Flash Fiction: A Horrific Homage to the Seattle Kraken

This is the most useful book on writing I have ever found, and it’s the only one I will actually buy to give to people. I ended up writing the introduction to the 10th anniversary edition, because I know the publisher and, well, I’ll let that introduction tell its own story. The “Patrick” referred to in it is Patrick Swenson, the publisher who owns Fairwood Press.

For the past few years, I have been covertly getting people to go up to Patrick at conventions and ask when the electronic edition of this book would appear. Why? It might be that I have a prankish mind that was devoted to making him believe there was a vast groundswell awaiting this book. But actually, that’s the truth, because I’ve been pushing this book for years, less for prankish reasons than because I think it’s so useful for new writers.

The 10% Solution is not a cure to all your writing woes. It’s not a tool that helps with everything. But it is a great little book that will make you a better writer if you use it at the right stage in the process. The time to employ it is in that last pass before you send the story out into the world. I think of it as a lint-brush, something that tidies things up and makes sure every sentence that you’re sending out into the world to represent you is doing so beautifully, showing off that you can construct clear and error-free sentences that do exactly what you want them to be doing.

I don’t remember the circumstances when I first ran across The 10% Solution, but I do know that since then I have given out multiple copies and recommended it to literally hundreds of people. Why? Because it works and effectively shows you how to polish a piece of work in a way that shows you are at the professional level. For not just fiction but nonfiction.

Yes, it’s a pain in the butt. Yes, the first time you apply it to a manuscript it will be a huge pain in the rear end that may well lead you to curse aloud, calling down vile imprecations on my head. Yup and yup. I’ve been there too. But it’s worth it. After you’ve done it a few times, your unconscious mind gets tired of that labor and begins making changes before you write, tightening up and clarifying your prose in a way that will make it better.

Don’t believe me? Don’t try to apply it to a book then, but test it out with a short story or essay. Do give it a full chance, not skipping any steps, doing the actual “now I am searching on ly, now I am searching on of” steps. And keep a copy of the original, then look at them side by side. If your original prose is so golden that this didn’t substantially improve it, well then, perhaps this is not the book for you. But for the rest of us, it’s an awesome one.

Thank you, Patrick, for finally listening to all those people I kept sending up to you. I swear you won’t regret it. I know I won’t.

It’s snowy out, the sort of snow I grew up with in Northern Indiana. A clumpy snow, a little wet, so it clings to branches in inch thick lines, making some more snow than branch. Last night I watched it drifting past the light in the parking lot, which illuminated a sphere of falling snow, like an open-air snow globe, the good kind without sparkles or glitter, just evocative white bits that make us think of quiet nights, growing quieter as the snow muffles sound.

Sometimes writers need to stop and look and figure out what makes a scene real, what distinguishes it from one of the many movie backdrops in our heads, so that when we recreate it or take a piece from it or somehow incorporate it into a piece of writing, we can convey that quality. Karen Joy Fowler mentioned that often the most unique detail of a landscape is one of the most transitory: a busker, the shape of a cloud, the noise of the rock concert next door. Right now it’s snow for me. So, I ask you – what’s the most evocative detail of your current landscape?