What I Wish Someone Had Told Me in April 2005
(which is when I had been submitting short fiction to magazines for two years)

You've been through your Freshman Year. You've been through your Sophomore Year. Only, it took longer than a year, or it took less than a year, and this whole high schoolian metaphor for writing is really getting on your nerves.

Though I'm not going to go abandon a perfectly good metaphor, you have a point. I'm not happy with the metaphor anymore either, because the implicit timeline is actually sort of demonic, and raises (or lowers) expectations. The timeline is a red herring. This just happens to be where I am in August 2006, a year and some change after my second anniversary as a Submitting Writer.

I learned a lot in my third year, and the reason I've titled this the Junior Year Abroad is because I feel like I've reached a point not unlike the cultural immersion of spending a year in a foreign country. I spent your first two years at home, studying the language and the culture of this country, but now I'm there, in person, breathing foreign air and reeling from culture shock.

And what's the first language I learned during my junior year?

Despair

No one really relays how hard the space is in between sales for a neopro. I've met many neopros who are struggling with dead spaces and their own expectations. -- Tobias Buckell, "Getting Past Being Joe Blow Neopro" (8:19, part one)

It's not that no one said, "Hey, be careful. There are some longish gaps between story sales." It was said, in a myriad of ways; I just didn't think it would be me, or if it were, that it would affect me so much. Since day one in the writing trade, despair was all around me once I looked. People who hadn't written in a year, people who hadn't sold since their first pro sale, people who had made it to all appearances and then just as suddenly stopped making it. After selling "Huntswoman" to Strange Horizons, I made exactly one sale in the following fifteen months. (Go to my 2005 stats page and search the word "accepted.") One $5 sale, and by the time I made it, I was so happy that I hadn't failed forever that I didn't even think of looking that gifthorse in the mouth.

Worse still, I was having a hard time writing. I could begin projects okay. And I was rewriting a few things here and there, like my first novel--but there was a six or nine month gap where I didn't finish any first drafts. That was also a bit depressing. I realize that there are writers in the world who don't finish a book in three years, even, and who don't write short stories in between. But I'd been plugging along regularly and finishing things on a fairly predictable basis. And when I paused to pay attention to novels... and then had so many false starts on top of it... I began to wonder if the reason I wasn't selling was because I'd never actually finish anything else.

So, I moved on to

Distraction

I ended up reading slush for a little less than a year at the now defunct Lenox Avenue; I joined the Online Writing Workshop (and even hit the Editor's Choice); I attended my second WorldCon (Interaction in Glasgow, functionally alone); I attended the UK Milford (a workshop with a storied history); I sat on panels at Wiscon and Worldcon. It was a good year in many ways, and a huge letdown in all the others (see above, despair). Of course, I sold a story on January 1st of 2006, and beyond that, managed to sell two more pieces from my December 2005 submissions spamming, and ultimately, made my junior year into something nearly respectable.

While I value everything I did in my junior year, two experiences stand out as the most important. First, reading slush was an education that I could not have replicated in any other way. You just don't learn how editors see you without becoming an editor yourself. Critiquing on workshops is no stand-in for this kind of experience, either. This experience also drove home how very important it is to write clearly, and to understand the etiquette of the whole endeavor. Guidelines are just as important on day 730 as they were on day 1. Accepting rejection gracefully is a fundamental skill. I looked back over the Freshman essay recently, and it's all still true--more true than I knew when I wrote the essay two and a half years ago. It's also seems so incomplete from this vantage point, but it really is everything I needed to know, wished I'd known in the first year.

The second experience I valued the most was Milford. I spent a week in Wales with 11 other writers and got two stories critiqued--neither of which have sold since, of course, but I still get mail from my compatriots asking if they've sold yet. The OWW critiques were great--Kelly Link choosing one of my stories as an Editor's Choice and giving me feedback was truly great--but I got more value out of the face-to-face critiques of Milford--specifically, 11 of them right in a row. The atmosphere was also truly wonderful. While OWW has a fun, involved on-line community, there's a certain amount of daily time I'd have to apply to the cause in order to get the feeling of actually being involved. Milford, on the other hand, was an intense, single week, and very motivating.

Back to Despair

I was convinced throughout 2005 that I was in a slump, though realistically my slump was in trusting myself and my stories and getting them sent out. I had only 36 submissions in 2005, and managed 54 the previous year. I probably pulled more stories than I added to my stable. I'm not sure this was the wrong thing to do, exactly, and I'm still working through the thought process on what's worth trying to sell and what's not. I know the usual line: don't do the editor's job for her--don't self-reject. But at the same time, I think, gosh, if I don't want ANYONE to read the story, then it's really not something I should send out. No matter what the common wisdom is.

Another thing I learned this year was to sometimes back off and write things I couldn't sell, even if I wanted to--specifically, fanfic. Knowing that the pressure of selling was off made the juices flow, and after completing just a few scenes of a fic, I always feel energized and am good to go for weeks. I know exactly why fic works this way for me and other types of free-writing don't: because I don't believe myself when I write something and tell myself I don't have to try and sell it. I need the helpful motivation of copyright law, I guess, to keep the lid on the trunk.

Writing through your weaknesses. Or past them. Or under them.

When not vacillating between despair and distraction, I spent some of the time in my junior year trying to hunt down and eliminate my weaknesses as a writer. I largely didn't succeed. I don't know that there is a way to eliminate your weaknesses--not at my level. I still flub my beginnings. I still rely on book-saidisms to an alarming degree in the first draft. I still don't quite understand why adverbs are bad. I can't write in the third person very well. Those have been my weaknesses for since day one, and they're still weak. I think the best I've done at fixing a weakness is learning to stop rushing my endings, but I don't even know if I have stopped doing that or if critiquers have stopped mentiong it.

I did, however, eventually learn that if you strengthen your strengths enough, you can cover up your weaknesses. Realizing that I usually manage to find a good and distinctive writing voice in most of my work was a huge relief. You can hide a multitude of sins with voice. It's like a slenderizing swimsuit that way. Learning that I can usually drag people past my plot holes through humor was also good. Can't patch the plot hole? Slap a joke on in it like an Oriental carpet.

So, even in the midst of a nine-month drought, I had the pleasure of realizing that I was getting better at my craft. Actually, let's call it a "pleasure," complete with ironical quotation marks. See, I was also learning that in less than a year, my craft had improved so much that I was actually sort of ashamed of what I was circulating and some of the things I'd already published. I know it's not popular to admit that, and maybe it's a big faux pas... the only thing I can say is that for my worst stories--thank God the markets folded, and there's no chance anyone will read those things without severely exercising the way-back machines of the internet.

I pulled a lot of things at that point and trunked them--either permanently or until there could be a rewrite. I still debate with myself about whether or not that's the right thing to do, and crazily, sometimes I look back at the stories and think, "This isn't so bad," and chuck it back out there again. I suppose the whole thing is just a matter of perspective.

Beyond Despair

The thing is, for as much despair as I was feeling, it wasn't that bad. You know? I kept writing, even though I didn't finish much. I kept rewriting. I kept stuff circulating if I believed in it, and I kept trying to make better the stuff that I didn't believe in. My distractions were largely good distractions. And I learned that I wouldn't die if I didn't sell a story for nine months--and more importantly, I learned I wouldn't stop trying if I didn't sell a story for nine months. I know enough about myself too, to know that if I can make it nine months, I can make it twenty-seven months. So, I'm ready for the next drought.

Droughts are inevitable in this business. Markets close so fast and unexpectedly around here--he first three 'zines that published me have gone under already, and I published in them just two years ago. And the river teems with little writer-salmons--the bears can't catch them all, no matter how tasty they look.

Okay, my metaphors grow creepier. It's time to wrap things up. I have writing to do, after all.

See you next April for Senior Thesis!