A million years ago I wanted to write a novel about border collies. I’d just published a detective novel (my first and only) and a couple of nonfiction books on detective stuff, so I was able to wrangle an invitation to spend a few days on a sheep ranch in the Appalachians. It was a wonderful and fascinating experience, and it helped clarify the story I wanted to write. I wrote the first couple of chapters over a weekend.

But the world, as Lula Pace Fortune pointed out, is wild at heart and weird on top. Stuff happened, I moved away from Washington, DC, and the manuscript ended up as a mostly-forgotten file on a thumb drive. I continued to write, but my focus became short detective fiction. Short stories are a more difficult form than novels; they require more discipline to write well, but are more elegant when they work. They also pay considerably less.

I didn’t write a lot of them, but I sold every manuscript I submitted. Well, all but one–and, of course, I like to think the editors made a mistake there. I even won an Edgar for Best Short Story in 2023. But a part of me still wanted to carve out enough time to write another novel-length manuscript. So after Mr. Poe’s head was delivered to my door, I plugged in that ancient thumb drive with the border collie story, downloaded the early partial draft, and started thinking about it.

After reading it, I decided to scrap everything–the plot, the characters, the style. I scrapped everything but the setting and the border collies. I added two sisters–one who’d left rural Appalachia to become a conflict photographer, one who’d stayed home and raised sheep. I added a Civil War diary, whose author died mysteriously after surviving the war. I added a writer for a monthly American history magazine who was interested in the diary. I added a rural community worried about the future of their Civil War memorial, a community suspicious of an outsider poking around in their past. I added an escalating plague of vandalism and racist graffiti. I added a sheriff who tries to cope with the unrest disrupting the community he loves. I added a wealthy, gentleman farmer–a relative newcomer to the community who wants to fit in. And I added townsfolk, some of whom struggle to be decent while being conflicted about their community’s racist past.

Then I killed one of them. Which brings in the State Police, whose presence isn’t entirely welcome and whose agenda differs from that of the sheriff.

It’s taken me about a year to write, edit, and revise the manuscript, but early this afternoon, I put the final period on it. Now I can relax, right? Nope. Now comes the hard part. Now I have to find the energy to start the agony and humiliation of an agent search, which is SO MUCH WORSE than writing.

You know, short fiction may be harder, it may pay poorly, but once you’re done with a short story, you send it off and forget about it. This novel business is work.

This might seem a silly question, but…

This question wasn’t asked of me; it was asked generally on Bluesky. But anybody who has ever written anything and been paid for it will eventually get a question that starts the same way. The questions tend to be pretty generic (…but how much dialog do you need?) or vague (…but how do you know when a scene is over?). But this was the most common and fundamental ‘silly’ question:

…but how do you *start* writing? How do you bridge the gap between staring at an empty page, with only a story idea & vague sense of urgency in your head, and convincing yourself to actually Start Writing?

There’s something fundamentally innocent about this situation. I’m just a writer, standing in front of an empty page, asking it how to begin. It’s both silly and serious, because the answer is both self-evident and incomprehensibly complex. How do you start writing a story? You put words in a row. It’s that simple. How do you start writing? Using godlike powers, you create an entire world where none exists and imbue it with rules and natural laws, then populate it with beings who behave as though they have free will but are, in fact, completely and entirely under your control. It seriously IS that complex.

Any story (and by ‘story’ I mean a work of fiction of any length–novel, novella, short fiction) is a cosmological event. When we write a story, we create a world and the world we create shapes how the story will be played out. All fictional worlds, to some degree, resemble the one we live in. The operative term there is resemble. As writers we routinely take liberties with the world we live in, making our fictional worlds different in ways we find useful. We may, for example, create a world in which dog trainers routinely discover dead bodies and solve crimes. Or librarians secretly engage in magical combat with ghosts. Or lesbian necromancers explore haunted gothic palaces in space. Regardless of the liberties we take with reality, the world we create nonetheless still resembles the world we live in.

This is true, but it doesn’t begin to help answer the actual question. How do you confront the empty page?

It’s like when you have a new car (or any other shiny new purchase). You’re very careful where you park, because you don’t want other cars to ding it, or birds to shit on it, or tree sap to fall on it. You dread that first ding, but once it happens you relax a bit. You don’t fret about it as much.

So that’s how you start writing. Ding the car. If you find a clean white page to be intimidating, get it dirty. Put words in a row. Any words.

Another thing. There are LOTS of books on how to write. I haven’t read any of them, but I’m told many have rules on what NOT to do when starting a story. Rules’ like Don’t start with dialog or Don’t start with descriptions of weather or other bullshit. If you’re at a loss with how to start, maybe start by deliberately breaking one of those ‘rules.’

Start with dialog between lesbian necromancers describing the gloomy weather at the gothic space castle if you want. You can always change it later. I mean, it’s ALL just stuff you’re making up, so do whatever the fuck you want. Ain’t nobody looking over your shoulder. Later, if you want/intend/hope to sell what you’ve written, then you may want to take an audience into consideration. But when you’re starting a story, you are completely free. There are no rules, no moral code, no ethical constraints, no social standards you have to comply with.

Once you realize you’re free to write anything you want in any way you want, starting to write becomes pretty easy. Here’s what I know to be true: writing the beginning is fun. It’s all enthusiasm and you’re unburdened by the weight of the story. Writing the ending is harder, but it’s always satisfying. The dangerous part of writing–the part that strangles most writing projects–is the grim fucking middle. That’s where you have to do the grunt work of creativity. That’s where you have to do the heavy lifting of the imagination. The middle requires discipline. I don’t know about you, but I resent discipline. But it’s part of the gig, so there it is.

The beginning though? That’s all bluebirds and sunshine and chocolate eclairs.

A few days ago I mentioned I was actually busy, that I’d found myself in “one of those rare instances when I’m working under a deadline.” Some folks wondered about that deadline business. Allow me to splain.

Twelve days ago (on Tuesday the 3rd) I noticed a post on Bluesky (which, by the way, is by far the most engaging and positive (and frequently very weird) social media platform I’ve ever encountered) stating that Uncanny Magazine had opened submissions for short fiction. Uncanny has been publishing science fiction and fantasy fiction for about a decade. The magazine itself and the fiction it’s published have won numerous awards. Uncanny has published short fiction and novellas by a LOT of the big hats in the SFF biz.

I don’t write science fiction or fantasy. I write detective/crime stuff. I’ve always read SFF, and I’ve occasionally banged out some ideas for SFF novels, but I’ve never followed through. So when I saw the post about open submissions, I said to myself, “Greg, old sock, why not give it a shot?”

The obvious response was, “I’ll tell you why not. First, you’ve never written SFF in your entire semi-wicked life. Second, you’ve got less than two weeks to come up with an idea and write a short story, which is another thing you’ve never done. Third, there are a million other things you actually WANT to do instead of sitting alone in a quiet room making shit up. It’s October, for fuck’s sake, and you’ll want to ride your bike and see people and go on long drives to look at autumn foliage. Fourth and finally, let me repeat that you’ll only have two weeks to write a story in a genre you’ve never written and it’s the best two weeks of autumn, you massive idiot.”

So I decided to write a story and submit it.

Which is exactly what I did.

Finished it last night, formatted it this morning, just submitted it moments ago. About 9500 words in eleven days. It doesn’t sound like a lot. Less than a thousand words a day. But that includes coming up with the idea, envisioning the story world, populating it with believable (I hope) characters, ensuring the plot holds together, arranging the scenes, and putting all those words in a row. I’ve never written an entire short story, nose to tail, in such a short period of time.

I have absolutely no idea if it’s any good. I mean, I was satisfied enough with the story that I submitted it, but Jesus suffering fuck, 12 days? And, of course, the fact that I’m satisfied with it doesn’t mean a damned thing. The folks who’ll send you the contract and cut the check, they’ve got to be satisfied…and who knows what they’ll do?

But THIS is the part of the writing gig I’m really very good at: letting go. Most writers I know tend to fret about the stories they’ve submitted. Me, once I submit a story for publication, I basically forget it…until I get an acceptance or a rejection. Out of sight, out of mind. Done and dusted.

Which may be good for my mental health, but is a terrible business practice. Because if a story gets rejected by one publisher, you may want to submit it to another. This actually almost happened to me last year. I’d submitted a story to Alfred Hitchcock’s magazine and immediately forgot about it. Well, I forgot about it until I was ready to submit another story to different magazine. Then I remembered, “Hey, dude, it’s been maybe 3-4 months and you haven’t heard about the other story; that ain’t right.” So I sent an email saying ‘Don’t want to make a fuss, but if you’re not going to accept the story, let me know so I can sell it elsewhere.’ The magazine responded with a contract. That story eventually won an Edgar award. Go figure publishers.

Anyway, the story is written. It’s been submitted. And I feel liberated. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go for a bike ride.

I want his head. I want to put it…where should I put Edgar Allan Poe’s head? The mantle is traditional, I suppose. It would probably look silly in the kitchen, next to the coffee maker or on top of the refrigerator. I don’t have to decide now; there’s probably plenty of time to figure that out.

But I want his head. I’m not entirely sure I deserve it, but I won it, fair and square. Really. Last night I won the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe award for Best Short Story. There are probably a lot of benefits that come with winning the award, but the one that has me most excited is Edgar’s head. You get (or at least I’m reliably informed you get) a small bust of Poe’s noggin. How cool is that? Very cool, is how cool.

I was curious about the actual size of Edgar’s head (that statuette’s head, not his actual head), so I googled it. And right there, first page, was a photo of Stephen Goddamn King with an Edgar in his hands. So, not exactly life-size (again, I’m talking about Edgar’s head, not Stephen King’s, which I’m pretty confident is life-size), but still.

Winning an Edgar is really a rather big deal, at least in the world of mystery and detective fiction. There’s a large, enthusiastic, deeply engaged community of folks who love mystery and detective fiction. Writers, would-be writers, fans–they create and join book clubs, reading groups, fan clubs, professional organizations. Groups like the Mystery Writers of America (who sponsor the Edgar awards), Sisters in Crime, and the Private Eye Writers of America–groups that feed and nurture that community. These groups are invaluable.

The thing is, though, I’m not really an active part of that community. I have a lot of respect for it; I’m terribly glad it exists and I benefit from its existence. But aside from writing detective stories, I haven’t contributed to it. I’m just not a joiner. I’m not even a member of MWA, but nevertheless they’re still generously offering me Edgar Allan Poe’s head. That makes me seem a tad ungrateful and vaguely misanthropic, although I’m not. In fact, I’m very grateful and I’m pretty damned anthropic.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I’m a pretty good writer. But there are a LOT of pretty good writers out there (including all the other nominees for Best Short Story). The thing is (in case you were wondering what the thing is), pretty good writers are nothing without a venue for good writing. And I’ve been lucky enough to be associated with two of the best magazines for mystery and detective fiction.

Alfred Hitchcock’s and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazines are two separate, independent magazines owned by the same publishing corporation. They are incredibly welcoming to writers, especially new writers. Without them, I’d just be an odd guy sitting in a room making shit up and putting words in a row.

If you have any aspiration to write short mystery or detective fiction, I encourage you to submit your work to either of these magazines. They may not buy your work, but they’ll treat you right. And hey, you might just get a shot at collecting Edgar Allan Poe’s head.