again at Uncle Milty’s down on 1st Street, as I had my first summer out of high school. Vietnam also loomed. My number had come up in the draft lottery, and by losing all that weight over the past year I had also managed to lose my 4-F exemption. I was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and had applied for conscientious objector status with my local draft board, but everyone told me that my chances of receiving it were small to none. More likely, I’d be drafted. I might only have a month or two of civilian life remaining.
I had that much, however…and since I only had a part-time job, I had half of every day as well. I decided to use that time for writing fiction, as I’d resolved to do at Disclave. To work at it
every day,
and see how much I could produce before Uncle Sam called me up. My Parks Department job began in the afternoon, so the mornings became my time to write. Every day after breakfast I would drag out my Smith-Corona portable electric, set it up on my mother’s kitchen table, plug it in, flick on the switch that made it
hummmmm,
and set to writing. Nor would I allow myself to put a story aside until I’d finished it. I wanted finished stories I could sell, not fragments and half-developed notions.
That summer I finished a story every two weeks, on the average. I wrote “Night Shift” and “Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels.” I wrote “The Last Super Bowl,” though my title was “The Final Touchdown Drive.” I wrote “A Peripheral Affair” and “Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg,” both of them intended as the first story of a series. And I wrote “With Morning Comes Mistfall” and “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” which follow. Seven stories, all in all. Maybe it was the spectre of Vietnam that goaded me, or my accumulated frustration at having neither a job, a girl, nor a life. (“Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg,” though perhaps the weakest story I produced that summer, reflects my state of mind most clearly. For “New Pittsburg,” read “Bayonne.” For “corpse,” read me.)
Whatever the cause, the words came pouring out of me as they never had before. Ultimately, all seven of the stories that I wrote that summer would go on to sell, though for some it would require four or five years and a score of rejections. Two of the seven, however, proved to be important milestones in my career, and those are the two that I’ve included here.
They were the two best. I knew that when I wrote them, and said as much in the letters I sent to Howard Waldrop that summer. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” was the finest thing that I had ever written,
ever…
until I wrote “The Second Kind of Loneliness” a few weeks later. “Mistfall” seemed to me to be the more polished of the two, a wistful mood piece with little in the way of traditional “action,” yet evocative and, I hoped, effective. “Loneliness,” on the other hand, was an open wound of a story, painful to write, painful to read. It represented a real breakthrough for my writing. My earlier stories had come wholly from the head, but this one came from the heart and the balls as well. It was the first story I ever wrote that truly left me feeling vulnerable, the first story that ever made me ask myself, “Do I
really
want to let people read this?”
“The Second Kind of Loneliness” and “With Morning Comes Mistfall” were the stories that would make or break my career, I was convinced. For the next half-year,
break
looked more likely than
make.
Neither story sold its first time out. Or its second. Or its third. My other “summer stories” were getting bounced around as well, but it was the rejections for “Mistfall” and “Loneliness” that hurt the most. These were
strong
stories, I was convinced, the best work that I was capable of. If the editors did not want them, maybe I did not understand what makes a good story after all…or maybe my best work was just not good enough. It was a dark day each time one of these two came
I had that much, however…and since I only had a part-time job, I had half of every day as well. I decided to use that time for writing fiction, as I’d resolved to do at Disclave. To work at it
every day,
and see how much I could produce before Uncle Sam called me up. My Parks Department job began in the afternoon, so the mornings became my time to write. Every day after breakfast I would drag out my Smith-Corona portable electric, set it up on my mother’s kitchen table, plug it in, flick on the switch that made it
hummmmm,
and set to writing. Nor would I allow myself to put a story aside until I’d finished it. I wanted finished stories I could sell, not fragments and half-developed notions.
That summer I finished a story every two weeks, on the average. I wrote “Night Shift” and “Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels.” I wrote “The Last Super Bowl,” though my title was “The Final Touchdown Drive.” I wrote “A Peripheral Affair” and “Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg,” both of them intended as the first story of a series. And I wrote “With Morning Comes Mistfall” and “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” which follow. Seven stories, all in all. Maybe it was the spectre of Vietnam that goaded me, or my accumulated frustration at having neither a job, a girl, nor a life. (“Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg,” though perhaps the weakest story I produced that summer, reflects my state of mind most clearly. For “New Pittsburg,” read “Bayonne.” For “corpse,” read me.)
Whatever the cause, the words came pouring out of me as they never had before. Ultimately, all seven of the stories that I wrote that summer would go on to sell, though for some it would require four or five years and a score of rejections. Two of the seven, however, proved to be important milestones in my career, and those are the two that I’ve included here.
They were the two best. I knew that when I wrote them, and said as much in the letters I sent to Howard Waldrop that summer. “With Morning Comes Mistfall” was the finest thing that I had ever written,
ever…
until I wrote “The Second Kind of Loneliness” a few weeks later. “Mistfall” seemed to me to be the more polished of the two, a wistful mood piece with little in the way of traditional “action,” yet evocative and, I hoped, effective. “Loneliness,” on the other hand, was an open wound of a story, painful to write, painful to read. It represented a real breakthrough for my writing. My earlier stories had come wholly from the head, but this one came from the heart and the balls as well. It was the first story I ever wrote that truly left me feeling vulnerable, the first story that ever made me ask myself, “Do I
really
want to let people read this?”
“The Second Kind of Loneliness” and “With Morning Comes Mistfall” were the stories that would make or break my career, I was convinced. For the next half-year,
break
looked more likely than
make.
Neither story sold its first time out. Or its second. Or its third. My other “summer stories” were getting bounced around as well, but it was the rejections for “Mistfall” and “Loneliness” that hurt the most. These were
strong
stories, I was convinced, the best work that I was capable of. If the editors did not want them, maybe I did not understand what makes a good story after all…or maybe my best work was just not good enough. It was a dark day each time one of these two came
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