I have a wonderful office. It is a full building, where my writing office is the entire upstairs with a fantastic view of the Pacific Ocean. Downstairs is a kitchen, living room, and Kris and my business office. It is where we do all of our e-mail and I play on eBay. Kris has her own building as her office and we live in yet another building here in the compound.

Yeah, it doesn’t get any better. <g> See why we don’t travel much?

I am sitting at my downstairs e-mail computer now in our business area. A few days back, on one of the nice days, I turned and stared out the window at the yard after finishing up on some business. I just sat and stared, marveling at how beautiful it was with the flowers and the ocean beyond. So instead of turning back to this computer, I got up and took a picture.

So, here is a picture of what it looks like out the window from this computer.

Cheers, Dean

The one writing question I tend to get the most is a simple one. “Why do I write under so many names?”

I usually want to say, but never do, “Because I can.”

Actually, that’s the most accurate answer. But before I jump into that aspect of this, let me talk about the obvious business reasons.

1) I write in a number of different genres. A reader of one of my romance novels might not want to pick up a copy of one of my thrillers. So the best way to keep them apart is just use a different name.

2) Sales of books in different genres are at different levels, and sales numbers are tracked in computers by name. So I have a small 10,000 copy science fiction novel and a 40,000 copy romance. I don’t want those numbers confused in any sales meeting or computer generated sales orders. Thus different names.

3) Dean Wesley Smith is known as a tie-in writer. So I write a thriller under Dean Wesley Smith and every review starts, “Star Trek writer… ” Thus a different name for those as well.

4) Speed. I write too damn fast for one name. This industry limits an author (unless you are a brand name) to one or two or three books a year. So I can have two books under one name, another book under my real name, another book under yet another name, and no one in the business cares. How do you think I got to over 90 novels sold? One novel per year, starting when I was 37 when I sold my first novel, would make me on the upper side of 130 years old. Nope, I write too fast for this business, so guess what, I can be a lot of names.

5) I am a writer. I don’t have an ego about a name, or care in the slightest if someone knows a book is mine or not. I know it is mine, that’s all that matters. I once stood in Safeway late one night staring at the paperback section, just smiling.  I had three novels there under three names. One Trek under my own name and two others under other names. That was a cool thing. Most writers have trouble with this part of many names. They must have EVERYONE know it is their book for some ego reason or another. Get over it or write one or two books a year.

6) Making a living with my fiction. Let me think, one writing career (name) vs three or four writing careers (names) pumping money into the house? Which is better? Duh. I have three unseen roommates who pay expenses yet never eat or cost me a thing. And my wife Kris has two or three unseen roommates as well in her office bringing in money. Makes it a ton easier to make a living at this business when you have a bunch of names working.

So, those are the business reasons, plus a few other minor reasons. But let’s look at the real answer: “Because I can.”

An actor, an artist, a business person. They are all stuck with their name, their reputation, their faces. With the exception of a very few brand names like King, no one knows what a writer looks like. Our work is not attached to our face, just our name.

Our work is not attached to our age, or our skin color, or our social level. It is only attached to our name. And anyone can change a name at any point. Women often change their name when they get married. No big deal.

Writers have the freedom to change their name from story to story, novel to novel, always being a fresh young face in the field.

Once, way back in the ancient history, I did a new writer column for a magazine Orson Scott Card edited. My job was to find and point out the new writers coming in through the magazines and books. I was a new writer as well, so it fit. And I got to pick up the phone and call the editors to get information about the new writers they published. A great assignment that Scott gave me.

Every time I did this, I was shocked to discover that so many of the “new writers” I was discovering and loving were simply pen names of long established writers. In one issue of one magazine, the same author had three stories under three names. As a new writer myself, this stunned me, until I started to understand the clear meaning of it.

Here is what it meant:

— Editors couldn’t find enough good material, first off, so they turned to established professional writers to fill their pages because deadlines didn’t change. A monthly magazine had to be out every month.

— Professional writers could make more money having more names.

— Professional writers could be thought of as new writers, getting around the baggage they might carry with their own name.

— Many professional writers found it was fun to write something completely different from what they normally wrote, what their fans expected. So, for example, a hard sf writer could publish a high fantasy under a pen name and enjoy the task of writing it without fear of what it would mean to his own name.

And so on and so on.

I’m fast, I enjoy writing across genre restrictions, I like more money, I enjoy the simple aspect of writing.

Writers write. Professional writers get paid for what they write. I am a professional writer. I couldn’t give a crap which name it is published under, or if anyone pats me on the back or not after reading it, or gives it a good review or not. Makes no difference to me, because what’s important is the writing.

Nothing more. Just the writing.

I write under many names because I can.

There, I said it.

Cheers, Dean

In writing, the idea to most writers of making a series of linked mistakes is just frightening. In fact, fear of making a mistake is the one element that stops most writers.

Major writing fears in no real order:

— If I don’t do another draft on this, people will laugh at me and think my writing sucks, so I better rewrite this over and over.

— If I mail this and the editor doesn’t like me, they will remember me and blackball me (or something like that.)

— How can I write that sex/graphic torture/mother murder scene? What will people think of me?

— Fear of no one ever buying anything, so better not risk it by mailing anything because I don’t really want to know that no one will buy my story or book.

— Fear of no one liking what I do, so better not finish anything. It’s always easier to start something new and more fun.

— Fear of publishing. What happens if this actually sells? What will I do then, so better not mail it to be safe.

And so on and so on. As a professional writer, I’ve climbed over a few of those myself, and heard hundreds more, told to me in very logical-sounding ways. All fear based.

So yesterday, I head back onto the golf course for the first time in a long time. I am playing with two other top writers. One a novelist and top Hollywood writer named Michael and the second a long time novelist named David. (No last names to protect our golf games.) Nine holes was all we had time for, but it turned out to be a blast.

Some of you might know that at one point in my life, I was a golf professional. And way back in the 1970s, I played a bunch of tour stops (with no success), and then when I approached 50 I had thoughts of trying for the Senior’s Tour. Now that got stopped by two things. One, my nerves and putting just went south. A long, ugly ways south. Two, I didn’t want it bad enough to climb over the first problem. But now, here I was yesterday, eight years later, staring 60 in the face, hitting the golf ball at my old length, playing irons the same distance, missing a ton of putts. But having a blast.

I didn’t score that well, but when looking back at my round, it was as most of my golf rounds, as anyone’s golf rounds. It was a series of mistakes. (Did you watch Tiger Woods win the US Open? How often did he miss a fairway, a green, twist on a broken leg and make it worse?)

For example, my first hole yesterday. I drove into a fairway bunker out about 260 off the tee but it bounced through and under a tree. Second shot moved forward but hit an overhanging tree limb and stopped short of the green. Third shot rolled past the pin about twenty feet and I missed the par putt coming back.

Every shot had an element of mistake to it, yet every shot advanced me down the fairway and I finished the hole and walked to the next one, enjoying the day.

Writing is the same way. A writing career is a series of linked mistakes. But those of us who are still here working and writing after 25 years of being professionals, like the three of us on that golf course yesterday, we just move forward all the time. With writing, as with yesterday on the golf course, the three of us have no real fear of making a mistake. We’ve made thousands in our careers, had books go south, been late for deadlines, and written poor sentences (well I have at least. Those two are damn fine writers. <g>) Hell, I’ve written entire books that didn’t work. I once had a publisher mix my book up with another writer’s book and put my name on the wrong book. If there is a mistake in publishing to be made, I’ve made it, yet here I am, going forward, having a blast, making a nice living with my fiction.

I wish I had learned this lesson a lot earlier, especially in golf. I might have at least made the first round of qualifying for the seniors, which is all I really wanted. But for some reason, I’ve learned it in writing and in poker.

Mistakes are common in writing. No one writes a perfect story or a perfect book. No one. Just as no one plays a perfect round of golf.

The only fatal mistake in writing you can make is allowing the fear of making a mistake to stop you.

Sadly, it stops many fine writers.

Move forward, enjoy the process, stop worrying about the mistakes. Make them, write that flawed book and mail it, write the next one. No one cares if you’ve made a mistake or not, mailed it to the wrong editor or not, written an ugly scene or not. Honestly. No one cares. Just as no one cared how I played yesterday. No one. But was I still scared on that first tee?

Yup. Luckily for me, it didn’t stop me from playing and having a blast with two good friends.

Cheers, Dean

In September this year, just three short months away, a very special workshop will be held here on the Oregon Coast. September 11, 12, 13, and 14, Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov’s Magazine will teach a short story workshop. She will be joined by Hugo Award winning editor and writer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. (I’ll be there as well, but even with all my editing and short story sales, I don’t hold a candle to those two. I’ll be fetching the drinks.)

Kris and Sheila are on the top of the form. If they can’t help you become a better short story writer, a better writer in general, no one can. And you have four days with them.

The format of the workshop is going to be pretty simple. The writers signed up will have a few months to write two short stories this summer. Sheila, Kris, and I will then talk about the stories, and if Sheila really likes the story, she might have you send it in to her. At the workshop, the writers will also write a new story to assignment.

So the writers attending will have three stories in front of the editor of Asimov’s, letting her get to know you, get to know your work, get to know your fiction. This is an opportunity that just doesn’t come along very often.

The information about this workshop has been held close for a time, since my fear was that it would fill up too fast, but here we are three months out and there are still five spots open. So if you are interested, if you have been mailing stories to Sheila regularly and haven’t had any luck yet, if you just want to know how to write better stories and find out what is both right and wrong with your writing, e-mail me and put Short Story Workshop on the subject line. I’ll give you all the details.

A once-in-a-lifetime workshop. Sheila Williams and Kristine Kathryn Rusch helping you learn short fiction. A chance to sell stories to Asimov’s. It just doesn’t come any better. Don’t miss this one.

Cheers

Dean

Algis Budrys left us today. He hadn’t been well for some time, but still the shock of this news is surprising. I can safely say that most of my writing career, Pulphouse, the workshops we run, everything wouldn’t have existed without Algis Budrys.

I first met AJ on one very hot summer evening in Michigan in 1982. He was teaching that first week of Clarion and he had been a god to me since I read his book Rogue Moon in 1961. But I suddenly understood that gods were real humans as he came into the room, overweight, huffing from the walk, his shirt soaked with sweat. His doctor had just forced him to quit a three pack-a-day habit and he was cranky. But he still cared about all of us, and over the next six weeks, he kept showing that. I grew to really like him as a person and admire him even more.

The following year, he stopped by my bookstore in Moscow, Idaho and stayed for a few days, sleeping in the store. And he did that every year for as long as I owned the bookstore, being both a friend and a mentor.

In 1983 he bought my second professional story for the very first volume of Writers of the Future. At the awards ceremony in the spring of 1985, at Chasen’s Restaurant, he let me be the very first person across the stage to accept my award for the very first Writer’s of the Future book. I still have that picture of AJ behind the podium, Robert Silverberg, and Roger Zelazny standing behind him, and Greg Bear handing me the award.

In 1986, he called me late one night in late April at the bar where I worked in Moscow, Idaho, and said, “You want to go to a workshop with eleven other writers at your level taught by Jack Williamson, Fred Pohl, Gene Wolfe, and me?”

I said, “Of course.”

He said, “One week from now in Taos, New Mexico. The workshop is free, paid for by Writers of the Future, but you have to pay for your own travel and your own room.” Without a second thought I said I would be there.

I had no money. I was working two jobs, living in a hotel. But none of that mattered. I would be there if AJ said it was worth being there. I threatened to quit both jobs if they didn’t give me the two weeks off. It was that important to me because AJ said it was worth my time as a new writer.

Six days later I find myself in Arizona when AJ called my father’s house where I was visiting on my way driving to New Mexico.

“Two writers need a ride from Albuquerque to Taos,” he said. “Got room to pick them up?”

I said sure and he gave me the address.

Kris and Martha Soukup were the writers who needed the ride. And Kris and I have been together ever since. All thanks to AJ. The standing joke was that he convinced me to “pick up” Kris.

The workshops we teach are patterned after what AJ started at Taos. He picked twelve writers from around the nation who were just starting to sell and decided to help them. Kris and I try to do the same thing, in honor of what AJ did for us.

Some of you also might not know that I started Tomorrow Science Fiction Magazine and hired AJ to be the editor. The first issue, which we got out for Worldcon in Orlando, was a hit. Shortly after that, Pulphouse started having money issues, so I gave the magazine completely to AJ. From the second issue onward he did a great job with it as both editor and publisher. A far better job than I would have done as publisher.

I have not had the chance, sadly, to see AJ in the last five years or so. My loss.

The world of literature is today missing a great writer, a great teacher, a great person.

Bye, AJ. Thanks. Literally for everything.

Dean

After my last post, I got a number of questions about how a newer writer could do the same thing with novels. And I have always said, over and over, that if you don’t read short stories, don’t bother trying to write them.

So, how to make the “challenge” I talked about in the last post work for novels.

There are a couple of ways, actually. But first off, you have to start with Heinlein’s Rules #1 and #2. You have to write and you have to finish what you write. The first part of the challenge or “secret” gives structure to those two rules.  But actually, just following Heilein’s Rules will do the trick.

So, here’s my suggestion. (This is too slow for me now, but it would have worked fine when I was working three jobs.)

1) One chapter a week, finished.

2) Repeat until the book is finished.

3) One week later, the book must go in the mail TO AN EDITOR (or better yet, a bunch of editors, which is allowed with novels unlike short fiction). And follow Heinlein’s Rules here as well, keeping the book in the mail until it sells.

4) No break. Start and finish first chapter of the next book the next week.

5) Repeat.

If you have to scream “But what about rewriting?” then you haven’t read Heinlein’s Rules, have you?

Okay, now to change to another topic on novels, one that I am sure will bring up a ton of questions.

Writer promotion of novels.

My rule: Besides a web site and a local signing to help out a local bookstore, don’t do any book promotion unless, and only unless, the publisher asks you to help them.

I know, I know, that’s against all the current myths about self promotion. But folks, think it through. Do the math.

First off, a job description. You are a writer. I am a writer. My job is to sit alone in a room and make shit up. I produce product, the very product that keeps this business going forward. I hire one employee, an agent, to help with some things, but otherwise, I do this alone, producing product.

When I have a finished product that a publisher would like to buy, the publisher and I have a contract. The contract says they are the publisher and I am the supplier of product. Their job is to publish, promote, and sell my product, and they take the risk with that. I took the risk in the time and money spent producing the product.

Unless asked, I NEVER step across that contract line. Ever. And most publisher’s would rather not have an author across that line messing up their promotions. That’s why they hire sales forces. When an author crosses that contract line, they are a problem most of the time, if not asked by the publisher.

If the publisher asks, a different matter. They have their reasons for asking and they will pay ALL the bills.

If the publisher is a small press, they will often ask and expect you to pay your own bills. Careful in that case as well. Your job is to write books, not promote them. But often if you have gone to a small press, and they ask, help them out where you can.

So back to the first topic, you are always better off just sitting alone in a room and writing, day after day, week after week. Follow Heinlein’s Rules, stay the hell away from self promotion of a sold book.

Of course, none of you out there will follow this advice until many, many years down into a career. But just remember I said this. I am just trying to help speed up the success and cut down the number of tragic events that can happen to you in this business.

And oh, yeah, get rid of your ego and write under a bunch of names. But that’s a topic for yet another day.

Cheers

Dean

A short story per week challenge with Nina Kiriki Hoffman was what got me moving finally from being a part-time, really-want-to-do-it writer to a full time professional writer. We bet each other the cost of dinner that we would write and mail to an editor a new short story every week. Since many of you know Nina’s wonderful work, you know that neither one of us missed much. And we pushed the challenge for almost three years until we were selling regularly.

In essence, what we did was follow Heinlein’s Rules with the challenge.

Lately I have gotten three questions about this challenge, so I figured it was time to talk about it here a little more.

When Kris and I talk to beginning writers, either at a conference, or back when we were doing what people called “The Kris and Dean Show,” we told the listeners that there was a “Secret” to being a published fiction writer, and we had never seen it miss (with one exception of one writer who just wrote the same story over and over and never worked to get better).

The “Secret” is simply this:

1) Write one short story per week.

2) That week mail that short story to the top paying market you can find.

3) Then repeat the following week.

4) When the story comes back with a rejection, send it to the second best market without looking at the story again. Keep all the stories in the mail.

5) Continue weekly for one year. At the end of the year, chances are you will have a bunch of rejections, but no sales if you are sending your stories up high. But keep working on your craft, your skills, working to make every story better. And keep all the early ones in the mail without looking at them.

6) Start a second year, and by the time the second year is finished, you will be selling short fiction to professional magazines.

That’s the Secret. Very simple, very hard to do, as hard as Heinlein’s Rules are to follow.

Okay, to question number one. “How can I ever write a short story per week with my day job and family?”

I was married when I started the challenge with Nina. I had three jobs, one of which was running my own bookstore. I drove school bus in the morning and was a bartender at night. Yeah, I had the time. Not.

But let me say this. I WANTED to be a writer, and was damn tired of just talking about it and doing nothing. So I made decisions, I carved out the time, I wrote any time and any place I could. And at the same time, I was teaching myself to type and spell and all that stuff, since I had almost finished three years of law school and could do none of that. Stunning but true. So my learning curve was steep and needed to happen fast. I did not quit any job, just carved out the time.

Bottom line, if you can’t carve out the time, you don’t really want to be a writer. Blunt, harsh, but all writers did it early in careers. You can too if you really want to. If you can’t find the time, find something else to do, you will never become a writer.

And if you can’t find the money or the time to make writer’s conferences and other places to learn from advanced writers, find another thing to do. You have to learn as well as write.

If you don’t own a dozen how-to-write books, you have a bad attitude, find another thing to do with your free time, since you don’t know how to learn.

Yup, blunt it is tonight. <g>

Second Question (combined with a third that gets answered in this answer): “With so many stories out there, don’t you run out of good markets?”

Uhhh, no. If you think you do, then you are not really learning marketing very fast. This challenge ramps up that marketing learning very quickly. I sold one story after 34 rejections, and I still got 10 cents per word for it. In 1985. Yes, it was a horror/sf story.

Here’s the problem I hear all the time. “I wrote a sf story and there are only three/five/seven good markets for it.” What that tells me is that the writer isn’t respecting his or her own work. That simple. The writer is not starting high enough in the markets, or not looking for the hundreds of great short fiction markets out there, let alone tracking all the new ones that pop up all the time.

How do you know what to look for in a market? Simple. Top circulation first. Second top money. Third top help or visibility with career.

New Yorker has all three, of course. Any of the big slicks do. Learn how to research markets, find them, make lists, keep the lists current, and don’t be afraid to fire high. Worst they can do is send you a rejection. No big deal.

And on the topic of rejection, NEVER track how long a magazine takes to reject. Who the hell cares. Always send a manuscript to a magazine with the intent of selling it. Duh. And if a magazine doesn’t buy it, it is their loss. You just mail it to the next one, expecting them to buy it.

So, that’s the secret to becoming a published fiction writer. One short story per week, mailed to a top market, kept in the mail. I had around 70 different stories in the mail when I started retiring stories by SELLING them. <g>

Follow Heinlein’s Rules every week. His rules, to remind you all are simple, with me adding in the challenge “Secret” parts.

1) You must write. (Every chance you get, all the time.)

2) You must finish what you write. (Every week.)

3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand. (Saves a ton of time and was the true thing I learned that helped me break through to selling.)

4) You must mail your story to an editor who will pay you money. (Start at the very top, respect your own work.)

5) You must keep it in the mail until someone buys it. (See rule #3, do not look at the story when it comes back, just put it back in the mail to another editor.)

Heinlein’s Rules. The “Secret.” He wrote those in the 1940’s. Nina and I used them for our challenge in 1982. They work today just as well.

Good luck. Have fun. It’s a great life, being a professional writer. You make the time, mail your work, you can get to this life as well. Hell, if I could do it, any of you can do it.

Cheers

Dean