During the October month, the society asked master of flash fiction and WRYMHOLE co-editor Tina S. Zhu some questions. Here are the answers, the good, the bad, and the wacky!
How did you start publishing your stories?
I was randomly in a Zoom workshop because I was bored + it was quarantine and I needed some social interaction (I was not a student at the time), and the instructor encouraged me to send out one of the pieces I wrote. Before that, I hadn’t really thought about publishing. I don’t have a humanities or English academic background, so I never really thought of myself as someone who could be a Real Writer until then. I don’t think publishing needs to be the end all be all of writing, I think of it as something separate from the act of writing. Anyway, I’m glad I did start sending my work out, because it’s connected me with a lot of cool people I otherwise wouldn’t have met!
How do you deal with self-doubt about your writing?
Great question. I think every writer wrestles with self-doubt, anyone who doesn’t own up to it is lying. I think self-doubt with writing and publishing are two different beasts entirely, so I’ll just keep this answer limited to writing. Different people have different things they’re insecure about, so I’ll try to split this out.
Drafting/writing a rough draft has always been my favorite part of the process. One of my best friends really struggles with perfectionism when it comes to writing, and it keeps her from starting stories. My advice to her was to set small goals and to just go with the flow instead of controlling where the story goes. My rough drafts are barely readable and definitely incomprehensible to other people. Some people can write really clean first drafts, but that’s not me. And the longer I write fiction, the more I leave to fix in edits.
With revising and editing, I struggle to keep working on a piece over a long period of time. The solution I found was to rotate between a few projects that are in different stages. This is when it’s easy for me to get paralyzed with making a story perfect. When this happens, I try to remind myself that I’m not aiming to make everyone happy, I’m really only trying to create something I want to see in the world and make a few very awesome and supportive friends happy. Everyone else is a bonus. I can’t rely on external validation beyond that, because publishing is brutal, and ‘good’ is a subjective assessment anyway, so I write whatever weird thing I feel like.
What are some publishing red flags?
If anyone is charging you money to publish a book, that’s a red flag for a vanity press. If anyone is claiming to be an literary agent but doesn’t work in a legit agency with a sales track record and says they’ll rep you if you pay them, stay away (legit agents work only on commission, they take a 15% cut of what you make). Writer Beware is a good place to keep up with the latest dramas and scams you’ll see.
However, a lot of university-affiliated literary magazines will charge a small fee for submissions in the short fiction space for literary fiction. This practice comes from the fact that you used to have to physically mail submissions and that cut down on the number of submissions. IMO charging fees is not great for a lot of reasons, but it does cut down on AI spam submissions that are currently hitting short genre fiction markets (science fiction/fantasy/horror), which don’t charge to submit. If you see a genre short fiction market that charges to submit, it’s a scam.
How did you get into writing?
I was a 12 year old writing fanfic, as one does. Then I took a break to do high school, and when I was in engineering school, I was overloaded with STEM and needed something creative. I was a music kid and thought that would be my creative thing forever, but turns out the piano was a poor choice of instrument because they’re way too big and hard to find in the wild. Who knew haha. I had a novel idea I wanted to write over a summer break but no writing muscles to do it, so I went back to fanfics until I built those muscles up and then moved into short original fiction when those original fiction ideas started popping up again. I’m currently neck-deep revising a novel (not the same idea I wanted to do when I restarted writing—my ideas got better over time), and TBH if I hadn’t written a couple novel-shaped and novel-length fanfics before, I would have given up already because I wouldn’t have known how much sheer work goes into novel writing.
Fanfic is great for trying out different processes and tools IMO, would highly recommend, and if you go this route, pay attention to what 1) what tropes/character archetypes interest you and 2) what readers say you do well in particular. I think every writer has a handful of obsessions they return to time and time again in terms of certain ideas or tropes, even when they don’t realize it consciously. Playing with these ideas further can be quite fun. For example, I learned I really like writing things with Gothic vibes, like messed up families and creepy houses, from my fanfic adventures. As for reader comments, fanfic comment culture means that they’ll point out aspects they enjoyed, which was awesome feedback that helped me figure out what was landing and what wasn’t. One caveat with fanfic if you’re ever planning to write for publication elsewhere is to read things that are not fanfic. I view it as a genre of its own with tropes and stylistic tics (i.e. an extremely close third person POV is the most common POV type by far) that don’t apply outside that world.
BTW fun fact: I’d say like half of writers under 40, probably more when you filter down to women and queer writers, either write or have written fanfic. A lot of people have secret AO3 handles, and not just in YA and Romance. I have a SFF writer friend who calls AO3 the ‘dark shadow of traditional publishing,’ which I find really funny. Earlier this year, I was reading Venita Blackburn’s kind of out there, experimental novel Dead in Long Beach (I ran into this book because my neighborhood bookstore has a shelf of free books outside with mostly advanced publisher copies given to them and inside Dead in Long Beach was a postcard handwritten from the editor to the bookstore owner who also seemed to be friends from the sound of the note, which was really cool to find), and there was a section in the form of a fanfic based on a book that the main character wrote that made me go, “Venita Blackburn, whose day job is teaching creative writing at a university, definitely writes/has written fanfic” lol.
How do you network?
Twitter used to be the water cooler for writers, it’s dying but there are still a decent number on there. I was lucky enough to make a good friend through Twitter who then introduced me to a bunch of other people IRL. I’ve heard conventions are great for networking, too. I’ve met a good number of people from slush reading—literary magazines have slacks/discords for their staff. Eventually, once you know people, there are private Slacks/discord servers where people spill publishing tea.
Find local readings and writing-related organizations. Universities and sometimes bars in larger cities will have regular series where writers will come in and read their work. If one doesn’t exist near you, this is something you could help start! I guarantee you’d be able to meet cool writers by running a reading series.
If you’re a writer of genre fiction and write short stories, Codex Writers’ Group is a great resource that you can get access to once you’ve made a short story sale. For horror writers, Tenebrous Press runs a Discord anyone can join that has a lot of information.
Are there any things that help you get your foot in the door?
I know the most about short fiction, and I think joining the staff of literary magazines as a slush reader, editor, or other volunteer is a great way to get involved. Also just submitting your work a lot, if publishing is something you’re interested in. There’s a ridiculous amount of rejection, but even a rejection means someone out there sat down and read your story and gave it serious consideration as to whether it would fit into their publication’s vibe. I like this essay a lot about rejection. (And the Submission Grinder for genre fiction and Chillsubs for literary fiction are great ways to track submissions too!)
What is your go-to editing technique?
You’re probably going to hate this answer, but my favorite trick is time. I wait long enough that I don’t remember specific details before going back and revising something. I also really like this list by Matthew Salesses for more nitty gritty revision.
Are there any exercises you recommend for developing specific aspects of writing (i.e. Style, Form, Plot, Characterisation, etc)?
For plot, I found a newer reprinting of a book called Plotto in a used bookstore, which was written in the 1920s by a prolific author of pulp fiction who claims to have listed all the possible plots and flip through them when I’m stuck and want some random ideas, but there’s also an online version here. Note that it originally comes from the 1920s, so there’s some period-typical racism/sexism/heteronormativity/etc, but I don’t think there’s been any similar guide since.
Write a very short (<500 word) story in the form of something that’s not a story (i.e. grocery list, dictionary entry, social media posts, etc.)
Fun challenge: try writing a story that’s only dialogue between two characters. For examples, see the short stories “Spokane” here and “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867”., both of which use the format really well to unleash twists for maximum emotional impact.
Write an interview featuring one of your characters from a WIP. What do they hate answering questions about? What do they like talking about?
I love fairy tales and they inspire me a lot. The fairy tale scholar Kate Bernheimmer talks about how they have four main defining features:
Flatness: characters are archetypes that aren’t well-developed
Abstraction: settings are usually in vague fantasyland and unclear time
Intuitive Logic: fairytale worlds don’t follow real-world logic
Normalized magic: pretty self-explanatory
Take these four principles and write an original fairytale of your own (max. 1500 words). If you’re stuck, feel free to reference the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (or just ATU Index for short), which is a giant list of commonly found folktale/fairy tale elements mostly from European folklore that was originally compiled around 100 years ago by a guy named Aarne that have been updated a couple times since by guys named Thompson and Uther.
If you could recommend one book to someone looking to develop their creative writing skills which would you choose and why?
Thrill Me by Benjamin Percy is probably the one book I personally got the most out of. In fiction there’s this old divide between genre and literary fiction. Quick rundown that literary fiction = people like Sally Rooney and Han Kang, genre fiction = anything that could be filed under a different genre label like Stephen King for horror. Both sides of the divide sometimes get snobby about the other side, which is a shame IMO. Benjamin Percy, whose day job is being a professor deep in the Literary Establishment but writes sci-fi novels on the side, talks about writing entertaining stories with depth regardless of what kind of story you’re trying to write.
And it isn’t a book, but I also dig Lincoln Michel’s substack Counter Craft. He has great insights.
A couple other books/resources I liked:
Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond: Essay collection on more advanced/subtle topics when it comes to writing fiction. I read this recently and found it really good and also quite funny.
The Art of Fiction by John Gardner: This is an older book, so warning that it’s more dry than the other recommendations. Dude gets snobby sometimes but makes some great points with his concept of the ‘fictive dream,’ that stories are basically dreams the writer puts readers through and that internal consistency will make or break the fictive dream.
What's the best beverage to write with?
I prefer tea, especially around this time of year when it’s getting chillier!
Have you ever had beef with another writer?
Haha I try to stay out of drama, so no. But I do pay attention to writerly gossip and what’s going on.
What's your favourite form of fiction to write (like flash fiction, long sagas, short stories, novels, poetry, etc)?
Probably short stories between 2k-10k. It’s a shame to me that they’re seen as things writers write for mainly other writers nowadays, but I like how compressed the form is. I do enjoy writing flash fiction and have written a lot of it over the past several years, but you lose character detail because they are so compressed.
How important do you think pre-planning is?
Depends on the person, and I think whatever works for you and gets you to finish a story/novel is the best way for you. I’m definitely more of a discovery writer/pantser. I need to be working on something actively for my brain to come up with more ideas on getting through it. For short stories, I need a premise and a POV character to start with, and the rest I kind of figure out on the fly and fix my mess afterwards. For novels, I have a lot of bullet points that are mostly vibes before starting and then do a big rewrite draft after a disgustingly messy rough draft. I have friends who like outlining and need that structure, though. I think the discovery writer equivalent of the outline is the rough draft. I’ve definitely heard people say outlining is a lot faster, but that’s just not how my brain works, so taking the slow way’s fine for me.
And these are all the questions Tina has answered for now! Thank you so much, Tina, for indulging our society's curious minds.
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