I must admit, I’ve always found writers to be puzzling.
I am one. I’ve had some success at being one, as you may have noticed. I grew up in a literature-rich environment. My mom was a published poet of no particular note, and quite a few of her old school friends were professionally published writers, mostly of mysteries. (Mom always seemed disappointed that I preferred science fiction, and never told her friends about “my son, the writer,” until I made my first sale to Hitchcock’s.)
So it’s fair to say I’ve been around writers all my life. But I’ve never quite understood them.
I think that’s because by inclination and education, I’m a musician. While I loved to read fiction, and from time to time puttered around with writing it, for the longest time, I truly believed I would make my living as an adult by writing and performing music.
In a sense, I did. My musical training, combined with my off-the-charts verbal acuity, landed me my first job in software development, with a now-defunct company making synthesizers and music-adjacent software. This led to my next job, which led to my next job, and so on, and so on…
Thus, there is a contiguous, if somewhat meandering and indirect, path from this—
To this—To this—
And now back to this.I spent most of the 1980s making the transition from dreaming of becoming a successful musician to actually being a successful short story writer. By the early 1990s I was selling every story I finished writing, usually on the first or second submission, and often for far more than the magazine’s stated word rate, as I’d become a “name” writer whose name on the cover would (it was hoped) sell more magazines.[Nota bene: This was back in the old days, before the dark times, before Amazon, when there actually were such things as print magazines and bookstores with magazine racks that sold them. Ask your grandparents about them.]
I spent most of the 1990s making the transition from being a successful short story writer to becoming a critically acclaimed and award-winning novelist, and along the way discovered that awards and rave reviews and such are all very nice, but in traditional publishing, your career is only as good as the sales numbers for your most recent novel. So in late 1999 I said “F*** this” and went back to working in software development.It seems that once one has become a somewhat famous and award-winning writer, though, there is no walking away from it—or in my case, driving away.
(Another compelling argument for using a pseudonym, if you ask me.)
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In 2005 I began to write a blog—because, what the heck, who wasn’t writing a blog, then? Over the next five years this blog morphed into The Friday Challenge, a sort of ad hoc writing workshop -slash- writing contest, and a community of writers began to grow up around it. This community would go on to form the original nucleus of the Stupefying Stories crew, and for a time, it was really good.
I’d been in writing communities before. I had been in writing groups galore, some good, some bad, some downright crippling. The worst was probably one run by an imperious leader who demanded to be the final authority on all things literary, as she was a graduate of a certain VERY FAMOUS writer’s workshop!
[“That’s nice,” I should have thought to ask before joining. “Have you ever actually sold anything to a pro market? Or are all your long list of publication credits just fanzines and small-press mags that pay in contributor’s copies and birdseed?”]
The best was without question the one with Joel Rosenberg, Patricia Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, Peg Kerr, myself, and a rotating cast of short-lived sixth-member guest stars. (We should have made them wear red shirts.) I learned a tremendous amount about the craft of writing and the business of selling books while in that group. Sadly, Joel died in 2011—that’s Joel Rosenberg, the fantasy and science fiction author (or as Joel preferred to call himself, “The original Joel Rosenberg”), not Joel C. Rosenberg, the guy who churns out bestselling novels about terrorism and Biblical prophecy—and the group disintegrated soon thereafter.
I joined SFWA in—1985, I think. Under the rules then in effect I’d actually made enough pro market sales to qualify for Active (voting) membership before I even knew the organization existed. At first I was very excited to be a member of SFWA, and even let myself be conned into running for office in 1990. I served two terms on the SFWA Board of Directors, under Ben Bova, but by the time my second term was done, my interest in the organization had tapered off exponentially. I’d thought I was joining a professional writer’s organization that was dedicated to helping members advance their careers. What I found instead was—
Okay, here’s a parallel. Once, on a business trip, I found myself booked into a hotel that was also hosting a standup comedians’ convention. You’d think that would be great, right? A hotel just full of standup comedians, everywhere you went? Imagine getting on an elevator with four standup comedians for a long trip down to the lobby. It would be a scream, right?
Well, yes, it did make me want to scream. That much is true. But everywhere I went in that hotel, I bumped into small groups of comedians standing together, bitching and moaning about clubs, contracts, agents, club owners who were chronically late with their checks, who was stealing who else’s material, and especially about those new up-and-coming no-talents who really didn’t deserve all their recent success because they hadn’t paid their dues. Oh, they hated those people most of all.
(Except for the new talents, who likewise clustered together in corresponding groups for basically the same bitch session, except ending with talking about those old guys who really needed to retire or die and get out of the way.)
I found SFWA to be a lot like that.
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The more successful professional fiction writers I got to know, the more puzzled I became. A few were genuinely kind, gracious, and helpful. A very few became good friends. Far more were not and did not, and it seemed the more successful they were, the more likely they were to be dicks. (Except for the ones who had only had some success despite years of trying, and were embittered by the experience. These guys—and they were almost invariably guys—typically pegged the needle on the dick-O-meter.)
Eventually, I began to formulate a theory. Musicians, on some level, seem to instinctively know that you must work together, if you’re ever going to get the show onstage. Even if you can’t stand someone, you work with him, because that’s what you must do to put your performance in front of an audience. The show’s the thing. The show is the only thing. Even someone like me, who hates performing live and would much rather work in a recording studio, understands that if the performance doesn’t reach an audience, it was all for naught.
Writers, on the other hand, tend to be introverts. Many don’t seem to like other people much. They find meeting and interacting with readers a chore, and would much rather be back at home, in their comfortable space, working on their next story or book. They seem to want someone else to take care of all that tedious business of finding an audience for their work and putting their work in front of that audience.
Hence the need for editors, publishers, and possibly even agents and influencers.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc,* you will often find professional writers gathered together in small groups, usually in the hotel bar, unless the con is large enough to have a SFWA suite, bitching and moaning about editors, agents, publishers, who’s stealing who else’s material, who’s chronically late with their royalty checks, who’s famous this month who doesn’t deserve it, and why isn’t anyone paying attention to meeeeee?
* Latin for, “Do you actually understand this?”
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Do you begin to see the fundamental problem involved in building a writing community? You’re trying to create a cohesive and mutually supportive group, but starting with a collection of introverts and misanthropes. It’s like trying to enter the Iditarod with a sled pulled by a team of cats.
I understand and sympathize. I really do. I like working with new writers; the ones who haven’t been in the business long enough to have become bitter, burned out, or jaded. I think a good writing community can encourage and develop a lot of really talented people, and do some remarkably good things. I know the original Friday Challenge/Stupefying Stories community did. I’m incredibly proud of all the people who started out with us and went on to become successful and even award-winning writers.
But I’ve also become aware that I myself am, by nature, an introvert—but it’s a weird kind of introversion. I can perform the part of being Bruce Bethke, Semi-famous Writer, Editor, Publisher, and General-purpose Cheerleader for the writers whose work I publish.
But only for a few hours at a time, and it’s exhausting. It’s just like performing music live and onstage. I can do it, but not all the time, and after the show I must rest.
I know from past experience with The Friday Challenge that building and maintaining a writing community is a lot of work. It is not a one-man job. So here’s the first question I want you to consider, before we go any further:
Who here is willing to help?
