I recently read the oral history of post punk hellraisers and balladeers The Replacements. One of the infuriating and endearing qualities of this band was their booze fueled attitude problem grinding against or with their talent. On any given night, you’d hear they were the worst band in Hell’s creation, and on others they were the greatest rock and roll band in history. Each night was one more time to get it right or wrong.

I loved The ‘Mats. They were for me what The Ramones and the Stooges were for other generations. A band that said, “anyone can do this, give it a whirl, who cares if you screw up, just crank the knob and let fly!” I couldn’t do that with Led Zeppelin or any rock god of any era.

But I’d “let fly” a lot as a musician a la the ‘Mats. We’d practice hard, but then go live with a different energy. Fueled by the beer we were paid with, we’d hit the stage and run through sets with that enthusiasm you can only summon when you’re seventeen and nicely refreshed and actually think you could make it. Most nights, I’d say, we were pretty damn good, even if notes were missed and beats skipped and vocals blacked out when the PA went belly-up.

I write now. The guitar is just a buddy, not working colleague. You can’t be too punk rock about writing because spelling and grammar boo boos ain’t kosher. But I’ve listened to so much chit chat on the current state of short fiction (not as good as a some golden era; competence ruining things; people more interested in publishing than writing well) that it makes me yearn for a vintage Marshall with tubes and a 60 watt amp and my old SG to blur the words to noise as I hammer an open chord through a fuzzbox.

All writing advice is idiosyncratic. What works for one will not for the other. I have no competence to make an argument on the state of the short story field. I like a lot of work out there and editors I respect are still buying stories for magazines and anthos I like. But I’ll leave the qualitative assessment of the state of short stories as a field to those with some data and not gut feelings behind them.

But these discussions tend to generate questions in my head about my own work. Are you more interested in being published than writing well? Are you experimenting enough? Too much?

That’s when I reach for my copy of the Mat’s Pleased to Meet Me and crank it. When the noise settles, what remains are some basics to take into condiseration when faced with these questions:

Write the best story you can today. Don’t listen to the noise unless it’s helpful. Decide if you’re a Robert Aickman (who emerged almost fully formed in the field) or a Joe Lansdale (who published a lot of early stuff, some good, some great, some meh, but always getting paid). There is a long tradition of genre writers learning by doing, having their early days published. I wonder if some of this comes from the pulp ethos of the genres, of that “make a living as a writer” attitude that fueled guys like Bradbury and Frank Gruber during and after the Depression. And that has a punk rock sensibility, where the Aickman approach is much more like a classical concert. Two different kinds of good, perhaps.

I don’t have an answer here, just suggestions. I don’t know that my point is clear. I do know that all writers have to decide what is best for them and do what their job is: write the best story they can. Today. Then tomorrow. Then the next day. Keep learning, keep improving. How you define best is up to you. But if you try to live up to someone else’s standards, if you try to be something you’re not, you are on a one way trip to mediocrity. Some folks are born to be Aickmans. Others Lansdales. You were born to write your stories. How best to do that is a life long gig. Just keep hammering, learning, fighting. And if a story is the worst drek in hell’s creation, so be it. The next one will have to be better, right?

Now I’ve just added to the noise I was complaining about. Gah. “Color me impressed.”

JSR

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