Mastodawn

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 7 Nbr 12 — Do you agree with Ray Bradbury, who said, "Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things you're doomed"?

Short answer: Yes! (YMMV)

TD;LR answer: When I began writing in a different millennium, I was convinced that story ideas were precious, that there were only so many that I could come up with. This was likely my insecurity of matching the greats in the field like Andre Norton, Frank Herbert, Sprague de Camp, Poul Anderson... As a result, I wrote novels to fully utilize each idea, and bring in the big bucks. (As if.) Those were the days of the mid-list and there was always a thirst for more pulp to read. There were gatekeepers to overcome, however. Which I overcame, but I didn't take proper advantage of that. Don't let that be you.

I wrote short stories, too. Not many, and then stopped. Why? I couldn't sell them. The magazines weren't interested in what amounted to my practice stories in Bradbury's terms. I'm rejection adverse, and after a few tries, I learned my lesson.

The wrong lesson.

For lack of even getting my agent interested in my work, not to mention the publishers who hide behind that gatekeeper, I burnt out in 2001. Too many completed novels. Nobody reading them. Writing is primarily about communicating. What the heck was I doing with my free time? One life to live. Ought to enjoy it. Yada, yada...

When I started writing again in 2015, I decided what I needed was practice.

"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things you're doomed."

I actually had Bradbury in mind when I concluded I needed lots of practice. It allowed me to invest time. I started with essays, then moved on to short stories. I set a goal of writing 1st person, and went for it. That I could post, for free, what I wrote and have people actually read it, helped.

I quickly realized that ideas are a dime a dozen. Nobody has a copyright on any idea. It's the story you create from an idea that people copyright. It's what you do with your characters and what you choose to communicate with you words that make your stories special. Well, as special as they can get. Sturgeon's Law🗡️ applies, which is why writing story, after story, after story, after story, etm., is the only way to improve.

As a result, I've written approaching a million words in the last nine years. Most of them read by at least a few readers. I think I have a pretty good 1st person patter going on, and lots of stock characters I can fall into point of view with no difficulty. I can bring up a blank page without any negative emotion and fill it, because I know if the story doesn't work, I'll just write something else.

This is one of the reasons I love Mastodon. It doesn't take much to find a writing prompt, and at least a few readers. Using hashtag Writever and others, I've created dozens of stories with two to four hours effort. Each allows me to experiment, to level up my craft while working to eliminate my flaws—specifically lack of concision and ellipsis. (Okay, this essay is neither concise nor featuring ellipsis, but, well, um...)

So, /yes,/ Bradbury and Asimov were both geniuses. Both had diarrhea of the typewriter, and became brilliant after an amazing number of failures. How much did you practice to ride a bike? How many tries did it take you to conquer that video game? How many years writing did it take you to create a story somebody liked? (Oops, that one's the point of this essay, innit?)

🗡️https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

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