Writing Words of Wisdom

I was recently asked (again) for words of wisdom regarding being a writer and seeking publication. So i thought i would just blog it.

I have some strong opinions about writing and publishing, springing from my own experience over 20-25 years of pursuing it, and numerous blogs, articles, essays, and having written and rewritten 13 books; added to this is also webmastering, book cover design, typography, editing, and publishing. I wanted to learn all the aspects of completing a book.

My most commonly offered caveat is this: don't fall in love with your words; fall in love with your craft. That's when you will begin the process of being a quality writer.

This subject is voluminous, and I can't do it justice in just a few paragraphs, but the other words of wisdom I will offer are these:

The competition to be a published writer is fierce. The dream of getting published has been overly-romanticized in the media so that many beginning writers think not only that writing is easy, but that they have a good chance of getting a contract from a major house. The odds are, realistically, one in a million--maybe worse than that. We hear about the success stories, not the ones who spend their lives toiling for that dream, to the exclusion of everything else, only to wind up poor, alone, lacking in social skills, and profoundly jaded that life has passed them by. There are so many unpublished writers who pursue this dream, and publishers and agents have had to crack down on the criteria to even LOOK at work sent. And it is very expensive for a writer to submit manuscripts, what with an ink cartridge costing around $30 and then adding the paper cost and the mailing costs, and that's just PER MANUSCRIPT. Common advice tells us that we must do this hundreds of times, and continually if we ever hope to get traditionally published. You have to pour lots of money into the endeavor over a period of many years, sometimes. And more often than not, this investment does not return.

Often, then, self-publishing is the only option if a writer wants to get her work out there. There's little point in spending your entire life hoping, while your words stay in a drawer. I believe as writers we are meant to honor that talent, and share it, otherwise, what's the point of having it? Fortunately, we live in an era where technology allows us some autonomy and some tools to make this happen. So, do whatever you have to do to get your work out there. If it's good, it might eventually get noticed and picked up by a major house or agent--that frequently has more to do with who you know, than how much you submit your work. So cultivate connections. And also try to go small or medium press. If you get a contract from one of them, you can use those books to woo larger fish.

Additionally, a writer who aspires to be published traditionally, needs to make sure she has a dependable source of income other than writing. And she needs to have other things and people in her life that bring her joy and satisfaction. This makes the journey pleasing, rather than a chore. And anyway, without a vibrant social life, you run out of things to write about. You must feed the well with people and events and experiences in order to keep your writing vibrant.

Changes are desperately needed in the publishing industry. Old School is just not working in our modern society. Publishers should be more open to self-published submissions. There is still, however, a haughtiness and arrogance among the Industry Insiders, and this does nothing to advance the cause of bringing great writing to the reading public. The process has been politicized by the Bottom Line.

Also, while there's a pretension in the publishing community, this is also true of the writing community, which is that if you self-publish, you must not be a good writer. This is not always accurate (though, admittedly, there ARE writers who self-publish but have not mastered their craft in any way). Still, there are many quality writers who self publish--they are among all the other writers who strive to see their work in print and available to the reading consumer. You might have to dig a little, but they can be found. And you can be among them if you really want to share your work.

You have to ask yourself what's more important: The prestige of major-house publication, or honoring the talent and sharing it? I take a more humanistic view of all this, as you might guess by now. I think it's more important to get the work out there, than cling to it against overwhelming odds. Writers usually are good at living inside their own fiction. This is fine on the page, but doesn't work so well in the real world.

Writing Words of Wisdom

BIG NEWS!!!

I was just offered a publishing contract for my novel, Plethora.

I'm excited. All that hard work paid off!

Details pending.

(I still await word from another publisher about a different book.)

BIG NEWS!!!

Lies from the Publishing SINdustry

When an author submits work to a publisher, there are guidelines that must be followed, and they will always be very clear about what those guidelines are. Some of them are industry-wide. Some of them are also without merit and bordering on either absurdity or outright lies.

One demand that publishers seem to spew with regularity is that all manuscripts must be in a certain font; what is called a serif font. Serif fonts have those little tiny flourishes or extras on the letters. The most common one is Times New Roman. The number one argument is it's easier to read. When publishers say Times New Roman is easier to read, what they really mean to say is, Times New Roman is what we have always used. (this is because that's what the industry started with when typesetting involved little blocks in a frame which would stamp one page at a time--it was too hard to make another set of blocks). But we're in the digital age now and typesetting is easy and a variety of options are now available. Another reason is that Times New Roman is the only typeface available in the third world where they send these manuscripts to be typeset and printed. Cheap labor, cheap supplies. Another example of American Outsourcing.*

Moving on to word count. In recent years, the criteria for word count has increased. A standard novel was often around 60,000 words. Now publishers almost across the board demand 80,000 to 120,000 words in order for your book to even get a glance. My problem with this one does not stem from laziness or an inability to write that many words; it stems from the concept of being true to a story. Sometimes a story is best told in fewer words. I think a book should only be long enough to tell the story, and to impose a higher word count as a matter of course is a total dismissal of the art of storytelling. Even the most popular fiction writers have had to pad out their stories to meet this word count, and I don't know about you, but I can tell. Who wants to read a three page description of a freakin' sunset? Also, it makes sense that it would be cheaper for the publisher if the book was smaller. And aren't people busier than ever? who has time to read these long ass books? I don't, and I write books myself and read quite a lot. My best friend, who's also an author, believes it's inherently psychological. Readers think they are getting more value for their money if the book is bigger. What they're getting is unneeded exposition that doesn't move the story, and often serves to bore the reader. Again, padding. I maintain that a story is as long as it needs to be. If a writer is thus shackled by a word count, aren't we just screwing around with the literary arts? That's like telling an artist he didn't use enough paint to create his picture, and should use a different color, or should perhaps paint on something other than canvas. Who are they to tell the creative artist how to interpret or impart their muse?

I get so disgusted with this whole thing that I swear I'll self-publish for the rest of my life. Then I can write what I want to write, how I want to write it, tell the story that needs to be told in the space it needs to do so, and I'll use the typeface that my research tells me is most legible and easy on the eyes, and I'll buck convention and write sarcastic and funny things within the copyright page because I bloody well want to, and not because some big brother publishing establishment tells me otherwise.

There.
I have vented.
I feel better.
But only a little.
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*since this writing, i have begun to use Palatino Linotype across the board. It's a compromise. I'm not completely stone-headed.

Lies from the Publishing SINdustry

Slings and Arrows

Recently, I was offered a publishing contract on my novel Achilles Forjan. I allowed myself to get all excited and when the hard copy of the contract came, I realized it was not the same as the "sample." I didn't like the idea of handing over the rights to my own book for SEVEN years. I didn't know this publisher well enough to entrust my work for such a long time. And then there was being at the mercy of their idea of what my work was, what it should look like, how it should be edited, and then how I'd get 10-15 percent of the profit on each book. The book I SLAVED over. The book that came from my guts. The one that cost me several years of my creative life. That book that is a piece of me as surely as if I had given birth to it. It was one of my literary children. And this deal would include very little, if any, marketing efforts on their part. Those perks are reserved for the cash cows like Dean Koontz and Nora Roberts. Rightfully so, as they have proven their profit viability in the marketplace. I'd still have to do the interviews, the book signings, the business cards, the web page... There were other things that just didn't feel right, too. My gut told me to refuse the contract. I always listen to my gut. It wasn't a pleasant decision, though. Making a decision like that is sort of like being pecked to death by chickens. How long had I waited for an opportunity like this? For years, I have intentionally avoided pitching my material because I wanted to feel like it was worthy enough to compete. Now that I feel I am a good enough writer to publish my work, I'm faced with the usual slings and arrows a writer faces when trying to make it to print. There are so many talented writers out there, but most of them don't get into the right door, largely because of the politics of the publishing industry. The advent of self-publishing has offered control back to the creator. (I don't mean God, I mean the writer...writing is, metaphorically speaking, quite like playing God...but that's for another blog). Now if we could only get past the stigma of it all. The stigma that says if you have to publish your own work, it must suck. That is sometimes true. But in many other cases, it is not. James Redfield (Celestine Prophesy) self-published first. So did John Grisham (he sold copies of A Time to Kill from the trunk of his car), as did Deepak Chopra, Mark Twain, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allen Poe, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Crane, Beatrix Potter, Margaret Atwood, Amanda Brown (Legally Blond). It's a great way to test market, and often, self-published books get picked up by traditional publishing houses. So stigma be damned. I began the task of being my own publisher. Then a funny thing happened. I fell in love with the process. I discovered a formidable affection for being in control of the editing, typography, formatting, design of my own work. And I resolved to get all my completed or nearly-completed work in print and continue to do that with forthcoming material. This has translated into 100 hour weeks. But I am loving it. I feel permeated by satisfaction. It's always been about getting my work out there, not getting rich off it. I'm not delusional. Having come close again to being sucked into the literary abyss of greed, and allowing my work to be corrupted, pigeon-holed, and packaged by strangers who take most of the profit, I managed to pull myself back, regain my footing. I can do this myself. So. The self-published copies will be used to fish for a literary agent. It's cheaper that way anyway. There's a reason why writers are historically poor, downtrodden, and half-insane addicts. It's because it's so hard and so expensive to get their work noticed. These days, it's still expensive. It costs upwards of $40 to send a manuscript to just ONE publisher or agent, when you include paper, ink, copying, postage, etc. One inkjet cartridge, for example, costs me $30 of that. So the point is, it's more economical for me to publish on Amazon's CreateSpace, buy a copy of it for $4 or $7 or $10 and mail that. In the old days, before computers, the craft of writing was even more arduous and tedious and time consuming. Imagine hand-writing a 300-400 page manuscript and then spilling your coffee on it. Imagine typing the same amount, and then realizing you have to do a major rewrite, and that means typing it all again. And you could spill your coffee on that, too. My best friend, who is also a writer, used a typewriter up until 4 years ago. She had turned over six of her manuscripts to her new agent, and he was in such a hurry to get to New York for his meetings, that he didn't make copies of them. Then POOF. Something weird happened; he had some sort of mental breakdown, or was abducted by aliens, or otherwise fell off the face of the earth, and she never could find him after that. Imagine. Six full novels. Gone. She's been flirting with rewriting them for the last four years, and has done some of it, along with new material, but you never quite get over something like that. It's like having someone rip out your spleen. I will continue this quest, and if, along the way, some agent or publisher sees my work and deems it suitable for representation and then negotiates a lucrative and satisfying alliance that will bring us both joy and a plethora of meaningless material possessions, I'll seriously consider it. In the meantime, it's still about the WRITING.

To purchase my books and music, go to http://jaebaeli Doing so will ensure blessings on you and yours, and the quality of your life will magically improve.

Slings and Arrows