Getting Organized: A Lesson in Keeping Track

Image by Hatice EROL from Pixabay

I recently made a mistake that at the beginning of my           writing life would have made me cringe and want to   crawl under the desk, but by this time I just kicked myself once and set about making sure it didn’t happen again. What was the error? I lost track of the final version of a short story, and submitted an earlier draft to a publication that has published everything I’ve sent it so far. It was rejected, of course.

 

My decision last year to increase the number of short stories I wrote and submitted meant more work floating around on my desk top and in my files, so I needed a better tracking system. I could no longer rely on the lists on paper I kept in a three-ring binder. I set up my spreadsheet and listed title, magazine/publisher, date submitted, date responded, response, notes. Sometimes a story is accepted by the first editor who reads it, and some titles end up going to a number of magazines before finding a home. The spreadsheet gave me a clear overview of where my work was. Apparently I was not as tidy with the stories themselves, and that’s where the trouble came in.

 

After the story was rejected I went looking for the final version I thought I had submitted. I easily found what I had submitted—it was right where it was supposed to be. But it did not read like the final version, which I remembered clearly because of the research it involved for a very neat ending (at least I thought it was near). I found and reviewed the research, but no matter how many times I searched, the only version that came up was the early rejected draft—in several places.

 

Several writers I know talk about pulling out work from years earlier and reworking the material into something new. To me the old stuff is just clutter but it still sits on my computer. After the mix-up with the story in question I’ve decided to clean out the old stuff and keep only the one version of material I’m working on. The danger of once again losing the one version that matters amid all the clutter and finding only the rejects is enough to decide me.

 

When the personal computer first became available and many writers were skeptical (many of us were still in love with our typewriters), The Writer carried an article about a novelist who argued in favor of the advantages of the new technology. He talked about how easy it was for him to compose two versions of the same scene. I remember vividly the photograph of him sitting at his desk holding up one version in his left hand and another in his right while he considered which was best for his work. That image haunted me because to me it meant he had two different novels, not two choices within one novel.

 

I may be a party of one in this matter, but I know that I rarely return to an earlier version. And in fact I can’t think of one instance in which I did, and then chose it over the more recent one. By now (a few weeks after the fact) I’m mostly philosophical about the incident. With the increase in my productivity in the last year it was probably inevitable that I would make such a mistake. I just wish it hadn’t been this one. And it won’t happen again. 

My File of Forgotten Stories

Note: Someone recently asked me how long it took to write a short story. She didn’t like my answer, so here it is, in another form.

Like most of my writing colleagues, I do a lot of editing and revising. Few of my published works have ever had fewer than half a dozen drafts, and then there are the weeks of tinkering, fussing over one particular word or phrase. In general, however, if I put a story aside for any length of time, the odds are good that I’ll never go back to it. 

This morning I opened my short story file thinking it might be time to clear out the deadwood. Some stories were not meant to be revised, salvaged and remade, no matter how much time I spent on them.

The first story I pulled up had several versions, which seemed confusing, so I went to the next one, which I liked and wasn’t sure what to do with. This went on for several stories until I pulled up one that I had enjoyed writing but couldn’t figure out a good ending. I wanted a surprise, but it couldn’t be too complicated because the narrator was an airhead and couldn’t deliver anything complex. As I read it through, I felt the story still had possibilities. I decided to analyze the working (and nonworking) parts to see where I could make improvements.

First, I considered the tone—humorous, light, satirical, just as I prefer. 

Second, I liked the characters. The narrator, Babe, is an airhead and the tone of the story reflects that. She is married to Nick. Her pal Charley, a gay man who was hired as cook and housekeeper, manages her easily, and she adores him. She often finds him trying on her clothes in her walk-in closet, and takes his advice on her wardrobe even if it means giving up a favorite item of clothing. Nick likes Charley because he minds his own business, is a good cook, and keeps Babe occupied.

Third, the plot works up to the last quarter. Babe and Charley discover a dead body, which they then have to get rid of. All of this works, and the two succeed in walking away from the corpse, safe and alive. But the story needs more of an oomph for an ending. Charley needs to be more than a quirky character, and to have more than an accidental role in Babe’s life. Once I trashed the last few pages, I could pare the plot down to something simpler and find the pressure points to build into the story a more complex series of twists. I added a character, altered Charley’s role just a little, and gave a few more hints on Nick’s “occupation.”

The key to being able to rescue this story from the slurping sound of the trash (this is a Mac—my trash basket slurps) was, first, the tone and, second, Babe’s husband’s line of work. As she explained, he spent his time talking “to the boys, whoever they are.”

Not every story will be as easy to rework, and not every story will be worth the effort. This one in particular had more going for it than not—the characters, the tone, the basic setup. With a reworking of the plot, the characters go farther and the story has a nice twist at the end. I’ll give it another polish, work up a better title, and send it out. 

After spending weeks working on a particular history article that turned out to be unnecessary for my graduate research, my professor said, “Nothing is ever wasted.” I’m not sure that’s always true, but in writing fiction, it’s a good principle to keep in mind.

Overused Words

One of the last things I do when I’m finishing a short story is read for overused words. Most of these are easy to recognize—awesome, literally, really, and the like. They have migrated into the written word from casual conversation, trendy TV comedians, and the younger generation. I hear these the minute they come out of my mouth, or fingers on the keyboard. But these are not the words I’m most concerned about.

Each of us has our own distinctive verbal tics and habits, and those are the easiest to miss. We think they sound right, so we don’t hear the repetition, or echoes as I call them. To ferret out these habits of writing, I search on Find/Replace, and consider each sentence or phrase that pops up. Most of them I rewrite, tightening the passage and excising unnecessary words.

In a recent short story, I found I had used  -thing words almost 40 times in 6,000 words. These are so common as to be almost invisible—nothing, something, anything, as well as thing. Removing these forced me to be specific, editing flabby phrasing into a more muscular passage. (I almost used the word “robust,” but that’s one of the overused words I’m trying to avoid.)

One immediate benefit of highlighting a poor verbal habit, such as overusing looked, is that it forces me to examine the character more closely and think hard about what she or he is doing. Is she admiring the view, sneaking a peek at a stranger, or staring at an old friend now so changed she almost didn’t recognize him? Why does it matter that he is “looking” at a person or scene? Is he calculating the next move, or is he trying to identify the person? Making these changes doesn’t necessarily mean more detail, but it does mean greater precision.

I’m fortunate to have three beta readers who together spot my verbal tics and bring them to my attention. As I go about revising those passages, I usually identify other infelicitous expressions. By the time I’m finished, the manuscript is tight and clean, and reads smoothly, without echoes or awkwardness or repetitions.

“Overused” words is a popular topic on various sites for writers, and I visited several. To read a list of words considered overused in writing today, go to:

https://www.consultpivotal.com/commonly_overused.htm

To read my fiction, go here:

https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Oleksiw/e/B001JS3P7C

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SusanOleksiw

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/susan+oleksiw?_requestid=1017995

Compiling a Short Story Collection

Since my college years my focus has been on writing novels. My first effort was an essay, my second a short story, and thereafter I wrote longer works. Still, between longer projects I write the occasional short story. I discovered the character Anita Ray through a short story, and by now I have about twenty published and unpublished Anita Ray stories. It seems about time to put together a collection of some of these, and that has become my end-of-year project.

Building a collection of short fiction is a separate skill. Work is enhanced or diminished by the order in which it appears, and figuring out that order can be a challenge. During the life of The Larcom Review, I was surprised but pleased that most of the work submitted fell into certain thematic categories without our requesting them. This made it relatively easy to find a sufficient number of works that went well together. The Review published poetry, short fiction (all genres), essays, book reviews, and interviews, along with black-and-white art. Selecting and arranging individual pieces has remained one of the great pleasures of my writing life. The work is both tactile and intellectual, and as I stood over the eight-foot table with stacks of paper at my fingertips I could imagine many different versions of the issue I was working on until my choices narrowed the possibilities, and I was left with the one we published.

The same question of an effective arrangement appeared in the Level Best Books anthologies, which I along with two colleagues, Kate Flora and Skye Alexander, later replaced by Ruth McCarty, published for about seven years. Kate did the honors in those volumes, and I noticed as I read how astutely she had matched one story with another.

Now as I set out to arrange a dozen Anita Ray stories into a collection that won't run beyond seventy thousand words I think about variations in tone and setting, types of crime and recurring characters, foreign and native suspects and victims, and any other qualities that will reduce the level of sameness in stories focused on a main character. I'm looking for an arrangement that will enhance the contrasts.

During a recent discussion in the Short Mystery Fiction Society list, several contributors shared their experiences with publishing collections or compilations, noting that a grouping of stories widely diverse in genre can undermine the book's appeal, and a little over sixty thousand words seems to be the sweet spot for length. I keep these points in mind as I continue to select and arrange.

Another aspect is the cover. I now use my own photographs of India for the reprints of the Anita Ray novels as well as the individual short stories I've posted on Amazon. I intend to do the same with the collection. The photograph must fulfill certain requirements, such as indicating at once the setting readers have come to know through the Anita Ray mystery novels as well as drawing the eye of new readers.

This is my final project for 2015, and it will carry a 2016 pub date.

To read two of the Anita Ray stories to be included, go to the links below.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Pulluvan-Drum-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00SHWPSPA

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-House-Anita-Mystery-Story-ebook/dp/B0165WGQP4