So, Publishing...

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.” - Sylvia Plath

Do I need to justify myself? Does anybody care that I have always written, but never published? I used to care. But now, at 69 (my favorite year) I’m at peace with it. It’s not that I have all that many rejection letters. It’s just that when I submitted what I thought was my best work, those few rejections stung, and I was daunted.

I started writing in grammar school. Stories of vampires and werewolves, and rockets to the stars. One early story was of a werewolf astronaut that travels to a moon where he hopes that could change at will instead of being trapped in the lunar cycle of Earth. But, tragically, on landing he found that the moon’s soil was high in silver. My mother read the story and scoffed. She said, “Why do you want to write that garbage?”

Why? When Sturgeon’s law applies to everything? When 90% of all writing is garbage? I didn’t ask myself why. I just kept writing. I wrote imaginative fiction. I wanted to be another Bradbury, or Asimov, or Heinlein, or LeGuin, but I’m not a genius. I imagined that perseverance and practice would be enough. I wrote stories and poetry. I wrote Fantasy and Science Fiction. I started and scrapped a dozen novels, eventually concluding that I could not sustain the level of effort needed.

Then two things happened.

First, my mother-in-law passed away. At the hospital, on the deathwatch, my 12 year-old daughter, Sofia, and I walked the halls, anxiously waiting the results of a desperate surgery. One morning, as we were walking, she told me that she wanted to write a story. It would be set on another planet filled with fantastic creatures. She spun the story out, and I pulled out my notebook (all writers have that handy, no?) and started to take notes. What she told me was not like any story that I had heard.

Second, Covid hit and I had to work from home (I was in IT working for the US Census). Suddenly, I had an extra two hours in my day, since I no longer had to commute. On a lark, I asked Sofia if she was serious about her story and if she wanted to work on it. We spent a year discussing the story, world building and characterization and plotting.

I treated the novel like an IT project. (Which sounds boring, I know.) I spent each week writing. I used the Scrivener application and set a 950 word per day goal. We had story conferences every week to review and edit the pages. We discussed plot problems, dialogue, and characterization. (BTW, Sofia is now 18 and working on a screenplay. I’m so proud.) After 8 months I had a first draft. I spent another two months editing and rewriting.

My first finished novel. 88,900 words. A lifelong ambition realized.

I sent the manuscript to friends and family to read, but got very little response. Really? Talking animals and weird creatures? Dragons and Gryphons and talking giant beavers, all stirred into a story of empire and political machinations? And science/magic? My brothers were encouraging, but I didn’t feel the work was ready or even worthy to publish. My mother’s words came back to me, and I let the novel sit.

It sat for two years.

Sofia has moved on to her own projects (currently art and writing related to an obsession with the music group Gorillaz). I’ve retired from IT and have been spending my time preparing for total atomic annihilation by playing Fallout 4 (gaming is what got me building computers over 30 years ago). But lately, I’ve been first reader for Sofia’s new script project and suggested that she use Scrivener.

Yesterday, I opened the program and there was our novel,
Heyna’s Tale.” Sofia said, “Yeah, Pop, I’ll get it published after you die.” It was a joke (we have that kind if relationship). But I started rereading the work and immediately started editing, again. I wondered, do I have to die? To get it published, I mean. Then I thought Substack, what the hell?

So, here I am. With my first Substack post. Always a reader (mostly politics) never a publisher, on the my 70th trip around Sol and on the verge of a new frontier. So, if you’re interested, the next post is the weird Dunsany inspired introduction to “Heyna’s Tale.” Let me know what you think.