Ernest Hemingway - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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You’ll Never Get Rejected

Interesting fact—over the years, I’ve submitted stories 441 times, and in all of the responses to all of those submissions, I’ve never been rejected. Hard to believe? Consider this—no matter how many times you submit your writing for publication, you will never be rejected either.

To clarify, my stories have been rejected plenty of times. Yours might be rejected as well. But I, as a person, have never been rejected by any editor. Nor will you.

When one of your stories gets rejected, it sure feels like the editor is rejecting you, doesn’t it? It’s like the editor’s saying, ‘You’re not good enough for my publication. You really aren’t a very good writer. You ought to quit now and consider doing something else with your time.’

Editors never say that. Nor do they mean it. But we writers can’t help but think that’s what they mean. After all, we think, I just wrote something from the heart, from the deepest part of my soul. I am the story, and the story is me. When you reject it, you reject me.

In dealing with this conundrum, you’ve got two options to choose from:

You can identify with your stories in a personal, intimate way. When an editor rejects one of your stories, you can regard it as a rejection of your very being. You’ll have to find some way of coping with that (see below).
You can place some emotional distance between yourself and your stories. They’re not you and you’re not them. They’re good, and you’re proud of them, but they’re a product of you, not the very essence of you. A rejection of a story is nothing more than a minor setback. It doesn’t constitute a condemnation of you as a person. Your identity as a writer remains intact.

Though I practice Option 2, I’m not sure that’s best. It can lead to a disinterested approach to writing—’It’s just a story, after all. It’s not me. Who cares if it gets rejected?’

Option 1, however, reminds me of the quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway—“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” That attitude calls for baring your soul using words, pouring out your essence into every story. Perhaps Option 1 could result in the best, most masterful writing you can do.

If you choose Option 1, how do you deal with rejection? You’re in for a rough time when an editor rejects (what you consider to be) you. At a minimum, alcohol may get consumed and perhaps your forehead will bang into a wall a few times. I hope nothing worse occurs.

It seems likely that, for Option 1 writers, rejection becomes less soul-crushing after the tenth, or the hundredth time. I hope so, even if only for the sake of minimizing wall damage.

Perhaps wisdom lies in a sort of balance between Option 1 and 2. You could maintain a close relationship, an identity, with your stories, while growing a hard shell when it comes to others’ opinions. You’re going to need a thick skin at some point anyway, even after acceptance, when critical readers leave scathing comments.

Whichever option you choose and however you deal with rejections of your stories, it remains true that you will never get rejected, and neither will—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 4, 2022Poseidon's ScribePermalink

How Readable is Your Story?

If you’d like your fiction to sell well, wouldn’t it be beneficial if readers found your stories easy to read?

Not all writers see it that way. Some authors of the world’s great classic literature made it tough on their readers, but their books still became bestsellers. Obviously, readability alone doesn’t determine great writing.

For the most part, the factors of great writing remain intangible, but you can measure readability. Many word processor software packages calculate the ‘Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease’ score, as well as the ‘Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level,’ both standard measures of readability. The higher the Reading Ease score and the lower the Grade Level, the more readable your story.

Journalist Shane Snow inspired me to think along these lines with this wonderful blogpost. He did a lot of research obtaining Flesch-Kincaid data on many great fiction authors, and graphed it all.

That made me wonder how I measured up. I obtained the data on my ten most recently published stories. Listed from least readable to most readable, here they are:

Story	Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease	Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level	Genre	Year Written
“The Steam Elephant”	69.0	6.8	Alt Hist	2006
“Target Practice”	69.3	6.5	Scifi	1999
“The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall”	69.8	6.5	Alt Hist	2011
“Reconnaissance Mission”	71.4	6.2	Alt Hist	2019
“Ripper’s Ring”	72.2	6.4	Alt Hist	2015
“Moonset”	74.8	5.3	Horror	2018
“A Clouded Affair”	75.9	5.5	Scifi	2014
“The Cats of Nerio-3”	76.3	5.1	Scifi	2016
“After the Martians”	78.3	5.1	Scifi	2015
“Instability”	79.1	4.8	Alt Hist	2017

Not too many obvious patterns there. My alternate history stories tend toward less readability than my straight science fiction, but not always. To some degree, I’ve improved readability with the passing years, but there’s some scatter in that, too.

When I average the F-K Grade Level of these stories, I get 5.82. According to one of the charts in Shane Snow’s post, that puts me around the readability level of Hunter S. Thompson, and between early J.K. Rowling and Stephen King. Not bad company.

If my stories don’t sell as well as theirs, it only proves that, as I mentioned above, readability alone doesn’t make for great writing.

What if it did? Could you write in a way that maximizes your Flesch-Kincaid readability score? The Wikipedia entry gives the formula. It’s very simple. Just take your average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word, and the rest is math.

To make readers struggle, use long words and long sentences. To make your writing more readable, do the opposite.

To make your stories irresistible and widely sold…ah, that’s the magic formula I’d really like to know. That equation—whatever it is—might contain readability as one factor, but also many others. Ernest Hemingway earned a F-K Grade Level of just over 4, and Michael Crichton earned one a little under 9.

Shane Snow makes the point that a lower F-K Grade Level allows you to reach a larger potential audience for your stories. However, he cites two other factors that help determine whether your writing will gain traction and catch on. I’ll discuss my take on those in a future blogpost.

Although readability alone won’t determine whether your stories sell in the marketplace, consider this: if all other factors rated the same between two stories, wouldn’t you prefer the more readable one? I suspect you would, and so would—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 10, 2021Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Can You Skip the Suffering Part?

Many great writers suffered early in life and during their writing careers. Of these, a good number wrote from a place of suffering, capturing that pain and creating timeless novels.

Did their suffering lead to classic writing? If so, would these authors have written so well if not for their suffering? In other words, is personal suffering necessary to produce great art?

Brian Feinblum explored this topic in a blogpost, and that’s what inspired my post today.

What about those of us who have led relatively happy and disease-free lives? Do we lack the necessary ingredients to produce great fiction?

The list of writers who suffered from health ailments alone (never mind other sorts of problems) is long. Here’s a partial list:

John Milton—likely a detached retina leading to blindness
Jonathan Swift—Ménière’s Disease leading to vertigo and tinnitus, obsessive-compulsive disorder
The Brontë Sisters—tuberculosis and depression; one may have had Asperger’s Syndrome.
Herman Melville—pains in joints, back, and eyes due to Ankylosing Spondylitis which brought on depression
Fyodor Dostoevsky—epilepsy, gambling addiction, severe depression
Jules Verne—stomach cramps from colitis, painful facial paralysis from Bell’s Palsy
Edith Wharton—typhoid fever, asthma
Jack London—bipolar disorder, scurvy, alcoholism, leg ulcers
Virginia Woolf—depression, mood swings, hallucinations
James Joyce—eye problems after gonorrhea treatments
F. Scott Fitzgerald—heavy drinking, heart disease
Ernest Hemingway—depression, alcoholism, electroshock treatments
George Orwell—damaged bronchial tubes after childhood bacterial infection, tuberculosis
Tennessee Williams—depression, drug and alcohol addiction
Sylvia Plath—depression; shock therapy; several suicide attempts

Perhaps your life doesn’t include any ailments nearly as severe as any on that list. Does that eliminate you from contention on some future list of great authors?

Fiction revolves around conflict, and therefore fictional characters must suffer. That’s necessary so readers can believe in them, identify with them, and root for them during their struggles.

Writers with health problems may have an edge here. They can write out of their own painful experiences. They’ve gazed into the abyss themselves, and garner instant credibility.

However, not all people who’ve suffered end up as successful novelists. Further, not all great writers suffered from anything more severe than the typical pains of a normal life.

I think what matters more is your ability to identify deeply with a suffering character you’ve created, and to convey that suffering to readers with your words. That strong empathy will come through, and distinguish your writing.

You needn’t have endured intense personal suffering to create great fiction. Make your protagonist suffer, though, and convince your readers to care about that character.

Hellen Keller knew something about the subject, and wrote, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

You may not have suffered as she did, but you can write. On the journey toward great fiction writing, whether you’ve suffered or not, you’re free to join—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 3, 2021Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Author Suicides

Writers, it’s difficult, but we have to talk about this. The recent celebrity suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have raised awareness of the general suicide problem. However, writers may be particularly at risk.

A study released in March 2017 by the UK’s Office for National Statistics reported a higher risk of suicide “among those working in artistic, literary and media occupations.” [My emphasis added.]

It didn’t take long for me to compile my own partial list of fiction authors who have committed suicide (in order of birth date):

Virginia Woolf – (1882-1941, age 59)
L.M. Montgomery – (1884-1942, age 67)
Ryunosuke Akutagawa – (1892-1927, age 35)
Yasunari Kawabata – (1899-1972, age 72)
Ernest Hemingway – (1899-1961, age 61)
Sándor Márai – (1900-1989, age 88)
Karin Boye – (1900 – 1941, age 40)
Arthur Koestler – (1905-1983, age 77)
Klaus Mann – (1906-1949, age 42)
Osamu Dazai (1909-1948, age 38)
Primo Levi – (1919-1987, age 67)
Walter M. Miller Jr.– (1923-1996, age 72)
Yukio Mishima – (1925-1970, age 45)
Sylvia Plath – (1932-1963, age 30)
Jerzy Kosinski – (1933-1991, age 57)
Richard Brautigan (1935-1984, age 49)
Hunter S. Thompson – (1937-2005, age 67)
John Kennedy Toole – (1937-1969, age 31)
Thomas Disch – (1940-2008, age 68)
David Foster Wallace – (1962-2008, age 46)
Ned Vizzini – (1981-2013, age 32)

For three of these (Kawabata, Mann, and Levi), the suicide explanation remains in doubt. I feel compelled to point out that three other authors on this list (Boye, Miller, and Disch) wrote Science Fiction, my chosen genre.

In reading articles about these authors, it’s significant how many articles mention the word “depression.”

Following any suicide, we naturally seek a reason, an explanation, an answer to “why?” Some authors left notes attempting to rationalize their choice, but often these only leave us with more questions.

It’s probably unfair to generalize about such a personal choice, an option chosen based on necessarily specific reasons. Still, it’s natural to wonder if there are aspects of writing fiction that increase suicide risk. Here are my (unscientific and unsupported) speculations on that:

Writing is solitary. Writers tend to be less social and have fewer contacts with friends who might talk them out of suicide.
Writers explore their inner feelings, and those of their characters. Such deep introspection can lead to depression and suicide.
Writers think more about death and suffering than most people do. All fiction involves conflict, and writers must put their characters through pain, and, in some cases, death.
Feedback can depress writers. Authors offer their cherished work to the entre world, and hope for a positive reaction. If the public ignores their stories or reviewers lambast them, authors often take it personally.

If you’re a writer (or anyone) contemplating suicide, please, please, please call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or go to their website.

Perhaps you know a writer (or, again, anyone) who may be at risk of suicide. There’s a Twitter hashtag devoted to this: #BeThe1To. Here are the 5 Action Steps you can take to help your friend:

Ask your friend in a caring way if they feel suicidal;
Do what you can to keep your friend safe;
Listen without judgement and be there for your friend;
Connect your friend to a network of resources and helpful people; and
Follow up with your friend, even after treatment.

Let’s have a world without suicides. That’s the dream of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 10, 2018Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Is Life Too Short for Re-Reading?

Do you read the same book multiple times? If so, why, and what does that say about you?

With Dr. Carl Sagan’s help, I’ve made the point before that the human lifespan is too short to read all books ever written. You can’t hope to read a tiny sliver of a percentage of them all. Therefore, time spent re-reading a book is time not spent enjoying a book you’ve never read.

Re-reading a book is different from ordering the same meal at a restaurant or re-watching a favorite TV show or movie. Reading a book is a significant investment in time—many hours or days—repeating something you’ve already done.

At this point, you might ask, defensively, “So what? Since I can’t read them all, why not re-read a few I enjoy? And since it will take a few days, why not spend that time doing something I know I’ll like?”

Fair points. Also, I must say, you avid re-readers are in good company. Here are the thoughts of some famous authors on this topic:

“Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.” Ernest Hemingway
“There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you’ve read only once can’t.” Gail Carson Levine
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” C.S. Lewis
“An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. . . . We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading.” C.S. Lewis
“No book is worth reading that isn’t worth re-reading.” Susan Sontag
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” Oscar Wilde

Reddit has an interesting discussion of this topic. Commenters cited several different reasons to re-read. Some just found it comforting. A few re-read a favorite book during the same month every year, and associated that time of year with that book.

Over at Melissa’s Book World, Melissa says she falls in love with favorite books and their characters. If forced to choose between never starting a new book again or never re-reading a book again, she’d choose never to start a new one, since she couldn’t bear to part with her favorites.

Sara Jonsson came up with 10 good reasons that we re-read, including some interesting rationales like “the movie adaptation is coming out,” and “you have a test on that book tomorrow.”

I’ve noticed the experience of reading a paper or electronic book visually is different from listening to an audiobook. It still counts as re-reading, but the experience is different.

From my research, it appears the prime reason to re-read is the comfort it brings, the familiarity of the known. However, it’s not completely familiar. It’s like trying to go back to your childhood home again, or trying to dip your toe in the same river. You can’t. The experience is different. The book hasn’t changed, but you have.

In subsequent readings, you know what will happen. You won’t have that same sense of wonder, that same eagerness for the action to advance. You have time to relish the clever foreshadowing, the subtle ways the author set things up for the climax, the techniques the author used to draw you in to loving the main character. You couldn’t have noticed these things the first time.

The difference is most stark when decades separate the initial reading from the re-reading. You’ve likely forgotten a lot, so re-reading may repeat some of the joy of a first read. Also, you’ve matured significantly; your interests and outlook have changed. You might dislike a book you once enjoyed, and say you’ve outgrown it. Or you may enjoy other aspects, less concerned with plot and setting, and more with characters, style, and theme.

I’d say reading is important, even vital. If you feel the need to re-read on occasion to sustain your love for the reading experience, then go ahead and re-read, especially books by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 12, 2017Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Best-Seller Foreteller?

What if a soothsayer could tell you if your manuscript would become a best-seller? If you were a publisher, you’d hire that soothsayer, right?

Throughout the history of the publishing industry, editors and publishers had to make buy-or-reject decisions based on experience and gut feel.

Welcome to the Age of Big Data.

According to an article in The Telegraph , researchers at Stony Brook University used computers to analyze writing styles and could predict whether a book would be successful with up to 84% accuracy.

Following up on that, Jodie Archer and Matthew L Jockers wrote The Bestseller Code, a book about their algorithm (the “bestseller-o-meter”) that analyzes character, plot, setting, style, and theme to make its predictions. According to an article in BBC Culture, this strangely named algorithm is also highly accurate.

More recently, I read an article in BuiltinAustin about a company in Austin, Texas called AUTHORS.me that has developed their own algorithm, StoryFit, which they market to publishers.

These algorithms chew on massive amounts of data—thousands of novels—and perform statistical analyses. After being given test data about past novels for which the success or failure results are known, the algorithm “learns,” or at least develops rules, to distinguish best-sellers from flops. You then apply the algorithm to an unpublished manuscript and make a reasonable prediction. A crystal ball for novels.

Could this lead to a world where publishers reject your manuscript because their algorithm said it wouldn’t sell? Or a world where authors could edit their manuscript to add in the aspects such algorithms judge to be indicative of success? Could the writing and publishing of novels be reduced to a numbers game?

Not quite yet, apparently. The Stony Brook University algorithm struggled to predict the success of books in one genre—historical fiction. Also their algorithm “predicted” Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea would flop. Archer and Jockers’ bestseller-o-meter rated The Help by Kathryn Stockett as meh. Further, the novel achieving their algorithm’s highest score (The Circle by Dave Eggers) was a commercial failure.

Certainly, these artificially intelligent systems will improve and get more accurate in the coming years. They’ll identify trends in how the reading public’s tastes are changing. Maybe the algorithms will never be 100% right, and some books they reject will succeed and vice versa. Every now and then, an author tries something new and it sells well despite being unlike the norm. They do call them novels, after all.

As publishers make increasing use of tools that predict a novel’s success, and as authors begin to use similar tools to tune their manuscripts for market success, could it be that overall novel writing will improve? Will that lead to an increase in readership, a renewed clamor for books by the buying public?

I hope so. In the meantime, my new big-data algorithm has just finished analyzing all my previous blog posts, and states there is a 99% probability I’ll conclude this one by signing it—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 2, 2017Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Better Writing through Chemistry?

If you consume alcohol or mind-altering drugs, will that improve your writing? Many people think so. Supposing it’s true, it’s nice to have that short-cut to greatness available, isn’t it? Why struggle to choose the right words while sober or clean when you can snort, inject, or imbibe your way to literary greatness?

The connection persists because so many of the top writers, it seems, had a reputation for using drugs or alcohol. The two that spring to my mind are Edgar Allan Poe’s use of opium and absinthe, and Ernest Hemingway’s consumption of wine, mojitos, and daiquiris. The list of famous authors who wrote under the influence also includes Anthony Burgess, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Jean Cocteau, Phillip K. Dick, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Stephen King, Carson McCullers, Dorothy Parker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and Tennessee Williams.

The effects of alcohol that might benefit a writer include a loss of inhibitions, which might stimulate creativity. However, other effects would be less helpful: blurred vision, slurred speech, slowed reaction times, impaired memory, blackouts, shaking, lack of muscle coordination and balance.

Drugs vary in their effects, but some of the reactions that might aid an author include euphoric pleasure, confidence, and extended wakefulness. I suppose hallucinations could be of use to a writer, so let’s include those. However, the known downsides of drugs can include delusions, aggression, paranoia, drowsiness, respiratory depression, nausea, blurred vision, headaches, disorientation, impaired memory, slowed reaction time, diminished judgment, mood swings, and addiction.

On balance, it seems to me there would be more harm than good in drinking or using drugs to improve your writing. Some of the things said about the writers I listed above may not even be true. The Edgar Allan Poe Society has debunked the myths about the writer of “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells.” It’s not entirely clear if some of the other writers took drugs or alcohol to improve their writing or to cope with their troubled lives.

I remain skeptical about using drugs or alcohol as a path to quality writing. Joanna Penn, whose blog I follow, has written a very thoughtful piece on the subject. I have to commend author Eric Kuentz for actually conducting an experiment and being willing to share his experience. His results seem rather mixed and it appears he’s disinclined to recommend the practice to others.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on, or experiences with, this subject. Please leave a comment. As for my own experiences, well, my scribing job occasionally takes me to Olympus where I’m sometimes allowed to partake of ambrosia and nectar. Those are the substances most recommended by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 4, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Hook ‘em, So You Can Reel ‘em In

How will you begin your next story? The beginning, called the ‘hook,’ is important. These days readers don’t have much time. Other things like TV, video games, and the Internet compete with your story for their attention. If your first sentence or paragraph doesn’t grab them, they’re on to doing something else.

Here are some examples of great hooks used in novels as chosen by the editors of American Book Review:

Call me Ishmael. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
Marley was dead, to begin with. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 1984, George Orwell
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. The Trial, Franz Kafka
Mother died today. The Stranger, Albert Camus
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
It was a pleasure to burn. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane

These beginnings work well for several reasons. They give us an early idea what the story will be about. They establish the tone of the story, and something about the attitude of the narrator’s voice.

But most of all they seize our attention and compel us to want to read more. What gives them this quality? It’s hard to find a common attribute just by looking at them. They seem to appeal for different reasons.

Writer Darcy Pattison has grouped the different beginnings into categories. This is helpful since one category might work better for the start of your story than another. Knowing the category can give you a starting point for developing your hook.

Many of the beginnings in the list start with a sense of the ordinary, and then give the reader something that clashes or is jarring somehow. We’re left with a puzzle, an oddity, a question that can only be resolved by reading further. So read on we must.

Those without that twist added to the ordinary seem to possess a different quality. They settle us in, set a mood, fluff up our pillow, put on some appropriate music. We’re now comfortably in the story, transported to the author’s world right from the start, and now that we’re there we might as well read on to see what the place is like.

Each of these beginnings without exception is easy to read. None have rare or difficult words to stumble over. All have rhythm, and almost poetic brevity. Not a word is wasted.

How do you write an opening like these? Heck if I know; these are some of the best ever written. Ask one of the world’s greatest authors.

With that task added to your to-do list, perhaps we could set our sights a bit lower for now. How do you write an effective story beginning? For one thing, it takes time and many trials. The beginning is the hardest part to write, usually takes the longest, and usually involves the most revisions. You might decide to skip the hook and come back to it later as the story evolves. You might like to write a first version of the hook knowing you’ll revisit it over and over. In any case, be prepared to spend the time and thought to craft it right.

To learn much more about how to write story hooks, read Hooked by Les Edgerton. What an invaluable resource!