What Would Hemingway Have To Say About The Kardashians?

Can you imagine Ernest Hemingway with a blog? I was thinking that today, when I realized I hadn't updated this blog in awhile. I grew up in an era when writers weren't expected to post daily updates on what they ate for breakfast, who they saw in the supermarket checkout line, and what they really think about Kim Kardashian's latest outfit, so I forget to keep up with all my online responsibilities. I have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, and of course, this blog, so there's no excuse for me to be so anti-social, right? I should be posting updates every hour, with lots of pictures, video clips, and funny captions, and instead I go weeks -- months, even! -- without posting. 

It's just that I always thought a writer was supposed to be busy creating other worlds, other characters besides Himself. I would rather socialize with the characters from my Rose Of Skibbereen books than spend time creating a John McDonnell character who is Internet ready and appropriately controversial. 

Most writers are not that interesting in person, but in terms of building a following in this social networking age, that's the kiss of death. You have to be interesting at all costs, able to gain legions of followers because of your comments, pictures, and the "events" that you can stage. 

But, like I said, that has never been the way most writers operate. Some of the greatest writers in the world of literature have been the kind of people you'd never even notice at a party. P.G. Wodehouse, who wrote almost a hundred classic books (most of which are still in print 50 years after his death), said many times that he led a boring, uneventful life. He spent his days sitting at a desk, immersed in the radiant world he created, writing down all the adventures of his unforgettable characters, and he went months without doing anything that was worthy of a Tweet or a Facebook post. 

And what about Ernest Hemingway? Oh, he could probably fill up a lot of Facebook with pictures and posts about all his macho adventures -- marlin fishing, big game hunting, boxing, fly fishing -- but you wouldn't see a peep about anything to do with his writing. Hemingway, like a lot of writers, didn't want to spoil the creative mood by posting daily updates about what his characters said or did. He was notoriously close-mouthed about his works in progress, and I doubt he would have posted any of his writing on social media for his fans to read. 

These are just two examples, but the list is endless. Most writers in the past would not have adapted well to social media. I realize there are writers today who embrace it, and good for them. If they can keep up with all the demands of having a public persona and interacting with their fans on social media, while still managing to write beautiful, imaginative literature, well, God bless them. I'm not one of them, it seems, and there's nothing I can do about that. So, I'll just keep writing my stories every day, and once in a while I'll pop my head out of my burrow, blink a few times like a mole who's found his way to the surface, and post an update or two. 

And if Kim Kardashian is still in the news, I'll offer an opinion on her latest outfit. 

People, Not Characters

Ernest Hemingway once wrote: "When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature."
In my novels I've tried to create living people, which means they are a mixture of good and bad, of noble and despicable qualities. They have many flaws, but they're also capable of kindness and grace. Like real people.
I've gotten some feedback from readers through emails and reviews on Amazon, but last night I had a chance to speak to some readers face to face, and I got some valuable insights about my characters.
For the first time ever, I went to a book club where the members were discussing one of my books, "Rose Of Skibbereen". I was nervous about going, but the members put me at ease right away, and it ended up being a truly enjoyable experience.
It was a special evening for a fiction writer, to sit there and discuss my characters as if they were real people. The members asked me questions about why Rose did something, or what was Peter thinking when he made yet another foolish decision, and as I gave them my answers it occurred to me that it was like explaining why someone in my family did something.
And that was the best part, because I realized the characters had come alive for these readers. They were not caricatures or cardboard figures, they were living people, warts and all. People whose lives you can get caught up in, which is why we read stories in the first place.
I couldn't be happier about the book club meeting last night. It was a special experience for an author, and I'd love to do it again. So, readers, if you have a book club and you'd like to invite me, contact me at mcdonnellwrite@gmail.com, and we can discuss the logistics. If it's possible for me to come, I'll be there.
I love discussing my people.

How Not To Starve As A Short Story Writer

By John McDonnell

Back in 2001 I decided to start sending out short stories to online magazines. Short fiction writers like Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O’Connor have always been my heroes, and I had a dream of being a successful short story writer myself. I put that dream off for many years, but when I saw how many magazines there were on the Internet devoted to “flash fiction”, or ultra-short stories, I decided to jump into the pool.

I joined an online flash fiction writing group, used its feedback to polish my stories, and I started sending them out.

And I had success. Some of my stories got published. Actually, a lot more of my stories got published than I had expected. It turned out that editors liked my writing. I went around in a pretty good mood for awhile, thinking that I could finally call myself a short story writer, because, hot damn, I was published!

My euphoria faded a bit with time. I was still happy with my decision to send out my stories, but there were times when I wondered, Is this all there is? The reason is that the  rush of seeing my name in print was followed by an empty feeling in my wallet.

The fact is, online magazines don’t pay very much. Actually, most of them don’t pay at all. If you get a dollar or two for your story, consider yourself lucky. In most cases you get a byline and a link to your Web site or blog, and maybe a 50 word bio.

Now, I’m not griping too much, mind you. It’s a great thrill to see your story on the screen, and to have the validation that an editor liked what you wrote. Sometimes you even get fan e-mail.

Money, though, is a kind of validation, perhaps the most telling kind. If somebody parts with their hard-earned cash to buy what you’ve written, it means more than if you’re giving it away for free.

And that’s why I love ebooks. The ebook revolution has made it easy for authors to publish their short stories, and to actually sell them to the reading public. I have four ebooks of my short stories online now, and I have been pleasantly surprised at how well they’re selling.

What makes me really happy, however, is this interesting fact. My first ebook has 13 horror stories in it. Five years ago I could have sent all 13 of those stories out to online magazines, waited weeks or months for editors to decide if they wanted to publish them, re-submitted to new magazines the ones that were rejected, waited some more, and kept at it until maybe a year later when I could see every one of the 13 published.

My net income would have been at most, 13 dollars, assuming every one of the stories got published in a magazine that paid a dollar a story (which, like I said before, is a princely sum for most online magazines).

Instead, I put those stories in an ebook, and started making money on them immediately. Now, I’m not on the level of a Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking, people who are selling thousands of their ebooks every month, but I can tell you that I’ve made many, many times that 13 dollars I referred to above.

The lesson to me is clear. Online magazines are a great outlet for short story writers, but if you like to be paid for your work, and you don’t like waiting for an editor to get back to you with a decision, and you like immediate feedback from readers, put your stories in an ebook and sell them on Smashwords, Amazon, or one of the other ebook outlets.

What happens if every writer does this? Will online magazines go out of business for lack of story submissions? Maybe some will, but I imagine there will still be enough people out there who want the validation that comes from an editor wanting to publish their work. And who knows, maybe the online magazines will have to increase their pay rates to get good writers to send stories to them in this new environment. 

All I know is that from now on, my stories are going straight to ebooks.

Hemingway And The Iceberg Theory

Ernest Hemingway was a powerful influence on me as a young writer. I still believe in his "iceberg theory", which he described as: 

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.  The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."  

This is why Hemingway made his stories so short. They are like icebergs, with a lot going on underneath the surface. He revised his stories rigorously, making them tighter and yet more suggestive with each revision. He packed a lot of meaning into a small amount of words. Read "A Very Short Story" by Ernest Hemingway, and you'll see what I mean.

I have always felt that Hemingway was a better short story writer than novelist. His short fiction is so strong, but it seemed like the longer form of the novel was hard for him. There's a quote from "A Moveable Feast", his great book about being a young writer in Paris, where he says he had worked so hard on learning how to write taut, condensed stories that writing a novel seemed like an impossible task. He couldn't imagine himself writing something that long.

Whatever you think about his novels, he is one of the great short story writers in English. You can learn a lot about writing from reading his short story collections.

And following his iceberg theory.