I was banging out my 2000 words for Nanowrimo yesterday and began wondering wistfully, not for the first time, if it was possible to make a living as a short story writer. It isn’t unless your name is Stephen King. I’m not a natural novelist and start to get a bit bored after 20,000 words. I expect I’ll finish it but it will be a novella of about 30,000 words. I can’t be bothered making up any more plot complications to extend it.
Anyway, thinking of good short story writers my mind wandered to Caitlin R. Kiernan. Reading various anthologies for SFcrowsnest, I have often come across her stories in volumes of horror, weird or Lovecraftian fiction. So I looked her up and it turns out she has a blog – Postcards from the Red Room. I perused it for a while and it’s interesting to read the daily life of a real professional writer.
Enlightening, too. I was under the vague impression that real writers bashed out 10,000 words a day but Kiernan gives her totals and they are between one and two thousand. Mind you, she writes very high-quality stuff – literary – so it’s no real surprise that she’s not churning it out with Asimovian ease. On the other hand, her dense, emotional fiction is best read, I find, in a mixed anthology. Whereas you can breeze through a book of Asimov short stories without too much trouble, a solid anthology of all Kiernan like The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories is tough. Excellent, you understand, but not easy reading. Here’s my review on SFcrowsnest. Or, for a different perspective, read this review of The Drowning Girl by my Crowsnest colleague Pauline Morgan.
Anyway, I’d recommend her. She has written several novels and won many prizes but reading her blog she’s not a happy soul. Training in Palaeontology has given her a realistic view of the extent of time and space and a Lovecraftian view of the insignificance of woman. Man, too. So she’s bleak, like Conrad, but all the more interesting for that.
And she doesn’t make a living writing short stories either. Back to the drawing board.
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