How I Came to Write "Those Who Can, Help"
by
David Bain
I really like the story behind this story, because this story led to one of the great friendships of my life, and because it gives me the opportunity to say a lot about what words can do.
Back even before Kindle Direct Publishing - we beat Amazon’s KDP by a full year or two - I joined The Company That Shall Not Be Named. We were going to revolutionize publishing via ebooks. I think it was mostly PDFs but also a few other formats, and it was actually a lot like what http://drivethrurpg.com/index.php is right now.
It was exciting - at the start, at least.
I recruited authors. I recruited artists. I quit other gainful sources of employment.
Man, I thought I was all set. Freedom as a publisher. Freedom to recruit all my connections to this exciting new format. Even Charles L. Grant and Thomas Monteleone signed on with me to republish a long-ago novella they’d cowritten called When Dark Descends. I commissioned a beautiful cover and everything.
And then the publisher sat on not only that project, but project after project.
He sat.
And sat.
And published virtually nothing.
And paid nobody.
Including me.
And … well, suffice it to say, one day it all imploded with literally hundreds of authors rebelling en masse.
And I put out a statement publically divorcing myself from The Company That Shall Not Be Named, releasing all materials I had worked so hard to garner. (The Grant/Monteleone piece was eventually picked up and published in hardcover by another company, by the way.)
But.
Along the way, I had intended to put together an anthology of dark fantasy road stories to be called Dark Highways. It would’ve been grand. You would’ve dug it. You see, I have a particular affinity for road stories. For instance, as the major work of my undergrad years, I wrote a 65-page paper exploring road narratives as they’re presented in modern American poetry, from the Beats through Robert Pinsky’s then-current book-length poem An Exploration of America.
And I also had an affinity for horror fiction.
And I wanted to see how my two loves combine.
One of the stories I received was “5:53” by C. Dennis Moore. And, as I recall, I rejected that particular version of that story, giving him some constructive criticism.
I must have handled the correction well enough, because Dennis and I have written back and forth pretty much every day since, for well more than a decade. He’s been there for me through a lot of rough stuff, he keeps me motivated, and we’ve collaborated on books like Band of Gypsies and Return to Angel Hill.
(I eventually did edit and publish a much smaller version of the Dark Highways anthology, available here. Dennis heeded my advice and rewrote “5:53” and it appears in this collection.)
So what about my story “Those Who Can, Help”? I’m supposed to be talking about that, right?
So, okay, shortly after we met, Dennis announced to me and a couple other authors that he had one slot left open in an anthology he was editing called The Book of Monsters. (It’s a nice little paperback, decently illustrated. It’s still available on Amazon, if you’re interested.)
So, because he’s sadistic, Dennis made that last slot a contest between myself and two other writers. My story won.
I was mostly working on my novel Gray Lake at the time. I was working third shift in group homes for the disabled and my job was basically to stay awake should something happen. Nothing ever happened - the residents almost always slept straight through the night - but I got a lot of writing done.
The monster Dennis assigned me was “goblins.” And very specific goblins, as outlined in a long, detailed paragraph he sent me.
The goblins, in this case, are much like the elves in old fairy tale of “The Shoemaker and the Elves”: helpful - until you cross them. (Of course, that’s not exactly what happens in the Grimm’s tale, but the Grimms and Hans Christian Anderson and all those guys were really messed up in their morality.)
So my thought was, Who needs help most of all in our modern-day society? And my obvious answer, given the location and circumstances under which I was writing, was: the disabled. I don’t make much of it, but I’ve worked, in one way or another, with disabled people for about 20 years now.
The title of this story means a lot to me. If you can help, do. (And not just the disabled.)
I wrote the story in a single night, maybe two - Dennis didn’t give us much time. It was due over the course of a weekend. By Monday I was back to Gray Lake.
So let me say something here about following your vision vs. writing to order.
My novel Gray Lake - which will probably always remain my favorite out of my own work - seems to divide readers. It’s not a typical horror novel. It’s long, it jumps genres, and it asks the reader to follow many divergent threads until they’re brought together at the end. And yet it’s exactly the novel I wanted. It’s the vision I wanted. Difficult as it might be for the reader who’s expecting or wanting a casual read, Gray Lake sums up the first thirty or so years of my life and I wouldn’t change a word of it.
So am I selling out when I get an anthology invite and write to order? Hardly.
First of all, you can write to order and stay true to yourself.
Dennis said, “Write about goblins, and write about these particular kind of goblins. Deliver me a good story by Monday and I’ll pay you.” And I did as he asked. And yet I stayed true to myself. I wrote about my disabled friends and their struggles. I tried, through the story, to make the world a better, more sympathetic place.
But there’s also nothing wrong with simply writing to order.
An artist should take up challenges sometimes. And those who can make money by exercising their art, should. Give the people what they want. Sometimes. Just be sure to then go off to your room and let your vision fly free. It can be a satisfying balance.
I’ll add this, since not everyone knows it - I’ve also spent twenty-some years working for newspapers in reporting or editorial positions. I think newspaper writing is itself an art - it’s one art among many open to you in this writing life. The conciseness, the ability to organize information into an inverted pyramid, exercising the restraint to NOT editorialize, knowing your stylebook - it’s all a kind of poetry, really.
I might be shocked, outraged, saddened, emboldened, inspired or otherwise affected by a story, but I’m paid to present it in a certain manner and to make certain decisions which, left to my own druthers, I might make differently.There have been news stories I’ve cried and agonized over, stories which have changed my life. They appeared one way in the newspaper because I was paid to present them that way, and because I respect the craft of newspapermen - while here on my blog, or in my memoirs, the reins would come off and you’d see a wholly different set of words telling the same story.
Words can do so much. You, as a writer, can do so much. You can get your vision down for others to see. You can articulate someone else’s vision. You can win friends, influence people. You can even make money, sometimes. And if you can write, you can write words that help.
by
David Bain
I really like the story behind this story, because this story led to one of the great friendships of my life, and because it gives me the opportunity to say a lot about what words can do.
Back even before Kindle Direct Publishing - we beat Amazon’s KDP by a full year or two - I joined The Company That Shall Not Be Named. We were going to revolutionize publishing via ebooks. I think it was mostly PDFs but also a few other formats, and it was actually a lot like what http://drivethrurpg.com/index.php is right now.
It was exciting - at the start, at least.
I recruited authors. I recruited artists. I quit other gainful sources of employment.
Man, I thought I was all set. Freedom as a publisher. Freedom to recruit all my connections to this exciting new format. Even Charles L. Grant and Thomas Monteleone signed on with me to republish a long-ago novella they’d cowritten called When Dark Descends. I commissioned a beautiful cover and everything.
And then the publisher sat on not only that project, but project after project.
He sat.
And sat.
And published virtually nothing.
And paid nobody.
Including me.
And … well, suffice it to say, one day it all imploded with literally hundreds of authors rebelling en masse.
And I put out a statement publically divorcing myself from The Company That Shall Not Be Named, releasing all materials I had worked so hard to garner. (The Grant/Monteleone piece was eventually picked up and published in hardcover by another company, by the way.)
But.
Along the way, I had intended to put together an anthology of dark fantasy road stories to be called Dark Highways. It would’ve been grand. You would’ve dug it. You see, I have a particular affinity for road stories. For instance, as the major work of my undergrad years, I wrote a 65-page paper exploring road narratives as they’re presented in modern American poetry, from the Beats through Robert Pinsky’s then-current book-length poem An Exploration of America.
And I also had an affinity for horror fiction.
And I wanted to see how my two loves combine.
One of the stories I received was “5:53” by C. Dennis Moore. And, as I recall, I rejected that particular version of that story, giving him some constructive criticism.
I must have handled the correction well enough, because Dennis and I have written back and forth pretty much every day since, for well more than a decade. He’s been there for me through a lot of rough stuff, he keeps me motivated, and we’ve collaborated on books like Band of Gypsies and Return to Angel Hill.
(I eventually did edit and publish a much smaller version of the Dark Highways anthology, available here. Dennis heeded my advice and rewrote “5:53” and it appears in this collection.)
So what about my story “Those Who Can, Help”? I’m supposed to be talking about that, right?
So, okay, shortly after we met, Dennis announced to me and a couple other authors that he had one slot left open in an anthology he was editing called The Book of Monsters. (It’s a nice little paperback, decently illustrated. It’s still available on Amazon, if you’re interested.)
So, because he’s sadistic, Dennis made that last slot a contest between myself and two other writers. My story won.
I was mostly working on my novel Gray Lake at the time. I was working third shift in group homes for the disabled and my job was basically to stay awake should something happen. Nothing ever happened - the residents almost always slept straight through the night - but I got a lot of writing done.
The monster Dennis assigned me was “goblins.” And very specific goblins, as outlined in a long, detailed paragraph he sent me.
The goblins, in this case, are much like the elves in old fairy tale of “The Shoemaker and the Elves”: helpful - until you cross them. (Of course, that’s not exactly what happens in the Grimm’s tale, but the Grimms and Hans Christian Anderson and all those guys were really messed up in their morality.)
So my thought was, Who needs help most of all in our modern-day society? And my obvious answer, given the location and circumstances under which I was writing, was: the disabled. I don’t make much of it, but I’ve worked, in one way or another, with disabled people for about 20 years now.
The title of this story means a lot to me. If you can help, do. (And not just the disabled.)
I wrote the story in a single night, maybe two - Dennis didn’t give us much time. It was due over the course of a weekend. By Monday I was back to Gray Lake.
So let me say something here about following your vision vs. writing to order.
My novel Gray Lake - which will probably always remain my favorite out of my own work - seems to divide readers. It’s not a typical horror novel. It’s long, it jumps genres, and it asks the reader to follow many divergent threads until they’re brought together at the end. And yet it’s exactly the novel I wanted. It’s the vision I wanted. Difficult as it might be for the reader who’s expecting or wanting a casual read, Gray Lake sums up the first thirty or so years of my life and I wouldn’t change a word of it.
So am I selling out when I get an anthology invite and write to order? Hardly.
First of all, you can write to order and stay true to yourself.
Dennis said, “Write about goblins, and write about these particular kind of goblins. Deliver me a good story by Monday and I’ll pay you.” And I did as he asked. And yet I stayed true to myself. I wrote about my disabled friends and their struggles. I tried, through the story, to make the world a better, more sympathetic place.
But there’s also nothing wrong with simply writing to order.
An artist should take up challenges sometimes. And those who can make money by exercising their art, should. Give the people what they want. Sometimes. Just be sure to then go off to your room and let your vision fly free. It can be a satisfying balance.
I’ll add this, since not everyone knows it - I’ve also spent twenty-some years working for newspapers in reporting or editorial positions. I think newspaper writing is itself an art - it’s one art among many open to you in this writing life. The conciseness, the ability to organize information into an inverted pyramid, exercising the restraint to NOT editorialize, knowing your stylebook - it’s all a kind of poetry, really.
I might be shocked, outraged, saddened, emboldened, inspired or otherwise affected by a story, but I’m paid to present it in a certain manner and to make certain decisions which, left to my own druthers, I might make differently.There have been news stories I’ve cried and agonized over, stories which have changed my life. They appeared one way in the newspaper because I was paid to present them that way, and because I respect the craft of newspapermen - while here on my blog, or in my memoirs, the reins would come off and you’d see a wholly different set of words telling the same story.
Words can do so much. You, as a writer, can do so much. You can get your vision down for others to see. You can articulate someone else’s vision. You can win friends, influence people. You can even make money, sometimes. And if you can write, you can write words that help.
The story "Those Who Can, Help" appears in the massive story collection UNTIL YOU CAN SCREAM NO MORE! and in the audiobook GREEN RIVER DARK FANTASY TALES. (iTunes)