F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre Allegedly Explains:
the “Mexican Lunch”

COPYRIGHTED © F. GWYNPLAINE MacINTYRE and GWYNPLAINE ENDEAVOURS, LLC.

I sometimes teach workshops in writing fiction and non-fiction. My workshops differ from conventional creative-writing classes in a significant way. I give my students solid information on how to get published: how to find markets for their fiction and non-fiction, how to write to the specific market, and so forth.

Inevitably, one question which aspiring writers ask me over and over is “How do you get your ideas?”. There’s a wide-spread misperception that the idea (for a story or article) is most of the achievement, and more important than all the other factors combined. Professional authors (including me) constantly encounter people who proceed on that assumption: “You’re a writer? I’ve got lots of ideas for stories. Hey, why don’t we do this? I’ll tell you my ideas, then you write ‘em and sell ‘em, and we’ll split the money!” As I tell my students, the idea (for a creative work) is one ingredient in the formula, but it’s only one ingredient. Many other ingredients — particularly the sheer time, effort and discipline of putting butt to chair, fingers to keyboard and words to text file — are often far more important than the idea that began the process.

The science-fiction editor John W. Campbell, who worked closely with many of his authors, liked to give the same story idea to several different writers. He knew that each one would filter that idea through his own unique imagination and his own craft . . . and each author would come back to Campbell’s office with a different story, even though they all started from the same idea!

There is a technique for coming up with original ideas for stories and articles, and I share this technique (free of charge) with the students who participate in my workshops, which I usually hold as part of larger events sponsored by organisations with which I’m affiliated. Email me if you’d like to participate. I use this technique so successfully that I never have any shortage of ideas to write about: my problem is a shortage of time and energy to develop those ideas into saleable manuscripts.

However, one fact which I emphasise to all my students is that very few ideas are unique. Your own idea may very well be original — meaning that you well and truly thought of it yourself, without borrowing from some other source — and yet your original idea is unlikely to be unique, because it’s amazingly easy for different people to invent the same idea independently, and someone else probably had the same idea BEFORE you had it.

This does not mean you should chuck it all in, abandon all hope of ever doing anything creative or useful, and spend the rest of your life working for the Democratic National Committee. Like the authors who worked for John W. Campbell, you should be able to put your own unique stamp and talents to the service of an idea that other artists or writers have already served (before you) and will later serve (after you). I address this in my workshops.

Every author or artist has a few horror stories of this type. For several years now, I’ve been drawing cartoons and submitting them to The New Yorker, hoping to break into that prestigious market. So far, The New Yorker have rejected all of my submissions . . . yet they’ve published cartoons (by other contributors) which seem dauntingly close to my own efforts. An example: I sent The New Yorker a cartoon depicting a psychiatrist’s office. On the psychiatrist’s couch is a crash-test dummy. The dummy is telling the psychiatrist: “I get urges to hurt myself.” A few months after The New Yorker rejected this, they published a cartoon by somebody else, as follows: A crash-test dummy on a psychiatrist’s couch. The psychiatrist is asking: “Are you sure these are accidents?”.

I make no accusations. Clearly, my version caught the editor in the wrong mood at the wrong moment, and the second version (by somebody else) caught the editor in the right mood at the right moment. Possibly, my version made the editor subconsciously more receptive for the second version . . . but there’s no court of appeals for such things.

I once wrote a science-fiction story which I thought was entirely my own original concept, and I submitted it to an editor much older — and more knowledgeable of the genre — than I was at the time. (I choose not to divulge his name here.) I still remember his rejection letter: “Your story is extremely well-written, and it is the best treatment of this particular idea that I have ever seen. Nevertheless, it is an extremely old idea which I have seen many times before, and so I am rejecting your story.”

Normally, when one editor rejects my work, I submit it elsewhere (possibly with revisions). In this case, I was astonished: an editor who knew the science-fiction genre much more deeply than I did was telling me that my idea had been done many times before. I allowed myself to assume that there was no point in submitting it elsewhere.

Slightly over a year later, the same editor published a story (by a different author, slightly better-known than I was at the time) using almost precisely the same idea! The story (by that other guy) received such a favourable reception from readers that it won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. It also enabled that author to receive the John Campbell Award, a book contract and a movie deal. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t bother me. Yet I make no claim of conspiracies against me: it was merely a matter of my story catching the wrong editor (as it turned out) in the wrong mood at the wrong time, and that other story catching the right editor (who was, in fact, the same editor) in the right mood at the right time.

After the other guy had won those awards, I dug out my rejected version of the same plotline, and showed it to the editor again, along with his rejection slip. “You were rejecting my idea, not my writing,” I reminded the editor. “If my idea was so unoriginal, then why did you publish the same idea when it came to you in someone else’s writing?”

The editor gave it serious thought before he made his reply, with a shrug: “Maybe (the other author’s) version was just that much better written.”

My friends, there really is no way of avoiding such incidents . . . except to give up altogether, and never create anything. To help my students cope with this sort of misfortune, I have devised a theory that explains all you need to know about being a professional author or journalist. Here it is:

The “Mexican Lunch” theory of writing (& other creative endeavours):

For purposes of simplicity, the hypothetical editor in this example is identified by male pronouns. The theory works just as well regardless of the sex of the editor (or the author). When applying this theory to other creative endeavours, substitute appropriate nouns: for instance, “art-gallery owner” instead of “editor”.

You’ve written a story and submitted it to an editor. The story works its way up through the slushpile. It is now one of the stories which the editor will consider today, at some point after he arrives at his desk and before he goes home.

9.00 A.M.: The editor arrives to begin his day’s work. He is in an eager and expectant mood, because today he is planning to eat lunch at his favourite Mexican restaurant. He is looking forward to it!

9.01 to 11.59 A.M.: Unfortunately, the editor’s mind is not on his job. His mind is in that Mexican restaurant. He can’t wait for lunchtime! Each manuscript in his slushpile receives a cursory glance before being consigned to its fate. REJECTION! Next! REJECTION! Next! REJECTION!

NOON: The golden moment has arrived. Lunchtime! The editor flings one more manuscript into the Rejections bin, and he departs for a well-deserved lunch . . . fully aware that the ever-brimming slushpile will still be awaiting him upon his return.

12.01 to 1.00 P.M.: The editor enjoys a leisurely repast at his favourite Mexican restaurant. Ahh, ecstasy! The enchiladas are exquisite! The jalapeños are heavenly! With reluctance, the editor declines a third helping of gazpacho, and he returns to his workplace.

1.01 to 1.15 P.M.: The editor confronts the slushpile once more, but this time with renewed vigour and a warm glow. (Must be those jalapeños.) The topmost manuscript on the slushpile gets the full benefit of his enthusiastic attentions. Brilliant writing! Sheer briliance! He eagerly accepts the manuscript for publication, and he notifies the Rights & Permissions department to send the author a contract.

1.16 to 4.59 P.M.: Those jalapeños have risen from the grave. Heartburn! The editor can no longer concentrate on the manuscripts in front of him; the acid reflux has claimed his soul, and he can only barely go through the motions of his job until quitting time, when he will be able to rush to the nearest cocktail lounge for some medicinal relief to cool his indigestion. Until then, each manuscript in his slushpile receives only the most perfunctory scrutiny. REJECTION! Next! REJECTION! Next! REJECTION!

5.00 P.M.: Quitting time! The rest of those manuscripts will have to wait until tomorrow: a new day, brimming with new opportunities. And tomorrow, the editor is planning to eat lunch at his favourite Hungarian restaurant.

So, lads and lassies, there you have it: many factors in life are just a crapshoot. You want your manuscript to be the one the editor reads right after he gets back from lunch, but there’s very little you can do to arrange that circumstance.

In my writing workshops, I tell the students my theory of the Mexican Lunch to emphasise that so much of success (and failure) is a crapshoot outside our control. But I also emphasise something else: even though you can never take complete control over the crapshoot, you can still influence the odds in your favour . . . nudging those editors who control your destiny, so that they’ll pay more attention to the merits of your manuscripts, and less attention to the gazpacho in their gastrointestinal tracts.

Here are some ways you can beat the odds:

• Write as much as possible.
• Write as well as possible.
• Know the markets, and write to fulfil their needs.
• If editors have any difficulty reading what you’ve output, they’ll reject it without reading it.
• Learn all the rules — and learn why those rules are in place — before you decide to break them. This includes the rules of grammar and punctuation.
• Your time is precious: don’t waste it on wankers who will happily tell you why you’re supposed to be a failure.
• Don’t write to imitate this year’s hot fad. By the time your manuscript is finished and out there, the fad will be over and something else will be hot. Write what you want to read . . . and maybe next year other writers will be imitating you!
• Don’t ask your family, spouse or friends to evaluate your writing: unless they’re in the publishing profession, their opinions are worthless at best and probably worse than worthless. One exception: if you’re writing about a specialised field of knowledge, solicit the advice of people in that field.
• Cultivate the friendships of other writers whose writing you admire. (That part is important.) Very few professional writers are so shallow that they would view you as a competitor or rival. Every author worth a damn loves to read: we get pleasure from reading our own work, but that pleasure is compromised because we know how the story ends. In order for any author to enjoy the continued pleasure of reading, other authors must get published! We help each other to achieve that goal, and to get better at it.
• Set aside a time of day — the same time period, every day — exclusively for writing, to be interrupted by absolutely nothing except toilet trips and genuine emergencies. (If you don’t need the police, a fire engine or an ambulance, then it’s not an emergency.) Generally, the time right after you first wake up — when you are freshest, and most alert — is the best time for writing.
• There is no chemical substance (legal or otherwise) which will make the creative process easier . . . and there are many that will make it more difficult. You will write more, and write better, when you are literally and figuratively hungry. Water is a biological necessity; everything else is a distraction. If you really feel you’ve earned that pig-out binge (of food, or any other indulgence), it will taste better after you’ve finished one more chapter.
• Every so often in this world, you will encounter a well-educated idiot who will tell you that you can’t possibly achieve what you want to achieve unless you first master the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers. Ignore such idiots! Unless you are attempting to master the subtleties of slave-owning or pædophilia, the ancient Greeks have nothing useful to teach you.
• Write the story that hurts: the one that affects you so intensely and personally that you don’t believe you really have what it takes to write it properly. That’s the one you should write!
• And enjoy your Mexican Lunch.

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