An Anxiety of Influence

by Steve Chapman

My story The Driver was written “in the style of” Ray Bradbury and published in Penumbra’s Bradbury tribute issue. In the wake of that story (of which I’m quite fond), a number of “in the style of” projects caught my eye, anthologies of new stories written in tribute to Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, and Roger Zelazny, to name the first three that come to mind.

My first impulse was discomfort. Was all this tributing a bad idea? Shouldn’t writers be developing their own distinct voices, rather than trying to ape their forebears?

There have always been tribute books and stories in the relatively small neighborhood of speculative fiction. Motivations of genuine celebration and pragmatic brand extension drive such enterprises, often a bit of both. For an author, trying on a different, distinctive voice can be fun and instructive. That had been my experience on the Bradbury story. But what does the reader get out of it?

It struck me that there’s a voluminous SFF tradition of stories written “in the style of” H.P. Lovecraft going back twenty years at least, that once upon a time I was pretty familiar with. When I was younger, having run out of actual Lovecraft, I would hunt down these secondhand stories hoping to extract some fraction of the pleasure I got from the real thing.

That didn’t happen often, but over time I was struck by the fact that my enjoyment of such stories often came from writers bringing distinct voices to bear on the original material. Fred Chappell and Ramsey Campbell jump to mind as authors who applied their own style and concerns to Lovecraftian tropes, creating striking stories and novels. In a different mode, but equally pleasurable, are Neil Gaiman’s Lovecraft pastiches – deconstructive and humorous more often than not.

So there are clearly modes of writing ‘in tribute’ that result in quality work.

I wonder if I suffered little of this anxiety of influence in writing the Penumbra tribute because Bradbury has always seemed to me ground zero for story construction. A Bradburyesque story requires a clear, simple SFF concept, evocative but straightforward prose, and a fable-like insistence on teasing out the emotional meaning of the concept. This has always seemed to me like an essential thing to know how to do – not as well as Bradbury, of course, but necessary in the manner of basic draftsmanship to a painter.

What I learned from that story is that writing ‘in the style of’ Bradbury meant a striking concept, unfussy writing, and a clear emotional through line, requirements not so different from simply “write a good story.” For someone else, another writer might fill this position. Perhaps to an author there is real value in imitating/interrogating the styles of the authors who feel most essential to you.

A lapsed musician and engineer, Steve Chapman lives with his wife and daughter at the New Jersey shore. Though he spends most days high above Times Square, in the evenings he can hear the ocean. Recent stories can be round in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress 27, the Harrow Press anthology Mortis Operandi, and the January 2013 issue of Penumbra.

A Moment with Steve Chapman

Do you write a story before you find a market for it, or do you find the market before you write the story? Why does this method work with you?

At the risk of appearing to dodge the question, my honest answer is that I write stories both for particular markets and without the hope of a market. As a matter of practicality, my writing gets divided into two separate workflows, each following a different method.

In the first, I focus on the submission deadlines for the likely markets, magazines or editors whom I’ve sold to before or who regularly publish short fiction that feels copacetic with my own. These markets represent a better probability of a sale, or at least suggest that I’ve a good feel for what their editors are seeking, so from a business perspective it only makes sense to pay close attention to them and to try to write to their themes and specifications. So this is what I do. This is my responsible workflow.

But it doesn’t always work for me, because this isn’t the way I like to write.
I come up with many more ideas than I’m ever going to have the time to execute, and I know from experience that I do my best work when an idea I’m excited about resolves itself into a workable structure. I do my least-inspired writing when I’m stuck with a topic/deadline that isn’t striking any imaginative sparks.

So I maintain a second (irresponsible?) workflow that’s all about whatever idea or character or situation I’m most excited to flesh out. This can end up being nothing more than mental doodling, but sometimes these sketches cohere into the fundamentals of a story. When this happens I’ll happily put other projects aside to work on the story that wants to be written.

In the past this approach has generated some of my favorite stories--which is not always the same thing as producing stories that have sold. While this approach is fun and rewarding for the writing itself, it can often result in a story without likely markets, which has to be put aside until a new market presents itself.

But there’s an extra benefit to this juggling of methods. One of the ways I generate and maintain enthusiasm for writing through long weeks of day jobbing, where little writing gets done, is to keep a rolling task list. That way I can see at a glance that I have to carve out seven hours of writing time from the coming weekend or else potentially world-bothering stories A, B, and C are never going to get outlined/written/revised. A trick that has proven endlessly helpful is to put the story I desperately want to write on the list behind the story that I should write, so that working on the new, shiny idea becomes the reward for responsibly working my way through the previously scheduled tasks, the literary equivalent of a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie.

It can be difficult to shift focus between multiple projects, but I’ve learned over time that it pays to follow my muse unless I’m up against a hard and fast deadline. At least for the moment this dual approach is working reasonably well as a method of balancing inspiration and perspiration.

A lapsed musician and engineer, Steve Chapman lives with his wife and daughter at the New Jersey shore. Though he spends most days high above Times Square, in the evenings he can hear the ocean. Recent stories can be round in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress 27, the Harrow Press anthology Mortis Operandi, and the January 2013 issue of Penumbra.