The Writing Matrix 
Informal entries on the writing life—
6-21-10
Well, I turned to the calendar just now and realized it was the first day of summer. Time seems to be passing me by at an accelerated clip.
Several stories have been accepted since my last entry: “Genius in a Bottle”, now available on the Semaphore Magazine website, “The Shadows of the Shadows in the Tree”, just released on the Daikaijuzine website, “The Mirror and the Morning Star”, accepted by ARCT Magazine, though yet to be released, and “The Magician’s Hat”, accepted by The Rose and Thorn Journal, but also awaiting release in their summer issue.
I’ve been accumulating new poems for a while now, and felt I had to address revisions on these before they became too numerous. Even so, I found I had seventy poems to revise, and that took some time. A final revision of these still awaits, but I’ll let them cool in my memory before I study them again. A couple of these are especially well done. I’ll only try to market a few of them, of course, but deciding which ones will have to wait until after final revisions.
I really should devote more time to marketing my poetry, and I guess a better use of time is in order. A writer can always find a way to get things done if he or she puts their mind to it. And doesn’t make excuses.
I still need to complete the initial revision of a story my brother, John, and I completed not too long ago; when I’m finished it will fall back into his hands for additional work, and then we’ll be able to send it to the markets. I’m not sure how many stories we’ve written together, but I do know the first collaboration we wrote was almost thirty years ago. Yes, we were just kids (farewell, my youth), but we were imaginative kids. Like everything else we wrote at the time, together or individually, it was never published, though if I could find the manuscript I might revise it just to see how it would fair in today’s markets.
I also have to begin working on the promised “Writing Poetry” essay for my website, but like so many other projects it’s still queued up and waiting, anxiously staring at its watch and wondering where the hell I am.
5-30-10
I’ve been occupying my free time lately finishing an essay that will appear on a new version of my website.
The new website appears pretty like the current website except for a couple of new features. One of these features is the essay “A Concise Guide to Fiction Writing”. I’ve wanted to write this essay for a couple of years now but simply never got around to it (I suppose the task seemed fairly daunting; how might I distill all the concepts of fiction writing into the space of a long essay?). Now I’ve completed the first draft of it and am very satisfied. I’ll have to run it through several more drafts before I’m ready to post it, but when I am ready I’ll publish the new version of my website as well.
I also intend to write a similar essay for poetry, but that will appear later.
The essay on fiction writing runs nearer to 6,000 words, but with a little editing I hope to bring that down nearer to 5,000 (if possible). Later, I might include an explication of one of my own short stories for purposes of illustration, but that is only a possibility at this point.
The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the principles behind effective fiction writing (as I know them); if I ever taught a class in writing fiction this is the material I would be teaching. It is hard-won knowledge acquired over many, many years of study and practice. But it is knowledge I’m more than happy to share.
5-17-10
It’s been a while since my last entry—a few more short story acceptances and a trip to Washington DC have taken place in the interim—and I feel a little rusty about things, though my time away from website matters was spent meaningfully.
One of the more important things I did over this time, aside from getting myself into better physical condition, was to read extensively. When I was young, reading was something I did all the time—those were the days before meaningful employment and familial responsibilities—so I tried to emulate that carefree approach for a few weeks, not only reading new material but rereading a lot of books that played a significant role in shaping my youthful literary tastes. It was a wonderful experience, actually, and I was able to trace my growth as a writer along the way. What seems important to us changes over time; and the few things that remain the same are often the distillation of who we really are.
The trip to Washington DC was something I’d wanted to do for some time; I’d always wanted to visit the Museum of Natural History (after reading about the collections there and the fantastic exhibits of dinosaur fossils when I was young). The museum certainly didn’t disappoint me. And, for someone who has a fondness for libraries, I found the reading room in the Library of Congress opulently beautiful. Much of Washington DC was interesting, and not just the museums and monuments. I watched very carefully how people conducted themselves; it was very enlightening.
But the most important thing I’ve done over the last few weeks is the determination of what I want to accomplish with my writing in the future.
No one lives forever, and I’m certainly closer to the end of my life than I am to its beginning, so I feel it’s important to know what to devote this remaining time to. It’s not a morbid thought process at all, but a practical one. Should I simply try to have a lot of fun with my writing, or do I have some ambitious projects left in me to execute? The answer, of course, is both. I plan to work on more meaningful projects while also enjoying whatever spontaneous work seems fun for me to engage in. Creating a literary triage was probably the most important administrative task for me to complete.
Ultimately, a writer has to separate his or her goals (projects) from a guiding artistic mission, which varies from person to person. And it’s important for the writer to clarify this mission from time to time, or else face difficulties when the completion of those goals produces a creative vacuum. The writer is left to ponder: all right, now what? The creation of new projects, of course, but guided by what criteria? The criteria defined through the direction of one’s artistic mission.
My own projects tend to become more ambitious as my artistic mission moves into more complex areas of fulfillment (or potential fulfillment), which sometimes produces a little hesitancy on my part to engage in the work. I just have to clear away any thoughts of the long road ahead and begin. It’s much like running longer and longer marathons, relying on the conditioning developed by the previous event to assist the runner in the next, more demanding race. In a playful arena training in this way may not be very important; in a professional arena it is essential. Perhaps that’s why so many writers give up writing even after many successful years.
I hope I never hit that wall.
3-25-10
I currently have two new pieces of fiction online, “Gocinni’s Instrument” and “The Conquest of Space and Other Dreams”.
“Gocinni’s Instrument” is available from “Fear and Trembling Magazine” and is a pretty straight-forward terror tale in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe (and pretty much every other writer of Gothic horror I’ve read over the years). The story has one of my favorite endings of all the stories I’ve written—a play on words that is perfect for the narrative. One of my early literary loves was nineteenth and early twentieth century horror and terror tales, ranging from the works of Arthur Machen to M.R. James to H.P. Lovecraft. I haunted many a used bookstore in search of out of print anthologies and collections of like work when I was young. Now it’s much easier finding these types of books online, but when I was a kid the only way to find them was by poring over the dusty shelves of antiquarians. My hope is that the story carries a little of the magic of those wonderful tales.
“The Conquest of Space and Other Dreams” is a much different story, available at the “A Fly in Amber” website. It is a literary fable, a fantastic story with a ‘Kafkaesque’ sensibility. It is a subtle work, exploring the theme of unfulfilled dreams. Since I know better by now, I would never try to psychoanalyze such a story in order to pry into the inner workings of my subconscious (not without a hazmat suit and a four-leaf clover), lest the experience leave me more confused than when I began. I have to believe (since I can’t find a reason not to) that the subconscious communicates such conscious speculations in metaphoric terms for a reason. Naked confession is at once lamentable for all the embarrassment it provides the listener, since most human regrets are typically pretty common at their core; the angst one feels in the exposing of emotional states is the actual goal of such disclosure. But when human angst is framed in metaphor it can take on the guise of art (and the affectations of art), and become something else entirely. The embarrassment is removed and only the broken equation remains. Kafka was a master at couching his angst in metaphoric terms that converted base fears into eloquent masks. Such is the craft of the conscientious writer.
I like both these pieces for their differences; I also very much like the idea that I can succeed in different literary arenas with some facility. “Dog at the Gate,” a serious literary short story, recently appeared on the “Short Story America” website (and is still available for viewing). I will soon have a new science fiction story, “Sacrament”, appearing in “Title Goes Here”. Each of these stories was written with a different sensibility in mind, and each, hopefully, succeeds in its own way. Some writers wear only one literary mask; some several. I find great satisfaction in wearing several masks, including the mask of the poet, because life is not simple, and neither is art. Before I die I would like to have said that I sampled the atmospheres of many literary environments, and was able to walk through all of them unscathed.
I like being a writer; writing individual pieces is like holding up individual mirrors to the world, and using these mirrors to construct a perceptual funhouse. This is where the writer lives, wandering through these perceptions while adding others to the collection. And, yes, it is a weird life, but it seems to fulfill an exotic human need that doesn’t appear within any psychologist’s hierarchy of needs—human imagination must be used to make a human world; otherwise, none of us really exist.
3-15-10
My brother, John (who is also a writer), and I had a long conversation a couple of days ago about the nature of writing and the writer. We’ve been writing since we were kids, and that’s an awful long time, let me tell you. Aside from working through the plot of a new science fiction story (the beginning of which I’m currently drafting) we discussed the meaning of being a writer, and how that status differentiates writers from non-writers (if it does at all).
All political correctness aside, we came to the conclusion that there is a difference—a very meaningful difference—between people who live half their lives in imaginary worlds and people who don’t. Those who create through their daydreams, and subsequently immortalize their daydreams in words, possess something greater than those who only pass their time enjoying the hard surfaces of reality. They possess the ability to enter into new worlds at will, to step from the monotony of a programmed life into an existence unbounded by any scientific or social limitation. And this ability to ‘escape’ from reality, to experience new worlds and new people, is a profoundly wonderful quality.
Few writers will disagree with this statement, but many non-writers will dismiss it as exaggeration. I can only tell this latter group that they are free to believe what they wish, but that being able to construct new versions of reality from sheer imagination is one of the more rewarding human practices in this life, beneficial like no other. In a few minutes time, sitting in a restaurant and molding a narrative through a simpatico understanding of story construction, we were able to build a whole world from nothing, and characters and social situations unique to that world. In a few weeks the story will be finalized in words, and sometime after that it might be published for others to read.
How is this not a magical process? How is this not a fabulous way to spend one’s life?
This paradigm causes the writer to work incredibly hard at his or her craft to insure the best results when a nascent idea is finalized in words. It’s what keeps writers dreaming from one day to the next, overcoming the difficulties of life, enduring depression and frustration in order to see the imagination’s potential fulfilled just one more time. And the better one becomes at it, the more enjoyable the process becomes. It is the conjuring of the wizard without the wizard’s magic; it is a successful incantation without the black arts. It is the creation of sustained thought from air, a beautiful rendering of the pieces of life into a whole form that never before existed. It is as godlike as human beings can possible come, in the purest sense of creation.
And that is why it is a cherished practice to most who write.
Some people, though (I suspect a small minority) actually consider writing only a job. I don’t understand these people at all. Perhaps they’re only protecting themselves from the thought of failing at it—but that’s part of the mystery of it, too. There are no guarantees of success when a writer sits down to write; every new piece is a new challenge to the imagination, and perhaps some writers simply can’t handle the pressure of thinking of it in this way. So be it. Then there are others who would like to write, but somehow never get around to it—these are usually the consistent writer’s harshest critics, because success too often breeds contempt. A clue to knowing when this type of jealousy is in play (in the form of criticism) is that well-meaning critics almost always provide suggestions for improving the work, while resentful critics almost always dismiss and insult the work without providing any constructive suggestions. The writer is well advised to thoughtfully entertain the former and completely dismiss the latter (yes, I know this is pretty cut-and-dried, but I really believe this to be true; listening to someone put down your work for the sake of putting it down accomplishes nothing but the placating of that critic’s psychological deficiencies).
I’ve often asked myself why I keep writing, because writing well is not an easy endeavor (consider the arbitrariness of critics of all sorts as outlined above). But I also always know the answer, whether I care to admit it to myself in the moment or not. The answer is what my brother and I discussed at that restaurant table, in the way of reinforcing our resolve as writers. There is magic to it that cannot be duplicated by other human activities, beauty, and exhilaration like no other. From wherever you are in the world, in whatever circumstances of reality, no matter how dire, that magic is always with you to carry you to another world, to endless worlds that know no limitations. The power to do this—the ability to construct new worlds in words—is a gift like no other. And one for which the writer need never apologize. What great works have been left unwritten because some writers succumbed to disillusionment or negative criticism?
I have to believe that this is why most writers continue on despite the difficulties they face. And the very definition of magic.
2-28-10
The last couple of weeks for me have been spent trying to recover from a convergence of minor illnesses. There’s nothing like having to address multiple physical issues to kill the creative spirit. Still, I’ve managed to revise a few stories (I’ve made a significant dent in the number of stories I had awaiting revisions) and hope to have caught up in the next couple of weeks. The variety of these stories is striking, even to the guy who wrote them—straight science fiction, mainstream realism, humorous science fantasy, and now a very sober fantasy (to be followed by another realistic mainstream story and another humorous fantasy).
Although I like writing the long narrative—I’ve written three novels to date and a couple of novellas—I have to admit that I have a special place in my heart for the short story. It was short stories I wrote when I first started writing as a kid (reflective of everything I was reading at the time, mostly genre fiction and supernatural stories about ghosts, monsters and other assorted nightmares). As I matured I tackled nearly every type of fiction imaginable, from serious mainstream to absurd fantasy, and learned the craft of writing along the way. In college I studied poetry as well, writing a hundred bad poems in the process, then another hundred before I began creating anything of decent quality. These short pieces are the training ground of every writer (though I know some writers only engage their efforts in book-length work and steer clear of shorter pieces, it seems to me a writer can cover more training ground through shorter works, but perhaps that’s my prejudice).
When I was young the completion of the first draft was pretty much all I did with a story—a second draft would follow if I wanted to submit my adolescent efforts to the magazines, but that was usually the extent of it. Nowadays, my routine for writing and revising short stories is pretty complex, though it doesn’t seem complex to me because I’ve compressed the actual process significantly (at least, within my mind). From the initial idea of a story I begin any necessary supporting research even while I’m making notes for the narrative. The research informs the notes, which in turn expand the concept of the story and characters within my mind. Once the notes are complete I begin writing the first draft; and even while I’m writing each section of it, I’m assessing the value of each component part and shaping the story as I go. When the first draft is complete I let it sit for a while (something I had a great deal of difficulty doing in my youth) and then begin the revising process, which usually consists of several revision drafts (a minimum of three, typically more), each time looking at finer and finer points of the story to make certain the narrative is as perfect as I can manage to make it. The final draft is a listening draft, where I’ll read it to myself aloud, or (and which is usually the case) I’ll run it through a text-to-speech reader on my computer to hear it read back to me from an indifferent reader (which does take time, and the longer the piece the more time it takes, but I consider this step essential). Only then am I ready to create a submission draft.
How long does this process take? As the old saying goes, it takes as long as it takes (depending on the piece). Fortunately, aging has done more than given me bad knees; it’s sharpened my ability to assess the qualities of a piece of fiction as I’m writing it, so I’m able to give my projects their best chance at success. I don’t always hit the mark (or hit the mark dead-center), but I rarely miss it entirely.
This is all in the way of saying just how much I love writing short stories. Sometimes it’s just in the blood.
2-11-10
The evening of the 8th and the morning of the 9th brought a total of three short story acceptances, a delightful accumulation of editorial approval arriving just in time to alleviate a lingering depression over the state of a few non-literary aspects of life. The first acceptance was from Sheryl Tempchin at Zahir for my science fiction story “The Cube Root of the Universe” (she previously published another of my short stories in the magazine, “The Fairy Ring”), the second from Tim Johnston, who actually requested a telephone interview to talk about publishing my mainstream story “Dog at the Gate” in Short Story America (this being one of the best mainstream short stories I’ve written to date, in my opinion), and the third from Alexandra Wolfe at The Wry Writer for my humorous science fiction story “The Persistence of Memory” (am I really that cynical about love?).
I also managed to complete the final revisions of a ghost story I wrote late last year, and began a new fantasy (though Kafkaesque and rather unusual for me, as it occurs in a foreign environment and contains a heavy international flavor). My next revision project is a short mainstream story with a single human protagonist and an inhuman antagonist—made of vegetable matter. I know it sounds like science fiction, but it’s quite realistic and required several hours of research to make certain I got all the details correct.
We’re supposed to finally see the sun tomorrow after an extended period of cold, clouds and rain; and just in time, too, because if my car hits just one more wash-induced pothole I think the poor thing will fall to pieces around me. After all, I live in Texas for a reason…
2-8-10
Every once in a while the artifacts of a life spent collecting papers will serve as a catalyst for extreme frustration. The folder in which I’d placed the notes and research articles for my next novel seemed to have vanished into some nether world of lost paperwork. I spent about half an hour sorting through innumerable folders and piles of notes searching for the damned thing, rummaging through file cabinets, peering into document bags, opening drawers, slowing growing panicky—and, of course, the folder was in the (nearly) last placed I looked, in a plastic holder I’d probably dropped it into last year for safe keeping. And, yes, I really do need to organize this stuff a little better.
On the bright side, I got to review the contents of nearly every folder I had lying around, so now I’m aware of where I left other notes for projects I may work on down the road. I have notes and research material for a mainstream novel I hope to begin this year as well, but that material was exactly where I thought it was supposed to be; I guess that proves something about the selective nature of universal practical jokes.
2-4-10
I completed the revisions on the science fiction story and sent it off to the markets. I also completed the first draft of the humorous fantasy story and am absolutely in love with it. The piece is just a lark, really, a funny look at a character who feels life has branded him as a total loser and is making him suffer the consequences. I think the part of the story I enjoy the most is the happy ending. I mean, a really happy ending, my kind of happy ending. Twisted as it is. As the old song goes, sometimes you just got to please yourself.
2-3-10
I recently completed the synopsis for my new novel which will accompany my agent query letter. Both were written and revised with utmost care, reflecting my personal philosophy of producing good writing even for material not meant for public consumption. This approach to writing should be a normal reflex for a writer (at least, I feel it should) and reflect on everything he or she does. That’s not to say that some types of writing shouldn’t be done just for the fun of it, but when the result really matters the professional response should always be present.
That especially goes for something as mechanical as a synopsis (which should eschew all ‘creative’ interpretations of an approach that must be as straightforward as possible). A writer can spend months or years writing and revising a novel to a high gloss, but then forget that the same gloss should be applied to all the materials drafted for its marketing. This is the tedious, time-consuming part of the business that eats into the writer’s ‘real’ writing, but it’s a necessary evil that shouldn’t be ignored. One of the writer’s worst pitfalls is rushing out new work before every aspect of it is ready for editorial consideration, and that includes marketing research and materials preparation. I’m just as impatient as the next guy, but believe me, I’ve learned my lesson on this one.
Having completed the novel and the marketing materials associated with it, I’ve moved on to a couple of other projects, chiefly the revision of a new science fiction story and the beginning of a new short fantasy. The science fiction story is dense and serious, while the fantasy is humorous and light. I have no illusions about the two forms—book-length work is where money and notoriety are, and I intend to keep producing such work as long as I breathe, but I also have a serious love for short stories and tend to write them compulsively. Despite the fact that short stories don’t return much in the way of coin, they give me great satisfaction nonetheless. And since I write a lot, expending my excess creative energies on shorter work is no detriment to the production of novels.
This brings me to an interesting subject for writers: that of triage. In some ways the writer with a very narrow area of interest has greater peace of mind when it comes to accomplishing desired projects. The writer with multiple interests has to gnash his teeth and decide which project is most deserving of his time. In my case, I wanted to finish the novel as quickly as possible and so left everything else in suspended animation while I used my free time to accomplish that goal. Now that the novel is finished I find myself moving back toward shorter work, at least until I begin writing the next novel (the notes and research of which sit waiting in a very thick folder). In this way I can move between interests, working out the rigorous requirements of a science fiction piece while enjoying the inventiveness of a clever fantasy. I’ll probably draft a few more short pieces before picking up the notes for the next novel, and I’ll definitely begin revising all those short stories that have been waiting in my ‘revision queue’ since late last year.
1-26-10
Last year was a great year for me as far as writing was concerned. I wrote 23 short stories, had 19 short story acceptances from various publications, wrote the majority of a new novel and generally had a wonderful time doing it. I also kept a year-long record of my writing pursuits in the ‘Notebook’ section of this website (don’t bother looking for it, it’s no longer listed) which contained over 40,000 words of entries. It was an exceedingly rigorous exercise that I’ve chosen not to repeat this year. Instead, I decided to make these entries far less rigorous and much less frequent in order to concentrate on more writing projects. Still, I really did like reporting in every now and then about my activities, thoughts on the problems at hand, future plans, and etc., so I decided to carry on the tradition in a slightly different manner.
So the entries in The Writing Matrix will contain less note-keeping and more informal commentary on what’s on my mind at the time I’m checking in. For instance, I completed the new science fiction novel this month and am researching potential agents to represent it. This is like saying that I’m about to start assembling my do-it-yourself nuclear submarine kit as far as the amount of time I’ll have to devote to the project. I’ve already drafted a query letter for that purpose, though I’ll appropriately tailor each individual query for the agency I’ll be soliciting. My hope is that I’ll be able to find an agency that represents a wide variety of material, as I am a busy little beaver writing in many areas.
Other projects include the writing of even more short stories (I’m addicted to writing short stories, I’m afraid), the assembling of a book of writing essays (already written but in need of revision), the drafting of another novel (for which I already have some very good notes) and any other project that might seem interesting to tackle.
Another limitation of my Notebook was the formality of the presentation. I wanted to move beyond that psychological limitation this year and have a little fun doing it; I have a very well-developed sense of humor (I’ve written a great many humorous stories), and I felt I couldn’t exhibit it in that framework. I feel much more at ease in this framework. And I intend to throw in a little bit of everything into this forum this year.
The project at hand for me right now is the final revision of the novel. I revised constantly as I wrote each section of the book, and feel confident the majority of the revisions are complete, but I need to run through it from beginning to end to check for inconsistencies, typos, mistakes I didn’t see the first time through, and to get a reader’s point of view of the narrative to see if anything is missing. That will take a good month I imagine, as I intend to use the early morning hours predominantly (good for ‘listening drafts’) and later hours to work on other things.
For now, this will conclude my updating of my website. I’d intended to write more essays for it this as well, and those will probably begin soon, but other projects take precedence right now. This is the triage of the writer’s life, and it’s pretty uncompromising.
Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
All entries copyright 2010 by Lawrence Buentello