How to Organize Your Short Stories

I've been writing and submitting short stories for about four or five years now. With each submission I send a short query letter and either attach my story or paste it in the email, depending on which they prefer. Many publications now use Submitable, which still involves the query letter and attaching or pasting the story.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I made the mistake I've always worried about - I sent a story that did not match the query letter. The query begins, "I've attached a copy of my 1,200-word story, Late November... But instead of sending Late November, I sent a different story.

I'd estimate that I've written 40 to 50 short stories. I've had 14 published, which I consider a good percentage, although it could be better. With that many short stories, it's important to keep them well organized. It's easy, too.

First, I just create a new file in my Documents and title it "Short Stories". Pretty creative, I know. Then every story I read gets its own file, with the story, a query letter, and a list of submissions. The title of each file is the title of the story. So inside the file Late November, located in the Short Stories file, is the story Late November, the query letter, and the list of magazines I've submitted it to, along with the dates and the name of the editor it was addressed to.

I also keep a separate file titled Published Stories, inside the Short Stories folder. Every time a story gets accepted for publication, it goes to the Published Stories folder. Easy, and for me easy is usually better.

Some people use a program like Excel to keep track of all this, but those people are far more computer literate than I am. My way is organized and simple, and being organized is so important, especially if you start writing and submitting a lot of stories.

Recycling some old stories

I finished another edit of my novel. The title is A Teacher First. Final decision, as they say on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. I really like the title now, whereas I was never really comfortable with the original title, Bring Back Coach Zim! I'm pretty satisfied with how the novel is looking.

I've also been doing some other writing lately, sort of. It's more like recycling some old writing. I've taken a short story I wrote about twelve years ago and rewritten it. It was poorly written but a pretty good story, in my opinion. One thing I've learned since then is how to tighten a story up. Now it's still a good story (I hope) and less poorly written. It'll be ready to submit to a few magazines by this weekend. I haven't had a short story published in two or three years, mainly because I haven't really written any for two or three years.

And I've wanted to write a few articles to submit to magazines but have been too busy (lazy). So I've taken a couple of columns that I wrote but never submitted to the Sanford News, tweaked them a little, and sent them out. I don't have a lot of faith in them, but you never know. They aren't bad, just not the best I've ever written.

I'm reading a book called Bang Your Head, about the rise and fall of heavy metal. It's good, I'm really enjoying it. And I've been reading a series of mystery novels, the Bernie and Chet series by Spencer Quinn, which I believe is a pen name for the author Peter Abrahams. Bernie is a private detective and Chet is his dog, and the stories are told from Chet's point of view. It's a good idea and really well done. I've read three of the books so far, I think there are a total of five.

Deciding on a title for my manuscript

I've only posted here once since September, which is not good. But I do have an excuse because I was writing my new novel. Don't believe me? Well, here it is: 

I finished the first draft last month and it will be ready to go by the end of the week. Where is it going? I'm not sure. Send to agents and publishers, or self-publish and try to market it? That's the question. It's really good and I like it a lot, so I'm happy with it.

Another question is the title. Here's a short description of the story:

Jim Zimmerman was once the best high school baseball player the state of Maine had ever seen. Now middle aged and known to everybody as Coach Zim, he’s the winningest high school coach in state history and everybody’s favorite history teacher. When he is unexpectedly fired from his coaching job by the school principal, a former teammate still harboring jealousy from high school, Coach Zim faces a future without baseball for the first time in his life.

 Before long a former player offers Coach Zim a dream job with the Red Sox organization. While pondering this job he finds himself helping a gay student who is being bullied and discovers that, inconceivable as it might seem, his work as a teacher may be more important than his work as a baseball coach.

That is a short and not very well-written description, but it gives an idea, at least. My problem is, do I title it Bring Back Coach Zim! or A Teacher First. It's been Bring Back Coach Zim! for a long time, but I just read a line in the story and thought A Teacher First sounded pretty good. So I'll decide soon. Any comments would be appreciated.

Modern Day Letter Writing

Wow, it's been almost 3 months since I've posted anything here. I guess that lets you know how exciting my life is.

I just finished reading The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough. Great book, very interesting and inspirational how two brothers with no knowledge or experience with aviation taught themselves to build a plane and fly it. Think of how different the world was barely a hundred years ago.

But what I found most interesting were the letters the Wrights wrote. I'm always fascinated by the letter writing from the 1800s and early 1900s. Whether it's Wilbur Wright or a Civil War soldier, most of the letter writers back then seem to have a greater mastery of the English language than most professional writers today (myself included, I'm afraid). And the letters were usually written in beautiful flowing cursive, unlike the hastily composed emails of today. Here's how a letter home from a travelling husband around 1900 might begin:

My Dearest Katherine,

Upon waking this morning I was most pleased to find the sun's warm rays caressing my face much as I hope to caress yours upon my return. I realize discretion would be the wise course, lest the children read this and laugh at their father's uncouth manner, yet I'm finding myself unable to err on the side of caution when proclaiming my adoration of and love for you, my wife.

And now, an email from a modern day husband:

Hey Kate, you wanna make sure you feed the dog? And don't let him have table scraps, they give him the shits.

It really is too bad that letter writing is a lost art.

I may change the title of my blog - any suggestions?

I'm thinking of changing the title of this blog. It has my name, which is nice, but it's Gary Sprague's Books, which I feel can be a bit confusing. My blog began as a way to talk about and market the books I've written, and since I'd never had a blog before that was the title I came up with. I'm bad with titles.

I don't seem to talk about my books a whole lot on here, though. I have pictures and links (which I hope everyone is taking advantage of) but I don't really talk about them that much. In fact, I mention my newspaper articles far more than my books.

The title also may give the idea that this is a book reviewing blog. I do give opinions on books that I've read, but that also isn't the main subject of this blog.

I guess the main subject is me. I could be like Donald Trump and name everything after myself. The title, every post, etc. Sounds funny, but I really may just call it Gary Sprague. I also like Gary Sprague, Writer. Or Gary Sprague's Blog. Those titles are pretty open ended and allow me to talk topics other than books without being confusing. And, again, they have my name.

One last title that I like is Mainely Writing, because I'm in Maine. For some reason, I like anything with Mainely in it. But then, that either sounds like I'm only talking about writing, or I'm only talking about Maine writing.

I don't know. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear them.

How sex caused me to lose my hair

Here's a story about how my son thinks that sex made me lose my hair:

A few months ago, my 9-year-old son told me that he knew all about sex and I didn't have to explain anything to him. I asked where he acquired this information and he said the playground. The same place we all learned it, I guess.

So I asked him to tell me what he'd heard, in the hopes that I might learn something. It's never too late, right? So he said that sex is when a man and a woman lay down together naked and one of them sticks their penis in the other one's butt. Which is about what I'd expect from third-grade sex experts.

I then explained to him what sex is and how it works (as much as I know, anyway). It was an awkward conversation. Then he asked, "What's the point? I mean, why would you even want to do that?" After saying that adults get feelings for each other and blah blah blah, I said, "Oh! It's to make children. The actual point of sex is to reproduce, or make children."

So yesterday, he was making fun of my lack of hair. I told him that I had plenty of hair before he was born (okay, I lied) and that it only started falling out when he was born. And then he asked, "Why, does sex make you lose your hair?"

Pretty clever, I thought.

Another one of his jokes about my hair:
Sam: Dad, do you think you'd be good in a club? I think you would be.
Me: Oh yeah? What kind of club?
Sam: Hair Club.

More (good) reviews would make me happy; Judd Apatow's Sick in the Head

I noticed yesterday that I got a bad review for Bobby's House recently on Amazon.com. Because it's only the third review, that's not good. But, the thing is, Bobby's House has been my best selling book this year. Every month, it's outsold my other books. Strange, really, because Lettahs From Maine was always my biggest seller.

Now, this doesn't mean that it's on the bestsellers list, but it is selling a few copies every month. This means that people are buying it, but nobody reviews it. I know that somebody is enjoying it, though. The two books of mine that people say are their favorites are usually Bobby's House and Lettahs From Maine, and they are very different. So if everyone who liked Bobby's House would review it, I'd be happy. I'm sure there are millions (hundreds, dozens?) of you out there! However, it seems that nobody reviews anything unless they are dissatisfied. I'm the same way.

Enough about that. I'm currently reading Sick in the Head, by Judd Apatow. It's a collection of interviews with comedians. It's OK. I like most of the people he interviews in the book, that part is great. But he often talks way too much about himself, which I call the Jon Stewart Syndrome. I like Jon Stewart, but when interviewing someone he has a habit of talking more about himself than about the person being interviewed.

 Plus, I don't care for Judd Apatow's movies. I've never made it through one of them. Since they seem to do very well at the box office, I'm going to admit that I don't speak for the general public when I say this.

Oh, wait. I liked Funny People. So once again, I contradict myself.

Here's a link to my latest Sanford News column. It's about my son Sam and I attending the Sanford Mainers baseball games and his getting an autograph and picture with his favorite player.