CHAPTER NINE

Learning the Unwritten Rules

In the late 1980s, after a three-year hiatus from the workshop, I started sending out stories for publication. I got a piece rejected (what else was new?) and the editor (at least I think it was the editor and not an assistant or intern) scrawled across the top of the first page, “learn the unwritten rules.”

Say what?

I had no idea what I did wrong. I still don’t.

What are the unwritten rules? What rules did I apparently break?

Did I explain the story in my cover letter? No. I knew that was a no-no. Did I say too much about being an unpublished author? I thought editors might like to know that. Did I go on and on about being a cab driver for a year? No. Well maybe a little. I figured that kind of bio info might be intriguing. My PhD mentor Robert L. Carringer said he once put a prospective professor on an interview short list because he flew helicopters in Vietnam. Anyway, did I paper clip the goddamn manuscript instead of stapling it? What the fuck did I do? Was there something about the story that broke rules? Shallow characters? Plot inconsistencies? Tonal shifts that made the prose uneven? Hmm.

You’ve heard of the Riddle of the Sphinx. Well this was the riddle of Gordon Lish.

He was the editor of the journal I received the scrawl from.

So out of this Riddle of the Lish mishegoss I’m hoping to provide some answers. For you. My suggestions on writing fiction are my attempts to lift the veil on some of the mysteries of storytelling. Consider what I say as my written rules that will lead to your success as an author. I certainly hope so. —Grant.

Workshop Etiquette

During an MLB broadcast Steve Stone once said, “I probably shook off more catchers than any other pitchers of my era.” He figured the W (win) or L (loss) goes next to his name in the record books not the catcher’s. So he took ownership of calling a game, the choice of pitches thrown in varying given circumstances.

I think writers should treat their work the way Steve Stone approached pitching.

It’s your work. You call the shots. Take ownership. Shake off some of the suggestions of the workshop.

Perhaps what I’m saying sounds like an anti-workshop position, but it isn’t. I think the writer is the final arbiter of what’s said about the work and should go with their gut. Take the advice that works but don’t try to please everyone. Be true to your vision. The job of the teacher is to not get in your way: encourage; point out what needs work; but never hijack the story. I don’t want you to write a Grant Tracey story; I want you to write your story.

I often look for variables, things that are already in the story, that can be further leaned into. When we write we juggle a bunch of plot dynamics and maybe we drop a ball or two that we should have kept juggling. That’s where I come in.

Okay, that’s a little abstract. But, let’s just put it plainly: I like writers who are a little stubborn.

As a teacher, I don’t see myself as a collaborator. The work is yours. My job is to help you realize what’s in the work and find ways for you to make it the best it can be. My name doesn’t go on the work when it appears in print. Yours does. I’m Steve Stone’s catcher that now and againa needs to be shaken off.

A buddy of mine says he always tries to find a third way. There’s what he wrote; then there’s an editor’s suggestion, sometimes a line edit with a strongly worded revision recommendation; and then there’s the third way: take into account what the editor said, but make it your own. Write toward what the editor suggested without copping their voice. Make it your publishing W (as in win). Not yours and the editor’s.

For the writer

Remain quiet while your work is being discussed. Take notes and listen. When the discussion is finished, I let the student writer ask some questions that weren’t addressed during the workshop. I also, ahead of time, allow the student to ask up to three craft questions that they can list at the end of their manuscript. Few take me up on this offer, but if they do it allows them to take some agency with regard to what we focus on in class.

I begin with what’s working, focusing on cookies. Nomnomnom. Then I move to the questions (if there are any at the end of the manuscript), and then conclude with what’s not working. I then ask the writer if they have any additional questions for us.

For the workshoppers

Read the story three times. Yes. Three times. The first time just get a feel for it. What’s its intentions? What kind of story is it? Place it in a tradition. How well does it play by the rules it sets up for itself? I believe in textual intentions, not necessarily writer’s intentions. The text is always bigger than us. We writers don’t always know what we’re doing. There are so many happy accidents, and if we’re really channeling the world it will surprise us.

On a second read, activate the text, commenting on what’s working and not working. Be specific. Don’t just write “good.” What makes a particular turn of phrase or character choice interesting or good?

On the third read make sure to conclude with a long end comment that summarizes your findings for the work. Sign your comments. We stand by our words.

Recently, I asked my students what they thought their responsibilities for worship were and their answers were striking. “Say something in class. Your voice is important and we want to hear your opinions.” “If I’m commenting in class on your work, I expect the same in return.” “Please write substantive comments on the manuscript—don’t just say this is good or this doesn’t work; but articulate why.” “Prioritize the class and invest the time; read the stories up for discussion carefully.”

One of my students strongly suggested that the work should be “finished”—not “half-baked.”

I get that. I had a friend, back in the 80s, who always put up stories that weren’t complete. “I’m going to get reamed anyway, so—” This struck me as a negative attitude and a kind of self-defensive armor—I don’t want to get “hurt” so I don’t want to put up my best. Put up your best. You owe it to yourself to take your work and yourself seriously as an artist.

I don’t believe a story is ever finished, but at some point we’re willing to let it go into the world. A workshop story should be something that you’re proud of, that you think is almost ready to send out but you need some help with to get it ready for prime time.

Oh, and I allow students to submit excerpts from novels in progress. Of course, this is kind of tricky. One, the chapter might not be self-contained and that makes iit hard to critique; and two, I don’t want to be suggesting to the writer where the novel needs to go next. So a light touch is required. —Grant

My Workshop Etiquette

I don’t believe a story should ever be half-baked. That, for me, leads to too much collaboration and a bunch of catchers getting a W or L next to their names. The writer is the pitcher. The rest of us are catchers. Know your roles.

In terms of making the workshop a safe place, we comment on the work, not the personality of the writer. Characters in a story don’t have to be moral; they just have to be interesting.

In the 1980s a female student once said about one of my stories, “You know nothing about women.” It really hurt. Okay, at the time, she was kind of right, but it wasn’t something to say aloud or embarrass me about in front of my fellow writers. It was a personal attack. Well, I just want to make the writing better, she later said to me at one of those parties where us grad students got to take home all the leftover bread and cheese. Maybe her heart was in the right place, but the comment still stings, even now when I recall it some forty years later.

Another workshop colleague once called my prose style “prosaic.” I didn’t know what that word meant, but I recognized the disdain with which the comment was made. I looked up the word once the workshop was done and I was turbo pissed. Simple? Okay, at the time I was heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver, but the comment implied not just simple but “simple minded.” I don’t ever want to see this nonsense in a class I teach.

Respect your fellow writers. It takes guts to put your work out on Front Street. That’s why, in my classes, we always applaud the writer and their work at the end of each workshop discussion. Moreover, the work is in me and I’m the work. What we write is personal and makes us very vulnerable. Keep that in mind when responding.

Kindness. I believe if you put positive energy into the universe you’ll get it in return.

Maybe that’s a little hey wow, but my Mom was into crystals, alternative medicines, Daoism. Deal.

Finally, I believe, a teacher should never be a gatekeeper. It’s not my job to say who has it and who doesn’t. Sure there are some people who have a greater facility with words and language, but I truly believe if you put in the time and effort and work on your craft you too can become a published author. I grade you against yourself, not against others in class. We’re all on the road of storytelling. We’re a community. —Grant

On Revision

For me, my stories fall under three revision categories: first draft ready; changing, restructuring, revising major sections; blowing the goddamn thing up.

First Draft Ready

About a quarter of my published stories were pretty close to first draft ready. By this I mean what I wrote in a white heat I stuck with. My impulses were good ones and I was in a state of flow. Any changes I made were cosmetic, adding a few details to enhance mood or nuances of dialogue, but the plot shape and narrative arc didn’t change at all. Alice Munro, when interviewed by the Nobel Prize Committee, said she hardly revises her more recent stories. She’s honed her craft, knows what she’s doing, and trusts her instincts. The more you write, the closer you’ll get to this kind of confidence, this feeling of being comfortable with uncertainty, knowing you’ll make the story work.

I’m a bit of an unrepentant Beat Generation guy. Or, I should say, the myth of the Beats. First draft ready. Trust your instincts, go with your impulses. First thought, best thought.

Blow the Damn Thing Up

Sometimes my impulses suck. Bad choices. First thought, bad thought.

I’d say that one fourth of my published stories were ones I completely hit the reboot button on. I opened a new file and didn’t even look at the older version. This approach came to me purely by accident. Literally. Some time in the 1980s my computer (a Leading Edge; yes, I’m dating myself) crashed and I lost the story I was hammering away on. I was bummed. But I didn’t leave the room. I started over. From scratch. My next draft was so much better. Key scenes from the first draft re-emerged, but I wasn’t stuck or beholden to my previous sentences, and choices. I made new discoveries.

And often this rebooted story, written in a white heat, is new draft ready (or close enough to send out). I can’t explain it, but usually when I do the blow the damn thing up approach the subsequent drafts of the reboot don’t take a lot of heavy lifting revising or mind bending rethinking ahead of their futures.

Needless to say, I turned this computer crashing experience into a productive ongoing revision strategy. My Master’s thesis at Kansas State featured three stories and a critical apparatus. I eventually published all three of those stories in literary magazines. Of those three one was first draft ready and the other two were blown up. “Truth or Dare” was pretty much the same story I wrote in 1985 (it appeared in Aethlon: the Journal of Sport Literature in 1992). “Strike” was a revision of “Fair or Foul” and I switched the emotional register from twelve year olds to twenty-something graduate students. None of the details were the same. None of the sentences of the original were echoed in the revision, but the main seed of the story—girls quitting a baseball team because of the boys’ sexism stayed at the heart of the new version “The Poem, 1969” became “Hockey Canada” and once again none of the sentences are echoed at all in the published version, but what remains consistent, the throughline between the drafts, is the theme, the central conflict: a grandson rooting for Canada and what it means to be Canadian taking on his grandfather (who because of his Slavic ancestry is rooting for the Russians) and holding on to his Old Country ways.

Re-structuring, Revising, Rethinking

Half of my published stories go through this process. It’s arduous and frustrating and difficult as I fiddle finding a lost impulse or a hidden inner story I’ve yet to discover. I believe writers juggle variables and often in this revision process I have to eliminate a variable and possibly add some new one. Sometimes a three scene story will evolve into a five or six scene story with more summary and interiority. Sometimes a theme or object in the background needs to be moved to the foreground. Sometimes what’s in the foreground needs to be displaced, removed. Sometimes a minor character needs to become a major player.

Steven Schwartz once said that this kind of revision is accordion like. If you stretch a scene in the final phase of the story, you may need to adjust something at the front end of the story to now make the clubhouse turn work. Changing one aspect affects many other choices. It’s not like you just fix one little thing here. No, this kind of revision often involves restructuring.

I find solving the riddles of these stories the most satisfying. Getting them right. Wow. —Grant

Process

I write my first draft fast and loose, like Eddie Felson playing pool (if you don’t get that reference watch The Hustler with Paul Newman and read Walter Tevis’s fine novel). I just want to get the yarn on the page without judgment. I shut off my censor and enter a zone that’s full of excitement and surprise. In this stage of euphoria I tend to walk around the room saying, “I’m a genius.”

Then, I put the draft aside for a few days. Let it cool off and begin the process of honestly accessing what’s working and what’s not working and thus begins the revising process. This is where I realize “I’m not all that and a bag of chips. Genius? Forget about it. Not even close.” Sometimes, I even need to let the story sit for a year. Because, damn it, I can’t fix it. At least not yet.

I’ve got a folder on my desktop called “No.” It’s full of over thirty failed stories that I’ve either abandoned or cobbled parts from for other stories that worked.

So what to do when I’m stuck? Or lost my way? Reading other fiction often helps me. I see how a writer solved a problem I’m having and I can borrow that craft choice and return to the work.

Moreover, devouring all kinds of narratives (I’m a junkie for the stuff from comic books to TV shows [“One Adam–12, roger”] to movies to crime novels to literary fiction to American drama) creates a filing system that’s in the back of my head that I can unconsciously tap into while composing and placing my events in a causal chain.

I don’t write every day. I wish I could, but I can’t.

I have to feel it, you know? And if I’m not feeling it, I’m not feeling it.

You’ll figure out your rhythms. Trust them. Don’t do what others say you should do; do what works for you. For me, I’ll write furiously for forty days or so and then take a breather and read, read, read, feeding the lake of ideas, readying for the next forty days of writing, revising, and writing. —Grant

Writing Communities

“The goal of the workshop is to get beyond the workshop,” my mentor Ben Nyberg once said to me, and I embrace this. Writing is a solitary activity and the introvert in me digs it. It makes me happy. It’s the most freeing feeling I ever experience in life just following impulses and enjoying the flow of the story’s energetic engine.

But that’s not to say I don’t seek out help when I’m stuck. But, for me, you need to find readers you trust, who have earned the right to see your vulnerability. They’re in the arena with you. They get you. It’s hard to find these kinds of people. I have three whom I trust: Marc Dickinson, a former student of mine, a helluva writer, and the best reader, ever, someone who reads all stories diligently, carefully; Jeremy Schraffenberger, fellow editor and friend who empathizes with what I’m trying to achieve and enters into the spirit of my work; and my daughter Elizabeth Tracey, who’s twice the writer I’ll ever be. She points out my inconsistencies. And she’s my sensitivity reader for my representations of queer characters.

When I was at Kansas State, the late Paul McCarthy, a soft-spoken professor of mine, said that in the 1950s, he was in the Iowa Writers Workshop. And every time a story of Flannery O’Connor’s was up for discussion, she left the room in tears. “They just didn’t get her.” Who needs that shit? I don’t want to be in a community of folks that don’t get me.

I prefer being on my own. Well, that is until I’m truly stuck (which isn’t that often). Thanks to Marc, Jeremy, and Elizabeth, Hall of Fame catchers all. —Grant

Literary Citizenship

It’s important to put yourself in the arena. Go to readings. Support local writers. Buy their books. Get involved in a literary magazine, if you can, and read, read, read.

Visit local bookstores.

Also, invest in all of the arts. See plays. Go to art galleries. Don’t stay locked in a box. Play guitar. Find things that you enjoy that free up your mind to create.

A few semesters ago, a talented YA writer, Jo Knowles, came to UNI, gave a great reading and several small talks on writing. Many tidbits of advice she gave I’ve taken up in my classes. Knowles said that for literary writers our world building centers around issues of power (who has it? who abuses it?). I love this advice, this way of thinking. The crime stories I write are invested in the melodramatic imagination, a world full of the powerful and the powerless.

The day Knowles came to visit my class, two of my most talented students (speculative fiction writers) didn’t attend. Maybe they were busy. I don’t know. I never heard from them as to why they were missing. If they didn’t attend because they thought a YA writer had nothing to offer them in terms of the craft, well then, shame on them. You can always learn something from leaning into other genres.

One of the most valuable workshops I ever took was a poetry workshop with Jonathan Holden. It helped me with my fiction, it taught me to pay greater attention to moment-by-moment language choices.

And I can’t tell you how much acting has helped me with my writing, making me more present (listening for the choices my characters make) and creating more subtexts to my dialogue and forcing my attention on what do my characters want and what are they willing to do to get it?

So cross genre boundaries. Embrace hybridity. You’ll be glad you did. —Grant

Politics and Writing

I’m all for it. As long as it’s integrated into storytelling and not proselytizing. Stories are meant to entertain.

I have two sets of crime stories I’m currently writing and publishing: one involves former Toronto Maple Leaf turned private eye, Hayden Fuller, and the other features an upstate New York cab driver and Korean War–veteran, Eddie Sands. Both series are set in the mid-1960s.

This creates a doubleness.

I’m aware of the times I live in and the times I’m writing about. I can’t be anachronistic. I can’t have Hayden make a crack like telling a female client, “I apologize for my gender,” but I can be aware of gender inequality and make sure my plots don’t fall into pernicious stereotypes or promote what once was “acceptable” (William Campbell Gault in his 1960s novels often disparages the queer community; John D MacDonald, in his 1950s novels, at times, leans into domestic violence as a way to keep a wife in line).

With Eddie Sands I lean into issues of PTSD. He’s a loner, a cab driver, and because of the horrors of war that he’s directly experienced he wants to protect the traumatized from further trauma.

I care about social justice and so does my PI (in this way he’s me). So my Fuller stories tackle abuse; of the young; of indigenous peoples (a knock at the door and aboriginal children of single mothers being marshaled off to residential schools); of unwed teen mothers. (under the Duplessis regime in Quebec single mothers and their children were cloistered away in asylums). I promote representations of women in positions of power (a superstar newspaper reporter; the head of the RCMP’s counter-intelligence branch).

I also like to flip traditional gender binaries. Stana Younger, Hayden’s former lover, begins the series as a lost love, slips into femme fatale mode, and then escapes this classification, becoming his lover again, and wife. I enjoyed playing with the dangerous female archetype and then thwarting expectations. No one can be defined around one truth. And I ultimately didn’t want to embrace an all-too common trope of noir films and pulp fiction.

So, that’s my spin as a writer placing myself in a somewhat irretrievable past. As a writer I want to move in the direction of being restorative. —Grant

On Publishing

What follows are some small pointers on publishing. My thoughts here are random and in a state of flow.

Cover letters

Three paragraphs. Intro: greetings; “please consider [title of your story] for publication in [title of journal], and maybe mention why you're submitting to the journal. Perhaps mention a story you read and liked that was recently published. Paragraph two: a bit about yourself; previous publications; interesting work you’ve done (perhaps involving community engagement); if you haven’t been previously published perhaps mention that. Paragraph three: a call-to-action. “I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.”

Keep it short. Don’t bloviate or brag. And never summarize or explain the story.

Near Misses

You got a near miss. An editor actually took time to say something nice about your work. Be encouraged. We don’t do this often and when we do we really do want to see more of your work. But don’t rush something off. Make sure it’s your best. Wow us.

Requests from Agents

This happened to me once in my life. I got a story, “Addition,” published in South Dakota Review and the Nat Sobel Agency wrote me a nice letter saying they admired my style, my crated, and wanted to see a novel, if I was working on one. Well, I was, and I rushed it off. Needless to say, it didn’t make it past the first reader, who didn’t read past the first chapter. I could tell because the novel was told from alternating third-person perspectives and there was no commentary of perspective two. Anyway, I never heard from the Nat Sobel Agency again.

Major bummer. My point? Don’t rush the work. Make sure it’s ready for prime time.

Where to send

I use DuoTrope as a search engine to find magazines to send to. Colleagues also suggest places that I should send my work.

I find I have to knock at the door a few times before an editor takes my work. So I like working with university publications and independents where the editorial staff is consistently the same. Some MFA–run magazines rotate editors every two–three years. I don’t like sending to those kinds of journals because it often takes me two-three years just to convince an editor that my work kicks ass. And if they’re gone in two–three years, I have to start the process all over again.

Submissions and All That

Most journals accept simultaneous submissions. I like to send out three copies of the same story. Three different magazines. As soon as one magazine rejects me I send to another one. Always have three copies of any story out in the world at a time. At least theoretically I try to do this.

Make sure you keep a log to track all your submissions. And once you get a story accepted, withdraw it from the other places it’s in process. This is just good practice and good etiquette.

If a journal says no simultaneous submissions respect their policy. If you mess up and they find out you multiply submitted you could get blacklisted. You don’t want to be that guy.

And if you enter a contest, make sure they say simultaneous submissions are okay. If not, either don’t submit or only submit to the contest.

My Story’s been Rejected Again and Again

Don’t despair. This is part of the process. Most literary journals only take up to 1% of all submissions sent their way. That means a lot of stories I read are publishable but I can only take so many. So, if you believe in your story, keep sending it out to new places.

However, if you start having doubts about your story do the ten-percent rule. Edit down the story by ten percent. Tighten the prose. Send it back out.

And, in time, if that doesn’t work and your doubts grow, linger, fester, honestly go back over the story and revise more radically. Ask a friend, a writer you trust, for advice. Seek their counsel (in the literary sense, not legal), and re-tool, re-think.

But if you’re truly confident in the work. Ride out those rejections. Remember, it only takes one editor to dig you. You’ll find that editor. —Grant