This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to to pick up a copy. Here’s a link to the ebook on my website. 

The second edition of The Write Attitude is quite different from the first edition, which originally appeared in 2016. I kept some parts of the original book, but much of the material is newer. The new material comes from my Patreon page. Not every post from my Patreon page shows up here, although several do. If you want to see everything, though, head to Patreon and sign up. 

This post is from October of 2025, and is in the first section of  the book. The collection that I refer to in the beginning of the post, Domestic Magic, is only available in the Kickstarter that we’re running right now. It contains some of those difficult stories. You can get that collection and some writing workshops if you’re so inclined by heading to the Kickstarter. It’ll run until Monday, October 19.

GOING THERE

From 2025

I went there.

Not right now, maybe not even this week, but years ago. I went to that place where the reader says, I can’t believe she went there. And that moment—that going there—makes the story unforgettable.

I’m putting together a collection to go with the novel in an upcoming Kickstarter. The collection features dark fantasy stories, many of which I haven’t read in a decade or more—if then.

I found one that didn’t really work for the anthology it was in. When you knew what kind of story it was, the twist got ruined. And the title of the anthology had the twist inside of it.

Also, the story is…shall we say…difficult? Nasty? Particularly if you hold a certain level of belief.

In the new collection, I followed that story with another that’s thematically similar. I can’t believe I even thought of them, but I did, and I’m putting them back into the world, which, I guess, means I’m going there all over again.

I remember writing the first one. I cringed as I went there, knowing that the place I went to was inevitable as the story came together as well as knowing that the twist would be a gut-punch to a goodly number of people reading it.

I guess I chickened out on putting those two stories up for the weekly free fiction stories that appear on my website, because they’re not listed in the record that I keep. Which means that the stories aren’t available individually in ebook form either.

So I didn’t go there years later.

Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t gone there. I have a novel that I wrote shortly after my father died while I was in intensive grief therapy as well as personal therapy for the incest and rapes I suffered before the age of thirteen. The novel, which I’m not going to name (just like I didn’t name those stories), is one that was painful to write.

Readers of a certain stripe love that book. I’ve signed a lot of copies of it over the years at various signings and conventions. I’ve had readers come up to me clutching the book to their heart and telling me that it spoke to them.

I’ve had readers asking if there will ever be another like it.

No. No, no, and no.

I can’t face writing any kind of sequel or rereading the book to see if it actually promised one.

I had to moderate my answer to those readers so that I didn’t insult them. I would say, No sequel is being planned right now in my calmest voice so that I didn’t let them know how much I never want to deal with that book again.

But young me had this belief that if I wrote it, it had to be out there in the world. Older me has developed some issues with that, and I’m actively fighting them.

Because writing is about going there.

Even if—especially if—you never planned to.

The good stories are never planned. There’s a great quote in the middle of an article in Vanity Fair about the then-upcoming musical Smash. (Ironically it debuted and closed before I had a chance to get to this issue of Vanity Fair. The article, written by Michael Riedel, is from February 2025, and is titled, “Smash Was a Cult TV Hit. Now Steven Spielberg and Friends Are Bringing It to Broadway.”)

One of the show’s writers, Bob Martin, said this:

The show that you end up creating is not the show you intend to create.

Yeah. That’s true.

In the theatre, you’re dealing with actors, producers, money people, directors, and the audience. There’s a lot of hands in the pie.

I’m sure that’s partially what he’s talking about.

But he’s also discussing the creative process.

When you do it right, the story you end up creating is not the one you intend to create.

Or in my case, intended to create.

I’ve written a lot of stories for invite-only theme anthologies, and those stories never went down the rails, mainly because I loathe rails. I hate it when a story goes exactly the way it is “supposed” to go.

Maybe that’s why I react so strongly when someone tells me that this expert or that guru told them all kinds of stupid crap.

Like:

• No one buys stories longer than 6,000 words (or 10,000 words or 20,000 words).
• If you want to be successful, write [the current trendy] subgenre.
• If you want to be successful, make sure you only write in one particular genre.
• If you want to be successful, avoid these topics, ideas, thoughts…

Oh, I could go on forever and ever. What happens to the writers who listen to this crap?

They stuff themselves into increasingly narrower boxes until finally their work becomes stale or old or lackluster. They also stop enjoying the work.

For me, the heart of creating is exactly what Bob Martin said—that moment when it becomes clear that the story (in whatever form and length) stands up and declares itself for what it really is.

A mystery when you thought you were writing sf? A violent murder sequence instead of a happily ever after ending? A topic that your family taught you was off limits?

Something longer than the prescribed 6000 words that some stupid guru limits writers to on the web?

The fact that plays and prose poems and novellas and novels are all different forms and might force you to have a different take on the very same idea?

Writers are so worried about what other people think—and I get it. I am too, at times. That’s why those stories aren’t up.

But they going into the collection.

Some of the reasons they’re not up are familial. My brother is gone. My oldest sister, who read everything I wrote, has dementia. My other sister has never read what I write because she “doesn’t read that stuff.” (Add a disgusted tone to that comment.)

Whenever I write about religion, even sideways, the stories have a lot of family history to them. My oldest sister used to see that. My brother would occasionally comment on something, including a story that touched on a pain I carried and one he shared. Until that moment, I had no idea that he even read my work.

Now, it doesn’t matter that the stories are out there—at least for familial reasons.

There are a lot of stories that I’ve written that I have some kind of personal connection that is now gone. Such as, the editor who initially contacted me is dead. Or no longer in the business. Or had a massive career implosion.

It was shocking to realize a few years back that some of the stories I wrote are not just out of print, but the anthologies that they were in are only available through Bookfinder.com (and sometimes not even then). For some reason, the initial publisher didn’t put the anthologies in ebook.

That doesn’t count the stories that ended up in magazines and weren’t reprinted until we started to do so at WMG.

We’re returning to that. We’re not only putting up stories individually, but compiling collections. And we’re working on other ways to make stories available.

Next, though, I need to retrain the going there habit. Over the years, every writer collects shoulds and should nots. I used to weed them out regularly and I stopped as my writing time got limited. I finished the promised stories, but left the ones that went sideways to finish another day.

As I put together this collection, I found three unfinished novels, all of which were started in the deep, dark end days of my years in traditional publishing. Back when I was told that I was an sf writer only, that Kristine Grayson (my pen name) couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag, that new pen names would take a lot of building that I wasn’t sure I wanted to do.

In those days (about twenty years ago), the publishers didn’t want to take any chances at all, so subject matter became critical. No one wants to read…was the phrase a lot of my mysteries were faced with. The phrase that hit my fantasy novels? This is good, but really you should focus on [this trendy thing].

Indie publishing was a godsend that I mostly used for my novels and my already published stories. The new ones still went to traditional markets before they found their way to ebooks online.

I have to retrain that habit. The old traditional anthology markets are gone. The traditional magazine markets are getting choked out or have such terrible contracts that I won’t sign them (heck, I don’t even want to touch them).

There are a lot of anthologies that are put together by indie writers using a royalty share plan, and I sometimes submit stories to them. Reprints. I’m looking for a new audience when I do that.

I’m still trying to figure out how to work with the new stories, but I’m writing them again.

Although…they’re going long. I think that’s because the stories (long and short) have been bottled up in my head for quite a while.

I also think it’s because my creative voice feels unfettered completely. So it’s stretching out and exploring.

It’s going there…whether I want it to or not.

 

“Going There” from The Write Attitude

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

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