Finding the Way in the Big Blue

Posted on October 25, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

Prior to my recent trip, I was working on a new story that just didn’t want to come together.  There was nothing specifically wrong with it; it just didn’t feel right.  I tried different things—I rewrote multiple sections, changed the ending and tone, altered the tense—but nothing made it click. 

It turns out my trip came at the perfect time.  While I wasn’t able to write, I had plenty of time to ruminate.  I find scuba diving provides an excellent opportunity to think.  No one can talk to me, and I can’t talk to anyone.  It’s just me, weightless and self-contained, floating above coral reef in clear blue water.  I had about ten minutes at the end of every dive (after I finished what I needed to do) to let my mind wander.  During that time, I found a solution for my story problem. 

It turns out that I had the wrong protagonist—I was telling someone else’s story.  I’m in the middle of rewriting now, and the story feels much better.  Perhaps it would be good for my writing if I traveled more often, or at least spent more time underwater.

Posted in Inspiration, Travel, Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

Confessions of Writing Junkie

Posted on October 22, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

I haven’t had much opportunity to write this week—I was traveling for my day job and spending twelve hours a day on and under water.  At night, the struggle to put words on the screen lost out to my need for sleep.  Around Wednesday, I started to feel guilty that I hadn’t written anything (Confession: my scribbles posted this week were written before I left).  Thursday I tried to write but failed, and settled for reading a handful of draft pages from the first half of my novel that I plan to finish in November.  That small fix got me through Friday. 

I think I’ve become a writing junkie, but instead of a speedball or a tab of acid, I need words and characters and story arcs for my high or suffer the psychological (and maybe physical) consequences—were those shakes I had Thursday shivers because I was cold after a long dive, or the DTs?

Today is Saturday.  The house is quiet; no one else is up yet, including the sun.  I’m throwing these words onto the screen before I dig into some serious writing.  The week away has motivated me to make significant headway on some stories because once NaNoWriMo starts, I won’t have the time to do that.  Now that the shakes have subsided, it’s time to get back to work.

Posted in Travel, Writing | Leave a comment

Three Down, One to Go

Posted on October 20, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

In January of this year, I set the following four writing goals:

  1. Write and/or edit at least 500 words per day
  2. Finish the novel I started last year
  3. Finish at least ten short stories
  4. Make at least forty story submissions or four sales

As I’ve been accomplishing these goals, I’ve been ticking them off with a Scribbles post.  I’m currently averaging 700 words a day.  I’ve finished thirteen short stories, and I have two more in the draft stage.  As of today, I’ve made fifty-four submissions this calendar year.  With the recent sale of “The Last Horse” to Aoife’s Kiss, I’ve met another of my goals.  “The Last Horse” was my fourth story sale of the year.  That leaves me with only one writing target left to reach this calendar year, and I currently plan to finish the first draft of my novel during NaNoWriMo (November). 

This year has already exceeded my expectations (which is a great thing!), and I still have over two months left.  I attribute this success to setting and meeting my writing goals.  I’m already thinking about rasing the bar for next year.  I’m confident I can do more, and hopefully I’ll see a concurrent increase in my sales.

Posted in Goals, Writing | 2 Comments

My First Reviews Are In

Posted on October 17, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

“Thief of Futures” was my first story to appear in a major speculative fiction publication, so I was expecting it to get a wide readership and garner a few reviews.  I’ve never had my work formally reviewed by total strangers before, so I admit I was a little nervous.  I’ve seen the reviews at two of the larger publications.  Lois Tilton at Locus and Richard Aphron at Tangent both reviewed the September issue of Lightspeed Magazine and both gave my story less than stellar reviews.  Ouch!

Digging into the reviews, however, I find one of main complaints from both reviewers is that they felt “Thief of Futures” was not science fiction.  Ms. Tilton wrote “[w]hile the dystopian setting suggests a vaguely cyberpunked future, the future-stealing places this one squarely in the camp of fantasy” and Mr. Aphron notes “the story can’t be good sf, because it’s not sf.  It’s a fantasy story set in the future.”  Hmm….  Valid “complaints,” but my story is what it is, and this seems more a complaint about the editor’s selection of my story for his science fiction magazine, than my story.  I wonder if “Thief of Futures” had appeared in a strictly fantasy magazine if they would have written different reviews. 

Overall, Ms. Tilton didn’t care for my story much (although the twist seemed to work for her).  Mr. Aphron did give it some small praise: “I liked the setting…Minton portrayed the sweltering Malaysian city well” and concluded by saying you might enjoy it if you like crime stories. 

I know my stories will not appeal to everyone.  That’s the way it is, and that’s fine—I write what I write.  I know from reader feedback that several people did like the story enough leave comments.  But you know, I don’t write stories for the praise (although it’s nice to hear when people like them).  I write stories I would like to read.  Hopefully others enjoy them, too.  I’m not sure how many other reviews I’ll read—my story “Observations on a Clock” (February 2012 issue of Asimov‘s) will be the next in line for both Locus and Tangent—but I am sucker for punishment, so I’ll probably check them out not matter how much I know I shouldn’t.

Posted in Science Fiction, Writing | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Grooving to Symphonic Science

Posted on October 14, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

In general, the American public is woefully under-educated about science (see where you sit by taking the Pew Research Centers’ Science Knowledge Quiz).  While this is partially a failing of our schools, I’ve always thought scientists needed to find compelling ways to present scientific material. 

Enter musician John Boswell, who may be onto something with his Symphony of Science.  Mr. Boswell has taken videos of leading scientists discussing scientific theories, done some digital magic to modulate their voices, and put the whole thing to spacey electronica, creating compositions that are fascinating to behold, yet surprisingly educational.

Mr. Boswell’s most recent composition is a piece called “The Quantum World”, which examines the nature of atoms and subatomic particles and features the “musical stylings” of Morgan Freeman, Frank Close, Michio Kaku, Brian Cox, Richard Feynman, and Stephen Hawking.  I found this one particularly interesting because I’m in the middle of reading Sean Carroll’s From Eternity to Here, a non-fiction book about the nature of time (it’s research for the time travel story I’ve been writing).  Other heady science topics given the musical treatment are evolution, biodiversity, Mars, and the Big Bang.  If you’re looking for something on the trippy side, head over to Symphony of Science, turn down the lights, fire up the lava lamp, and groove to Steven Hawking, Carl Sagan, and Neil deGrasse Tyson (among others) “singing” about the beginning of the universe.

Posted in General News, Inspiration | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Must be the Season

Posted on October 13, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

Tracie McBride, our Hopefull Monster down under, has had a run of sales recently and commented that it “must be the season for acceptances”.  I guess she was right.  The day after she said that, I sold “The Last Horse” to Aoife’s Kiss, and a day later, Colum Paget—Hopefull Monster and resident curmudgeon in jolly ol’ England—sold his story “The Taking of IOSA-2083” to Mutation Press’ Rocket Science anthology.  Add these to Tracie’s sale of “The Changing Tree” to Paisley Stitchington’s Speculative Buggle and “The Touch of the Taniwha” to Dagan Book’s Fish anthology and it’s shaping up to be a monstrously good season.

Posted in Hopefull Monsters | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“The Last Horse” Finds a Home

Posted on October 11, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

Aoife’s Kiss has accepted my story “The Last Horse” for the September 2012 print and online issue.  This one was a personal favorite, so I’m happy that it’s finally found a home.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Alien is Here

Posted on October 11, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

The other day, someone asked me where I get ideas for alien worlds.  That made me pause as I realized that I don’t write many stories that take place on alien worlds or which even have aliens in them.  The “alien” worlds I have invented tend to be based on places right here on Earth.  For example, the alien world in my forthcoming story “Hoodoo” was inspired from a trip I took to Goblin Valley, Utah about fifteen years ago.  The historic downtown quarter of just about any old North American city inspired the domed city on the alien world in “The Fine Art of Surfacing”.  I don’t think this is unusual, however; while speculative fiction is a genre of ideas, ultimately a good story illustrates something about the human condition and life on Earth.  Most alien worlds in speculative fiction are created to tell such stories and likely have their foundations in something human and mundane.

This must be a disappointing revelation for those who think speculative-fiction writers are infinitely inventive.  Some certainly are—I know several who fit the bill—but I’m not one of them when it comes to creating alien worlds (or aliens for that matter).  I’m more interested in telling human stories about people than inventing a detailed alien world and/or civilization.  World building is a lot of work, especially for a 4,000-word story, and I would rather spend that time developing the story’s characters, conflict, and tension.  Besides I find Earth to be interesting enough—it’s already filled with innumerable “alien” worlds and civilizations (at least to me), so who needs to create them from scratch?

Posted in Inspiration, Science Fiction, Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

On Being a Writer and Getting Eaten by a Shark

Posted on October 8, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

I aspire to make a living one day from writing fiction.  It’s something I’ve aspired to for most of my life, but never pursued because I was always told the chances of success were so slim, and therefore it was prudent to pursue something that would actually earn me a living (so I went into marine biology, which probably has about the same odds of success and level of pay). 

So what are the odds of becoming a professional fiction writer vs. just being a fiction writer (by “professional” writer, I mean one who makes a living selling fiction)?  This is not an easy question to answer, because most professional fiction writers are working at the novel length, but I only have decent acceptance rate data for short story publications.  I’ll have to assume these rates are comparable (you do know what happens when you assume).  According to Duotrope, the “big three” in speculative short fiction (Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s) have an acceptance rate less 0.2%.  Of the writers that sell a story to a professional publication, only a small percent continue to sell at a rate consistent enough to make a living from their fiction.  Hmmm…it sounds like the odds somewhere in the range of 1 in 1,000,000 or so.  According the Book of Odds, the chance of getting stuck by lightning is higher (1 in 835,500). 

Chance is a funny thing, however—it assumes randomness and that all subjects are the same.  Yet writers vary in talent and drive.  I’d like to think that talent and drive increase the chances of professional success (I think they would!).  I wonder how many with the talent and drive to make it?  What about those writers with less talent, but lots of drive?  I’d like to think I have above average talent and drive, but maybe I’m delusional.

I guess I’ll keep my day job for now, at least until I have a better idea what my chances are of success.  I better not wait too long, however.  My chances of getting eaten by a shark are 1 in 251,800,000, but they are probably higher for me because I work in the ocean.  Hopefully it’s not higher than my chances of becoming a professional writer.

Posted in Goals, Inspiration, Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

Wrong Goals ===> Disappointment & Misery

Posted on October 6, 2011 by D. Thomas Minton

I recently had an email discussion with a writing colleague about how he was discouraged by the relatively few “returns” on his writing “investment”.  That got me thinking about writing goals again—I think a lot about writing goals.  In this case, I think returns and goals are intertwined, and one can’t be consider without the other. 

At the heart of the issue is the simple question: What do I want from my writing? 

People write for many reasons.  Most people who write will never make a living from their fiction—and by most I mean more than ninety-nine percent.  I think most people realize the odds are stacked against them and don’t expect their fiction writing to turn into a career.  Therefore, something else drives them to put words on the screen.  Maybe it’s simply a need to tell a story.  This isn’t a bad reason to write.  If a writer doesn’t want to go the hard road of being a professional writer, no shame on him.  I think it’s important to define goals appropriately—setting goals linked to publishing will likely result in a dump-truck full of disappointment and misery for the writer who holds few serious aspirations to publish in professional markets. 

I don’t see this as low-balling your potential either .  I see this as setting the correct goals for what you want, and ultimately, setting the correct goals is what should be done.  Writing shouldn’t make you miserable—I’m not a big subscriber of the tortured writer myth.  If it does, I think you’re doing something wrong.  Maybe it’s the goals you’ve set, and thus the kind of returns you’re expecting.

Posted in Goals, Writing | Tagged , | 2 Comments