Writing and Publishing Fiction

The Italo Calvino novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler, opened me up to a completely different type of story-telling. First, the story is written in the second person point of view. You know the second person, that point of view you are warned not even to try, because it is nearly impossible to make it work, but every writer at some point tries anyway. Well, Calvino pulls it off. How?

The knock against second person is that the writer doesn’t know anything about the reader, so how can the writer pretend to know how the reader would think or feel any of things that the writer assigns to the second person character. In this case the bridge is made by identifying with the reader as a reader and nothing else, simply someone who is beginning to read a Italo Calvino’s book, If on a winter’s night a traveler.

I have read stories that have started off rather badly in my opinion with an extended physical description of the main character. In some cases, every new character is introduced with an extended physical description. Of course, these descriptions include a distinguishing trait, because somewhere someone said that would make the character more believable.

I have found quite the opposite to be true, where the distinguishing trait more often results in a crazy character circus of individuals with strange mannerisms, deranged senses of fashion, and obscure disabilities and ailments. They unintentionally become self-conscious caricatures of a character description that don’t contribute to the story or even the character. These quirks have the same effect as wearing a loud tie—memorable but not palatable.

Way back when I was more earnestly learning the craft of writing, I was reading through several different books on writing fiction. Almost immediately, I felt that I was reading the same book over and over again. It was if they were all cribbing from the same set of Cliff Notes. Show don’t tell. Give your characters a distinctive trait.

Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers was different, both philosophical and practical. Academic and grounded. Finally, a guide to writing that went beyond storytelling abstractions or superficial suggestions on character development, plotting, point of view, and themes.

While most of the rejections I ever received were of the form letter variety (“not at this time” or “does not fit our current needs”), I did get two that encouraged me to keep trying, perhaps for longer than was good for me.

Rejection #1

The first rejection was for a story that I had written and revised in my first writing workshop while I was pursuing a BA. It included an encouraging note with suggested changes that would improve the story. Not only did this rejection encourage me to submit and submit, it encouraged me to resubmit this particular story over and over again.