When I was a pre-teen I started writing short stories. I still have some of those and when I look back at them I have a good laugh. They were cute, but lacked maturity. Of course, what do you expect – I did say pre-teen.
My stories got longer as I grew older and as far as maturity was concerned my imagination matured far faster than the rest of me. I still wrote fiction – though it sounded too much like fact. I was nearly expelled when a teacher found one of my stories. When called to the principal's office he asked if I did any of the things I'd written about in my stories. When I said I did not, he insisted it sounded like I did. I did my best not to look happy about that. To me his statement told me my fiction sounded real. However, the point was it wasn't.
With that as my inspiration I practiced my art all the more, knowing there was hope for me as a writer. However, it was many years before I actually submitted a story to be published. The difference was owning a computer with word processing capabilities. I refer to my days of being unpublished as my pre-computer days, and those after as post-computer. It took the capabilities of editing on screen to make a huge difference. The old days were over where you held up the page to if there were than five spots of White-out – meaning it wasn't fit to send to an editor.
Well, I never was a good typist, so there was a long period when I didn't send anything to an editor. Still, even after I did, I had a lot of rejections. If you have been reading my blog, you might remember my mentioning my wall of rejection slips.
There was actually a more important reason I wasn't having my work accepted. I was still writing fiction. My imagination may have been working overtime, but my skills as a writer hadn't kept up with it. What I needed was to be able to say more with less.
Someone gave me a tip I never forgot. Write non-fiction first. How boring, I had thought. Telling the truth certainly couldn't be what they cracked it up to be. Until I actually did it, I didn't realize how wrong I was. Non-fiction was an exciting learning experience. During my time writing for newspapers and magazines I got an education I might never have gotten writing fiction.
You see, I was fortunate this happened prior to the Internet. I could not just Google a few keywords and get all the research I needed for an article. I actually had to go to the source sitting through hours of meetings, workshops and seminars. I would return with pages and pages of notes and lots of business cards from people whose brains I hoped to pick.
As I wrote non-fiction I learned. As I learned I grew more confident. As I grew more confident I submitted more. I was published more. My reputation grew. I was happy – except for one thing – I still wanted to write fiction.
Little did I know I was setting the ground work for years of fiction writing.
Wait, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I was also going to say that I started to set certain goals that became rules for my work. For every meeting, workshop or seminar I attended I tried to find at least one side bar, or side story, that could run with it. I tried to have at least three perspectives in a story by interviewing people from all angles of a subject. Also, I always listened to rumors, but never wrote about them until three unrelated people substantiated the story. I was always honest and did my best to keep people from looking like fools, even when at times they were. And when I did, I did it nicely. That got me a reputation as a journalist who could be trusted.
Now for the lesson I mentioned above. I learned to say more with less. In my words I say, "I learned to write short." I learned to cut the crap and keep what was important. Pardon my words, but it's the truth.
This eventually helped me when I started writing women's fiction. I was able to keep a story condensed enough that it fit into the guidelines for a specific magazine. As of last count I had around 200 short stories published in the personal experience market. This is another subject I will go into at great length in my next blog.
Last, my jump from short fiction to novels was a little like stepping back in time. I now know how to add to my shorter stories to turn them into novels. Nothing educated me more than reading the work of other novelists I enjoyed. I started to determine what details needed to be added to lengthen my stories. But again, that will be another blog I will write later.
For now, let me say, if you have been struggling trying to get published in fiction markets, you might want to give non-fiction a try. Sometimes telling the truth is exactly what it is cracked up to be.
