Desire Paths

Recently, I spent about a week writing a short story set in the imagined West. It integrated Lovecraft mythos (or, so as not to invoke the name of a hilariously antisemitic and inadequate prose stylist, cosmic horror). This mix of genres is known as "weird West." 

I've been wanting to write a Western for some years now. I'm (increasingly) in love with the genre, particularly with how its environment is quite precise but its manifestations are nigh infinite. That is, the imagined West is a desert place, usually but not always in America in the late 19th century, with saloons and fast guns and horses and leather. Within that, you have certain character types: villain, antihero, innocent, Othered enemy. You have big, vague forces: the Law, modernity, temptation, Mother Nature, money, grief, the shadowy past. But you can mix and match any number of other elements. Gender and race can be whatever. Technology can be anachronistic, if you want. (Neo-Westerns have an even more flexible set of characteristics!) Because no one really believes the imagined West is factual, it can be molded to the story you want to tell. That's why the weird West is such a fertile blend: Cthulhu slides into the setting with ease. 

While trying to overcome anxiety about the Casablanca novel (I have added a decent number of words to it over the past month, but I might have bitten off more than I'd like to chew with the historicity), I wrote this story, based on an idea of Matt's about two opposing characters who both accept supernatural favors on one particular night in a silver mining town. I had so much fun writing it, and I broke a bunch of my own rules of revision, including reading today's words today (you gotta let 'em sit!) and submitting the day after I finished a draft (YOU GOTTA LET IT SIT!). 

The submission was rejected almost immediately. This was part of the feedback, edited to keep from spoiling the story: 

"...the opening scenes lacked a bit of tension. I think if I had more insight earlier on into the narrative stakes (such as what [x] in first scene could mean, or what [y] could signal), there would have been a bit more of the urgency I needed." 

Let's be clear. I'm quoting and unpacking this NOT because I'm wounded about a rejection. It was such fun to write this story that I felt rewarded as soon as I finished the draft, and I submitted it with a higher proportion than usual of I-want-someone-else-to-love-reading-this and less than usual of I-want-to-be-published. And, by now, I virtually never care about story rejections, because that's a numbers/persistence game, not personal or meaningful. 

I'm unpacking this feedback because I find it remarkably self-contradictory. In writing this story, I surrounded x and y with enigma so as to keep the reader reading, which, as Donald Maass taught me, is what tension is. How can a scene lack tension when it has enigma? If I'd explained what x and y meant on the first two pages, why on earth would you keep reading? 

It's possible that the first few pages didn't move quickly enough. It's possible that the rejecter misspoke, and meant "lacked a bit of clarity," not tension. But, based on my experience of rejections over the past five years, I think it's more likely that the rejecter didn't know what they meant. I think it's likely that the rejecter didn't like or even notice the sentences (which is part of what I enjoyed most about the first two pages: polishing the sentences until they rambled and rolled like a bowlegged sheriff), and wanted the story to move faster, to jam plot in immediately. 

Sentences matter more than plot to me, but that's exactly why I haven't done very well with my genre fiction. It might not be the root of this rejection - I am not stupid enough to think this story is perfect, nor single-minded enough to think it's perfect for this market - but I suspect it is. 

This rejection is the latest in a whole catalog of occurrences that are making me rethink, altogether, what I want out of a writing career. It bookends the first item in the catalog: an agent rejection for my bad-film book, which I got sometime in 2021. The agent didn't think the book had major-press possibilities. The way she explained this to me, I got the message: she is an agent who makes big deals, not little deals, and she didn't think she could sell the book as a big enough package to make it worth her time. I respected this, but it also surprised me, because I know how many copies make a bestseller and I know the size of the bad film/cult film audience. But I'm not a major critic, I'm not cruel, and the book doesn't have little bite-sized essays, so you'd have to market it pretty carefully. 

Hmm. Okay. So, I used this feedback to rejigger my expectations and I queried smaller or specialty presses for the book. A year & many rejections later, I've finally contracted the book to a terrific indie press, Castle Bridge Media, and I'm thrilled to be working with them. But I really did think this book was going to go to a big press. The result isn't a disappointment, but it's a different path, an alteration in the trajectory I thought I was creating with my first two books. 

I thought the idea was to step up and step up until I had an agent and a comfortable contract/series of contracts. I thought I'd edit and write reviews until I had a book or film column. I never thought I'd make a living wage by writing alone, but I did think I'd be able to stop hustling, stop hanging my own slate and instead have people or objects (publicists, agents, my own recognizable name) to do that work for me. 

These are the ideas I'm rethinking altogether: the ladder, the progression, the comfort, the reliance on others. None of them have come to pass, even though I've jumped through many of the necessary hoops. 

My friend Dave Housley has been running Barrelhouse for many years, and he has published seven books. I don't think he has an agent at the moment, and he's never brought a book out with a major press (although he has with big indies). Writers of many types and sizes know and respect him as a community-builder and a good dude. He's held a day job unrelated to writing all this time, and I doubt anything about his life or work is going to change. I don't even know if he wants it to. He keeps writing and making what he wants, and plunging himself up to his elbows into writerly community and working, and he doesn't have to be a hotshot to do those things. 

I'm wondering if this is a preferable model for my writing. Should I stop thinking about remuneration more completely than I already have? Should I make things and trust that readers will show up somewhere along the line? Should I stop trying to build this thing like a city planner, and instead let my interests make desire paths wherever they want to go? 

I'm considering making my weird West story into a Kindle single type thing for 99 cents. That's where I'm at. I tried self-publishing in my 20s, with a (deliberate) ripoff of VC Andrews that I couldn't figure out how else to sell, and I failed at it and swore never to do it again. Now that I've got 15 years of experience on that writer, I'm thinking about breaking her oath. I don't want to submit this story for two years only to hear feedback that doesn't make sense, I don't want to trunk it until I finally have enough genre stories for a collection (...it'll be a while), I don't want to rely on others who don't understand my work to promote a story I can damn well promote myself. 

I want to put stuff into the world that I love, and help people discover it who will love it too. Doing that has been the goal all along, but it's always been complicated and ritualized and tediously reliant on gatekeepers. Now, it seems possible that I'm at a stage where for some parts of my work, I don't need or want to trade gatekeeping for greater prominence. I've watched a handful of acquaintances go through this and never thought it would be me. And, let's be clear, I could not have published Ceremonials or Plan 9 on my own, nor can I publish Junk Film or most of the manuscripts I'm shopping on my own. But this little weird West story? I think I can. And I think I might. 

I just need to let it sit a little longer. 

Librariana

I keep wanting to write a post on how I feel about the holidays and stopping myself. My inner Grinch is on the rampage this year, and I don't necessarily want to expose her to friends and loved ones.

I finished Airships. Heavens above. I've really picked some incredible books of short stories to read this year! If you want to be amazed, read that thing. There was also an interesting treasure in the inside cover:

Space Library: 1999!

I took out Under the Volcano from the library to read next, but I am so tired of men's writing that I just couldn't take it. Nearly everything we've read for my UCLA class this semester has been by white men, as have most of the books I've read for fun over the same period. I'm used to this, of course, but the insistent feeling of standing outside the party has been a lot worse lately. Male writers often (unintentionally) (?) create worlds in which I stand apart, where all the characters who look like me are trophies or objects or barnyard animals. So I fled to the girliest unread book on my shelf: a Georgette Heyer. I gobbled it in less than 24 hours and I feel such relief. Yes, I do exist after all.

I'm also following two comic books right now: the Matt Fraction/Chip Zdarsky collaboration about which you will get the wrong impression (and I'll draw unfortunate searches) if I name, so I'll just direct you there; and the Kelly Sue DeConnick/Emma Rios book Pretty Deadly. I adored PD #1, but #2 was...largely confusing (and OMG learn to use commas, whoever letters these books). I still can't wait for the next one. The pleasure of following a comic book upon release, book by book over several months, is one I wasn't familiar with until now. And a pleasure it is, indeed.

Matt and I and a lovely friend spent Thanksgiving Day in Las Vegas this year. It was a very cool trip. On the drive back, Matt and I developed an idea about a Western that I am now committed to writing. The landscape inspired us. I've sketched out the idea, and I've already fallen in love with the main character. She's like a much more damaged version of the main character of Highbinder, one who believes in revenge instead of not. I really want to just write it, go go go, but I feel I need to at least read a couple of Westerns before I do; thus far all I've read are Elmore Leonard and Annie Proulx stories. Anybody know if Lonesome Dove is really that good?

Me + West = LUV

I'm home from Montana. I really enjoyed the adventure, and I experienced so many things that were just incredible and that I couldn't have seen any other way, even though it took 36 hours of driving to experience them. I smelled rain and fire at the same time when I was in Utah. I stayed in a hotel run by a husband and wife in a town so small that I had to add it to Facebook's check-in utility. I rolled sagebrush between my fingers and smelled its wildness, and ate fresh roadside huckleberries. I touched a Joshua tree in a ridiculous driving rainstorm. But it's tiring, driving like that, and expensive to keep taking days off work and paying for gas and hotels &etc., so I'm glad to be home.

One of the big things I learned on this trip is that I love the West. I love the West. I thought I understood this, but I didn't know the depth of it - not even halfway there. I really, really love the West. Montana is astonishing, wild and rough and heartless and welcoming and utterly American. Idaho is beautiful along I-15 only when you're about to enter or leave it, and is otherwise pretty darned boring. Utah is head-to-toe unbelievably beautiful, the southern part especially, and has the oddest mix of cultures I've ever seen. I was openmouthed with astonishment at the tiny wedge of Arizona I drove through, its high highs and flat lows. And southern Nevada is unearthly in its distant desolation. But nothing made me so happy during the whole trip than driving through the Inland Empire, toward home, and seeing the San Gabriel mountains coming up through my windshield. I just don't want to be anywhere else than out here.

Part of it is feeling like there's enough land to go around; everything is so much more spread out here than it is in the East. Even though that's a bit more dangerous when you're traveling, it's also a relief, to feel like there are places that are untouched that are nevertheless worth being. I really did see the whole trip as an adventure - not quite a covered-wagon adventure, but for me it was a big deal, setting out with the smallest plan and without much idea of what would happen.

There's another 1,100-mile trip that I was considering in mid-September - Margaret Atwood is reading in Colorado Springs - but honestly, I don't think I'm up to it so soon. I wish I were. There's so much more to see. The West is so goddamn big. But now I've crossed it nearly top-to-bottom just as I did the East when I was in college. The pleasures of that trip were many, but it doesn't hold a candle to this one.