Interview with Anna Ziegelhof
1. How did you get started writing fiction?
As a child. I was six or seven and suddenly had this idea for a story about two bird-like creatures living in a mushroom house and going on adventures with their friends. It was a proper series, too! Five or six "books" (of about two pages each). They're very cute, I still have them. I always loved being read stories as a child, particularly the ones without pictures, and from the moment I figured out how to read myself, I read all the time. At some point I learned what an "author" is: some magical person who wrote the stories I loved? Wow! Discovering at age six or seven that I can write my own stories, exactly as I wanted them, was huge to me.
2. What kind of fiction do you enjoy writing? (Such as fantasy, romance, horror, or unspecified)
I write mainly science fiction and horror. I like that those genres allow you to bend reality to meet a story's or a message's needs. This bending of reality allows me to explore hypotheticals in a visceral way.
3. What was it about writing short stories that just seemed to "click" with your writing career?
I love reading short stories and flash fiction, though I also love immersing myself for hours and hours in a novel. But when it comes to crafting my own stories, short fiction works for me. I have a few novel projects I'm working on, but I have so many ideas and sometimes the ideas can't exist in the same story world, so I commit to a few big ideas in novel-form, and to several more ideas in short story form. This allows me to get to them sooner, to play with them sooner. I guess I'm impatient. In my genres there are so many wonderful short fiction markets and I love challenging myself to come up with a cool story in response to their themed calls for short story submissions. Some venues I really like are Solarpunk, Diabolical Plots, Luna Station, Apparition, Flametree Press, The Future Fire, Cast of Wonders (a YA podcast), to name just a few.
4. Is there a type of short story that you enjoy writing most?
I love challenging myself to something highly restricted in terms of point of view, or something very technical. That'll usually be a flash fiction piece (under 1,000 words). Like, the other day I tried writing a story that could be read backwards and forwards, like a palindrome but in flash fiction form. That was great fun! I love writing from the point of views of nature or inanimate objects, too. You really gotta think, "okay, how could this tree know what this human is feeling?" or "how would a rock feel about this?"
I have a horror short story called "Leave Nothing to Chance" in an awesome anthology titled "Navigating Ruins". It's written from the point of view of a child hiding during a monster-attack. The child is so scared and their life is so disrupted, that the child flees into a world in their mind that's governed by arcane rules. So the whole story is written as a list of rules and exceptions. It's very abstract and very estranged, but ultimately really emotional, because you realize that the poor child is so scared, they have chosen ultimate abstraction to deal with their circumstances.
5. What was it like when you sold your first short story?
Sort of unreal. I was so used to getting rejection emails. I think I opened the email expecting yet another rejection, but it was an acceptance!
I had started submitting fiction for the first time about eight months earlier. I wasn't just submitting one story, but a bunch of stories, and I was shopping them around to short fiction markets, and writing new stories, responding to those themed calls I mentioned before, staying really productive.
"Little Grey Weirdos" was a story I had originally written for an anthology. It was rejected by the anthology editors, so I resubmitted it elsewhere. It was rejected again and again. Ultimately, it was picked up by "The Future Fire". There's definitely such a thing as the right market for a story. I got the email and I was like, "wait... what...? No way!" "The Future Fire" was a great venue to be published for the first time, too. They're very diligent about editing and the business aspect of things.
6. Where do you find short story markets to submit to?
I use Submission Grinder, a website where you can enter your story's details (like how many words, which genre, if it's a reprint) and you get a list of relevant markets. I also (sparingly) follow authors and publications on social media to know where others publish and when submission windows are open. I'm a member of SFWA, which gives me access to discussion boards where authors share their publications. I subscribe to email newsletters by publications I like. I've been doing this for quite some time, so by now I also have an annual schedule of when which publication is open for submissions.
7. What is one lesson you have learned as a writer when it comes to writing short fiction?
To cut mercilessly. I've learned to become very clear on the theme of my story and leave out stuff that doesn't serve the theme. Another thing I've learned: the story usually gets better as you cut. I used to keep documents with my cut-outs, because I thought I might put them back or re-use them. I never put anything back. So far, my stories have always benefited from cutting.
8. How is writing short fiction different from your work as a writer of longer fiction?
It's a different way of working, because in one edit-session I can usually read through the entire story and really pay attention to how every last detail fits into the larger arc. With longer pieces, I only ever see one part when I work on them. The most technical of all is writing flash fiction or micro fiction. Those stories are so short, but in a way also harder, because you really have to know what the story is about in order to place each word with intention. I can tweak those endlessly.
9. What is some of the best advice you have received from other writers or editors when it comes to writing short fiction?
I recommend George Saunders' A Swim in a Pond in the Rain to everyone. I learned a lot from that book, for example about reader expectations, how to fulfill but also subvert expectations.
10. Do you have any advice of your own to share with other writers?
1) Read a lot. I split my "professional" reading-time into reading canon (classic science fiction and horror by the big genre writers), recent releases in the genres, and non-fiction about all kinds of things I'm interested in. (Then there's leisure reading-time, during which I love cozy mysteries and thrillers.)
2) If you ask for feedback, be ready to hear the feedback. Feedback isn't necessarily praise. It's probably better when it's not praise. I've seen it happening so much that someone receiving feedback starts justifying or explaining. It doesn't make sense to do that, because when a piece of writing gets to a reader, the writer won't be there to deliver a justification or explanation. I ask select trusted people for feedback and when it arrives, I listen and then consider whether to incorporate it.
ABOUT ANNA:
Anna Ziegelhof is a short fiction writer originally from Germany, now based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has an academic background in Jewish Studies and Sociology and a professional background in language teaching and computational linguistics. She is particularly drawn to stories about darker aspects of the human (or alien) experience; stories that don't shy away from showing dire aspects of life, but incorporate at least a sliver of hope, compassion, and agency. Her short fiction can be found, among others, in Luna Station, Solarpunk, The Future Fire, Silver Blade Magazine, Flametree Press' "Footsteps in the Dark" anthology, and Short Edition's short story dispensers. Online she can be found at www.annaziegelhof.com and she enjoys being creative on Instagram as @annawithaz