Blocked Writers

I wrote Science Fiction Stories in my teens and early 20s and then started up again when I turned 40. I had 20 years of ideas to write down and I sold all of these stories – more than 40 of them. I wrote as though I was going to submit the story to Astounding Magazine in 1955.

I stopped for a while and then started writing again a coupld of years ago. The stories that I write now are dark and complex, nothing like the stories that I used to write.

When I write now, I take a good idea and start working on it. If it takes a wrong turn I have no ability to turn back. I need to follow the story to the end. Sometimes I get a mood piece which has more in common with a poor imitation of a story from the Dubliners than a golden age of SF story.

These new stories don’t sell easily. I have sold a couple of reprints, a Magical Realism story, and an overly technical programming story. I am submitting the same set of stories to everyone in Ralan’s and get the same form responses.

I think that the markets want things they’ve seen before. These stories that I am writing surprise even me as I write them. I feel as though I have to keep writing to find out where the story goes and the story winds up to be nothing like what I thought it would be. They are not rewrites of the latest Hugo award winners. They move off the side and slide into an area just visible out of the corner of my eye.

There are more markets paying 6 cents a word or better than I have ever seen in Science Fiction. I count around 50 magazines and anthologies that pay these rates, and the penny a word or less sites are disappearing. I will keep sending these last half dozen stories out as long as the new venues pop up, but I will also expect the non-committal “Thank your for your submission, but…”