I published my first Novella in 2019. I was finishing my MFA and. Had taken countless writing classes over the years. I thought I knew everything. Of course I didn’t, and still don’t. Here are a few things I have learned since then.
When I first published, everything I’d read said to keep your genres separate. If you write in different genres, use a different pen name for each. That sounded like good advice, and I think for a rapid release author that’s still true. Rapid release authors publish a book every month or at least every two months.
I am not a rapid release author. I write daily, but my brain doesn’t focus on one story at a time. Currently, I am writing on four different novels/novellas and a slew of short stories. I will finish them all. I write about a thousand words a day towards them. That means over a year I may finish two of the novels and some short stories, or I may finish tons of shorts and one novel. So far this year, it’s early April. I have finished four short stories, and one novelette. This year I have written 100,000 good, mostly publishable words. I’ve tried sticking to one story at a time, and my brain just doesn’t work like that.
Listening to my muse and writing what she tells me works for me as long as I write daily. As long as I write daily, I will complete my projects. It will just take me longer.
I used to feel bad about that. I could see very successful indie authors. A couple of them are friends of mine in real life. I’ve watched one of them write a 1000,000 word novel in a week, then spend less than a week copy editing and designing the book cover. I tried to be like them. Trying to be like them caused me to create so much pressure for myself that I quit trying to write for publication. I didn’t quit writing. I just did free writes and an occasional writing session beyond that. Eventually that pressure turned into kicking myself, for not being someone else.
I firmly believe the secret to life was written about the Oracle of Delphi’s cave several thousand years ago. Know thyself and all things in moderation. I told my students for years that’s the secret of life. I’ve told them if they actually know who they are, then they’d be harder to stop. If you know who you are, you know what you’re capable of, and you know what you’re worth. I, on their other hand, didn’t know who I was, at least as a writer. I tried being someone else. I was terrible at being someone else.
Christmas Eve I gave myself permission to be myself as a writer. Over 1000,000 good, publishable words in a little over three months, shows I’m a pretty good me. I’m writing great stories, submitting them to traditional publications, submitting quarterly to Writers of The Future, and getting close to finishing my first full-length novel.
I’m also done kicking myself for not being someone else.
I set at goal at the end of last year. I would either win the Writer’s of the Future contest this year or pro out. It’s, I believe the oldest science fiction and Fantasy writing contest. I’ve submitted to the contest sporadically since 2016.
In 2019 My story Not a Piece of Cake earned an honorable mention. At first I was elated. It was acknowledgement that my writing was getting good. I almost cried when I received the certificate. Pretty quickly my resistance kicked in and I convinced myself it wasn’t a big deal. I eventually posted it on Kindle unlimited as The Zone. You can read it there for free.
I went ahead and reentered the contest and, nothing happened, other than more rejections. Then I quit entering, until December of last year year. I entered for the first quarter of 2024.
I just heard back from them, and another honorable mention for my story Secondhand Speedos and other things you find at the Dump. From what I’ve researched that means I was in the top 10 percent of entries last year quarter. They have several thousand entries every quarter, so while it’s a rejection, it’s also a win. I’m now submitting the same story to other paying publishers.
I’m putting the polishes on my next entry 12 Miles Out, deadline is March 31st.
I was fourteen and we were on our annual trek to Huntsville, Alabama to space camp. Loaded in our two-tone, gray and blue, GMC crew-cab with camper, were my mother, two little sisters, little brother, and best friend Mark. My mom decided we should stop in Henryetta, Oklahoma to visit her aunt Wanda. Henryetta is an unremarkable town, its only claim to fame Troy Aikman, a former Cowboys quarterback. It is a small town of small houses with peeling paint and cracked sidewalks and unmanaged lawns, a town of potholes, of worn-away blacktop and exposed cobblestone roads.
I didn’t want to see my mother’s aunt. I thought that this town offered me nothing. Wanda didn’t have cable or even a VCR so I couldn’t escape into a science fiction movie. What could possibly interest me in the middle of a small Oklahoma town? After all, I was on my way to space camp. I was preparing to go to the Moon, to go to Mars, to enter the Brave New World I had seen in countless science fiction movies or read about in books. There could be nothing in this little town for me. Nothing.
We passed one dreary little street after another as my mother tried to remember where her aunt’s house was: streets named Maple, and Birch, and Elm, and Spruce, ticky-tacky tiny streets that made the truck rumble as we hit the cobblestones.
As we passed yet another street undoubtedly named for a tree, I saw it, my dream, what I’d been waiting my whole life to see: a flying car. The first flying car should not have been in Oklahoma… What could “Oakies” possibly have to do with flying cars? And yet, there it was, in Henryetta. For the rest of the time my mother spent looking for her Aunt’s house, I could talk of nothing else. I knew I had seen the flying car.
Mark confirmed he had seen it. Ever the skeptic, “undoubtedly a gag,” he said. My brother and sisters were asleep, and my mother’s eyes were fixed to road, dodging potholes, so she had missed it.
We found Wanda’s house and my mother, meaning well, but none-the-less Marquis De Sade like, made me sit at the dining room table, politely talking with my relatives. They asked me about soccer and baseball, and school and girls. Who the hell had time for any of these? There was a flying car three blocks away. I answered their questions as politely and quickly as possible, not wanting to strike up a conversation. I had to leave. I had to go see who had invented this, who was building this, who was dreaming, who was the visionary.
After a daylong half hour, my mother finally let Mark and I go. We ran as quickly as possible to the place; the place we had seen the car. It seemed like it took forever, but we were there, and it was beautiful: twelve feet around, like a giant Frisbee, smooth as glass and white as porcelain.
Behind the car was an unassuming building. It could have been a handyman’s shop, or a place where they fix lawn mowers or a junk store, but it was the corporate headquarters for the inventor of the flying car. Stenciled on the front windows of the building were the words “want to know what this is? Come on in and ask.”
We did.
The man inside wasn’t a mad scientist, an engineer, or even a nerd. He had been a diesel mechanic and good at fixing things, and now he was a “dreamer.” His dream was to build the flying car. He couldn’t tell me how it worked, but he said no one could explain how the Frisbee worked either, so that was okay. Knowing that you had a dream, and knowing that you had faith was all that was important in life. Faith was a lever you see, and you could use it to achieve anything.
I was hooked. I had to have one of the cars. I needed to know how much they cost and when they would be ready. He handed me a mimeographed timetable and explanation of cost. Right there in blue ink still smelling of ditto fluid, it said his first prototype would be available in two years, after my sixteenth birthday. The car would only cost seventy-five hundred dollars.
Never mind how a fourteen- year-old was going to come up with seventy-five-hundred dollars, never mind he hadn’t actually built one yet, never mind the flying car in front of his shop was made of plaster and chicken wire… The important thing was, they were finally here.
The flying car was finally here, and it hadn’t taken science or math, or even space camp. The dream was coming to life and all it took was faith. I spent the next two years of my life dreaming of owning the flying car, and planning how to buy it. Buying it would be the easy part.
When I was seven my father had bought a brand new 1977 Fiat Spider turbo convertible. I was in love. The day we drove it home from the dealer I asked if I could have the Fiat when I turned sixteen. He laughed, and assured me that we wouldn’t still have it then, but even though he thought everyone should earn their own car, if by chance the car was still around when I turned sixteen, I could have it.
At seven, I became a maintenance obsessive, continually reminding my dad to have his oil changed, to check the fluids when we gassed, and on almost every sunny day I washed and waxed the car.
Now that I was approaching sixteen, “by chance” we still had the car. On my birthday my father would give me the keys to my “seven year-old” dream and I knew I would sell this old dream for my new one. I would give up my convertible for my flying car.
The flying car of Henryetta, Oklahoma, never got off the ground; well at least it never flew into production or off the assembly line. And when I turned sixteen, there was no flying car for me to buy.
That didn’t discourage me though. I enjoyed driving my little blue convertible, but even more, I enjoyed dreaming of my flying car. I enjoyed dreaming of letting my earthbound tires fall away, and of escaping another day, flying over roads, over roads and fields, effortlessly, freely away from Oklahoma, away from people, away from any place at all.
I’ve earned several advanced degrees, but I’m definitely a slow learner. I’ve been telling stories, writing them, since first grade. In hindsight it seems obvious I’ve always been a writer— I am a writer. I’ve done my best to avoid that— not sure why. I’m not sure that matters either. The fact I accept that is the important thing.
After years of dabbling, and denying my writing I released my first novel in November of 2019. I assumed I’d release my next one very shortly. I even set up an amazon preorder. I didn’t make my own deadline. I didn’t finish book two Planet of Terror. I didn’t know why either and I felt like a failure, especially refunding the few preorders that had been made.
I’ve come to discover I was trying to write the wrong story. Carrie Starr is fun — pulp— not meant to be deep literature. So, I assumed writing the next would be easy. Maybe fo. Different writer it would have been, maybe its lack of genre training, I have a few writer friends/professors who would agree with that assumption. I’m not convinced though. I think you have to be in sync with your stories. I think you have to coax them out. I think you have to give them a space to live. I hadn’t done that. I simply assume I could force the story out.
I started diligently working on Carrie Starr book two a month ago, or so. It isn’t Planet o terror, it’s a different book. Planet of Terror is now book three. I’m letting the story come at its own pace. Carrie is setting her own terms, and I am listening. I am writing everyday, maybe only a few sentences. Maybe a few pages, but it is happening every day, and I’m in love again with the world I created.
Carrie Starr book two will get finished and published. It’s not the easy fast write I’d assumed it would be, but its also a better story, and I am a better writer for the experience.
This still feels a little surreal to me. I was interviewed for a writing podcast called Writing Itself. Sean, the host, is narrating some audio books for me. He has an AMAZING. Voice, and is a pretty decent fellow. He’s a loser a writer, and like all writers likes to talk about writing. The episode is about a half hour long. I still don’t like hearing my own voice played back to me, but it was fun to talk shop and slide further into my new writer’s life. You can listen to me ramble here. I f that doesn’t work use this link. https://writingitself.com/listen-here