Are you bored writing the same old linear story lines, predictable characters, and mundane settings? If you answered "Yes!" than you might need to shake up your writing life a little. I’m almost getting to that point in my own writing, where I want to do something innovative and different (doesn’t every writer?).

Experimental fiction just might be the way to go! By it’s very definition, experimental fiction is hard to peg down as a series of "how to" articles, or a step-by-step process for writing something that would be considered "experimental."

The best definition I have found for experimental fiction comes from this website I came across. The article says experimental fiction…

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I have a confession to make: My guilty pleasure in this world is reading genre fiction. Mystery? You bet. Science fiction? Absolutely! Thriller? Bring it on! The only genre I haven’t indulged in is romance (more out of lack of interest than having anything against the genre). I love getting lost in the plots of genre fiction and trying to guess how characters will get out of whatever trouble they find themselves in.

Likewise, during my college years, there was a period of time when all I read was either the classics, poetry, literary fiction, literary criticism, or any combination of those type of works. I loved it! I was having the time of my life. The literature I was working with challenged my thinking and sharpened my skills in critical reading and critical thinking.

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Self-publishing has long been the bastard child of the publishing industry. That could be changing now. More and more authors who self-publish are finding success after traditional publishing houses offer lucrative contracts for their self-published books. And most of these cases, the manuscript in question was rejected over and over before the author took matters into his/her own hands.

That is the story of Lisa Genova, who tried to get her book Still Alice (aff link) into the hands of agents and publishers before turning to self-publishing. Her story, in part, is featured in this article from the New York Times about the world of self-publishing:

When Lisa Genova, a former consultant to pharmaceutical companies, wrote her first novel, "Still Alice," a story about a woman with Alzheimer’s disease, she was turned down or ignored by 100 literary agents.

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For a while now I have been reading this great blog by Crawford Kilian, who is a published novelist as well as college professor. His posts are always interesting and he fills them with tons of useful tips, advice and general wisdom from someone who knows the writing/publishing business.

A recent post, Writing fiction in bad times, is no different. But it caught my eye because he compares the world of publishing from around the 1930s (where a writer could make a good living selling fiction to magazines) and today – where its hard to eek out a living as a novelist, much less just writing for magazines.

And if you’re an unknown writer trying to get a novel published? Forget it!

In times like these, no publisher is quite insane enough to take a chance on an unknown writer with no agent. The publisher has long since sacked the underpaid sub-editor who would normally read submissions from such writers.

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The internet has really swung the doors wide open for writers. Before we could go online, writers had to type out their article, send it via snail-mail to the publication, and then wait weeks (or possibly months) before receiving a reply. It was then another long wait for the writer’s work to actually get published (assuming it was accepted), and who knows when they’d get paid.

Thanks to the internet, writers can submit their work to any number of websites and get notified within days of the status of their submission. Payment is also much faster with sites like Paypal and Google Checkout. One of these sites that not only publishes your work but also pays for it is called Associated Content.

AC lets you submit articles on just about every subject under the sun. And if they really like your article, they’ll pay you up front for it. But even if you don’t get paid up front, you’ll receive payment based on page impressions, the number of times your article has been read.

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Recent news has been dominated by the scandal involving Bernard L. Madoff and the enormous scam he pulled on investors. While the scandal seems almost unreal (who would have imagined such a large Ponzi scheme making, and then losing, such large quantities of money), only in the world of literature could something on this scale be imagined.

Before I get into the meat of this post, however, I just want to say that Madoff represents the worst of the worst. His unending greed has ruined the lives of countless investors and has even placed many non-profits into financial jeopardy. Madoff deserves to spend the rest of his days in prison where he’ll probably work for only pennies a day and have a few meager belongings. But even life in prison won’t be enough of a punishment for a thug like him. Just my opinion though.

I never thought I’d actually be posting about this scandal until I read this article from the New York Times Books Section. The article makes a rather pointed statement that large and bizarre crimes like this can rarely be thought of by most, except by those who get paid to use their imagination – writers!

The accusations against Mr. Madoff may seem so outlandish and outsize that only a literary imagination could have dreamed him up. And indeed, where businessmen, psychologists, theologians and prosecutors have so far come up short in explaining the tangle of human emotions and drives behind the Madoff enterprise, literature and drama have provided plenty of models.

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In these bad economic times, it is no surprise that many people are shunning expensive, high-tech gifts this holiday season, for gifts that are cheap in cost but priceless in love and creativity. Homemade crafts are seeing a dramatic rise this year, as detailed by this article from the New York Times.

The boom in crafts and related supplies contrasts with poor results for traditional retailers, like electronics retailers and department stores. The nation’s overall retail sales in November fell 7.4 percent from the year before, according to the Commerce Department.

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Currently, I have two short fiction projects I’m working on at the same time. For one project, I’m pounding the story out on my trusty Mac. The other project is being written "old school" with pen and notebook paper. This got me thinking: What is the preferred medium for writing?

Both writing longhand and typing have their pros and cons. I used to write everything longhand, and then spent hours typing it into a word processing program before I started editing. The process was slow and a little cumbersome, but there was a little magic to it.

Old fashion pen and paper

Writing your novel/short story with pen and paper is a very "intimate" way to write. You feel each word as you put it on paper, and, if you have decent handwriting, it can be somewhat of an art form. Also, writing longhand slows you down a little, so you have more time to ponder your words and sentences. When I write longhand, my writing tends to be a little more thoughtful and more carefully crafted.

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One of my favorite forms of fiction is called the drabble (not to be confused with the author Margaret Drabble). Basically, it’s a very short story that is exactly 100 words long. Not a word more, or a word less. You can write in any genre you like, using any style, and all the other elements of fiction are there – you just have to keep it to 100 words.

Yes, it’s very challenging. Trying to have a beginning, middle, and end of a story, plus character/s in such limited space, really forces you to make every word do as much work as possible. But it can be done, and I’ve written quite a few of them. Here’s the lowdown on the drabble!

History of the drabble

While there is no definitive source on the history of the drabble, I managed to find a few good nuggets of information by poking around the intertubes a little. According to this article, the drabble started out as a game, and got it’s name, of all places, from a Monty Python sketch:

Did you ever hear of the great Drabble craze that swept over (bits of) British sf fandom in the late 1980s? Literary historians have traced the name back to the 1971 Monty Python’s Big Red Book: `Drabble. A word game for 2 to 4 players. The four players sit from left to right and the first person to write a novel wins.’

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Unfortunately, we are all stuck in boring reality, where time is linear and we can’t stop time from moving forward. What the heck am I talking about, you ask? I’m currently reading a book by Stephen Baxter called Manifold: Space aff link) that is part of a series, and I have noticed some interesting ways Baxter plays with time.

One of the cool things about fiction is that time can be manipulated and played with in interesting ways. Shifting the timeline around in the story can add more depth to the plot, and if you’re not careful, confuse the reader. Most of my own fiction follows a fairly linear time progression (ie. the story moves forward along one timeline). There might be a flashback or two, but nothing too complicated.

Baxter, on the other hand, likes to jump around. I don’t want to bore you with endless plot details (you can read the book yourself for that!), but basically Baxter uses Einstein’s theory of relativity as a method of manipulating time for his characters. The premise is that certain characters are traveling further and further out of the solar system using high-tech, futuristic teleportation to get them from point A to point B.

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