The Learning Curve

Pensive Mood Kyrie says, "I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all here today..."

(Okay, not really. Really Mood Kyrie was saying, "You're not thinking of taking my bone, are you?")

Being in a thoughtful mood this evening, and having promised a new blog entry, and having been remiss in my bloggerly duties (I know, not a real word, but "bloggerly" is pretty awesome even so), I am here now to talk about the learning curve of writing.

This isn't about the four million words of crap you supposedly have to write. (Or was it one million? I've lost count. And anyway I always assumed that, like swing dancing, I would take four times as long to learn the same steps as everyone else.) Rather it is about how you work so hard, you're getting good feedback, you think you've gotten better, you're starting to feel encouraged...

And then you read something else and realize you're not even partway up the mountain--you're barely in the foothills.

In the last year I've been learning a lot. I realized that I would have no idea how to set about editing my novel, for one thing. So I wrote a bunch of short stories and tried to figure out how a short story actually works. Harder than it seems, by the way, as I am the sort of reader who hasn't really sought out short stories. I am much more fond of novels. And my writing resembles noveling. Which is fine until you realize that you're writing a short story, not a novel.

But I digress.

The point is that I think I have finally figured out how a short story actually works, and in attempting to edit my own hopelessly sprawling short fiction I managed to learn enough about self-editing to feel that I wouldn't make a total hash of the rewrite/editing of my novel. I honestly can say I would have had no idea about how to even begin to edit _East of the Sun_ if I hadn't spent the last year or so battling with short fiction.

I've read some writers who say that short stories really have nothing much in common with novels and that trying to write one to learn more about the other isn't the best use of your time. I would have to disagree. All stories, of whatever length, are about story, after all. For a wordy, rambling writer like me, learning to create a credible story in under eight thousand (the last one was only FIVE thousand! I almost swooned...) words is a very valuable lesson in how to trim the dross off of your fiction.

So. I have successfully slimmed my stories. I have gotten some very encouraging rejections from Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and even Tor.com. I am starting to feel like I might just write something very soon that someone might want to buy.

Then I went to the bookstore this past weekend and picked up Elizabeth George's _Write Away_. It's less a how-to and more an exploration of her own writing process. I find that stuff fascinating and have always loved George's mysteries--like my other fav P.D. James, she's a master of the literary mystery. Her characterizations and prose are deep and fluid enough to drown in.

This, however, along with being a wonderful read, exposed to my poor beginning-writer brain exactly where in the foothills of writing I was. It was like plotting my course with a topographical map and compass, and then getting cell phone reception and glancing at the GPS and finding out that you might, perhaps, have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

To be fair, not a wrong turn...just that you weren't as far along as you thought. There are always those wake-up calls where you realize that you have a lot to learn yet, and this is one of those.

On the one hand, I am ever so much better at the writing craft than I was two or three years ago. On the other hand, I am realizing that the learning curve for writing (like other forms of art that I have practiced) is two things.

First, it is actually a very gradual slope. A little epiphany here, a jump in logic there, a phrase that triggers a little light in the brain along a little farther there.

However, it is an INFINITE slope with many different trails. And no matter how far along you think you are in one moment, in the next you will turn around and read something that seems to expand the accordion of your brain (with accompanying wheezing and settling dust). I think that even seasoned authors must do that--they must read other authors and just have a moment of pause where they're like, "Well. THAT was well done." And maybe, for a second, they wish they'd written it.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I am also going back to re-read that damn book this weekend. And this time, like the student I am, I am taking notes.