Chat with Nick Mamatas

Writer Intro:
Nick Mamatas has published two novels, a novella, two collections of short stories, and too many essays and articles to count. He’s a former editor for Clarkesworld, edited numerous anthologies, written term papers for cash, and blogs regularly at http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/. Everybody in the world reads his blog, but most of them are too afraid to leave a comment

Nick Mamatas:
Thanks for the bio. I can see that you almost worked hard on it.

John Mantooth: A lot of cutting and pasting. I’ll throw out the first question:

With your experience at Clarkesworld and with the anthos you’ve edited, I think it’s safe to say you’ve read a lot of slush. What are some things that make stories stand out both in a positive and negative way? And as a corollary (and I can’t remember where I heard this), is it true you can basically tell if a story is going to have a shot just by looking at the white space and the paragraph lengths?

Nick Mamatas:
A complex question, because stories for an online venue such as Clarkesworld should be different than one for an anthology such as Haunted Legends. For a paper magazine or book, you want a story that is engaging and artful, of course, but it cannot really disrupt the other stories around it. And for a print magazine you don’t want stories that will leave the reader without the will to turn the page afterwards so they can look at the ads. For a web-based story, though, you do want something that will dig deep into a reader’s mind, so they will send the URL to their friends, Digg it, put it on Facebook, write a blog post about it, whatever. I’ve certainly read many excellent stories for Clarkesworld that would have worked great on paper. One of them I purchased for Haunted Legends.

But leaving that aside, as far as the basics of publishability: A story should be interesting from the first words, and give the reader the sense that the writer is in control of the story, and that every word is purposeful. Most of the negatives are just failures to do that: starting with a character waking up, or a false start (i.e., some crazy or wild thing that is revealed to be a dream or a TV show or a fantasy a character is experiencing), or a clumsy sentence.

A favorite example: “There is no feeling quite so wonderful to me as the warmth of the sun on your flesh.” Of course, I was editing a science fiction magazine at the time, so I did have to read on to make sure that it wasn’t a story about some sort of epidermal telepath.

Other than that, endings are a big thing. They tend to be either too neat, leaving nothing for the reader to think about, or shy away from the implications of the story itself. Sort of like how we know that at the end of every episode of some TV show that the status quo will be restored. And yes, I can tell whether a story is horrid or not from its shape on the screen. Of course, “not horrid” includes many stories that are simply awful. As well as all the great ones.

Kurt Dinan:
I found that some of the stories in You Might Sleep the reader is asked to work a little harder to understand the story. Is this a conscious decision on your part when you’re writing? How important to you is keeping your stories ragged in places? And is that something that has developed for you over the years you’ve written fiction, or more of a recent development?

Nick Mamatas:
Well, work a little harder than when doing what?

Kurt Dinan:
For example, I think some stories are more straightforward for me in what you are attempting to do – say with “April 29th” – but with others like “Solidarity Forever”, I really had to read deeply – something I enjoyed – but I didn’t know if you consciously do that while working out the story – if you approach writing each story for a completely different angle.

Nick Mamatas:
Well, stories suggest their own forms in a way. I suppose some of the forms are somewhat unusual: story as blog posts, as cinema-verite interviews, turning from third to first person in the last sentence, as numbered list, but I also read widely. I’ve seen all those forms before and I enjoy messing with them. I don’t believe that there is any such thing as transparent prose — now defined as 3rd person objective viewpoint that generally follows around one major character (though 150 years ago, transparent was quite different and involves transparent address of the reader from the author) — so why not just try a lot of different things? Plus, I believe that an unusual story has a chance of standing out in, say, a slush pile, or in the pages of an anthology, and I’m a mercenary when I need to be.

Petra Miller:
You were talking earlier about how you choose through the slush pile and I love how you put that – ‘disrupt the other stories around it.” By this do you mean that they have a different theme or tone?

Nick Mamatas:
Well, on the most basic level, for example, a story in which it is decided that there is no such thing as ghosts might not be a good fit for an anthology of retold “true” ghost stories. Or a big hunk o’ splatterpunk amidst some Jamesian horror pieces. Or some non-fantastical realist drama in an issue of Analog. In a magazine, the goal is to get the reader to turn pages and eventually to abandon the magazine, so that someone else can pick it up. Ad rates are based on three people (most often) reading one sold copy of the magazine. A “disruptive” story might be one that is so life-changing that you never surrender your copy, or one so awful that you just tear up the magazine or cancel your subscription. With the web, any set of readers can look at just a single page or story, so the idea of surrounding copy is less important, and the idea of triggering a networked activity of readers passing along a URL is more important.

Kim Despins:
Changing the subject…Do you approach writing novels differently than writing short fiction? And if so, how?

Nick Mamatas:
Well, I like writing short fiction and dislike writing novels, so yes. I approach writing short stories with giddy glee and novels with dread and procrastination. Ultimately, I end up writing my novels as if they were fourteen short stories laid down in a row, which is why they are too short to be published by the genre imprints of large commercial houses. They do tend to start with the same germs of creation: a single concept, a line overheard on a bus, or whatnot.

Kurt Dinan:
Why do you dread writing novels? Under My Roof was effective on every level, and it made me wish for other, longer works from you.

Nick Mamatas:
I find writing novels tiresome because I cannot do it in one or two sittings. I mostly write by trying to cultivate an alpha brain wave state, and that is difficult to do for three months at a time. So it is start and go.

Also, I dislike most novels, I suppose. I find that most of the books I read have 40,000 words of novel and 40,000 words of characters opening doors and sipping their drinks and picking at loose threads on their shirtcuffs and having sex and reciting the plot to one another. I suppose that one of my favorite novelists is Nathanael West, who by modern definitions of the novel never wrote any.

Then there are the commercial aspects of the novel; sales and such are dependent on things which one cannot control, such as a novel with a broadly similar theme that failed seven years prior (a reason given for why a major publisher didn’t reprint MOVE UNDER GROUND as a mass market paperback) or a ridiculously inappropriate cover (like UNDER MY ROOF, which my own agent declared “a cover for your memoir of surviving ovarian cancer”). And given that I can write an article for a slick magazine and make $500 or $1000 in an afternoon, novels are just a headache.

Sam W. Anderson:
You’ve mentioned that when you edit, you look for not so “neat” endings. Can you expound on this some? Do you have examples of endings that really blow your skirt up?

Nick Mamatas:
Well, the best ending is the ending of Joyce’s “Araby”, which is also the best short story in English. And what it does is subtly connect the boy’s loss of innocence and his own self-loathing to the dead priest mentioned in the first graf of that story (and not mentioned elsewhere in it). It’s a ka-powza type of ending, a life-changing one that demands attention since it takes a while to figure out what is going on.

A neat ending is like a too precisely proportioned meal; it’s not good to be satisfied. One should be left hungry for more. I think this came up when Kurt asked me about John’s Haunted Legends story. And Kurt asked (correct me if I misremember) if the story shouldn’t have ended some other way. Not-so-coincidentally, when Ellen Datlow and I were looking at the story, Ellen said, “And thank God he didn’t end it by [the ending Kurt thought was a good idea]!”

John Mantooth:
That’s really funny, Nick. I will rub that in forever.

Nick Mamatas:
The bad, or at least mediocre and predictable, ending was telegraphed by the top of the story. But so too was the ending John correctly chose instead.

Kurt Dinan:
Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened – I had suggested another ending to the story, but John went in the right direction, proving once again, that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

Nick Mamatas:
And that’s the trick. In the same way you shouldn’t just write the first idea that comes into your head, you probably shouldn’t write the first ending either.

John Mantooth:
Thanks, Nick. You ready, Erik?

Erik Williams:
Are you going to make fun of us on your LJ? Kidding.

But on the topic of LJ and other types of social networking, has being brutally honest day in and day out had any kind of negative effect on your professional life as a writer? And I don’t mean flame wars on Shocklines or the HWA forum. I mean have you accidentally burned any bridges? Anything you regret we might be able to learn from and not do the same thing?

Nick Mamatas:
Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. I will say that some editors call my agent with rejection phone calls rather than sending her emailed rejection letters, so avoid those letters ending up on the blog. Of course, I am known for getting rejection letters like, “Instead of a nuclear bomb, can’t the kid have a girlfriend instead?” so it’s probably a good idea that they don’t share too much.

All that said, the great joy and pleasure of being a writer is having no boss. Why replace that absence of a boss with 10,000 bosses who are ready to tsk tsk or complain at every comment one might make. Living in fear isn’t good for the soul.

Petra Miller:
I’ve read a couple stories from You Might Sleep, and one that truly sticks out, is ‘The Bloodied Woman.’ Mostly because there are so many damn levels to that story!! I truly am amazed with it – your prose, the tone of the story – the whole conversation being carried out in front of this woman as if there were no real crisis! I don’t think I’ve ever read something like that before, and I thought it was fantastic! This also is a great example to your earlier statement that endings should not be too neat. This being said, as an editor, do you look for stories that seem to strike that same chord in you? (not that I can imagine you find many of them that do!) Or is more along the lines of just finding the right story to fit the surrounding stories, finding something well written and engaging? I guess I am asking if ultimately, you are looking to find something on the same stratosphere as you?

Nick Mamatas:
Haha, oddly enough I changed the ending based on editorial input from editor A. Neil Smith, a great crime writer and scholar. The original one had the nameless narrator doing some sort of snuff film upload, but it struck the wrong chord. It made a suggestion that I didn’t want (namely that the guys may have attacked the woman in the first place, which made their whole CSI-for-Dummies dialogue ring false), so I rewrote it. Smith wouldn’t even tell me what ending he wanted, just “Not that one! You’re the writer!” which was a good kick in the pants for me.

As far as what I look at, it depends on the project. For an online venue, yes. If I were, say, the editor of Nature and buying stories for their “Futures” section at the back of the book, then I’d want stuff that was more whimiscal and “closed-off” in a way. Most stories are rejected because they are bad, some are rejected because the venue literally isn’t right for them. So when I am acquiring stories, I try to think of the reader’s experience of the whole book or magazine, not just the quality of the single story before me.

Sam W Anderson:
Please explain your bias against subplots. What about the argument that they can show the character as a more-rounded person?

Nick Mamatas:
Well, subplots often don’t even involve the protag, but secondary characters. And they tend to be shoehorned in. Ya know, a little romance for the laaaaadies, or given the demands for 80,000 word novels a subplot may be a 20,000-word wrong turn.

I certainly haven’t noticed that the characters in the short novels and novellas I’ve read to be less rounded than the faceless cyphers who crash their way through most monster novels or military space opera adventures. It depends on how one uses the words one has, not on how many circumstances one places a character. Subplots are also often built on false suspense: will they track down the Big Bad Guy? No! He got away. And the hunt is back on…

John Mantooth:
I’m going to Piggy back off Kurt’s initial question. My favorite story in the YOU MIGHT SLEEP was “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Like a lot of the stories, I began it feeling slightly disoriented. But as the story progressed, I began to understand things. Is the disorientation intentional? If so, it is a great trick because I kept reading just to orient myself and once I got oriented, I was hooked.

Nick Mamatas:
Ah yeah, the Poe story. Well, that one was by solicitation for an anthology called POE’S LIGHTHOUSE, in which editor Chris Conlon asked us to finish Poe’s “lighthouse fragment.” And if you’ve read the fragment, well, there isn’t much to it. But I’ve been fascinated with Poe for a while so I wanted him in the story, and I like The Smiths so I decided to use the song for no other reason than it was playing when I received the email solicitation. And I’d just read some stuff on Freemason rituals, so that suggested Fortunado, who is a Mason and also a mason! And I decided that I would absolutely bury the fragment under as many levels as possible!

And since Poe died delirious, the story had to be a bit delirious, and I threw in me as God in the end because otherwise either a) the story would have gone on forever or b) the modern character just would have committed suicide for poorly articulated reasons, and that’s always a lame way to end a story. So I touched you deep in your heart because mostly I try to avoid being lame and because I am a narcissist with a God complex. That’s what we call making lemonade with lemons.

Kurt Dinan:
You mentioned entering an alpha state when doing your writing. I’ll have to plead ignorance here on exactly what that means. Without asking you to run a seminar here and explain exactly what it is or how you enter it (I can do the research later) – what benefits do you find writing in this manner?

Nick Mamatas:
Well, you know all that advice about revising and finding a writer’s group and that writing is rewriting and all that? I don’t do any of that. I don’t revise. The stories come out more or less as they are published, in one setting, with occasional editorial (or girlfriendorial) input to fix this or that.

This is not to brag, but here’s an example: I wrote a story called “That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable” on solicitation for Ellen Datlow for an anthology of Lovecraft stories. Peviously Ellen rejected all the stories I’d sent for Sci-Fiction and, later, for Inferno. But anyway, I moved to Berkeley and was invited to do a reading, so the morning of the reading I read a couple of Carver stories, then went into the alpha state and wrote the story. I edited it on the train on the way to the reading, and made some more notes on the train back, perhaps changing as many as twenty words. And then I emailed it to Ellen and went to sleep and woke up to an acceptance. But there’s more. Ellen is widely and rightly known as a great line editor. So I spent months looking forward to my line edit, which would surely be extensive and make the story much much better. Here is what she sent me for line edits: p.5–“I don’t know if he’s real, but it’s sure real,”—italics ok for “he’s”. That’s it. (I declined that edit, btw.)
That’s the benefit of the alpha brain wave state, to me.

John Mantooth:
I wonder, though. Do you ever think or wonder about how much better you might be if you spent a week or so revising a story? Or is that just antithetical to the way you work? And, did I mention how jealous I am of you?

Nick Mamatas:
I dunno, do you ever wonder how much better you would be with a more handsome writer’s group?

Petra Miller:
Nice!!!

John Mantooth:
Well, you haven’t seen Sam.

Petra Miller:
Or Kurt with his newly shaved head.

John Mantooth:
Or Kim from the neck down.

Sam W Anderson: I’m gorgeous!

Nick Mamatas:
And I saw Kurt’s Ban Roll-On head in pics from Readercon this weekend. Anyway, nah, I don’t think about it. The alpha state also leads to euphoria, so it has its own merits in addition to selling stories.

Sam W Anderson:
Kind of playing off of Erik’s question, but you have one of the most successful blogs ever. You started on the interwebs back in the day. How would you recommend us employing this to help our own promotion?

Nick Mamatas:
I’ve been online since the late 1980s and have seen everything come and go, but I only have one good piece of advice. It may be familiar as your mother probably told you the same thing: be yourself. And since YOU are NOT an advertising agency, do not spend your time preparing advertising messages. I read somewhere that the average American is exposed to over 10,000 ad messages per day. Why add to that endless horror? Just be yourself. People will like your stuff, or they will not. They will like you, or they will not. We’re small people in a big world. It’s all fine. Don’t kiss up, don’t whine unless you want that whining on the front page of the New York Times the next day, and just have fun.

Kurt Dinan:
Really, more of a comment, I guess – Not to kiss ass or anything, but today I read “A Stain on The Stone” in the Phantoms anthology and found the voice so damn dead-on it gives the story a perfect energy. Again, is that another benefit of writing in the alpha state?

Nick Mamatas:
Haha, I suppose it depends on the mental state in which you read it more than the one in which I wrote it. I mean, I wrote that story for that book and Paul Tremblay (the editor) liked it very much, but when I showed it to Alethea Kontis for example, she said it was “pointless”. But as far as voice specifically, that’s less to do with the alpha state and more to do with tinnitus.

Kurt Dinan:
How so?

Nick Mamatas:
I have tinnitus. It’s a hassle that comes with a party trick; I can hear things that are across the room better than I can hear people talking to me. When we met in person last year, Kurt, I read your lips. I couldn’t hear a word. The room full of people on the other side of the suite–clear as a bell. So I have the knack for knowing what people sound like when I’m not in the room. That’s the great question of the ages, isn’t it: what do women talk about when men aren’t around? What do people mutter to themselves when you see them walking by. Well, I know the answers to those questions.

John Mantooth:
Pretty cool

Sam W Anderson:
I’ve got tinnitus, but I don’t know any of that. I’m just deaf…and old.

Nick Mamatas:
Perhaps you need MORE tinnitus, or a bit less. When you lose certain frequencies, your brain compensates by raising the volume. Or at least my GIANT brain does.

John Mantooth:
Nick, you did the MFA thing, if I’m not mistaken. Can you talk a little about the whole experience?

Nick Mamatas:
It sucked. Well, I did it because I wanted to get an academic job. I ended up getting a very good editorial job. I suppose I wasn’t prepared for the sort of problems one would have being a writer with some publications and experience in the publishing industry in a class with a number of people who were very successful in their own fields and unused to not being always right about everything by definition because they only ever spoke to their underlings or social inferiors.

I did learn a few things, and am doing a little teaching on the side soon, so it worked out for me. I also got a few college appearances thanks to it. As an experience though, I’d recommend not publishing widely and THEN going to get an MFA, unless it’s the sort of program where you’re already friends with the faculty. That can be difficult; a number of the top MFA programs bar anyone who has already published a book, for example. I will recommend my MFA program — Western Connecticut State University — to anyone interested in commercial fiction and magazine writing. Commerce isn’t a dirty word there.

John Mantooth:
How were your stories accepted in the critique sessions?

Nick Mamatas:
Oh, they flipped out. Actually, “The Bloodied Woman” was my first workshop story. I heard everything from “Why are you underlining certain words!” (luckily, another student knew those meant italics) to being accused of “espousing depraved ideas” and sexism, plus somehow befouling a publication like the Mississippi Review for submitting the story to it. Here’s a full quote:

Having said that, I need to get out of the way the most cerebral and visceral reactions I had to this work, and that is to its unacceptably misogynistic and perhaps misanthropic nature. Yes, these are strong words. (Please don’t take offense where none is intended: I am not qualified to make any sociological observations or psychological diagnoses of Nick the person, the man, the peace-loving, charitable human being.) I am dumbstruck by any author’s motivation or need to construct such a brutal and cynical portray of women/society without any redeeming feature to it. Writing such as this perpetuates negative images IN THE EXTREME of women, sex, and inappropriately celebrates our culture’s desensitization toward violence. In my opinion. As an author you must take ownership of the social commentary embedded in this work. As a reader I have the right to reject it and to express to you that the brilliance of the writing here is overshadowed by my profound rejection of the depraved ideas you have chosen to espouse…in a commercial publication no less. I say espouse because I believe in a metaphorical way that we are, after all, what we write about.

Some were shallow, some were deep, some came around when they realized that a) I wasn’t going anywhere and that b) I actually’d been around the block a few times and had some good advice. Things got a bit better later on, but I did have one professor dimiss two chapters of my thesis novel with something like, “Is this what modern fiction is now?” and nothing else.

John Mantooth:
Well, I can honestly say this has been one of my favorite chats. Nick, do you mind if we post a transcript of this on our blogs, collective and otherwise?

Nick Mamatas:
Sure, go ahead. Be sure to edit it for flow and stuff.

Kurt Dinan:
Thanks a lot, Nick. Great stuff and advice throughout.

Sam W Anderson:
Thank you.

Kim Despins:
Thanks!!

Erik Williams:
Yeah, thanks a lot.

John Mantooth:
I really appreciate you taking the time.

Petra:
Thanks so much for all your great information, Nick!

Nick Mamatas:
Thanks again for having me!