Why Write?

A reflective piece on writing. Also a breakdown on my path to becoming a pulp writer

Storytelling has always been an activity for me. My first affair with creativity started when I was five or six years old drawing freehand; sketching odd characters, stick-figure swordsmen, and superheroes on clean printer paper stolen from my dad’s desk. Sketching morphed into painting watercolors of my mother’s flowers and plants on the windowsill around seven years old. Soon after I learned how to read and write, I picked up writing comics.

Cutting up printer paper, drawing characters with colored pencils, writing oversized word bubbles and stapling them together, I wrote my first ingenious comic book - Lego Man, inspired by my obsession of watching reruns of the 1980 Inspector Gadget cartoon and building random LEGO bricks of course. The result was a three-issue series of a man caught in a freak explosion and reassembled with LEGO bricks in order to fight crime. I’m saddened to say that this fine piece of children’s literature I crafted has gone the way of the Dodo bird after many days and nights searching my old bedroom. Like most of my childhood works, nothing remains. They are nothing more than found memories now.

I don’t remember what prompted my young mind to pickup a pen or brush or a pencil in the first place. Do any of us know?

What compels a young person to tell themselves, “Yeah I can make a comic book/write a story/make art. Children have no shortage of imagination, but when does the first spark ignite for a person to make art? I’d be curious to know when you, dear reader, first felt called to make something?

Why Write?

Writing never came natural to me and it still doesn’t, but I’ve always felt drawn to it. For me, it was the most inexpensive way to build and create characters in interesting settings where they get into some kind of trouble. Storytelling through the written word allowed me to keep playing in the sandbox and keep that child-like wonder that many people grow out of.

Writing stories of adventure, science fiction, terror, and fantasy gave me a form of escapism from a dull and lackluster upbringing. Growing up in such an environment forced my young mind to always ask “what if X happened?” The seeds of creativity were planted along with an addiction for escapist literature.

Writing offers clarity of thoughts. It allows the expansion of new ideas and gives your subconscious permission to play with nothing held back.

Writing offers you freedom. You are free to pick up a pen and scribble in a cheap journal as you wish. In most (not all) areas of the world you and with the power of the internet and independent publishing, you are free to publish your essays, fiction, blog, letters, everything as you wish.

I believe there is only upside to writing. A child who picks up the pen and spends a quiet evening alone with a blank journal is bound for something great in my opinion.

I write simply because I must. Because I am pulled by its seductive force. It won’t leave me alone and I pray that it never does. My mind is littered with ideas, plots, and characters that I can’t get out fast enough. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again:

Writing is my sickness and I refuse to be cured.

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A Rundown of My Path to Becoming a Pulp Writer

There was a question regarding my last post on how I plan to do all this; a rundown of how this will work. I’ve laid it out below but no that it’s not set in stone. This is part of my experiment.

The mission is to become a professional writer using the same attitude and work ethic some of the most successful writers had during the pulp era of the ‘20s until ‘50s. No “starving artist” bullsh*t. No waiting for inspiration. It all comes down to three things: Write Fast, Write Clean, Publish Often. Or as Science Fiction writer Robert Heinlein infamously wrote for beginning writers:

1. You must write

2. You must finish

3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order¹

4. You must put it on the market

5. You must keep it on the market until sold

These rules are simple to understand but difficult to follow. But these are the rules I will live by.

Step One: Write and Write Fast

When I say “Write Fast” I mean writing often.

Butt + Chair x Typing = Writing

Keeping myself honest, I’ll publish my daily word counts on here in a weekly fashion in a Sunday Edition of this newsletter. The goal is one short story a week. Stories range from 500 words (flash fiction) to 6,000 word limit.

This step is all about establishing the process of showing up and writing new words on the page. Day in and day out. During the Great Depression, if a pulp writer didn’t write he couldn’t eat. Same attitude here.

Step Two: Write Clean

I don’t believe in writing a shit draft for the sake of writing a shit draft. This idea is popular among many writers who participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Bang out a draft and clean it up in the second or third draft.

No thank you. I think that’s more work and often deters beginning writers. They write a sloppy 50k draft and then never bother to go back and edit. They abandon the project. Pulp writers hardly had more than one draft unless their editors requested it. Remember they were working on a manual typewriter!

Instead, I’ll edit as I go and hand over the finished story to my first reader (my wife) who usually catches my typos and errors. She also has no problem telling me if the story sucks. :)

Step Three: Publish Often

As Heinlein says in Rule #4, you must put it on the market. Since I’ll be focusing on short fiction every story I write will be sent out to a professional magazine paying a professional rate of at least 5 cents a word. Using online databases such as The Submission Grinder and Duotrope has made the search for paying markets easy.

I’ve made a list of 44 paying markets already that I will reference. That’s just off of one database too. As writer Douglas Smith says in his book Playing the Short Game:

“It’s a numbers game. The more fiction you’ve written and you have out in front of editors at professional markets, the better your chances of success.

If I haven’t sold a story (or I’ve run out of markets to send it to) I’ll publish it on this newsletter.

Step Four: Study, Study, Study

When I’m not writing, you will find me reading. I’ll be working through my library of short story collections of westerns, science fiction, crime, mystery, you name it. Reading fiction will not only help me with learning craft but it will also keep my creative well full of new ideas and genres to experiment with.

Step Five: Have Fun!

As I said before, storytelling has always been an activity for me. Making stuff up unlocks my inner child and allows him to have fun every time. If I find myself bored while writing a story, then the reader will find it boring to. For this experiment, I won’t be writing-to-market or writing to some hot, new trend. Instead, I’ll write the stories I simply want to read and that I think would be interesting. Having fun is the great secret.

That’s all, folks. These are the steps I’m taking to make this work. I don’t know how long will take to get to a professional level but I’m determined to get there as long as I can. As Harlan Ellison wrote:

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”

If you wish to support this journey of madness, you can buy me a coffee down below to help power the long nights of pumping out fiction. I appreciate the fuel.

1. The third rule always gets people upset but from what I understand, this rule applies to beginners who do nothing but polish and edit their stories to death. They spend 10 years writing and rewriting the same story until it’s “perfect”.