Poem: "Moral Traditions"

Writing is a learning process. The more you do, the better you get. When you know the rules, you can work with them or think about how to bend or break them and still have a good story.

>> Perhaps my relative success with poetry spoiled me. I seem to have much less trouble finding homes for my poems.<<

Same here. I still write fiction, but I put more energy into poetry these days. I know that my fiction is good; I know how to identify good fiction. But it doesn't sell nearly as well as my poetry, especially counting my crowdfunded poetry. That's one reason I keep poking around with crowdfunded fiction, trying to find a version that will work for me and allow me to tap into my large audience. People like it when they read it; there's just a bottleneck problem.

>> My major problem is that the stories I really want to write don't necessarily follow the current rules of writing for publication (like, for instance, my wizardly story daring to have a wizard use his wizardly powers to deal with the problems he faces in the story).<<

I've had that problem too. I deal with it by watching for markets that specialize in unusual types of fiction. So for instance, The Lorelei Signal focuses on strong female characters; I've placed several stories there, including some pretty far-out ones like "The Political Courtesan Strikes Back." I've found the adjustable search engines like Duotrope's Digest to be indispensable for this.

>>I'm finding there is more freedom of expression in visual art than there seems to be in fiction writing.<<

That may be true, although art also has rules and people can be just as snotty about those.

>> All I ever hear in the writing realm is "you have to do this" or "you cannot do that" (the whole "adverbs are evil" mantra is a good example ). I find it very frustrating, and a bit discouraging.<<

As a writer, I always found that aggravating. As an editor, my rule is that you can have all the adverbs you can handle competently. I don't believe in throwing out one of the eight parts of speech just because some people misuse it. One time at a convention, a particularly annoying editor on a panel started a diatribe about how adverbs should be banned from fiction, and when it got time for audience opinions, I voiced mine as "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here!"

I was somewhat surprised when a large portion of the audience joined in. The whole panel sort of sat back with stunned faces. I don't think it had occurred to them that plenty of readers like adverbs.

>> So, is the idea that poetry is a harder sell than prose coming from people that can't write poetry? <<

No, the market really does suck for poetry. There are more fiction markets than poetry markets. Fiction gets more respect than poetry. Current teaching of poetry, when done at all, is usually bad and encourages bad poetry.

In order to succeed, you have to be able to write good poetry, where "good" means "stuff that people enjoy reading enough to give you money for" rather than "stuff that will impress academics with its opacity." Then you have to find markets for it so that people can actually see it. I suspect that more poets succeed by thinking outside the box than in it.

Yes, that's true. It makes most professional organizations irrelevant to me. I'm interested in storytelling, money, and audience response (not necessarily in that order). Things like awards and professional magazines are nice, but not a prerequisite for productivity.

If I ever have money again, I may check out HWA. I've crossed paths with that org a few times and it seems promising. I'm not primarily a horror writer but I do write some horror, and have certainly succeeded in squicking more than one editor with how far I'll go.