Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Process of Collections

Yesterday I sent my collection of short stories off to Snubnose Press. What an interesting project this has been. Who knew that putting together a collection was more than slapping together a few stories you'd written and patting yourself on the back for a job well done?

Of course, I've never been one to do things the easy way. Half of the stories I put into the collection are new, including one novelette. And that novelette was a novella of nearly 15,000 words, of which I dumped one character and over seven thousand words because the ending just really sucked (you know, boy rushes in to save girl from disaster when she could just as easily save herself). Yeah, with two weeks to deadline! With one short story I wound up adding another two thousand words because the story just seemed to stop. A week before deadline I realized exactly where to take it for a much better ending. Of course, that's my opinion and the editor may not agree. All in all it was a hair-pulling, nerve wracking, excitingly delicious experience.

Then came putting it together. How many stories? What order? Does this one fit? Are there too many with a similar theme? And the questions just kept piling up.

I finally wound up with nineteen stories, nine of which are totally new and one that was lengthened from a published flash piece, much of which remained intact at the center of the story. And editing and editing all of the stories over and over again, catching mistakes where I thought there were none.

As for the order, I spent hours writing down lists of stories, their themes, lengths, male or female protags. I finally wound up loosely putting them together in groups of four - two dark stories, one paranormal and one humorous. What I hoped for in this arrangement was to break up the intensity of the darkest crime stories so that readers didn't feel like they were being pummeled to death with disaster. Will it work? I'm hoping so. One other thing that I did was mix in a good dose of male protags so the male readers won't be overwhelmed with a feminine point of view. I didn't want the collection to appeal strictly to women, I wanted something for everyone to enjoy.

And then there's the title - I've had three already and the final one is still up in the air at this point. I did submit it with the working title of "Cold Rifts" with "Crooked Roads" as another option if the editor doesn't like the first. Of course, at this point I could just name it "Another Damn Collection of Shorts". I wonder if that would sell very many copies. :)

Quite a few of you have been putting together collections and anthologies, what had you pulling your hair out?

12 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I recognize what you're saying here. I've put three anthos together in the past couple of years. I really agonized over story order, and I revised a fair number of stories to try to make them more consistent with the theme of the anthology I was putting together. For one antho I didn't have quite enough stories so I did a lot of writing to get that one up in word count. Several new stories appear there.

sandra seamans said...

It certainly is a challenge, Charles! But it sounds like you enjoyed the work, too.

Chris Rhatigan said...

That's very interesting Sandra. Your commitment to putting out a quality collection (nine new ones, no one does that!) is admirable and I can't wait to read it.

Seemed like everything to do with Pulp Ink had me pulling my hair out. That naming fiasco, proofreading and formatting the damn thing, getting everyone on the same page, etc. Though it was totally worth it in the end and the thing that really matters (the quality of the stories) was never in question.

Anita Page said...

Sandra,thanks for the glimpse into what sounds like an agonizing process. I look forward to reading the collection of your stories when it appears.

Sean Patrick Reardon said...

Congrats Sandra, very happy and excited for you.

sandra seamans said...

I was lucky, Chris, I already had some unpublished stories written that hadn't been submitted, or I couldn't find quite the right market for them. I just hope the editor likes them. Being published mostly online, I felt an obligation to provide plenty of new content. Probably a weird sentiment, but I felt that it was important for both the readers and the publisher. If I was self-pubbing it would have probably been all previously published stories :)

Probably other writers don't think things to death like I do, Anita. So putting together a collection might not be so daunting for them.

Thanks, Sean!

Paul D Brazill said...

Looking forward to it!

Chris Rhatigan said...

Sandra, that's an excellent point about everything being online and wanting to provide new content. Especially for people who already following your work this will provide a little bit of an extra kick to put down the money and buy your collection.

I, too, have found that even though there are a lot of markets out there, some stories I write just don't seem to fit anywhere so they've stayed the old hard drive. It's great that you've found a way to get them out there. Perhaps mine will find their way into a collection one day too.

sandra seamans said...

It is frustrating sometimes to have stories that aren't quite a fit for the crime markets and not sci-fi or fantasy enough for those markets. That's a problem with a lot of my stories, my brain tends to run sideways :) But I can't help myself. I writing them just to get them out of my system.

Katherine Tomlinson said...

I can't wait to read it! For me, story order became important when I realized that smashwords and other sites were giving free samples based just on page count. So when I led with a long story in my first collection, that was pretty much all a reader got.

sandra seamans said...

I didn't know that, Katherine! Another thing to keep in mind.

Brian Lindenmuth said...

I'll just post this here even though this is an old thread.

If you write a story that you think doesn't fit squarely into a market SEND IT TO SPINETINGLER :)