I have a new story just out in a wonderful collection called Love and Rockets. The collection is out of DAW Books and is edited by Kerrie Hughes and Martin H. Greenberg. It also has an introduction by Lois McMaster Bujold.
My story is called “Music in Time” and to be honest I’m very proud of it. A year from now I’ll get it out as an electronic story, but until then you’ll only be able to read it in the book.
The other authors in this book are Brenda Cooper, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jay Lake, Anita Ensal, Sylvia Kelso with Lillian Stewart Carl, Steven H. Silver, Donald J. Bingle, Shannon Page and Jay Lake, Kelly Swails, Jody Lynn Nye, Tim Waggoner, and the anchor story by my wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Her story is called “Drinking Games” and is flat wonderful.
I wrote a first attempt at my story, “Music in Time,” a number of years ago, but the story didn’t work. It even had an original Country Western song in it that I wrote called “My Farts Cry for You.” Not kidding. Lyrics and all.
But when Kerrie asked me for a story for this wonderful book, I remembered this story idea that I had failed on with the first attempt. So I just redrafted the same idea without looking at the first story at all. And I didn’t include any song lyrics. I remember the first story being somewhat unfocused, while this story I kept my focus because of the challenge of writing for this anthology. And that made all the difference.
I did not look at the first attempt and won’t, I just took the idea and this time I liked what I finished. And thankfully, Kerrie liked it as well.
Go find this anthology, folks. Trust me, with all these writers, you won’t be sorry.
On another note:
New short story challenge starts at midnight on Friday. I went upstairs two days ago and just sat and copied about fifty half-titles from a run of Ellery Queen Magazines, then on a second page I copies another fifty half-titles from a run of 1950s sf digests. Combining half a title from the Queens and half from the old sf digests should give me some interesting story titles to jump from.
The challenge to myself is to write 100 new short stories and get them up electronically for sale in 2011. And if Kris tells me a story should go to Queen or Asimov’s, that story won’t count in the challenge since it will go off into the mail to a traditional market. Plus I have a ton of other writing and work to do, so this is going to be fun and crazy. Stay tuned right here, I’ll detail it all out as it goes.
And go buy Love and Rockets. I’m really proud of that story.
Congrats on the story, Dean. Quick question, at the risk of sounding stupid, do you mean you literally took one half of a title from an older story and added it to the list? Like if a story was titled “The Black Dog Came to Roost” you wrote down either “The Black Dog” or “Came to Roost?” Or is ‘half-title’ something different?
Just curious. Sounds like a great way to generate ideas.
Jim, yes, if the title was “The Black Dog Came to Roost” then I just wrote down “The Black Dog” on my list. Never both halves, just one half or the other.
Then I’ll take one half from one list and one half from another and sometimes add in a word or two. My Nebula nominated story “In the Shade of the Slowboat Man” came from that challenge. “In the Shade” was half a title from one story in one magazine and “Slow Boat” was half a title from another magazine. As the challenge goes on starting on Saturday, I’ll show you how my sometimes off-kilter mind works with this sort of thing.
And I always cross off the half-titles from the lists as I use them.
Sounds awesome, Dean. Nice to hear the story turned out so well.
Also – wow! I’ve never thought of trying to come up with story titles that way. That’s a killer idea, thanks Dean!
I like the genesis of this story. Before the Internet age and the possibility of self-publishing old short stories, I went against all advice and simply discarded those that didn’t work.
But I never forgot them, and many a discarded story came back to life as better stories when I recalled the basic premise of the old story, and simply wrote a new story based on that.
Actually, James, Kris and I teach the very method I described. We call it “redrafting” which means taking the idea, not looking at the old draft at all, and just writing the manuscript again. It is way, way better than rewriting. I’ve always considered rewriting like trying to fix a sculpture you are carving out of stone and the arm has broken off. No amount of new carving will fix that. But taking a new block of stone and starting fresh can produce something wonderful. Different, but wonderful. I think any “rewriting” beyond fixing a few typos and mistakes a bad thing for most writers, unless trained how to do it such as the way Laura has trained herself and her method. But redrafting works wonders because the story is in your mind and you’re not stuck with a flawed communication device (manuscript original attempt) trying to tell the story.
So when people ask me what happens if I don’t rewrite, yet a story doesn’t work. I try it again with a brand new draft, never looking at the old draft. Very simple. But for those writers who think every word is golden and should always be saved and that practice isn’t a word that can be used with writing, my method makes them shudder.
“Redrafting”, huh? Nice to have a term for it. It’s something that always made sense to me, but I never had a good term for the process.