In fact, should I rate a tombstone, I’d be all right with that. I got a rejection today that at first glance was just another impersonal note stuffed in the return envelope. I almost didn’t read the text of the note; I’ve seen it before. This rejection was different, however, for two reasons. First, the text of the note actually was different: it said in part, “… your work shows a great deal of promise, and we’d very much like to see more from you.” They don’t have to ask me twice. Second, and even better(ish) was the personal message scratched at the bottom in handwriting worse than mine. The message read, “Some nice writing, but too much was left unexplained.”
Too much left unexplained. I’m trying to explain more now, really.
The reviews of “Memory of a Thing that Never Was” were generally good. There were a couple of professional critics that really liked it, and a bunch of armchair critics who thought it was pretty good. On the other hand, there was a minority of folks who said “I didn’t get it. What happened?” This issue of the magazine had been promoted to the blogosphere, promising free copies in exchange for honest reviews. That would seem like an open invitation to the nutjobs, but I read many reviews and most of these folk stepped up with fair and well-reasoned criticism. Those who rose to the challenge really were passionate about the genre, and ready to help it grow. So, when they ask “What happened?” it’s worth remembering that they are avid readers and champions of the genre.
Too much left unexplained. Some of my good friends here have said the same thing. (It takes a good friend to say something like that — caring enough to risk giving offense and trusting enough to know that the criticism will be taken constructively.) Graybeard, when he read “Memory”, thought for a bit and said, “this should be 600 pages.” From Graybeard, a brutally honest individual, that was for me a great compliment. “Memory” hints at a lot of other things that would take pages and pages to explain, but wouldn’t enhance the short story.
A lot of my stories have holes in them. It seems I’m not writing the holes well enough. Sometimes when I write a short story I’m trying to create a single instant, a moment in a person’s life. A mood. These are my favorite ones and the ones that are the most difficult to write. I worked at a pace of about a paragraph per hour on the rejected story’s opening. The time was well-spent, I think, as the Rejecting Authority appears to have enjoyed the prose. Often I write background bits that I subsequently delete because I see them as distractions. Unfortunately many people find the lack of background to be distracting. If I were to add that stuff, however, it would change the nature of the story.
Thinking about it, I write plenty of stories in which everything is explained. Some of them I even like. (My hard drive is a graveyard of stories written that will never see the light of day, unless I decide to hire some poor slob to find the ones I dropped only because I was in the wrong mood when I reviewed them a week after writing). But my favorites are the very short, very dense stories that are more like a painting than a movie; a single frame in a longer narrative.
Tonight I looked at the rejected story with some frustration. I really thought I was hammering on the important parts, almost embarrassingly so. There is much unknown, but no one in the story knows the answers. They even say as much. The story is about a moment of awakening, but one that has happened many times before. So what can I clarify? The mountains are forbidden. Why? I don’t know. Nobody in the story knows. Why is not important; what matters is that they all believe it enough to kill a friend rather than let him get there. In a novel or even a novella I would explore those questions, but there’s not time for that now.
Obviously I have some work cut out for me as a short story writer, but at the same time I can’t help but think that there is a readership that likes to fill in the blanks. I am more appreciative than ever of the people at Fantasy and Science Fiction for having faith in their readers to put a more difficult story in their pages.
I joked tonight that perhaps I should write my stories in czech because the last thing they want here is an answer. Of course that’s silly; I’m blaming the audience (or actually in this case, a single underpaid slush-pile reader) for failing to understand me when it is my job to be understood.
Too much left unexplained. Isn’t that just like life.
My sagacity from a comment many comments ago bears repeating: Stick to your guns.
In this entry you write a better defense for your methods than I could summon: mood; like a painting; no one in the story knows the answers.
The mission shouldn’t be to adapt until the company accepts your writing, the mission should be to keep searching for a publisher who will accept your writing for what it is. (then die a pauper, only to have future generations buy your original hard drive at Sotheby’s for 10 billion euros).
As for present agent, I recommend that you don’t revamp the current story and send it back, but rather send a new story with less holes. This will show you have lots up your sleeve; that you can write in a different way; and when they accept the story, you can say, “oh by the way there’s this earlier work…”
Here here!! Jesse, you are brilliant. I was thinking how to say something along the same lines to Jerry because writers need to support each other and I read yours and applaud you.
Jerry, don’t dummy down your work, tighten and sketch without a heavy hand and I think it is worthy.
But then I should mention I have critique circle and I get bitched at often for putting a line in that makes the reader want more (duh…engaging reader is a good thing).
Mayhaps, in the case of the mountains, people are not looking for the ‘why’ of the forbiddeness, but for more of the ‘how that is manisfest in (all) the people (before they start killing friends)’
I realise I make no sense, and having not seen the story I could be terribly , terribly stupid. But perhaps things can be explained not in a binary sense (they are THIS because of THAT) but rather the holes are plugged by background.
We dont know what’s happening off the canvas, the painter may not know either, but the people in the painting are reacting to it as though they know.
I’ll stop now, because I have not enough sleep, and can’t really explain myself. Hope someone can pull something worthwhile out of this…
Cheers.
Hi Jer,
I also agree with Jesse on your sticking to your guns. Thanks again for EoD; it was worth the wait.
Hello All,
This is MOH fiddy21 signing off. I expect history will recognize the primary accomplishment (besides being the catalyst for the publication of EoD) of my term as the Great Rhubarb Compromise of 2006. I’m sure the congratulatory call from Kofi will come at a reasonable hour, but the Peace Prize selection committee seems to think everyone is on Stockholm time.
Good luck to MOH 51,001 from Santa Fe, NM. I hope your not an egg frier. If you are, make sure you include green chilis.
Cheers to all!
Had I the opprotunity to retitle this episode, it would be (written in a Puerto Rican accent) Jeeerry! You got some ‘splainin’ to do!
Next time. We all know there will be a next time.
Progress report on Blood of the Moon: I added two paragraps down near the end, and they have a couple of good thoughts in them. Right now, they feel like paragraphs added at the end. If I can capture that content with the same stark imagery that the story starts with, then it’s all a win-win. If not, I’ll chop them back out and send the story to a magazine that likes to challenge its readers.
That pays. The two seem almost exclusive.
My arithmetic shows that Mom (official location: Santa Fe) was, alas, visitor 51,000 and not 51,001.
Visitor 51,001 was an egg friar from Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
But if we decide that just one place of difference is “close enough for government work,” that means Mom is the new MOH.
Personally, I think 50,000 is way cooler than 50,001, prime number or not.
I had copied the data to post here, but now the post is gone. After hitting preview, I probably never clicked Publish.
There is no arithemetic required to determine who the new MOH is, as visitor number is a field on the detail screen. 51001 hails from Santa Fe. The list on sitemeter is not always in order, becase on that screen they are sorted by the time of the last page load in the visit.
Does that make mom the MOH?
Well, it is someone using the same webserver Mom uses, so I’d say it’s very likely.
Whoever it was was running firefox on Windows 98. That has to slim things down.
Pretty sure that’s what Mom uses, she still has Win 98 on her computer.