The Dated Essay of the Month comes from the June, 1996 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which I used to edit. As I tried to pick which dated essay I was going to choose this month, I looked at all of my June editorials. Some are REALLY dated and should remain in the issue in which they were published.

The writing advice contained within still holds true, of course, but you can’t use it to sell anything to me, since I don’t edit any more. And that’s about as dated as this editorial gets.

Editorial
June, 1996

The first writer I ever met was a too-tall Truman Capote look alike who wrote poetry and taught at the local university. He spoke to my high school Creative Writing class, and all I remember about him (besides the fact that he was the first person I know to wear a cravat) were his complaints about being misunderstood by the publishing community. His talk before our class consisted of a long whine about publishing, two even longer poems, and a question-and-answer session in which no questions were asked.

The second writer I ever met had the most amazing talent: he could pick up anything — a paper clip, a ball of sand, a marble — and tell you what it weighed to the gram. He sold non-fiction to local publications, and made a good living…or so it seemed, until the police busted him for selling cocaine. He never complained about the publishing community. In fact, he never spoke about publishing at all.

The third writer I ever met was a Big Name Professional who came to speak at my college creative writing class. She had an Attitude. At her meet-the-author gathering in the faculty lounge, she refused to answer questions from us wanna-bes. “You’ll never listen anyway,” she said. “And most of you will go on to your little nine-to-five jobs, and look at this as your moment of glory. Of course, you’ll say you never made it because no one understood your art when the truth is most of you will never make it because you refuse to learn your art.”

Part of me still harbors resentment at BNP’s Attitude. As a professional myself, I justify that resentment this way: she had no idea who was in the room, and she should have been polite. (It should be noted here that I was raised in the Midwest where being polite is a virtue above all others.) But in truth, nowadays my attitude toward new writers is probably harsher than hers.

Every month, I receive about 1,000 manuscripts in the mail. These manuscripts, which I never asked to see, come in all shapes and sizes. Most are improperly done: they are written in crayon on yellow legal paper; they have spiders and other bugs tucked in their pages; or they have paperclips so old that the rust has stained the paper. Another large chunk appear fine until I start to read them: the spelling is abysmal, the punctuation non-existent, and the syntax is convoluted. The final group of the hopeless ones have learned how to handle the mechanics, but they have forgotten to tell a story. I don’t care to read about Joe Everyman waking up, shutting off his alarm and stumbling to the bathroom. It simply isn’t interesting.

So when I approach those manuscripts, my attitude resembles that of a classical music critic at a garage band rehearsal: I know I’m going to hate this experience unless something miraculous happens.

Imagine, if you will, trying to entertain a woman in an empty room. She has her arms crossed, her nose plugged, and a frown on her unlovely face. She has already made it clear that she doesn’t like your inexperience, your pushiness, or your friends. And you have to not only entertain her, you have to entertain her so well that she’ll pay you for the experience.

That’s me, folks.

Meet the editor.

I am the sourpuss neighbor, the old maid school marm, the nasty librarian whom you must convince to pull her hair out of a bun, throw away the glasses and dance the night away. I am a writer’s greatest nightmare.

Or a writer’s best friend.

Because once I am entertained, I will dance the night away. And the next, and the next. I love a good story, and I love a good writer even more. Once you’ve gotten past that grumpy woman guarding the door, you’ll find a friend who always makes certain you know the back way into the party.

Why am I telling you this now, after we’ve become such good friends? You didn’t want to see my dark side, to know that I’ve got an Attitude that puts BNP’s to shame. But you need to know right now, this instant, before you turn the page.

Because, as you’ve probably noticed, none of the names in this issue (with the exception of mine and the columnists) are familiar. Every story here was written by a new writer.

And every one of those writers has crossed that barrier. Every one has entertained the grumpy woman in the empty room, and made her dance with joy.

Every one.

I tell you this now so that you will understand why I believe this to be one of the strongest issues we’ve done all year. Most writers get in the back door. What that means is not that they get special favors, or that they know the secret handshake, or they know which kind of chocolate the editor prefers (dark with caramel). What it means is that when they come in, I’m already dancing. I know I like their work. I know they’ll entertain me. I know we’ll have a good time.

It’s the newcomers who have to prove themselves.

There are occasional anthologies of new writers and there is a very good contest run by Writers of the Future, also for new writers. (New writers, by the contest’s definition, are those who have not published a novel, and who have published less than four short stories. We use that definition here.) These are good ways for writers to “break in.” But they are flawed in one fundamental way: the new writers are competing against other new writers. To be the best in that group is sometimes to be brilliant (Robert Reed and Dave Wolverton got their starts there as the best of the new) but it is sometimes to be merely better than the others (which is to say the only entertaining one in the bunch). At F&SF, the new writers must compete against Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe, and Kate Wilhelm for space in the magazine. The new writer’s stories must be as good as an entertaining story by someone whose name is already familiar. And, if the truth be told, sometimes the new writer’s story must be better.

We’re taking a risk here to do an issue of the magazine with only new writer stories. And I wish I could say the risk was entirely mine. This all happened because Matthew Wells sent us a story called “The Aushwitz Circus” which I liked enough to buy. Our publisher, Ed Ferman, liked it enough to assign Kent Bash the cover. Kent’s cover — well, Kent’s cover speaks for itself. Kent showed the cover to our film critic Harlan Ellison, who called Ed and said it would be a crime to put names over this piece of art. Ed agreed and, realizing that I have bought a lot of new writers, suggested the new writer issue to me.

I wish I had thought of it first.

But I’m the guard at the door. If you don’t like a story in this issue, blame me. I’m the one who let the author into the party. But I suspect you’ll like these stories. A lot.

I do.

As for those writers, I mentioned up front, here’s where they stand nearly twenty years later: The Truman Capote look-alike has yet to publish outside of vanity presses. The non-fiction writer, after a long probation (he was sentenced before the War on Drugs), really started to write non-fiction for a living, and discovered it was more lucrative than his previous profession. The Big Name Professional has an even bigger name now, thanks to several literary awards and two bestsellers. I still think she has an Attitude, but I know now that her Attitude is one of the reasons she’s successful. She has seen hundreds of “writers” come and go. Most never listen and most never publish.

It takes a lot of guts, a lot of hard work, and a lot of persistence to sell a story.

It takes even more to make a career.

The folks whose name you see on these pages are real writers.

Let’s hope we’ll be following their careers for years to come.

Copyright 1996 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The news came across the lists this morning: Algis Budrys died.

On the one hand, his death was not a surprise. AJ had been sick for a long time. On the other hand, it’s quite a shock. It seems like I’ve known AJ all my life. When I met him, he wasn’t well, but he wasn’t horribly ill either. It just seemed that AJ would be around forever.

I met AJ in June of 1985, when I attended Clarion Writers Workshop in East Lansing, Michigan. In those days, I wasn’t a genre reader. Or at least, I didn’t know I was a genre reader. I read every book in my path. I also subscribed to fiction magazines, including F&SF. I had read AJ’s book columns, but I didn’t know he had written some of the classics in the field until April of 1985, when I got accepted to Clarion. At that point, I read everything I could find by the writers who were going to teach me. Since AJ was going to be the first instructor, I started with him.

I read Rogue Moon. I had no idea it was a classic. In fact, I had no idea that science fiction had classics. Okay, let’s be honest. I had no idea that science fiction existed. All I knew was that I liked stories with outer space in them. I liked time travel stories. I liked stories about robots.

And I loved Rogue Moon.

I expected its author to be a slender, blond-headed man who spoke in a cultured East Coast accent and who intimidated the hell out of me. I turned out to be right about the intimidation. As nice as he was, AJ was a formidable man.

I later discovered I was right about the slender, blond man who had written Rogue Moon. When he wrote the book in the late 1950s, AJ had been quite the looker. But the man who walked into my Clarion class on that night in June was heavyset, breathing so heavily we all thought he was going to have a heart attack right there, and he was angry. Michigan State, where Clarion was held in them there days, was remodeling the graduate dorms where Clarion was usually housed. We were in a freshman dorm with no phone service, crappy rooms, and a lounge instead of a meeting room.

He was used to the amenities. We weren’t. So we didn’t understand why he was so upset. He battled the administration that whole week as well as got us on our feet as young writers. He laid the ground rules, he told stories, and he enchanted us. By the end of the week, we were all Budrys fans.

He came back in the middle with his lovely wife Edna, and cooked us all a spaghetti dinner. By then, we were jaded students who knew everything. He just smiled and went back to Chicago for another two weeks. He returned for the final weekend, and critiqued stories alongside Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, teaching us by example that the professional writers (and editors and reviewers, which they all were) did not agree on what made a great story, although they all agreed on what made a bad story.

I figured that was all AJ would do to influence my life. We were sent away from Clarion to start our professional writing careers. I already had a professional writing career, but it was in non-fiction. Clarion made me decide that fiction writers could actually earn some money, and I was going to try.

I was in the process of trying the following April when AJ called me. He invited me to an experimental workshop in Taos, New Mexico, sponsored by Writers of the Future. I was not a winner of Writers of the Future. I never even made the finals. In my entire beginning writer career (even after this workshop), the best I did was an honorable mention.

Yet AJ was clear: he wanted me to be one of the 12 because, he said, I had a bright future. Little did we know how much he would influence that.

I managed to scrap together $1000 for plane flight, hotel, and food. That money should have gone to my divorce and the very expensive attorney I had just hired. Instead, it covered expenses (Writers of the Future covered the cost of the workshop).

I showed up in Albuquerque, spent a few days with my Clarion classmate, Sally Gwylan, and got another phone call from AJ. He said he’d arranged for another student to give me and Martha Soukup (yet another Clarion classmate) a ride to Taos.

The driver, along with two more writers, Lori Ann White and Jon Gustafson, showed up that Sunday morning. And cynical me, the woman who thought love at first sight was something made up for the movies, fell in love the moment the driver got out of the car.

That was Dean Wesley Smith. We’ve been together ever since.

AJ used to joke that he told Dean to pick me up–and Dean did. AJ encouraged the relationship when a lot of people were warning us away from each other. I don’t know if he saw what a combination we’d be or if he was just a romantic. But Dean and I owe him everything.

After Taos, we were on the guest list for many WoTF events. We went to the U.N. as speakers for a WoTF event; we got flown to LA several times for events. I went all over the country because AJ believed in us. Oddly the only piece I ever sold to WoTF was a non-fiction article I wrote in collaboration with Dean for one of the volumes. I was a guest instructor in Malibu one year. Me, AJ, and Orson Scott Card. They were the ones in charge; I was the gopher. I think this was 1988. And even though I heard AJ’s stories yet again, I learned a lot from them.

To me, he was a mentor, a teacher, and a great writer.

And then he became one of my writers. I think that was the strangest part of our relationship. I became editor of F&SF and inherited Algis Budrys, the respected book reviewer. He asked for editorial feedback, but there wasn’t much I could give him. He already knew so much more about writing/reviewing/fiction than I could imagine at that point.

We also worked together at Pulphouse. And when he took over Tomorrow Magazine, he resigned as F&SF’s book reviewer. I think letting him do that was the biggest mistake I made as an editor. I missed him, but more importantly, the readers missed him. And while F&SF has great columnists, no one has ever been able to replace him.

He put his imprint on the field in so many ways–as a writer of classics, as a teacher, as an editor, and as a reviewer. He encouraged young writers. I think most of the influential writers in the field, as well as the influential editors, from 1970 or so on to about the year 2000, had AJ as a teacher or a mentor or a friend. Some pushed against him. Some embraced him.

But he influenced all of us.

Hard to believe he’s gone.

Every few years, Dean and I teach workshops for professional writers who are either at the beginning of their careers (in other words, a few things sold) or at a crossroads in their careers (stuck in the same spot, unable to sell any more or just plain frustrated by the business). This is one of those teaching years. I’ve posted a list of the workshops on its own page. If you’re interested in any of them, contact my husband Dean Wesley Smith through his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com.

I wrote May’s Dated Essay of the Month in May of 1994. So clearly all the references are dated. Very dated. I do find that I’m fonder of The Stand than I used to be. And I did love that mini-series.

Other than that, not many changes. I think this first appeared in The Report, but as usual, I don’t have the exact reference. I think I might have to start a non-fiction page to solve all of this.

Inspiration
by
Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Last week I spent 8 hours watching Stephen King’s The Stand on ABC. Now, I read The Stand when it appeared in 1977, and while I remembered much of it (and hence the book made an impression), I didn’t like it very much. I’m not fond of its simple religion nor do I like King’s English teacher joke: setting up an entire book with a legitimate deus ex machina ending. Still, when I read that King had done the script for the mini-series, I had to watch. I had to know how he cut that 1,000+ page monstrosity to a manageable length.

I expected to watch the first 2 hours and then quit. Imagine my surprise when I got hooked. The good vs. evil story still annoyed me, but less than it had when I was reading it. Instead, I found myself caught up in the imagery: the dead bodies scattered through four nights of opening credits, the detail in the post-apocalypse societies. Once again, King’s imagination sucked me in and didn’t let me go.

I found that very inspiring.

When Dean and I teach, we tell people to shut off the television and write. But I have a confession. I love television. Good television. And I find that it fuels the writing. Not in ideas (god forbid! television is usually behind the times), but in story-telling power. Good television (and I put The Stand in that category) grips and holds through the commercials. The problem is that good television is rare. We hunt and peck each season, finding series that hit the good mark two shows out of three. This year, it’s been Lois & Clark, both Treks, Northern Exposure, Roseanne (for sheer guts no one can beat her), and Picket Fences. In the past, we’ve sampled LA Law, and mourned the losses of Magnum P.I. , Quantum Leap, and Moonlighting. Not every episode hit. Some had bad seasons and lost us (L.A. Law, Moonlighting) but we always gained a bit of inspiration, a reminder that stories exist in many forms.

And I don’t find my inspiration just from television. I find it in music — lately The Crash Test Dummies, again for guts. (Can you see that I admire people on an edge?) I love musicals, symphonies, some country music and most hard rock. Buried in each is something that speaks to the artist in me.

To music and television, add movies. What better way to lose yourself for two hours than in the dark with a bunch of strangers, listening to an expert tell you a story. Dean and I watched Jaws again the other night, and let me tell you, Spielberg can teach Cussler how to mix characters with plot for the sake of suspense.

Then, of course, there are the more conventional means of inspiration. An excellent short story always spurs me on. I read a lot of history and even more biography because I love to find out how famous people became famous. Recently, I read an essay/short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald called “An Afternoon of An Author” about a writer attempting to write. Wonderful, backwards inspiration that showed even the masters had days where the writing was painful.

Novels help too, good and bad. The bad ones show me what I want to avoid or give me the exercise in how-would-I-have-plotted-that (and made it better)? I study the good ones, just to learn the techniques. Please, someone, read Scott Turow’s Pleading Guilty. I need to talk about his protagonist and the style Turow chose to tell the story. I finished that novel on Thursday and haven’t been able to start another novel since.

And conversations are wonderful, especially conversations I eavesdrop on. Like the Middle School students on the Water Polo team who hang out at Emerald Rec center whom I overheard on Friday. “I can’t gossip anymore,” one girl said. “I always have to go to detention.” “Detention? We’re not in school now,” the other girl said. “You can tell me.” “If I tell you, I’ll get in trouble,” the first girl said. “I always do.”

Detention for gossiping (not for talking but for the content of the conversation. Oh, I like that). It will find its way into something, I’m sure.

Finding inspiration is important to me because I have to write every day. Sometimes I have afternoons like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s where I wander through the house hoping that I can find my muse. Other days I need no help at all, because it feels as if my inspiration battery has been charged. Those eight hours last week were not a waste of time. In fact, if anything I have felt since then that my inspiration battery is an EverReady. The muse has been happily scheming in the back of my brain.

My search for inspiration never interferes with my walk to the computer. I need to work even if I am not inspired. Since even a drop of inspiration helps, though, I keep my mind open to it. When I finish writing for the day, I need something to get me going for the next session. And I find that inspiration in the coolest places.

Copyright 1994 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Well, the Marketing Workshop ended Sunday. I’m tired, hoarse, and pleased. Twenty excellent writers, all of whom worked hard, improved, and showed me examples of books I want to read. I’ll be back to updating in the next day or so–a lot happened in my writing career this past week–but at the moment, I’m going to rest, read, write, and enjoy the quiet.