Barry B. Longyear Webmansion

FOR WRITERS

White Space: Ski Slopes & Story Beginnings

October 27, 2011

Writers: Ever freeze up trying to get an important new story started? Your mind is going a thousand miles an hour, searching for the perfect beginning, but your fingers are caught in quick-set concrete. You are jammed. The upshot is that nothing gets on the paper.

Skiers: Ever freeze up at the top of a steep new double black-diamond trail? Your heart's in your throat beating a good 500/min, your mouth's suddenly dry as dust, you're seeing yourself flying a thousand miles per hour into a solid wall of ice, but your skis are bolted solid to the snow. Not going anywhere; You are jammed. The upshot is that your tracks don't make it down the trail at all.

It was easy for me to recognize the similarity between the two situations because I both ski and write. Read More

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Nobody's Buying! What Do I Do?

October 23, 2011

Tags: sales, art, business

Writing the best stories of which you are capable

The economy is in the crapper, the promised turnaround is out there somewhere hiding with "prosperity is just around the corner," losing pro ball players are getting multiple millions, and long-established professional writers are on seemingly permanent raman noodle diets. Editor George H. Scithers once told me that, in tough economic times, books and magazines have to compete with beer, and when it comes to a choice between beer and something to read, well, bet your investment dollars on Bud.

Where does that leave writers? Okay, the big-name blockbuster writers, the airport newsstand authors, those blessed by Imus and Oprah, might possibly see a slight decrease in sales. Perhaps they might have to put off the diamond-studded yacht until next year. They are not running from the wolves.

The so-called "midlist authors," however, are wolf meat. As it was explained to me once, "midlist author" is a term of sales art used by marketers to avoid identifying a publisher's other-than-bestselling-writers as "bottom list" or "bottom-of-the-barrel." The reality, however, is that the vast majority of professional freelance writers are "bottom list." And don't get your nose out of joint--I number myself among them. Read More

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Comments

Oct 31, 2011 6:58 AM EDT

i read and agree with all of the above. but i recall my comment when my brother told me that, several years after i moved east from B.C., he still has people coming up to him and saying how much they miss me being gone from the local paper in Revelstoke. this after i went for years without a decent pay raise and having to scrape by and driving myself into the ground trying to cover all the council, school board, regional district, cops, court, sports, and whatever else was going on, while some jerk churned out a crap "sunday shopper" that competed with my paper for local ad revenue with its dirt-cheap rates and offered nothing in return but shoddy production and editorial filler using whatever press releases showed up in the mail from all over B.C.
my comment to my brother was, "It would have been nice to at least hear that appreciation BACK THEN!"
too little far too late.
i try to keep that in mind when deciding how to budget my book and magazine spending these days. when i can i buy from the little book stores and i try to at least make sure my favourite authors get first go.

- Gregg Chamberlain

Nov 19, 2011 4:22 PM EST

It's not just for writers but for every walk of life there are dwindling buyers for an over-supply of sellers. The top-echelon gets the majority of the attention, and the financial success that comes with that.

- http://igtsoft.com

Nov 20, 2011 5:13 AM EST

Interesting how many times I've had to read this installment of my own blog over the past few days. Artist or businessman; Success or failure. Appreciation or crickets. This mire of destructive pondering is bad enough when things are going well. In tough economic times, it moves danger into the redline. Add on top of that a fairly debilitating illness, and alarms go off all over the place.

In such times I really have to put together what those in Twelve Step programs call a "gratitude list." Instead of focusing on the lack of sales, the lack of mail, my guest-of-honor days are long past, and that no one is throwing a celebrity roast in my honor, I list the things I should be grateful for: I am still alive. Here and there published books of mine are found and purchased, I have food on the table and a roof over my head, and most important, I get to spend most of my time planning, researching, and writing stories. And every now and then a nice word comes in. A fellow emailed me about a year ago saying that he thought I "am one of the gods of science fiction." I wrote back that "god may not be dead, but he has a definite cough." His comment goes on the gratitude list. Even if he was lying his ass off, it was a nice thing to say.

- Barry B. Longyear

Jan 16, 2012 4:56 PM EST

Barry,

I just want to let you know that I love your work. Sea of Glass is among my favorite all time novels. Just read Hangman's Son, and loved it! Passed your work on to my gifted son, now 20, and he loves it too. Success can be measured in many ways. Many people quietly appreciate your work, and see the quality! I don't know if commercial success will find you (again), but you are deserving! Keep writing, master. I anxiously await your next book!

- Andrew Sanford

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Short & Sweet

September 9, 2011

Tags: Brevity, TWITTER, aTwitMystery

Follow @BarryLongyear

I am deeply into my second aTwitMystery story, this one titled "A Hitman's Lot." It brings an old writing task to mind.

The term "tightening up" a story or scene is easy to understand. It is getting from point A to point B with fewer words. It is an editorial comment still aimed in my direction on occasion. If you find yourself in similar straits in your rejection mail, try writing your story as a series of tweets on Twitter. You simply can't do those page-long blocks of description in 140 character squirts (including spaces). I'm having a lot of fun with aTwitMystery, but it is scary. It's writing with the readers looking over your shoulder, and commenting, going into publication with each tweet. I originally did this to bring folks to my website, and it is doing that. However, the twit story genre is the writing equivalent of doing improv.
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Trying Something New

August 28, 2011

Tags: Breach of Contract, aTwitMystery, Blackbird, real time

aTwitMystery Catchup

For the past few days I've been trying out a new genre/format/kind of writing I've been planning ever since I first heard about Twitter. It's written by a hitman who fills in his odd moments on the job tweeting to his followers his current status and the events of the day. He Read More

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Nuts, Bolts & Laughs

August 4, 2011

Tags: Science-Fiction humor

There are many works that helped me along the road to authorhood, but the first of these was Harry Harrison's BILL THE GALACTIC HERO. I had been in the Army and was an avid science-fiction reader, and BILL satirizes both. I laughed until I hurt, and when I was finished reading Harry's book, I Read More

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Pet Peeve #1

July 23, 2011

Tags: Peeves, politics

When I guest lectured at the Odyssey workshop a few weeks ago, I was asked by one of the student what my pet peeves are regarding writing. I went through my list of anti-vibes: Telling instead of showing, starts slowed by set-ups and lectures, ginormous blocks of description, etc. It wasn't until I was Read More

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Ideas and Other Obligations

July 20, 2011

Tags: ideas, time allocation

Up to my ears in overhauling the Webmansion, yet those pesky story ideas keep intruding on relearning the composing program, capturing icons, getting postings straight, reformatting countless pages, etc., etc. I caught myself putting one such idea aside, assuring myself that I would remember it later when I had completed the mind-numbing website repair Read More

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Why This Blog?

July 19, 2011

Tags: Introduction, useful tips

I have two great loves I plan to honor through this experiment: Writing and teaching writing. Two lesser affections, reading awareness and chewing the fat about the writing art/business, will creep in here and there. Your comments, questions, and suggestions are solicited, and those deemed useful will appear here. If you have something Read More

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For those who wish to write the best stories of which they are capable.

The Write Stuff

Everything I know about writing worth passing on. In this work, step-by-step, I show what I did. From that it is intended that writers form their own paths toward producing their art.

Science-Fiction Writer's Workshop-I

For Beginners

A year after I published my first short story, Editor George Scithers said to me that I was so close to moving from just fooling around to producing professional-grade stories, why not write about that. This is the result, the How-To book I wish I'd had when I first started writing.

All of Barry's books are available on Amazon and this is your link to all of Amazon's other great values.

What About This Blog?

For writers & readers. For writers, this is stuff I've learned, am in the process of discovering, and stuff that is imparted to me by other writers. For readers, I believe the more one knows about what goes into the writing of a story, and into the life of being a writer, the more one appreciates an author's writings.

This is a two-way blog. Your comments on the blogs are welcome, as are your questions. Comments on blogs can be made directly on each blog entry. For questions and comments not related to specific blogs, use the eMail link below.

EMail Barry

Send your writing & reading related comments and questions

Barry B Longyear

Barry B. Longyear is the first writer to win the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer all in the same year. In addition to his acclaimed Enemy Mine Series, his works include the Circus World and Infinity Hold series, Sea of Glass, other SF & fantasy novels, recovery and writing instruction works, and numerous short stories.

How to write the best stories of which you are capable