After college, as I was deciding what to do about not becoming a veterinarian, I tried my hand at writing. I produced the outline and opening chapters of a fantasy novel, and a short story based on a Deep Purple song, “Blind”. Then graduate school called, and I gave up on writing again.
Over the next two decades, I sent out “Blind” every couple of years, with no result – mostly with no answer at all. Meanwhile, my writing process consisted of: 1) waiting for inspiration to strike, and 2) hoping to be near a keyboard or pen when that happened. It’s surprising how rarely the two coincide. My total output was essentially nil, though I did keep my ‘idea’ file regularly topped up.
In the fall of 2010, something changed – Absent Willow Review (now sadly defunct), accepted “Blind”, the story I’d been sending around for so long. When the shock wore off, I sat down to think. Clearly, my inspiration-based process wasn’t working; twenty years is a pretty fair test period. At the same time, I was working as a short-term consultant; I had time free between gigs. I’m pretty serious about my work. Why not do what so many people recommend, and treat writing as a job?
As with an annoyingly high percentage of popular wisdom, it worked. Every day, after an hour futzing around doing nothing, I would find my rhythm, and the words would pour out. At one point, I was writing a story a day – good ones! I found myself racing to complete stories before the mailman arrived, so that I could send them to those irritating magazines that only accept hardcopies. I was about to burst onto the writing scene in a big way!
Or maybe in a small way. My scintillating prose didn’t seem to wow the editors (it may be that the whole type-and-send approach deserved a rethink). Equally important, I accepted a full-time job, and my period of high production came to a close after only two months.
I kept writing new stories, but at a much slower rate – perhaps one a quarter, if I was lucky. One such was “Tocsin”, inspired by Thomas Covenant; at least, I was reading the latest by Stephen Donaldson, and he used the word. My immediate reaction was “Hey! [Fellow writer] Fran Wilde could use that” as the title for a story of hers that I loved, and which involved ships, a bell, and mysterious disappearances. Unfortunately, her story was more hopeful and uplifting, and I decided the title didn’t fit after all. So I was left with a clever title but no story to go with it. “Tocsin”, with its steady rhythm and echoes of John Donne, is what I came up with.
Despite my meager output, I’d been selling stories occasionally to ‘semi-pro’ venues during 2011 and 2012, and I’d reconciled to the idea of taking the world by light breeze, instead of by storm. Then, in February this year, Penumbra accepted “Tocsin” for its Ocean-themed issue. My first ‘professional’ sale!
Real world requirements have prevented much new writing this year, so the Penumbra sale didn’t open the floodgates, but there are several stories due in anthologies in the near future (including “Blind”, I’m happy to say). I’ve also been experimenting with self-publishing – a few stories, two collections, a novella.
It’s been a long, leisurely path from Alfred the Orange Donkey to here, but I like to think that he’d be pleased with the result. Despite the slowdown in production at the story factory, there’s a sizeable batch of new stories awaiting finishing touches, so there’s a chance that light breeze will pick up soon. Keep your eyes open for a change in the weather!
B. Morris Allen grew up in a house full of books that traveled the world, and was initially a fan of Gogol and Dickens. Then, one cool night, he saw the light of Barsoom...
B. Morris has been a biochemist, an activist, and a lawyer. He pauses from time to time on the Oregon coast to recharge, but now he's back on the move, and the books are multiplying like mad. When he can, he works on his own contributions to speculative fiction.
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