Author: Scott William Carter

I’ve reached the two thirds mark on the second pass on the young adult fantasy. The goal is to push through this second pass and finish it by the end of the week. Then it goes to the First Reader (who happens to also be my wife, making for a sometimes sticky situation, but her critical skills are too good to pass up), after which I’ll finally get the thing in the mail to a publisher.

Speaking of genres, while I was doing a little Web surfing I saw that the latest Hugo Awards had been announced. These are the awards that the attendees of Worldcon, the biggest science and fantasy convention, give out each year. It reminded me of my experience at last year’s Worldcon in Boston. I really enjoyed meeting some wonderful people, including Matt Cheney, who’s becoming something of a noted critic in the field; Jeff VanderMeer, whose writing career has moved into a new gear; Stan Schmidt, editor of Analog, buyer of three of my stories, and all around amazing guy; as well as many, many other nice folks. It was great putting faces with the names, and getting a sense of the people I knew only from their writing or editing. Except for an Orycon I attended back in college, this was my first real Con experience. I really wanted to know what it was all about and I’m glad I went. However, I also learned that conventions are not my cup of tea, and I’ll be a very, very infrequent con-goer at best. For me, I’m much better off spending that time writing and reading. There are writers I’ve met who have used conventions to make a lot of connections, connections that have undoubtedly helped their careers, but ultimately publishing is always, in the end, about the work itself. You can have all the connections in the world but if you can’t tell a good tale, they won’t help you much. And that’s what I love about writing fiction, too. If you do nothing but write a lot, read a lot, and keep striving to get better, you can have a very nice career from the comfort of your own home. Lots of writers have. It always seems to amaze people when I tell them (usually after they ask just how I managed to publish stories, and, my god, for actual money) that I just put them in envelopes and mail them out to markets that might buy them.

There’s the other side of conventions, which is the social aspect, the sense of community, and that has a lot of value. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by lots of writers here in Oregon, but even so, there are times when I still feel like I’m writing essentially in isolation. Even being surrounded by writers, I sadly don’t get too see them all that often. There’s just too little time these days, and when it comes down to it, after the day job and family, most of what remains must go to writing and getting better at writing. But I try not to be too much a hermit, getting out when I can. Of course, if the choice comes down to hanging out with writers or going to the zoo with my daughter, as I did yesterday . . . well, there’s no contest, is there? Just love those monkeys.

Recent reads: Finished H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. I think I’d read it long, long ago, but I hardly remembered it at all. With all the publicity around the new movie (no, I haven’t seen it, and don’t plan to), I wanted to read it again. The mode of storytelling seems a bit dated, a sort of first person journalistic account, but since it’s so dated it’s almost fresh again. Strangely, this book reminded me of Cold Mountain, which couldn’t be more different in subject matter, since it deals with the Civil War and not an alien invasion — but they both deal with a main character trying to make his way home to his beloved while having a series of mishaps and adventures along the way, each of these episodes revealing something about human nature. Also, I finished off Joseph J. Ellis’s Founding Brothers, which was an entertainng book about all the subtle and not so subtle ways our founding fathers (focusing on Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Hamilton) were connected. It doesn’t delve too deeply, but it’s a great overview. What always amazes me, when I think about it, is that the population of the United States in 1776 was roughtly the same as Oregon’s population today — a little less than three million. I have a hard time imagining all of those talented people coming out of Oregon today, but I suppose there’s two reasons it happened during the Revolutionary period: 1) History has been very kind to the Founding Fathers, in most cases eliminating their flaws and elevating their strengths and 2) trying times, to slightly modify Thomas Paine’s famous sentiment, bring out both the best and the worst in people. If these men had been born ten years later, we most likely never would have heard of any of them.

About halfway through my second pass on the young adult fantasy, and so far, I’m feeling good about this draft. It definitely has a richer texture than the previous ones. The reality never quite matches up with the vision I have in my mind, but I find that the more I work at my craft, the closer I get to the vision. At least, sometimes. There are also times such as yesterday, when I took a break from the novel to work on a story for an upcoming horror anthology, when I lapsed into moments of despair at how big the gulf is between the kind of writer I want to be and the kind of write that I am — or, as I said to my wife, that my reach seems so much farther than my grasp. But then a couple things happened, as they often do, to pull me out of this mood. First, as I was transferring this story from my desktop computer to my laptop, I happened to use a disk I hadn’t used in years, and it turned out that on this desk were a couple of stories from four or five years ago. Reading them, I nearly gagged at how bad they were (so bad I quickly dropped them from inventory, and, apparently, also from my conscious mind). It made me feel better, knowing that the million or so words I wrote in the interval weren’t wasted, that my craft had definitely improved in that time.

Then, making me feel even better, I got my galleys for my upcoming story in Analog (“A Christmas in Amber”) in the mail. Looking over the story, which will be my third appearance there, I suddenly realized that I could, in a way, now be considered a regular contributor — and how strange this feeling was, making me remember when I was wet-behind-the-ears eighteen year old freshman in college having late night coffee with a bunch of other aspiring writers, dreaming of the day when my name would appear in what’s called the Big Three in the science fiction field (F&SF and Asimov’s being the other two). So while I would prefer that these nagging doubts and black moods vanish as I progress as a writer, I’m thinking that ain’t all that likely. But at least I’ve got more life preservers to keep me from drowning in my own psychological stew. That’s something.

In reading news, finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a couple weeks ago. Say what you want about Rowling’s literary merit, this woman is a hell of a storyteller. You might toss off the first book as lightning in a bottle, but you don’t captivate millions of readers for six books unless you’re spinning a great yarn. And this is a great yarn. Can’t wait for the final book.

Well, my novel-in-a-week challenge last week went pretty well. I ended up doing just short of 70,000 words, definitely a one week record for me, which is the equivalent word count of a book. However, I didn’t quite finish it — it’s my third run at a young adult fantasy I’m trying to get right — but it’s close. Just a chapter and a half to go.

All in all, I’m glad I did this, as I’ve always found I work well under pressure. It was also helpful to have other writers participating; we had our own virtual writing community, and each night we posted our totals as well as shared our struggles and triumphs. Did we all come away with sellable books? Who knows. In the end, I really ended up writing not much faster than my normal drafting speed; I just put in a lot more hours. The book still needs work. It’s a lot better than the first two drafts, I think, but I’m going to have to go over it chapter by chapter, most of all for setting and sensory details, but also for voice miscues. Still, I feel good about this one. I feel like I know what to do. It’s just a matter of doing it.

Lately, I’ve been gearing myself up to really increase my productivity, and this week helped kicked things off. I’ve been fairly productive the last three years (probably about a quarter of a million words of fiction a year, spread between novels and short stories), but I know I can do better. When it comes down to it, if you want to “make it” as a professional fiction writer — however you define that — the only thing you can really control that has a direct bearing on your chances of success is your production. Of course, you must also strive to get better, studying, learning from others who have walked the road, but none of that matters much if you don’t produce.

So I’m upping my productivity goals. It’s a fine balancing act, what with a full time job, a supportive wife, and a two year old, but it can be done. What I give up — television, mostly — I don’t miss much. What really drives me, and what will continue to drive me no matter how far I go with my writing career, is the desire to become the best storyteller I can be. I get so many rewards from that pursuit that it makes the short term sacrifices worth it.