Finding the time.
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, Poetry
Time. We have so much of it in theory and yet there’s never enough hours in the day. I’ve been fortunate for the last three years, being a student has meant I have had plenty of time to spend doing things I genuinely enjoy. Of course like many students I’ve been skint, but you soon learn how to make those loan installments go a long way.
Before going to university I had worked a string of largely no-brainer 9-5 jobs: shop work, call centres, office admin. At that stage I had no inkling that I might enjoy, or want to try my hand at, writing. I was playing in bands and generally enjoying it. Going to band rehearsal from 7:30 to 11 three nights a week, doing recording sessions, or coming back from gigs in the early hours never seemed to bother me much. Having a dead end job had its perks.
I have noticed since being at university that, despite having more time, my sense of creativity and enjoyment has been somewhat stifled. With all the books to read and essays to do the last thing I want to do some times is write or read anything, and the quality of some of the literature is frightening. I haven’t picked up my bass guitar in months, except for the odd noodle.
Let’s face it, I’m lazy. Sometimes I wonder how writers keep going and find the space and time for writing. Most of them have a day job (and not necessarily a no-brainer), plus families and other interests. On top of all that they manage to keep writing and submitting short stories, novels, plays, poetry, journalism. Are they superhuman?
Not really. They just have a passion and a work ethic: something student life has completely destroyed in me during three short years. They fit the writing in, an hour here, fifteen minutes there. It all adds up.
One of my tutors at university, Martin Goodman, told me that he gets up at five each morning to squeeze a couple of hours of writing in before coming in to take his classes. Writing is something he has to do, and he’ll find a way to get it done, even with all his other responsibilities. When I told him I find it hard to motivate my self sometimes (OK, most of the time), he told me not to focus on finishing a story or novel etc. as that can be de-motivating. Looking at the task ahead you can feel like giving up, it seems unmanageable. But, he said, you can do the next paragraph, the next sentence, and it soon adds up. Do some writing every day, without fail.
I read an interview with a writer, whose name escapes me, and he said he sets himself a target of 200 words a day. It seems so low, so attainable, that he doesn’t get disheartened. Then if he beats it great, if he doesn’t – well he made his target. If you write 200 words a day, five days a week, you would have the first draft of a 50,000 word novel finished in a year. Baby steps.
So I’ve made a new resolution. I will write something creative everyday. It might be some flash fiction, part of a story, a vignette or even some poetry. But get into the habit and keep writing. 200 words a day sounds fine to me.
Today I drafted out a bunch of poems, all with a sci-fi/speculative theme. Poetry is something I’ve always been nervous about, much moreso than fiction, but I figured, what the hell. And I have to say it felt good. I’m no Keats, Tennyson or Hardy but it was enjoyable and got the creative juices flowing. One even gave me the idea for a short story.
I’m investigating possible publication routes, but I guess sci-fi poetry is a really niche niche.
If I’m feeling brave I might put up a couple of sci-fi-kus (a science fiction haiku) or some other stuff on my writing page. Or if you’re particularly unlucky 
Ta ta for now.
Thoughts on Self Publishing…
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General
Is anybody out there?
I haven’t posted in quite some time, unfortunately I’ve been bogged down with essays and my dissertation and spending a lot of time in the library with my nose in books on subjects as diverse as Auschwitz, the poetry of Tony Harrison and books on the theory and nature of Sci-fi. It’ll all be over soon though.
I’ve taken a day off today to enjoy the lovely weather and had a thought about self-publishing that I wanted to get off my chest, so here goes. Buckle up it could be a bumpy ride.
As yet I’ve had no success at getting my stories published. One ‘zine has requested a re-write, which I’ll be tackling after Uni is done and dusted, two others have rejected me and I’m waiting to hear on two others. It’s a hard slog even at this early stage but everything I’ve been told by struggling and established writers prepared me as such, so I can’t really complain.
So, anyway, I got to thinking about self-publication. With technology advancing there seems to be a multitude of ways to get your work out there. There’s the traditional vanity presses, who will print a few hundred copies of your book in exchange for some hefty cash. Or how about print on demand, where you can print just a handful of copies. An e-book perhaps, which can go up on websites for download. But then I thought: “Self publishing is for people who can’t write”, but is it?
You don’t have to look hard to find “literary legends” who were self published: Horace Walpole, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling. All self published at various points of their careers and nobody would dream of calling them bad or failed writers. Who would call William Blake a bad poet? He printed all his own poetry, drew the illustrations and bound them. But these days it appears that self publishing is the domain of the failed writers. But it doesn’t seem to be that way in other fields.
As a musician you can get in a band, write some songs, record a demo or whole album at home (thanks to nothing more than some software and a PC), put singles up for sale on iTunes etc. and, although you won’t have the status of an act signed to Warner Bros. or Sony, nobody would say you’re a failed musician. Likewise and artist can sell his or her work through eBay and earn hundreds of pounds a painting (I know someone who does this and makes more money than selling through galleries)…are they a failed artist because their work isn’t in a gallery?
So why doesn’t this work for writers? If I publish a hundred odd copies of a collection of short stories, at my own expense, and sell them through a website or place them in a couple of local bookshops why would I be snorted at if I told anyone I’m a published writer?
I’m not sure I have an answer to this. It appears that for work to be of value people whose real motivation is the bottom line of cold hard cash must approve of your work. If you don’t think that agents, publishers, record company execs etc. don’t focus on the bottom line then consider why these days if a writer sells less than 10,000 copies with a big publishing house they’ll often be considered very lucky if a second book comes out (of course this doesn’t apply to more niche work like poetry etc. but then these are often published by small presses). Or think about the huge numbers of bands that get an album or two out only for it not to set the charts alight and then get dropped (again I know of a band from Devon that this happened to). And of course once you’ve proved you don’t sell it can be even harder to break back in than if you’re unproven. Years ago many novelists would write several “apprentice” novels before establishing a fan base and becoming a best seller, and don’t even mention that now endangered species the mid-list novelist.
Of course even trying to rationalise it this way I still can’t bring myself to seriously consider self-publishing. Like everyone else I feel I need the affirmation that goes with having someone else think my work is worthy of publishing.
Perhaps in a way sci-fi is a harder nut to crack as so much of the entry level publishing (short stories in fanzines and magazines) is done out of a real love of the genre. As Philip K. Dick noted, nobody got rich writing sci-fi.
Later,
Ben
The bitter sting of rejection…
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, News
Dramatic I know but,yep, that’s right, I’ve finally heard back on a couple of my stories and the outcome was as expected…well not entirely.
I received a very nice email regarding one of my stories from the fiction editor of a ‘zine. He liked the story but felt that a couple of issues needed to be addressed. He offered some advice on what he felt needed to be changed or tightened up and said that if I was willing to attempt a re-write he would strongly consider it for inclusion in his ‘zine.
That buoyed my spirits somewhat. It wasn’t a firm acceptance but the acknowledgement that the story had some merits and could be published felt good. So I’m tackling a re-write at the moment, it’s coming along OK but having to take a back seat to my dissertation and essays for my degree.
Two of the other stories came back rejected. It’s an odd feeling and I went through a strange cycle of emotions.
Firstly a tinge of anger mixed with indignancy…huh so my story’s not good enough for you huh! Well what do you know! This then quickly gave way to a kind of depression…I’m never going to be a writer, who am I kidding? What’s the point of even trying if I can’t place a couple of stories, might as well give up now and save myself some time and disappointment.
This depression phase lasted for a day or two. To try and lift myself out of it I trawled some websites about writing, rejection and success. It made me feel slightly better and some of the advice out there really did give me the strength to get back at it, particularly rules from the late Robert Heinlein ( you can read them here). Having read this page, along with Robert J. Sawyer’s own take on the rules, I decided to have a look at the two rejects.
One of them I can see why it was rejected. It’s an older piece, more than a year old, that I submitted on a creative writing module and earned a 1st for. I hadn’t looked at it since getting it back in the second year, other than a brief check over for any grammar or punctuation cockups before submitting. Having re-read it I can see all the weaknesses in it. Crucially I think I sent it out to the wrong market. I intend to do some serious editing and re-writing on this one and send it to a more appropriate magazine at a later date.
The second one felt stronger to me, a recent effort that I had spent plenty of time on. I read it and re-read it. I had received no advice for this story, just a form rejection – thanks but no thanks. So I decided to follow Heinlein’s fifth rule – get it back out on the market. I hunted around and found a magazine that could be a perfect market for the story and emailed it off to them the very same day.
So it’s been an interesting learning experience. I think I’ve acquitted myself well and definitely feel better for having come out the other side of rejection hell! I can see now that this is going to be a really hard slog, with absolutely no guarantee of any success, but hopefully I can learn from it all and make myself a better writer.
Later,
Ben
Remakes and Battlestar Galactica
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General
Gareth L. Powell recently posted a nice little rant about the trend in Hollywood towards remakes (read it here), specifically in reference to the upcoming Star Trek “reboot”. I have to say I really do agree with him… mostly.
I was appalled to hear that Total Recall will be remade soon, and with an exciting new “twist”. I’m shuddering at the thought. Total Recall, based on Philip K. Dick’s superb short story “We Can Remember it For You, Wholesale”, is one of the greatest slices of sci-fi action ever commited to celluloid. It is very different to Dick’s story in many regards, and those ridiculous fans of literature who insist that film adaptations must be “true” to the original source (I’m thinking of the idiots who were moaning about Tom Bombadil being left out of The LOTR films) probably don’t like it that much. Nonetheless as an action sci-fi film it has it all, plenty of action, a believeable and immersive world and a little bit of depth (courtesy of the original story) about reality, memories etc. It doesn’t need remaking, particularly in the sanitised format of modern action films which lack, for want of a better word, balls.
The tendnecy towards constantly remaking films is a worrying one. As Gareth says in his post, why not invest in good writers, new scripts, start something new. Unfortunately that seems like too much of a gamble for Hollywood, after all if millions of idiots will line up to see a remake of a film, or an adaptation of a musical (not that I’m averse to musicals at all) or even worse the latest travesty in the Scary Movie spin off spoofs, then why bother possibly having a film that tanks at the box office,like Blade Runner or Brazil?
But remakes can be a good thing. No, hear me out please. Despite what I just said.
I’ve recently been watching the remake of Battlestar Galactica and it is awesome. The acting is good, the writing is tight and the characters believable. They are also tackling issues such as human/machine interaction, what is it to be human and other current concerns such as terrorism etc. It is without a doubt the best piece of sci-fi I have seen in some time, particularly TV sci-fi.
Now lets cast our minds back to the original. Yes I’m sure some of you get misty eyed about it but take a good hard look at it. It was a pretty poor Star Wars cash in for 70′s and 80′s TV. The acting was bad, the writing abysmal and the characters flat. Don’t get me wrong I loved it as a kid, but not now. So a remake was no bad thing.
So what about Star Trek. I loved Star Trek too, all of the incarnations were watchable (my favourite was DS9, which often sparks some controversy) and for many of us it was our first introduction to sci-fi. Recently I had a chance to rewatch some. One afternoon dogsitting at my parents house a cable channel had The next Generation, Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise back to back. I settled in for an enjoyable afternoon.
Wrong. The shows have dated very badly. Not only in terms of aesthetics which we can forgive of course but the writing, directing and acting (with a few exceptions) were pretty bad. Also each incarnation seems to have similar episodes and themes. Not a bad thing at all but it really felt weak. My rose tinted spectacles were shattered, luckily they had a two for one offer at SpecSavers so I’m OK for the moment.
So a Star Trek “reboot” could be a good thing, after all it did Batman wonders. Except nothing I’ve seen about this film makes me excited at all.
No thanks. I think I’ll go and watch The Wrath of Khan for the hundredth time, now that’s a classic slice of Trek! I’m also hanging in for a Buck Rogers remake, get rid of all those 70s discos with light up floors that seem to be so common in the 25th century…oh yeah and send Twiki to the trash compactor on the Death Star.
Later,
Ben
Submission
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, News
I finshed off another story yesterday. Some final polishing was done over a few days and then I flung it out in to the far reaches of t’interweb.
So that’s three out and three more that need polishing, plus a new story, plus looming uni deadlines for essays! And here I am fiddling with my blog…that damned procrastination again!
Tags: News, stories, submissions
Online Publication
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General
As I’ve been scouring the web looking for publications to submit my work to I’ve hit upon an interesting debate about online publications.
Many people, writers and readers, seem to view online publication with disdain. I suppose because the ease with which a webzine could be knocked up, and the fact that they are done simply for love, signifies to these people that the quality of stories will be low.
I can see their point.
However as the print market for speculative short fiction, especially here in the UK, is very small it seems that online webzines are emerging as a market, much like the print fanzines which were much more prevalent in days of yore.
Not only that but some of them are of particularly high quality and include some great fiction as well as interesting interviews and reviews. Personally I admire the creators of these online ‘zines as they do it mainly for their love of the genre and to provide much needed space to new writers.
I’m hoping to get some of my stories published on these webzines and I’ll also put up links to the good ones on my links page.