t tell”)

My client has expressed an interest in being involved and has told me some of the things he’d like to keep in there, but I think I’ll sit him down and explain that he wants to cram in too much. We can’t save Detroit, build a new industry, go back to include an exciting chapter on WWII Flying Tigers in China, jump forward to 2020, and solve the world tensions by bringing together China and the US all in one 90 minute film. Oh, and somewhere in there have a big ‘ole Motown benefit concert and a tour of the Detroit auto show. All that tends to crowd out room for character development.

The core idea has to come through, and truly movies rarely tackle more than one issue-idea-action at a time. Unless of course you’re going for a 3 hour long production, but rarely, if ever, does a new screenwriter get that opportunity. Cut your teeth on the standard format and if they like you enough you might be able to go wide and step off the beaten path.