Welcome to the latest installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused Q&A session. If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories
or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to
email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a
public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be
read and considered.
Q: When did you decide to grow a beard?!?!?!
A: I never “decided” to grow a beard. I’ve been growing a beard since I was 17. Shortly before Thanksgiving I decided to stop shaving for a few weeks, to see how it looked if I let it grow out, and more importantly, to test the theory that if I let it get long enough it would eventually stop driving me mad with its itchiness.
What do you think? Keep or shave? Pick one or the other. No trying to split your vote by saying, “Trim it back to a goatee” or anything like that. Pierce Brosnan looks great with a Van Dyke. I don’t.
Mutton chops or an Imperial are right out.
Q: I tried to post a comment but couldn’t. What’s going on with commenting?
A: This site has been discovered by the spambots again, and for the past month we’ve been getting carpet-bombed with spam comments trying to sell you sketchy pharmaceuticals, cyberpunk fashion accessories, and Middle Eastern-sourced decorative tiles and paving blocks. Consequently, we’ve had to switch on strict content moderation, block anonymous commenting, and delete suspected junk comments without mercy.
Would that we could simply identify and block spam commenters. But doing that is about as effective as trying to block junk phone calls by blocking the caller ID they’ve spoofed.
Q: I’ve been following your “Ask Dr. Cyberpunk” saga of woe. Why not simply self-publish your original novel?
A: Because unfortunately, it does not exist—or rather, something exists, but it resembles a complete and functional novel in the same way that a crash reconstruction resembles a complete and functional aircraft.
This is because of the way I work, and almost always have worked. I rarely start at the beginning and write straight through to The End. I develop my major projects in a decidedly non-linear way, writing bits, pieces, descriptions, and above all, key scenes first, and then figuring out what else needs to be written to bridge the gaps between the key scenes.
Hence my one piece of enduring advice to aspiring novelists: write the ending first. Then figure out what else you need to write in order to set up and support that ending, and write it. In the process you may wind up throwing out your original ending, as the characters come to life in your mind, hijack the story, and demand that it head off in a different direction. But at least you will begin with some idea of where you intend to go.
Most of the time, when I hear writers complain about being stuck or having writer’s block or that sort of thing, the real problem isn’t a lack of inspiration or imagination. It’s that they began writing with no clue as to where they wanted the story to go or how they intended it to end. Therefore, they have no sense of whether they’re making actual progress towards getting to where they want to go, or are just stumbling around in the foggy dark spaces inside their mind.
Q: What’s going on with Stupefying Stories? You’ve been silent since your Top 10 of 2024 series of posts at the beginning of this month.
A: I published the last of the Top 10 posts, TOP 10: Special Edition! The Pete Wood Challenge, on January 7th. On the morning of January 8th, I got the news that my brother had died overnight.
This was not completely unexpected. He’d been fighting a difficult battle with cancer for a long time. Still, this came as a shock. I’d spoken with him just a few days before, and while he was unhappy to be back in the hospital again, he seemed cautiously optimistic that he was on the mend and would be going home soon.
Then, the phone call.
Perhaps this wouldn’t have come as such a shock to me if it hadn’t happened within days of both my wedding anniversary and my late wife’s birthday; but it did, and for the past three weeks I’ve been…lost in thought.
Sometimes thoughts are dark and foggy spaces. Other times, things suddenly shine through with brilliant and disturbing clarity.
Q: Gee, that’s, er, interesting. So is anything going on with The Pete Wood Challenge?
A: As a matter of fact, YES! The latest Pete Wood Challenge, “Out of Gas,” rolls out next week, with eight, count ‘em, eight new flash fiction stories by fan-favorite writers Jeff Currier, Sophie Sparrow, Christopher Degni, Andrew Jensen, Karin Terebessy, Crystal Sidell, Richard Zwicker, and introducing, Lori Jensen!
But, operating on the principle that nothing is ever easy around here, I need to finish getting these stories coded up and in the publication queue this week, because next week the contractors are showing up to finish the remodeling and repair work that was made necessary by last summer’s destructive hailstorm, and I’m probably going to be losing Internet connectivity for most of the week.
So if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.
Nil desperandum,
Bruce Bethke
3 comments:
What Bruce doesn't want you to know is that when he is talking about contractors he's really talking about unsavory Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro types. You didn't really think Bruce made his fortune from writing, did you?
I think the beard looks good
Oh Bruce, I’m so sorry to hear about your brother. And that his death should come on these other anniversaries. I don’t know, the older I get the more each date on the calender becomes colored by past events. I suspect there are few dates left that aren’t the anniversary of something personally momentous. What a strange and oddly sweet short story it would make - an old couple, one dying, looking over a calender to choose a date to die free from past trauma to spare the other compounded pain. It could be handled quite beautifully and respectfully as it subtly reveals the quiet measure of a good life. Sigh…
As for the beard… I know you insisted we not equivocate but I have known a few folks who grow the thick beard to keep them warm in Winter and shave it in the Spring as the weather warms. Might be a natural rhythm for a Minnesotan.
Post a Comment