05.24.2008
The other night I was at the bar with my notebook. I'd been in a little bit of a funk lately. Nothing specific. Just busy with work, a feeling that I'd been drinking too much lately, and watching a few too many TV shows that made my life feel... err... boring? That and the fact that I feel as though my little studio has its walls closing in. It's just too small for me these days and I need to find a bigger place.
Anyway... I didn't much feel like talking with people but I wanted to have a Maker's Mark and chill. So I pulled out my notebook and began the opening to Company Town. It worked out pretty well, if I may say. It was about eight hundred words worth of writing and sketched out the main characters in a way that I felt could be easily expanded later.
And for those of you keeping track, this is only the second story within the world that I've written this year.
Anyway... I began flushing it out more last night, adding a cool thousand more words and really jamming on the feeling and description of it all. Then today, when I can ignore NPR long enough to get back to it, I've been editing it and adding a little more.
So I'm listening to This American Life when my forty-ninth rejection comes in from Ideomancer.
Now Ideomancer is one of those web based magazines that I submitted to way back in the day but hadn't for quite a long time. In fact, I'm pretty sure this was my first submission to them in well over a year and a half. But.... Drug Enforcement is running a little short on places to get rejected from these days so I figured, what the hell.
Today, after forty-eight days on their desk, I got their reply. To be honest, it was very, very nice and offered some valuable feedback. Bear witness:
Your handle on language is very competent, and in places here you have an easy way with character interactions that I quite enjoyed. However, I had trouble engaging with the story until around page six -- you might consider that more muted interaction between Santos and Sanchez as your opening. The characters there are much more comfortable with each other, and ease me into the story. I also greatly enjoyed your ending. In total, though, the story is quite long and its speculative element is a bit too thin for Ideomancer.
She was very constructive I think. And there's no way I cannot appreciate the fact that she took the time to write a person response. But I am wondering something...
Between having a story called fairly well-written and now having my handle on the language be called "very competent", is this death by a thousand head pats?
Look, I know all writers are insecure little people who parse simple fucking sentences looking for meaning that is probably not there... so is this one of those cases?
What the fuck am I talking about? Of course it is! Mary titty fucking mother of Christ... I'm an asshole.
You read it here first, folks. I reconsidered mid-post. How do you like them apples?
The speculative element thing though is a common thread I see in rejections that do offer feedback though. My sci-fi stories aren't really heavy on the science. In fact, the whole space travel thing is really just a back drop for topics that I want to abstract and discuss. For instance, Drug Enforcement is obviously about how stupid and pointless the drug war is. I mean, at the end of the day, it's never going to be won. People like drugs. They make them feel good. Going after the people who fill the demand just keeps the price high - though anyone who lives in New York and has ever been to a bar knows that it's not exactly like coke is the most expensive thing in the world.
Ayla Athena is about mob justice and the people caught in the middle. To that end, so is Varad Ranjani. Skin is about how sometimes bad things have good uses. Rugged Individualists is about getting the fuck away from stupid laws but about discovering how some basic law is a good thing.
Look, I'm a libertarian - notice the small "L" - and I wanted to write first about a new United States and, secondly, one that keeps to the true ethos of what we were supposed to be. One where the people have all of our rights and merely give the government a few to keep order. One where the majority of people don't believe that our rights are not grants from our government.
A quick illustration for those who don't get it.
You know those people that say we don't have a right to privacy because it's nowhere to be found in the constitution? To that I say, read the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
To wit, the Ninth Amendment reads:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Pretty fucking basic, right? I don't have the right to privacy? Sure I do, because the Constitution is a summary of the limited rights I've given up to the government. If it's not mentioned as one of their powers, then it's mine. Mine!
Except that the Supreme Court has lately ruled that the last two amendments are really just rhetorical flourish. Something added as sort of a footer but with no real legal standing on their own. That we need to have those rights enacted into law before we actually have them.
Yeah... that makes sense. Retards...
Now, I'm not saying that my stories are overt political diatribes. After all, who the fuck wants to read that? No, they're stories, full and true, but in the background, thought experiments about what life might be like if we never lost our feeling of individualism and independence.
Deep breath...
Needless to say, as much as I like spaceships, they're not the end all and be all of my world. Nor are any great technological innovations. I mean, in my world, I've lifted most of my ship terminology from the British Navy of the Patrick O'Brien books. And technology is an amazing thing - hell, I do it for a living - but we still have the same problems as a society whether we're driving cars or whipping horses from the back of a buggy. Assholes are assholes, in ancient Mesopotamia or in outer fucking space. It's dealing with assholes that's really interesting.
So... I don't know how to resolve the not enough science in my science-fiction... Maybe that might come more from my next series of stories. I mean, it's tough to write about great technology when a civilization is just being established... But I'll work on it. Maybe I'll figure something out.
Anyway... This does make rejection number forty-nine, one away from the magical fifty. And since I have a story out at Fantasy & Science Fiction, I predict I will easily make my goal - unless I fuck up somehow and get published - by my thirtieth birthday on June the twelfth.
For those curious, this is my fifteenth rejection for the year, and I'm averaging just north of forty days for each one. I've got two more submissions to make until I beat my record of most submissions in a year and six rejections to take before I beat that record too.
The Colin Ferm Writing Hall of Fame is going to have to open up its record books this year, kids. Because there's going to be some new all time bests this year and none of that fucking asterisk shit either. All of this is legit.
All righty. Well... hope you all have a good weekend. And remember, Colin loves you. Yes, even you.