When I was twelve or thirteen years old, by dad would bring paperback books home from friends of his at his job as a machinist. His friends knew that I loved to read, and they passed the books along to me. I would lay in my bed in my room–a dark room in the basement of our house with no windows–and read the books deep into the night, a small lamp illuminating the pages. The experience was more than just recreation–it was something that transported me and lifted me to new lands and introduced me to new people and new ideas.

One series of those books was The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and they were anthologies full of not just wonder and amazing tales, but heartfelt stories of raw emotion and philosophical resonance. It truly was the best of the best of what science fiction had to offer. I read the stories by Cordwainer Smith, Alfred Bester, Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, Tom Godwin, and so many others, and the awe I felt far outshone the weak light of the lamp.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame were anthologies meant to acknowledge the great stories written before the Nebula Awards were established. The members of the SFWA voted on them, and they were–in every sense of the word–what the Nebulas are meant to be about.

So when I would finish a story by Asimov Or Heinlein or Keyes, I would close my eyes and think about the author, the story, and what a tremendous thing it was to be recognized by the Nebulas. My knowledge of the award and the Science Fiction Writers of America was minimal back then, so the Nebulas were something that meant more than just an award or a ceremony or voting. The Nebulas were stories that moved me, changed how I looked at life. They were the representation of everything that I loved about science fiction.

And this year I was nominated for one.

I can’t begin to tell you how profoundly humbling that fact is for me. It was certainly the dream of a 12 year old boy, but those are just childhood dreams. Like wanting to be president or flying in space. These dreams don’t come true. They are the fond memories of youth that you remember with a wisftul kind of fondness.

But my dream did come true. A story that I wrote was nominated for an award that shared the name of those stories that outshone the lamp in my dark bedroom. I get tears in my eyes just thinking about it.

So I am incredibly grateful to the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America who nominated me for this award. You made one boy’s dream come true.

If you haven’t read the final version, you can read it on the Lightspeed Magazine site here. Actually, for this excercise you don’t even have to read the full story, as I only got barely past the beginning before I realized it wasn’t working.

That is, perhaps, a lesson: There are many ways to write a story. Your job as a writer is to find the best one. The final version of “The Old Equations” is written as a series of messages between loved ones. It’s a highly personal type of narrative. Below is the first draft of the story, and–as you can see–I initially chose to use a third person point-of-view in a traditional narrative. It took me 432 words to realize that it wasn’t working. That’s actually quite good. Sometimes people write novels before realizing that they need to change the entire narrative framework.

So here they are, the raw 432 words of first draft of “The Old Equations.” And, yes, you may laugh at my idiocy of naming a story intended to be an homage to “The Cold Equations” as “The New Equations” before realizing that “Old” not only worked better but created a nice parallel to “The Cold Equations.” Mea culpa.

THE NEW EQUATIONS

He received the first message from his wife before he had even left orbit. She had clearly meant for him to find it when he had started the mission, but she didn’t count on his nervous habit of going over every detail ahead of time. He had pulled out his launch plan on the shuttle to the station, and there, tucked behind the last page, was the note. It was handwritten on old-fashioned paper.

My dearest James,

I miss you already, but you know that. What you don’t know is just how proud I am of you. You were born for this, and no one could possibly be able to handle such a demanding job as well as you. I saw the joy in your eyes when we agreed in your taking the mission. And although I cried, and I complained, and it seemed like I hated the idea, the reality is that, more than anything, I was and am happy for you. I guess I was just scared—I’m still scared, but I know that this is how our life was meant to be, and I’m prepared for it. And proud—did I mention I’m proud of you?

Anyway, know that even while we are millions of miles apart, my heart will always be with you. Ten years is not long. I’m sad that for most of the journey I won’t be able to hear from you, but you’ll be able to hear from me, and I promise that I’ll have mission control pass my messages along to you every day.

So this is the first of many many reminders of the person you are leaving back on earth, but also the love that you are bringing with you.

Kate

There was a lipstick kiss left on the bottom of the message, and Colonel James Fowler lightly outlined the soft red with his fingertips. The enormity of his mission was still sinking in, and the personal details were part of that. Ten years away from his wife. They hadn’t even been married five years yet.

Fowler shook his head and tucked the message back behind the last page. Once the Lewis & Clark launched safely he would have plenty of time to think about his future—their future. Plenty of time.

###

As Fowler looked out at the Lewis & Clark, he had trouble seeing the capsule where he would be spending nine of the next ten years. As far as he could see there was nothing but an enormous square sail. Layered in photon absorbing material, the sail was dark.

http://www.sfwa.org/2012/02/2011-nebula-awards-nominees-announced/

I continue to be amazed and enjoy the popularity of steampunk, which was in full force last night. The fun costumes, and the swashbucking fiction, and the creative artwork is so fun.

I’ve so far written three stories, and a few things are becoming clear. One is that I’m not very comfortable at writing this length. While I can certainly write at shorter length, and I think I can create compelling stories while doing so, they aren’t the kind of stories that I enjoy writing. I like to really dig into the emotional undercurrents that live within science fiction and fantasy, and that is nearly impossible to do at this length. In a lot of ways I enjoy the tapestry of life and how all the threads illustrate a scene, a story, a situation, and that kind of rich view requires more than 750 words, that’s for sure.

I do want to note that you can certainly achieve a high level of emotion in a flash piece, but it is generally intense and highly situational. The emotion runs strong but is not very nuanced. As a writer, I miss the nuance. I like the nuance. I need the nuance.

So flash isn’t a length that feels natural to me. Still, it can be fun to write, and I definitely see myself occasionally dabbling in it. Just not very often.

One of the reasons they aren’t taught is that the subject is incredibly complex. It is often much easier to just tell writers to read a lot and to use the lessons from the prose they are reading as a guide. The trouble is that I’m just not sure how effective that is. Be that as it may, let’s take a look at  the most basic of prose tools, the simple period.

A period, as with most punctuation, has really only two jobs: To provide clarity and to provide rhythm. The clarity is simple enough–we use periods to let us know when a subject completes an action in a self-contained manner. Jack runs. Sarah reads. Toby presses the button on the microwave. Those sentences make sense because there is a period there. Try to parse this sentence:

Sarah reads Toby presses the button on the microwave Jack runs

It’s confusing. We need the period to provide a clarity that doesn’t exist otherwise. So in the writer’s toolbox, the period is pretty important. But, wait, the period also has a more subtle job–it helps convey rhythm as a device that means “stop.” It is here that things start to break down for the writing instructor, because rhythm is very much relative and clarity and rhythm are often in conflict. Summarizing simple rules for the period is thus a formidable task. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples why.

Let’s first take a quick look at rhythm. Rhythm is how the words and sentences flow as a reader reads them in his or her mind. Rhythm can be short and sharp:

There was a crash as the car slammed into the house. Siding fell onto the hood. A single brick dropped onto the windshield, creating a spiderweb of glass. John felt his forehead. At least he wasn’t bleeding.

Each sentence is intended to be foreground and consumed as a whole. This, this, and this happened. The rhythm of the prose tells us read-stop-read-stop.

Sentence rhythm can also flow like a single thought told in multiple sentences. Here’s Nick talking to Jay Gatsby. Note how this is all really one thought told in a few sentences, and as you read it there are no real hard pauses, even though there are periods. In this instance, the flow of the words overwhelm the pauses a period would normally demand:

I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time.

There is actually a slight pause after the first period, which just goes to show you how difficult this is to discuss.

Beginning writers often see comments like “stilted prose” or “awkward prose,” and this is very much an indication of not “hearing” how sentences flow to the reader. One valuable solution for someone frustrated over seeing lots of criticisms like this but not knowing what he or she is doing wrong is to read your work to yourself. Spoken word demands a rhythm, and often you will be shocked at how different your prose reads when it is spoken aloud versus in your head.

But what defines stilted prose? Generally speaking, prose is awkward when it is written without any real effect in mind. It is solely put on the page to get the message across. This is a common problem across all of prose tools today. With the period–and rhythm specficially–it means that the writer doesn’t know why he or she is putting the periods where they are. Note: The sentences may be clear, because that is certainly one of the jobs of the period, but they sound off.

In other words, whenever you use a period to construct a sentence–especially when you are revising–you need to know why you have made the choices you have made. It just isn’t enough to “wing it” until you have become accomplished enough that criticism of stilted prose are no longer aimed at you.

Okay, back to the simple elegant period and why this is very complex. We are told that a comma indicates a short stop, and a period indicates a longer stop. This is often true, but not always so. The words also have a huge impact. You can have a long paragraph of many sentences that reads as one flowing thought. But how is that so?

It is so because advanced writers know that more than just a period affects rhythm. The result we often find are writers who “break the rules” because the tool just isn’t getting the job done. And this is critical, because authors with great prose don’t start with the tool (such as a period); they start with the effect they are going for. After they examine the various tools at their disposal, they pick the best tool for the job. Sometimes it’s a period. Sometimes it’s not.

Let’s look at an example from a story I wrote recently:

We’ve isolated the failure to the rotating part of the fan structure. The moment he fixes it, the blades will turn, and he’ll be knocked off. It’s a long fall.

Now it was important to me to have a very hard pause between “knocked off” and “it’s a long fall.” Why? Because the person he is talking to has never been in the structure. The person speaking realizes this and quickly adds the “it’s a long fall” line to let him know it will most likely be fatal without saying it explicitly. Now normally I would use something like “there was no response, so he continued, ‘It’s a long fall.’” That neatly solves my problem, but there is one issue–I had already used a similar technique earlier in the paragraph. This put me in a conundrum. I really wanted to have a very hard stop after “knocked off,” but the sentence rhythm and the period didn’t stop long enough on their own. I had to artificially create this stop somehow.

You can come up with your own solution (including the conclusion that this isn’t a big enough problem worth worrying over), but the key takeaway here is that as you write your prose, think about how you want each sentence to be presented, and then make it happen. It’s something that will often be second nature, but there will always be moments where you’ll hear in your head a sentence not doing what you want it to do. That’s when you need to think about things like the period and it’s modest role–is it doing its job creating the rhythm you want or do you need to call in reinforcements.

So what a great way to launch 2012. I hope that your goals for the new year start off as well as mine have.

Despite my being thoroughly new to the science fiction and fantasy genres (I hadn’t followed them to any significant degree since I graduated high school) and my newness to the craft of writing fiction, I had what many writers would consider to be stupid goals for 2011–to sell two or three stories to professional markets. I sold one story in 2011 to a professional market, so I fell short of my goal.

Many writers would call my goals foolish, as they depend entirely on things outside of my control, but if I learned one thing in my many years in the entertainment industry, it’s that most of the goals worth striving for include many elements outside of your control. So while I can certainly understand aiming for specific goals like word count and submissions, those just aren’t inspiring enough for me, so I ignore tangible goals and focus on intangible achievements. Maybe I’m a masochist.

So, 2011–good start, but not quite as good as I had hoped.

Looking ahead to 2012, I have expanded my goals a bit:

1. Complete my YA fantasy novel in Q1
2. Sell my novel
3. Write at least one short story a month
4. Sell three or four stories to professional markets

Of course my immediate concern is to finish my novel, and that will be the focus of my writing efforts for the first part of the year. The good news is that I have a chunk already written, and I have it plotted.

I’m looking forward to a wonderful 2012, and I certainly hope that the year treats you well, too.

There are a number of external reasons for this, from my tendency to file away stories early in the submission process so that I can improve them later to the fact that I only submit to a few fiction publications. But the biggest reason, I believe, is that I’ve done a ton of experimentation in my writing over the past year. Looking over my stories, I see that I’ve used: an epistolary narrative, a non-linear narrative, a fairy tale, a story with nothing but dialog, and a brutally honest and adult story about genetically modified humans. None of these are what you would remotely call mainstream in presentation.

I title this post “experimentation,” but it could equally have been called “having fun,” because some of the choices I made in story structure or format was nothing more than to challenge myself and to have fun doing it. My fairy tale certainly fits the bill here, as does the story that contains nothing but dialog. I set myself the challenge of writing a story like that, and I did. Mind you, I think they’re good stories, but their presentation is decidedly uncommon.

But more than half of the stories that were atypical in structure or presentation weren’t created with any particular style or structure in mind. The story and how it needed to be told demanded it. This was true of the epistolary story I sold to Lightspeed, and the non-linear narrative I turned into a novella. So it’s not just about having fun but also picking the right tool from the writing toolbox for the job at hand.

I foresee continuing to use all those tools in 2012, so we’ll see how mass-appeal my short fiction will be, but one thing is certain–I’ll have fun doing it.