Writing Report September 24, 2021

Recently I was -- let’s be kind and say “participating” -- on a writing page discussion centered around self-publishing. 

I know several self-published writers and hold the greatest respect for them. They approach self-publishing professionally and with the highest standards, and they richly deserve the success they enjoy. 

But there’s a lot of aspiring authors who don’t act like qualified professionals but more like self-identified marks for con artists. 

I didn’t post this there, but this quote from Pulp Fiction pretty much sums up my attitude: 

“I’m a boxer.  And after you’ve said that, you’ve said pretty much all there is to say about me.  Now maybe that son-of-a-bitch tonight was once at one time a boxer.  If he was, then he was dead before his ass ever stepped in the ring… And if he never was a boxer, that’s what he gets for fucking with my sport.”

I’ve posted elsewhere about how I found myself attuned to storytelling at a very early age.

I entertained myself by making up stories when I played with my toy dinosaurs and soldiers.

I’d tell my friends above movies I’d seen, and I never felt the slightest bit of hesitancy about improving those stories if I felt the need.

I “wrote” my first book at age five before I learned how to read, painstakingly copying the names and images of dinosaurs out of my picture books then stapling the whole thing together.

I can’t remember the first time I tried to write a short story, but I do know I tried writing a play when I was in the third grade, a sci-fi epic about the first spaceship.

And I remember even at that age putting it aside unfinished because halfway through the first scene I realized just how badly it sucked.

I read a lot.  And I read about writing a lot.  My father once held aspirations of being a writer, so we had a bunch of old Writer’s Digest magazines and Jack Woodford’s How To Write For Money* laying around the house.

I wrote my first short story that was good enough to stick in my head when I was in the 5th grade; another sci-fi tale that earned me a B+.**

I became a monster kid in the summer of 1965, a sci-fi fan by 1966 at the latest.  I was writing stories and scripts for my own amusement by this time, but certainly no later than age 16 I was submitting stories to professional magazines and articles and reviews to fanzines (all rejected). 

I published an underground newspaper in my high school in 1970.

I saw my first published article “I Wouldn't Be Caught Dead in One of Them!” in Gore Creatures #20 in September of 1971.

I was drafted and inducted in June of 1972.  Based on my civilian background as an aspiring writer, the Army made me a military journalist and a post newspaper editor.

I continued submitting -- and failing to sell -- short stories while placing movie and book reviews until I was discharged in February of 1978.

I made my first freelance animation sale in April or May of 1978; I was a staff writer by June.

I literally spent a lifetime learning my craft.  So did most writers. ***

You can’t take short cuts.

You can’t buy your way to success.

You can read, you can study, you can learn, you can practice, but you need to do the work yourself.

You can’t short change the reader with substandard material.

I deny no one their pleasure, and I know there are many who enjoy writing simplistic formula fiction and there are many who enjoy reading it, but dammit, I expect you to work just as hard at your craft as any old school pro would.

Don’t you dare bring anything less that your best to it.

Not somebody else’s best, YOUR best.

“The chief commodity a writer has to sell is his courage.
And if he has none, he is more than a coward.
He is a sellout and a fink and a heretic,
because writing is a holy chore.”

-- Harlan Ellison

© Buzz Dixon

*  Strunk & White’s The Elements Of Style is absolutely essential for any writer, and Lajos Egri’s The Art Of Dramatic Writing and John Gardner’s The Art Of Fiction will teach you everything about the art of writing that you need to know but holy &#@% to this day nothing beats Woodford when it comes to the nuts & bolts of the business end of the beast.

**  This would have been 1964 or ’65.  My story was about the US beating Russia to the moon by using a Gemini / lunar lander hybrid, the same idea Hank Searls used in his 1964 novel The Pilgrim Project only I didn’t read The Pilgrim Project any earlier than 1969 or later when it was re-released to tie-in with the movie based on the book, Countdown. So yea 5th grade me for coming up independently with an idea that worked well enough for somebody else to enjoy a successful book and a movie deal.

***  Truman Capote didn’t.  Truman Capote sold the first three stories he submitted to the first three magazines he submitted them to, receiving all three acceptance letters on the same day.  Fuck you, Truman.