GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #679: THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

 

So I found this last week or so while going through my things, trying to figure out what I want to save and what I'm OK with never seeing again. I thought, why not save this for a GF? And then I posted last night's column, and I realized tonight would be the perfect time for this.

If you can't tell what that is in the picture, it's a photocopied bundle of pages from a Writer's Market book. Once upon a time, around when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, I took a creative writing course in high school. I'm fairly certain it was the first year it had been offered, and it was supposed to be for seniors, but I took it as a sophomore.

Mr. Langner was the teacher, and he must have recognized something in me because I'm pretty sure he didn't take any of his other students aside like he did me. That bundle of pages above? He put that in my hand and told me that there are people in the world WHO ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY FROM WRITING. It was a real eye-opener for me. He even knew what I wanted to write, so he copied the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror section of the Writer's Market. The keys to the kingdom.

If you weren't writing back then, the Writer's Market was an annual book published by Writer's Digest. It contained places to send your work to. That was our version of the internet back then. So I pored over those pages and started submitting stories immediately.

Long story short, if you're looking for someone to blame for me, you might want to think about Mr. Langner. I probably would have found out eventually, but because of him I got a very early start and got the hope appropriately beaten out of me earlier in life and got me very familiar with rejection from the beginning.

More things a beginning writer needs to know. But that's all for tonight. Goodnight, fuckers, and good luck.

PS: If you want to know what is in those boxes, they are packed to the brim with reject letters. There are three boxes there, and that's not even all of the rejects I've gotten. I've gotten rejected by some of the best. One day I might go through those and look for the ones with personal notes. For nostalgia.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #678: BEGINNING WRITERS

 So my hetero life mate Rob Tannahill posted this recently on his blog. If you're starting out as a writer, it's probably great advice. In all honesty, I'm not familiar with Emily Harstone, but the things he says makes sense. I'm not really sure how a writer would start out now because when I started out, the world was a vastly different place. When I started submitting stories, I'd just graduated to using a computer to write. I'm just a few years separated from writers who typed their work with actual typewriters and kept carbon copies in case the work got lost in the mail. And if that happened? They would have to type up a new copy from the carbons, and if they're anything like me, they'd give in to the urge to do even more editing.

Ah yes. Mail. Note the lack of the "e." What we now call snail mail was the only way to submit stories back then. Unless you were Hunter S. Thompson with his mojo wire, of course. The internet was around back then but not for common people like me. I'm not old enough to have turned in a manuscript "over the transom," but you get the idea.

Anyway, the point is, Rob, having to start over from scratch due to many years of drug problems, probably knows what he's talking about more than I do at this point. He did, after all, get his first acceptance letter today. From someone whose name *isn't* John Bruni, I might add.

So congratulations to him. Incidentally, the people publishing him put me in my first anthology about a thousand years ago. So it's another thing we have in common. Keep an eye out.

If you read far enough down in his blog, you'll note that he calls me an "extreme horror sensation." If the rest of you looked at me like he did, I might not have to work a day job selling auto glass. I appreciate the kind words, but sensation is a bit off the mark, and while I've been known to write extreme horror, I think it's a very small part of my toolbox. If I have any advice to give to starting authors, it's usually after everyone else tells them to know their genre. That's when I add my two cents, which is, you don't have to pick a genre. Write whatever you want. Just be familiar with those who came before you. That's all. I've taken a lot of what Joe R. Lansdale does to heart. Not to say that I want to be Lansdale, it's just that I want to write whatever the hell I want to and not just stick to the same territory.

And I did give Rob that advice about keeping the blog. Practice is the most important thing a starting writer can do. Here's another thing Lansdale said once: you have a lot of shit in you. The only way to get that shit out of your system and start writing gold is to keep practicing.

And in my defense, the headline of the article I read said a giant turtle crawled out of the Chicago River. Having walked along the Chicago River almost every day for about four years (and being familiar with how toxic it looks even when it's not St. Patrick's Day), that translated in my head to "mutant." When I actually read the article, I saw it was a snapping turtle. Those things are supposed to be huge.