”You learn more from finishing a failure than you do from writing a success. And you definitely learn more from finishing a failure than you ever do from beginning something that’s fantastic but stops.”
—Neil Gaiman
This post ’makes a nice companion piece to yesterday’s post How to Be a Better Writer a Year from Today (According to Ray Bradbury).
”If you want to write an award-winning television episode, you got to write episodes of television that critics don’t like. If you want to write an award-winning movie, you got to write movies that critics don’t like. If you want to write award-winning short stories, you got to write short stories that nobody reads—that don’t really work. That’s okay. And after you’ve written 10,000 words, 30,000 words, 60,000 words, 150,000 words, a million words, you will have your voice. Because your voice is the stuff you can’t help doing.”
—Neil Gaiman
MasterClass, “Finding Your Voice” (Lesson 4)
Gaiman talks about the first book he wrote being an unpublished children’s book that only exists in his attic. He revisited the book after he established he writing career and was pleased to find a page and a half of that book where he recognized his emerging voice. Then he put the book back in his attic where it belongs.
In lesson 18 of Gaiman’s MasterClass he talks about “Rules for Writers” that he first read in an essay by Harlan Ellison, that was was based on Robert Heinlein’s essay On the Writing of Speculative Fiction. Gaiman added his spin to it, and here’s my shorthand version. (There’s no shortage of writers interpreting Heinlein’s original thoughts for various reasons.)
1. Start writing.
2. Finish what you write.
3. Submit what you write (to someone who can publish it).
4. When it comes back rejected (make changes as needed or as requested), send it back out.
5. Start writing the next thing.
Heinlein had a slightly different wrinkle, but the above list captures the essence. It’s worth pointing out that Heinlein’s original essay was written in 1947. That was the same year that The Saturday Evening Post published his short story The Green Hills of Earth. A decent payday for a writer back then. So he had reason to be hopeful about writers following his rules.
“If you will follow them, it matter not how you write, you will find some editor somewhere, sometime, so unwary or so desperate for copy as to buy the worst old dog you, or I, or anybody else, can throw at them.”
—Robert Heinlein
On the Writing of Speculative Fiction
Once upon a time, a writer could actually make a living writing short stories that were published in magazines. That era was well before the internet, DVDs, and even before Gilligan’s Island began airing on TV. Not to point the blame to Gilligan and the gang on the S.S. Minnow, but around 1963 seems to be when the shift happened. There was a major cultural shift in the United States. In 1963, Bob Dylan sang on TV for the first time (Blowing in the Wind), Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, and President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The next year the Beatles came to America for the first time, the Civil Rights Act became law, and Gulf of Tonkin Resolution ramped up U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Then, to quote the theme song from Gilligan’s Island, “the weather started getting rough.” Television was ready to take the main stage capturing “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” From the rise of Muhammad Ali to the fall of Saigon.
“No competitor ever gave publishers as many fretful hours as television, which grew rapidly in the postwar boom. Expenditures on television advertising — network, spot, and local — climbed from virtually nothing in the late 1940s to more than $1.7 billion in 1963 … . When magazine profits declined in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many observers were quick to blame the trouble on television.”
—T. Peterson
Advertising Age, 1980
That was a bad time of transition to be a short story writer dependent on income from magazines. But fast forward 60 years and there are ways that writers are making new inroads to getting their stories told. There are writers getting a following on blogs and podcasts, and raising funds through places like Patreon and GoFundMe. Writers are self-publishing their print, digital, and audio books easier than ever. Andy Weir is the success story of a guy who had a two-decade career as a software engineer before becoming a full timer writer. Weir just starting freely writing a serialized version of a book on his website until the demand was strong enough to self-publish on Amazon Kindle. That turned into the best selling book The Martian, that also become the hit movie of the the same name starring Matt Damon. How’d he do it?
He started writing.
He finished what he wrote.
He self-published it. (And its success led to it being published by Penguin Random House and becoming a New York Times bestseller.)
He started writing the next book.
P.S. Hearing Gaiman’s talk about his book The Ocean at the End of the Lane made me just purchase that audio book. A fantasy story, rooted in his childhood, that he says is a lie that tells the truth. A book that started as a short story and just grew. If you’ve never heard Gaiman’s literal voice, here’s a talk I found online titled How Stories Last.
Related post:
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles