This is a post about how to foreshadow in a book.  It is of course a post for writers, but also for readers.  Sometimes being aware of the foreshadowing is a delight.  I confess I don’t usually do it first read through, when I’m like “yay, story.”  BUT on second read, seeing how beautiful the structure is supporting the tent can help appreciate the work.

I will warn you I am no expert.  I only discovered foreshadowing after selling FOUR books.  Does this mean I was doing none of it?  Well, no, it doesn’t.  I’ve read so much – books and stories have always been part of my life, even if the earliest reading I remember is comic books.  What I mean is, I absorbed some of what to do through the skin, without thinking about it.

[CACS asked how I could have a degree in literature without learning about foreshadowing.  Very easily.  First you have to account for different cultures.  I don’t know HOW Portuguese novels are structured, but I know it’s different from Anglophonic novels.  For one, they read far more leisurely and unstructured to me.  Now, we studied English and German and French novels, too, but if a concept does not exist in your own literature, you’ll be blind to it in other literatures.  OTOH it’s entirely possible that foreshadowing is well known in Portugal and I never heard of it.  Honestly, having gone into highschool in 75 (highschool in Portugal starts with 7th grade) and graduating in 81, I got the first wave of what we’ll call ex-hippie (and sometimes not ex) teachers.  College was more mixed, because some of my literature professors were older, but they too were under the tyranny of the hip.  Just like art was about throwing us at a wall with paint and telling us to express ourselves, we were encouraged to analyze literature anyway we wanted to, with bonus points for Marxist.  Just like I now take arts courses to learn about stuff like perspective and shading, I had to unlearn almost anything I thought I knew about literature, in order to write readable books.]

Anyway, I thought – feel free to laugh here – that things were just supposed to happen in books.  In the same way I like surprise endings, I thought that ALL plot developments should be surprises, the more surprise the better.  This resulted in some reviews for my first published books, saying the books had no plot.  This is silly, because they do.  What happens HAS to happen, logically.  It’s just that I didn’t signal it enough in advance and from the readers’ perspective it just “happens.”  At that, my first published books have SOME structure that’s visible to readers, in the form of leaning on older fairytales.  The great Minoan saga suffers, most of all, from a complete lack of foreshadowing (yes, I DID think I was being clever) which means walls fal on the character.  From the reader’s perspective, this character is just cursed, and he can’t walk past a wall without it’s falling onto it.  (A quick note on plotting here – your character should suffer mostly from things he did himself.  While the eternal victim character – Jane Eyre, or the beginning of Harry Potter – grabs you, if the character doesn’t start having some control over his destiny and soon, you’ll either lose readers or win a Nobel Prize, depending on who your victim is.)  This is why the great Minoan saga MUST be rewritten, even IF I bring it out myself.

And then within the space of a month, both Dave Freer and Toni Weisskopft informed me when I said something like “I know, my plotting sucks” (which I’d told other professionals before and they never disabused me) “No, your plotting is fine, but you have no clue how to foreshadow.”  (Boy, were they right.  I’m looking at novellas I wrote before that, and OUCH.  Those too are being rewritten.  The short stories “swim” better because very short.)

They both then left me to sink or swim, (and in Dave’s case we ALL know there are sharks in the waters he swims in!) They both recommended I read Georgette Heyer as an example, though.  (This started my downfall into reading icky, icky romance.  Actually reading ANY romance doesn’t hurt, if you haven’t read it before.  Or any genre you don’t normally read.  You see the structure better if the idea is unfamiliar.)

The first time I foreshadowed I was convinced – CONVINCED – that people would tell me I’d ruined the book; that they knew all the plot in the first three pages, that they didn’t like it.

Instead, that book, Draw One In The Dark, though it had a horrible cover in hard cover, and therefore negligible numbers, was the beginning of my building my fandom.  (It’s available at Baen’s Webscriptions at a reasonable price, too AND with the not-horrible mmpb cover.)

Foreshadowing is one of those things you have to learn by trial and error, but from the height of my eight years of doing it, let me tell you what I’ve learned so far.

1- Tell the readers what the book IS in the first few pages.  By which I don’t mean your character should stop and say “Welcome to my world, this is a sf/adventure/with dragons.”  I mean that the major elements that shape genre or sub-genre should be there.  PARTICULARLY now that covers are often thumbnails and you decide to purchase on the first few pages.  If I think I’m reading quest fantasy and then they arrive at the spaceport I’m going to be jarred at least, and throw the book against the wall at worst.

But SARAH, you say – stop whining, kid – my book doesn’t start at a place that tells you what it is.  You see, my character is in this perfectly normal coffee shop, and then this magician comes in…  (Noted, coffee + magic equals AWESOME, but–) and the world is perfectly normal till then.  Yeah.  Okay fine.  BUT there are ways to give clues.  If your character knows magic exists, give him a thought about oh, fixing his own coffee maker with magic.  If he doesn’t, have him see something and go “Impossible.  There’s no such thing as magic.”  This can be very short and throw away, but it’s enough to let the reader know – even if at a subconscious level – that magic is part of this novel.

This is more important the more out of the ordinary your book is.  So if you’re writing a science fantasy or a techno romance, you need to signal more and earlier.  People tend to default to book-patterns they know.  If you don’t signal, they’ll assume your book is a standard whatever they read last.

2- For major plot points ahead, signal three times.

Say your character is going to suddenly and explosively turn into a dragon when cornered.  You should have this signaled ahead, in different ways – he remembers doing it at some point, and leveling the area (weak); he is afraid of doing it (stronger, but still weak); he goes halfway to changing and pulls back (stronger.)

It needs three times because your readers might not notice the first, and think the second is accidental.

3 – For minor plot points, you can foreshadow less, or just weakly.  Say by mentioning a few times, in passing, through different characters that red hats attract dragons.

4 – Take what you think is excessive signaling ahead, then amp it to double.  Remember, you know the book, so to you it feels like being beat over the head.  It doesn’t to a reader because they don’t KNOW what you’re trying to do.  (Which is rather the point.)  Objects in the writer’s mind are larger than they appear to the reader.  Remember that.

For those going traditional publishing, copy editors are the enemies of this process.  They don’t seem to GET that they’re doing this professionally and line by line, and the reader doesn’t read like that, so they’ll tell you things like “you already told us that!”  This is why G-d gave you a STET stamp (or if you’re me, you had it made at a local shop.)  Use it.  Try to make sure you didn’t repeat the words, though, particularly in different characters’ mouths, because readers DO get THAT.

5 – If you’re a pantser or an occasional pantser, or a pantser in details (which I am, sometimes) don’t go in with a heavy hand in revision and ASSUME you didn’t foreshadow.  I seem to be foreshadowing behind my own back.  Take the whole child prostitution thing in Witchfinder – which, ick, ick, ick, I wouldn’t consciously put in, but my subconscious THINKS must be in there – it surprised me as coming out of nowhere, but when I read back over it, it is foreshadowed.  This has happened to me A TON of times, with various books.  So, read first.  The foreshadowing might ALREADY be there.

6- OTOH when revising, make sure you remove accidental foreshadowing. I.e. Foreshadowing for things that aren’t in the book/won’t happen/are just plain weird. Take the beginning of Death Of The Musketeer.  I have – I think I’ve admitted this – a crush on Athos.  When writing that book, the first time I got to play with Athos in my own prose, I forgot I was in D’Artagnan’s mind, and described Athos… rather… lovingly.  This was the author having fun, but when I revised, it read like signage for guy on guy romance, if not guy on guy porn.  I deleted six pages, in utter horror at my slip-up.  (No.  You can’t have them.  Geesh.  You guys just want to laugh at me.)  A lost of accidental foreshadowing isn’t that in your face, and you might miss it.  Say you mention your character is an excellent rider, just because you want to give him ALL virtues.  If this is done early, the reader will expect… horsemanship to matter.  (If it’s later in the novel, they might get you’re just saying he’s “Wonnerful.”) Unless horsemanship matters, take it out.

Of course, the BEST way to test your learning of these techniques is beta readers you can trust.  If this IS what you’re testing, you might ask them to write on the margins (or make a note) at certain points in the book of what they think the book is about and where it’s going.

Another good way is to write fanfic.  At least at the Derbyshire Writers’ Guild, you get a lot of comments, and from the comments – where people ALWAYS speculate on what will happen next – you can judge how your signaling is.

Good luck, and may you learn to cast long shadows.

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.   If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.
There is a compilation of previous chapters here  all in one big lump, which makes it easier to read and I will compile each new chapter there, a week after I post.  When the novel is completed and about to be edited the compilation page will probably be deleted.

Oh, this is in pre-arc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet. *

For previous chapters, look here:  http://accordingtohoyt.com/witchfinder/

The Coil Winds

“I helped find you,” Marlon Elfborn said.

Nell had got coffee, because she knew – both because Antoine had told her, and because Seraphim had confirmed it – that coffee was good for restoring damaged magic.  Some people believed the only way magicians could survive on Earth was through vast infusions of coffee and coffee shops were always a good place to find magicians porting between dimmensions, stopping on Earth for a few hours or a few days.

Elfborn was holding his cup between both hands, with the sort of clenched-fist grip normally reserved for the proverbial straw and the drowning man.  He took it black, and he’d drained almost the whole cup, which was fine, since she’d brought the pot down.  What was interesting, as far as she was concerned, was that Gabriel Penn had gone to sit gingerly next to him, and was – as far as it was possible to tell from the outside – monitoring Elfborn’s magical power.  There was that odd, analytical look as he stared at Marlon’s magic through half closed eyes.

It seemed for a moment, staring at Penn, that Nell discerned something else in those eyes, but … In Avalon?  Besides, what she’d heard from Seraphim about Elfborn’s character…  It seemed hardly likely, though she’d come to believe that people did the most stupid and out of character things when it came to their private lives.

Gabriel Penn glared at her, as though he could read her thoughts, and she cleared her throat and looked back at Marlon, who was looking at her, with the sort of unfocused look of one not fully attuned to his surroundings.

“You… helped find me?  What does that mean?”

Marlon shifted the cup, so the fingers of his right hand curled around the handle.  The left went up and raked at his hair.  He darted a furtive look at Gabriel Penn, then looked at his coffee.  “When Gab– When Mr. Penn…  That is…  He should not have–” He paused and seemed to collect himself.  “When Mr. Penn discovered the reanimated corpse of my friend in my attic and… and was alarmed enough to… to… to let his– That is…  When he let his Grace know–”

Seraphim snorted.  He mumbled something that sounded like “if coming to my door in abject terror didn’t let me know, nothing would.”

But Gabriel put a hand out and grabbed Seraphim’s arm and Elfborn seemed to ignore the interruption and went on, “And his Grace laid information against me on two capital crimes, I had to disappear.  I had to disappear fast.  Contrary to popular belief, magic professors that Cambridge… No.  Magic professors whose whole background is a foundling home, aren’t paid princely salaries.  We are- I was given a place to live and fifty pounds a year.  It was not held against me if I tutored on the side to make ends meet, which I did.”

Again Seraphim snorted, and Nell had the impression that Gabriel glared at him and squeezed his arm harder, but she didn’t look at them.  Instead she was looking at Elfborn in near horror.  While house servants made considerably less than fifty pounds a year, they got not only a place to live, but also food and clothing and often used clothing or other side benefits that could be sold.  But a governess might make a hundred pounds a year, and she too got not just a place to live but food and at least some furnishings and other benefits including – as she had found in Avalon – the not inconsiderable one of – in most decent households – coal for heating.

To live on fifty pounds a year, even with lodgings paid for, support the state of a gentleman which would be expected of a professor, and buy the necessaries of his profession, including the extremely expensive tomes on magic research would have…  Been well nigh impossible, even with tutoring on the side.  She knew what tutoring paid – she’d known people who had done it.  It was near to nothing.  The thought that Cambridge, whose “regular” professors got paid quite decently, tood advantage of people whose tainted blood made them less than equal in society made her stomach clench.  “Yes?” she said, trying to keep her voice indifferent.  “I fail to see why you’d need money to escape.  Magic yes, but–”

“Oh, magic too,” Marlon said.  “The police are not completely stupid, you know, no matter what popular fiction shows, and they do have some very competent magicians on staff.  They would have found me if all I’d done was throw a veil over my magic.  I needed to… I needed to go between-times,” he said, as if braving himself.  “Between places.  The sort of thing you read about in fairytales, where the door is only there if you’re looking for it.  As for money,” he shrugged.  “A magician in hiding still has to eat.  I suppose if I’d grown up anywhere where one lays snares or hunts I could have done that, though I hear one can’t live on rabbit without starving.  Or I could maybe have kept chickens, or something.  But I grew up in a foundling home, in London.  And I never learned to hunt.  I needed large enough money that I could… buy food.  For years.  For however long… for as long as need.”

“But,” Nell said.  “Surely necromancy pays well?”  She’d heard rumors of fortunes paid for such illegal magic.  “If you’re a necromancer–”

“He is not.  It was accidental.  He raised Gypson Haiden through a resurrection spell applied too late.  Stop glaring Seraphim, I believe him.”

“Of course you do, you’re very eager to believe–”

“Shut up, both of you,” Nell said, reflecting only later that she’d ordered a duke around as though he were an unruly school boy.  And he hadn’t complained.  Oh, very well, then.  She might grow to like this princessing thing.  “Mr. Elfborne, I still don’t understand it.  Oh, I understand your needing money, but you say until as though it would have an end.”

He shrugged, “Oh, it would.  But it might be ten or twenty years in the future.  You see, they put an embargo on my leaving the world.  I couldn’t port out.  I had to wait–” He paused and his eyes almost crossed.  “I’m out of the world.  They can’t have removed the embargo.  The minimum time is ten years.  They can’t have done it.”

“No,” it was Gabriel, assuredly.

“So…  When we were ported out violently, it must be … someone with the keys…”

“That much has been obvious for a while,” Seraphim said.  “Now, if you would answer Her Royal Highness’s implied question about whom you found her for, perhaps we can find out who ported us here.”

Marlon’s hand went up and made a worse mess of his hair, and he took a sip of his cup, only to find it was empty.  Nell held his wrist to keep the cup in place, and poured coffee for him.  He took a sip, then sighed.  “It might be them.  I always thought it was them.  I don’t know how they found I was in distress, but of course, I suppose they keep track of those of us like Gabriel and myself in your world, and from one or the other of us, they must have picked up my bind.”  He looked up at their blank looks.  “Fairyland, of course.  They sent envoys to my house, in between the time Gabriel left and before …  And before the law arrived, while I was hoping…  While I was convincing myself Gabriel would come back and I could expl–”

“You set a compulsion on him, did you not, you filthy bastard?” Seraphim asked.  “It only activated now.  I should–”

“Enough, Duke, he–”

“Compulsion?”  Elfborn blinked at Seraphim as though he’d said a foreign word.  “No.  I just hoped he would come back.  I thought if he car– I thought he’d come to his senses and come back and I could explain.”

“An animated corpse in your closet, really?  You could explain?”

Elfborn gave a short, hollow crack that might have been an attempt at laugh.  “I could try.  But I never got the chance, as the next person at my door was your Grace, challenging me for a duel and informing me you’d set the law on me. But before you came, there were envoys from fairyland.  They offered me a place already turned in the magical way that made it hard to find and ten thousand pounds– As I said, I didn’t know how they found I needed help, but my need was desperate enough that I took it.”

“I went to my mother before I went to Seraphim,” Gabriel said, not looking at Elfborne.

“Penny!” from Seraphim echoed, in tones of great shock.  “Your mother?”

Strangely this made Elfborne smile at Gabriel and shake his head, his eyes amused.  “You really were past thinking, were you not?”

“Well–” Gabriel said.  “If you’d told me– If you’d explained– As it was I thought everything…  Everything I’d thought you to be was a lie, and possibly that you intended to kill me and keep me…  I thought…”  A red tide swept upwards through his skin giving him the appearance of glowing red from within.  “One reads of such things.  Of people who… of people who are only…  Interested when someone is… that is, reanimated.  It’s one of the reasons it’s illegal, and yet there are rings of them that they catch sometimes.”

“You thought I’d kill you and reanimate you for sexual purposes?” Elborne asked, and his voice sounded shocked but as though he were on the verge of laughing.

Which didn’t last long, as Seraphim grabbed him by the front of his shirt and half-lifted him from the sofa.  “You will not speak of such things in front of her Highness.  You will remember your company and you will–”

“Let him go,” Nell said, and was shocked to see herself obeyed instantly.  She could really grow to like this princessing.  Unfortunately, she was almost sure there were drawbacks.  She sighed and turned to Seraphim who managed to look both embarrassed and vaguely confused about why he should be embarrassed.  “Your Grace.  I grew up on Earth.  You have seen, and read enough of our entertainment since you’ve been here to know I will not swoon at the mention of sexual practices no matter how vile.  I hadn’t thought of it, but of course, in a world where necromancy is possible there will be a sex trade for reanimated corpses – and yes, I consider that absolutely vile.  But it won’t make me swoon.” Something had formed in her mind.  It wasn’t a suspicion, but more like a sudden falling of a jigsaw puzzle into place.  It was as though a hundred half-seen looks, a hundred glimpses of expressions, a hundred half seen gestures had come together in that moment.  She took a deep breath, aware she was going to poke her nose into a can of worms.  But it had to be done, she thought, or the three of them were going to continue talking around things, and Seraphim would keep erupting at the worst times, trying to protect her, and making it impossible for her to piece together what Elfborn knew.

“You said two capital crimes,” she said, and looked at Elfborn.  “I am not fully aware of your laws, but I know that in our time, when society was close to yours homosexuality was a capital crime, though rarely enforced and never for people of high birth.”

“I’m not of high birth,” Elfborn said.

“So you and…” she glanced at Gabriel Penn who was looking like he’d lost the power of speech.  Also, like he wold presently have a heart attack.  She hoped Elfborn would be quicker with a resurrection spell if that happened.  “And Mr. Penn were lovers?”

The room went wild.  She’d half expected it would.  The thing she didn’t expect is that it would be all caused by Seraphim, because the other two were completely speechless.  Elfborn managed something that might have been a nod; Gabriel Penn had covered his face.  BUT the duke made up for it in triplicate, by jumping up and yelling at her, at the two other men, at – possibly – the walls of the room.  She couldn’t make much sense of his yelling, but the gist of it, as far as she could tell, was that Gabriel didn’t know what he was doing; that at nineteen he’d been underage; that Elfborn had used compulsion and magical tricks; that he was a more powerful magician than anyone else on Avalon, just about, and that he had no morals, as he’d proven by reanimating his dead lover and keeping him around; and that Seraphim would put a bullet in his head and soon.  At which point Nell screamed for Seraphim to shut up.  And it was absolutely ineffective, showing that there were limits to the princessing powers.

And then Gabriel spoke, very quietly, and Seraphim stopped, suddenly, and looked at Gabriel as though he’d grown a second head.  “He didn’t use compulsion, Seraphim.  I know, because I did.”

There was a long silence, and the Duke of Darkwater swayed slightly on his feet.  “You what?”

“I used compulsion, Seraphim.  It was a stupid thing to do but I was very young and I knew nothing of life outside Darkwater…  Not really, not as an adult.  But I knew THAT.  How do you think I survived after my mother kicked me out and our father found us?”

“You…”

“I found gentlemen of certain tastes were willing to pay for a comely half-elf child.  Yes, I know what is wrong with them.  Yes, I agree with you that those gentlemen deserve death – or at least …  No one should have to do that when they’re only a child and can’t understand any of it.  On the other hand, without it, I’d have died of starvation.  Crossing sweeping doesn’t pay that much.”

“But–” Seraphim dropped back onto the chair by the table, next to Nell’s.  “But… you never told me.”

“You were younger than I.  And besides, there are things one doesn’t talk about.  I was… just glad to be at Darkwater, and to have enough food, and not to have to… not to have to do that.”

“Oh.  Did father–”

“Of course.  When he found me he knew.  It was rumors that led him to me, and he knew how I’d been living.  He was shocked and… it overcame his reluctance to bring his half-elf child into the house.”

“Did he tell you not to speak of it?”

“No.  He…  He let me speak of it to him, for a while.  I had to.  You don’t understand, I think.  If it’s possible to have scars on one’s mind or perhaps one’s soul–” He shrugged.  “I had to talk to someone, but it was hard to.  It was easier to Father, because he already knew.  I think that’s when I came to love him as a father.  Before that, he was just…  A vague figure.  And of course my mother said horrible things of him.”

“But after that…”  Seraphim looked from Gabriel to Elfborn.  “How could you–”  

“For a long time, I thought I’d never want to do that – with anyone.  When I got old enough that the scullery maid tried to show–” He coughed.  “That is, when girls our age started showing an interest, despite my elf blood, I thought I’d been too wounded to ever feel that for anyone.  I didn’t even really like to be touched.  I tolerated it from you and Father, but I didn’t like it.  But then…” He cast a look from beneath lowered lashes towards Marlon Elfborne.  “We became friends.  Both of us had elf blood, and…”  He shrugged again.  “We had a similar sense of humor.  And around him I didn’t feel like he was cringing, afraid of what my magic might do at any minute.  I–” The blush came again, dark red, and Nell wondered if the duke also blushed like that.  She must find an occasion to test it.  “I fell in love.  But he was…  He didn’t seem to care.  So… I used a compulsion.”

“It wasn’t that,” Marlon said.  “It was just… Haiden was the one person I could trust.  After he died…”  He shrugged.  “And since I didn’t have the courage to destroy his corpse, I felt like I was too tainted to–” He paused as though something registered.  “You used compulsion?”

“Only the first time,” Gabriel put his hands up.  “Only the first time, I swear.”

“You DO know that’s legal rape, right?” Elfborn’s eyes danced with amusement.  “Three capital crimes.  Only one is yours, princeling.”

“He was underage!” Seraphim said, in the sulky tone of someone who has a feeling he’s losing an argument.

“Right,” Nell said.  “Now that this is out in the open, and that the duke of Darkwater doesn’t have to protect my ears from sullying–”

“You’re very jaded, Madame,” he said, disapprovingly.

“Rather,” she answered drily.  “But let me ask the important question – who came to your door?  And why did they want to find me?  You said people from fairyland?”

“The centaurs,” Elfborn said.  “And they wanted to bring you back to Avalon.  I didn’t see any harm in that.”

I asked her to send me the info and she did.

Publishing is changing. We all know it. We’ve seen how traditional publishers have struggled, and are still struggling, to adapt to changes in technology and customer demand. Every aspect of the industry has been impacted. But those who have been impacted the most are writers. The question each of us face is whether we view these changes as a door closing on our careers or one opening. In my opinion, it is a door being thrown wide open and, for the first time ever, giving writers the chance to take full control of their careers. This workshop will deal with a number of the issues facing writers as they determine whether or not to take advantage of new opportunities to digitally publish their work.

Here is a brief overview of what we will be discussing during the workshop:

    Some business and legal considerations.
    Software.
    Digital formats.
    Preparing to digitize
    Editing, copy-editing and proofreading
    General formatting considerations
    Distribution possibilities
    Repackager v. doing it yourself
    Where can you do it yourself
    Pros and cons of each
    Specific manuscript formatting issues based on upload method (Smashwords, Lulu, Amazon, B&N, etc)
    Conversion
    ISBN, copyright, etc
    Covers
    Where to find artwork for cheap/free
    Text considerations
    Other considerations
    Pricing
    Price points
    Price control
    Promotional pricing
    Misc. topics including promotion, print on demand, etc.

The workshop is free, although donations are welcomed.

I’m taking it also, since the method I use I learned at Oregon Writers and though it works well, it can drive me bananas with some things — like Smashwords — and glitch majorly on longer works.  Amanda uses different methods/software and I figure if I know both I can pick and choose.

If you have Amanda’s email contact her and she’ll add you.  If not, leave your interest here, and make sure the email is active on your avatar, or leave an email you don’t mind leaving, in occluded format, and she’ll ping you.

Oh, and those of you who are waiting for Witchfinder, I’m working on it right now.  It’s … an ODD chapter.

Frosting incidents — 2.  Showers — 3.  I think it’s a record, even for summer in Ohio.

The Gauntlet — I don’t think Ms. Ogle is going to take it, partly because, well, let’s face it — if she gets the kind of advances that fund one’s research for five years, I’m dust beneath her carriage wheels.  Eh.  Shrug.  Ain’t enlightened self-interest a b*tch?  When it’s OTHER PEOPLE’s of course. 

Soooooooo…………  I don’t know any other Defender of The Establishment ™ who wants to play, do you?  I guess I’m stuck running my mouth on my own again/still.  BUT… any questions y’all have?  Even if I’ve answered them before, it’s been a good two years.  (Yes, this is called Sarah is lazy and out of blog posts.  Give me some ideas.)  I’ve noted foreshadowing down and of course tomorrow is Witchfinder.  But I’m open to questions.

After what ALL OF US here and Mad Genius Club and at Passive Voice and at Kris Writes and at Dean Wesley Smith’s site have done for the last … three? years, she would like me to write something for the Atlantic, explaining what we do as fiction writers, and how new publishing affects us.

Yes, the suggestion annoyed me, MOSTLY because I have a congenital stiffness of the spine, and telling me that after ten years and twenty one novels (I admit to) I should go hat in hand and be a newby in another field JUST to please someone else gives me heartburn.  Particularly when I’ve explained ALL THAT’S RELEVANT in other venues.

However, let’s stipulate something: when I say that I WILL NOT spend my time trying to break into something with the Atlantic’s circulation, when I can, without effort, put blogs up at similar circulation, it’s not the money or the small readership I object to.  It’s the “breaking in” part.  When I do my blog tours, I do “no blog too small” meaning I blog for twenty people, some days.  BUT here’s the thing – the bloggers take what I give them, I don’t have to sign contracts.  I don’t have to bother with multiple rewrites.  It’s less time.  Besides… things on line have a way of propagating.

So, while I was taking a shower (we will not talk of the frosting incident.  No.  We WON’T.) I thought of a counter challenge.

Because I don’t have it in for Ms. Ogle, and because she probably represents my polar opposite in many ways, and because we can both use the publicity and things on line have a way of propagating…

I suggest we both sacrifice some time, for the chance of some publicity wider than we would otherwise get AND for the rather altruistic (eep) possibility of enlightening others.

I am throwing down the gauntlet for the Hoyt-Ogle dialogues.  (Or Ogle-Hoyt, though that seems like a weird command and I’m not even wearing lace stockings.)

Here are my proposed rules, though I’ll accept tweaking:

1- We start with our history in publishing – how we broke in, what contacts we had, how things went.  One post.

2 – We take questions from our respective, collective and individual readers about what we do, what it pays, and what we see happening around us in publishing AND how it affects us AND where it’s all going. (We will pick questions by the method of “if one of us wants to answer it, the other will.  We will take NO questions that insult one or both of us, of course.”

3- We will keep it civil and each one talk about what she sees and her experience, rather than engage in arguments (though “in my case” is allowed.)  And while I’m just a midlist writer, I shall bring in stunt brains by quoting for instance Kris Rusch and J.A. Konrath where applicable.        

4 – I can get it – probably – linked at very large sites, with a lot of readership (PJMedia Lifestyle comes to mind).  I’ll have to check, but I don’t see why not.  Some of them I have keys to.  You are free to do likewise.  I will however echo each of our “twin” posts in my blog, and you’re free to do so in yours.

If we do this right, we’ll both bring our worlds into collision and perhaps get some publicity.  More importantly, perhaps we’ll each understand each other’s point of view better.

Interested?

I’ll leave the gauntlet lying there.  I shall go frost (ARGH) a cake.

So? — So.  It’s the final party for the robotics kids, and they’re SUCH good kids, and the parents are bringing stuff in for them, and I lost my mind.  THREE TIMES.  First, I volunteered to bring a cake.  Second, I decided not to order it (our favorite bakery has gone out, I don’t know the others, and if I’m paying it best be VERY good.  And third when I decided this would be a tri-d robot.  IF I can assemble it without all of it falling apart, I shall post pictures.

Anyway, I was going to do a post about foreshadowing, except my mind is full of devil’s food (as opposed to being the devil’s playground!) and frosting, so I was very glad to find that my friend Kate Paulk at Mad Genius Club did a post that SHOULD be echoed.

Kate’s post is important because it captures HOW NEW this all is.  Metaphorically speaking, this is not the seventh day and the Earth shiny and new and not quite dried in places.  No — hard as this is to believe with how many pioneers there are who’ve been doing the indie thing for years — this is the third day.  We just got plants, we’re not sure what the animals will be or if there will be animals, and those lights in the sky might be stars or oncoming meteors.  Half of our posts are to figure out what in heck is going on FOR OURSELVES.  I’m not sure readers get that.  And I’m fairly sure that the writers who are like a c-section trying to crawl back into their mother’s womb DON’T get that.  They think we’re “gloating” or “dancing” or being “ingrate” to the publishing establishment.  (But that’s a bad thought, and I have a robot to build.  You guys who read Asterix, Asterix and the Cauldron to be exact, should recognize the allusion: FUNDAMENTALLY I have a robot cake to build.)

Without further ado, I give you Kate Paulk, aka da Mad Aussie, aka, the Winch Wench.  (And if you haven’t read ConVent, you should.)

Talking to the other side

by Kate Paulk

And no, I don’t mean dead people. I mean non-writers and writers whose usual fields aren’t the ones we frequent.

Why? Well, between the furor that seems to have finally died over Sarah’s analysis (and anger) over a non-fiction author’s assumption that fiction is easy – just making things up (and therefore more amenable to self-publishing and not getting destroyed by changing times), and the non-fiction author’s response (and challenge) I realized that yeah, we do tend to get wound up in our own universe and frame of reference and forget that there are other people out there with other points of view.

For those who choose to read the comments, especially on Sarah’s blog (things got rather… ahem… animated – I had fun playing with the guy who was either criminally dense or deliberately obfuscating, and may have crossed a few lines there, but that’s me for you. I like playing whackatroll, and seeing how much it takes before the brains splatter everywhere or they start flapping and frothing and contradicting themselves… What? I never said I was nice). Um. Anyway, I realized that between the Mad Genius Club and Sarah’s blog, there’s been quite the evolution of views and development of a new paradigm.

So here’s where I see it. Apologies if this is way too obvious for anyone: I’m trying to look at where we are here from the perspective of someone outside.

Essential vocabulary:

• Heinleining: fitting the salient details seamlessly into the narrative and action, without overloading the reader with details
• Good research: in the fiction world, especially genre, this is research that’s mostly or entirely invisible but makes the whole piece feel solid and ‘real’. Even if it’s about cyborg zombies.
• Time: a mysterious entity no author has enough of.
• Money: see ‘Time’.

Where we stand: in the middle of an ever-widening chasm, trying to keep enough appendages (virtual or otherwise) attached to something so we don’t plummet to our metaphorical deaths-as-writers in the gaping pit that used to be traditional publishing. Traditional publishing is the corpse kind of sort of straddling the gap. I know it’s still twitching: ignore that. Some kind of parasitic outgrowth could still find roots in there and produce something, but for all bar the uber-bestsellers and the industry daaaaahlings (they’re the ones who got gifted with the numbers that should have been credited to the midlisters – visit The Business Rusch for details – that thing is deader than dead, the serious kind of dead that doesn’t get up and start lurching around. There may be a bridge somewhere off in the distance but most of us are right here near that corpse, since it used to be what fed/kept/chained us. Us in this case not including me personally. I’m generalizing here, okay?

Where we’re going: sod if we know, but we’re trying anything that looks good in case it works. Most of us figure that the more different tactics we can get into the mix, the more likely we’ll find one that lets us survive as writers, and maybe even thrive. We’re all banking on the long tail concept – our potential audience is now everyone in the world who can read English (say about a billion people), so we can do well with a really tiny proportion of those people as fans – and cumulative volume – twenty books or more at $5 apiece, which nets an independent $3.50 a sale from Amazon (I’ll use them as the example), each selling 100 copies a month is $350 x 20 – $7000 a month. And since the independent is the one controlling what’s there, those books never go out of print. The first one starts earning a few sales a month when it’s put up, and it’s still earning five years later when the author’s entire trunk list has gone up and there’s now a good, solid income stream. Length doesn’t matter – independents can put up short pieces (short stories, or for the non-fiction minded, monographs) that take a lot less time to write, and have a fat-looking list, all of it selling for not too much, but continuing to sell for as long as there’s an internet.

The catch – and there’s always a catch – is that it takes time for all of this to build. A young writer doesn’t have as much to publish as a more established writer, and none of us have enough money or time. It takes time to properly format anything for ebook reading, and money to get a cover that won’t scream “stock art” or “amateur” (Ask Amanda if you want info on her epublishing online course – she’ll let you in and give you the website. Or just scroll back through the history here until you find it.). Unless you’re one of those fortunate individuals who are good artists as well, in which case you’re going to need more time. So it’s slow. Most of us are holding two or more jobs. Some of us the “day job” is writing for traditional publishing houses, for others it’s a salaried thing. It’s still a time sink.

The key thing – and probably the only thing keeping all of us going – is that there’s hope where there wasn’t before. Within the last couple of years, self-publishing has become both possible and a viable way to enter the market as a writer. We’re not limited to the stale old “just like the last big hit, only different” that’s all mainstream’s managed for years. We’re not having our books – and careers – killed by editors who think we’re not “sexy” or “interesting” enough to justify selling. We’re not being nixed by glorified accountants who reward meeting the sales prediction even if it’s bad and penalize not meeting it when it’s good. (You outside the field, you’ve wondered why there’s so little that interests you in the bookstores now? That’s why. You’re not jaded. Fiction’s been murdered by glorified accountants who think one book is just like any other book. Sarah’s posted about that, too.)

So, give us time. Give us patience. We’re figuring this out as we go, and many of us are escaping an abusive relationship (with the publishing houses) as well, so the process is going to be a little (okay, a lot) messy. But we’ll get there in the end. We might even figure out where ‘there’ is.

Pass, you say?  Pass as what?  If you’re looking at me and wondering if I’m part of a racial minority – well, both the kids tend to be identified as Latin on sight, which is odd, because I’m not (identified as such.  According to Los Federales I AM Latin), but that’s not even racial, it’s cultural.  Not that a few choice idiots won’t hold it against the boys, the same way I’ve had a few people tell me to go back to Mexico.  (Fortunately my habit of spending most of the day inside and the fact my hair went white at twenty eight and I can dye it any color I want make me rather blandly Mediterranean.  Not that my original color of mahogany-brown was particularly ethnic.  Actually it just looked dyed.)  But that’s neither here nor there.  My husband who was born in New England and, if he spends enough time in the sun, looks merely “white” has been told to go back to Russia.  (This still puzzles me.  I mean, do they think the name was originally Hoytinski?)  And I’m sure if I were a blond, blue-eyed woman named Mary Jones some idiot would discriminate against me because he hates blonds.  Which in a way is part of our discussion, and in a way it totally is not.

No, racial discrimination is more or less verboten in the States these days and though voluntary segregation (more on this later, as again, it’s germane and not) is probably worse than never, people just don’t seem to care about race or different subrace as much as they once did.  In fact, racism has become such a taboo for most normal human beings in the US (the asses you shall always have with you) that an accusation of racism has now become a weapon under which to hide repulsive habits, bizarre beliefs and oddly destructive attitudes.  “You don’t like my habit of burning babies alive because you hate my Carthagenian ancestry, you racist” would totally work in modern day America.  (More on this later, too, as it just gave me an idea for a modest proposal.)  I don’t vouch for other countries, though I will say that those where I’m privileged to mingle with common people and listen to their conversations are about twenty and sometimes fifty years behind us in removing that racist thing from their culture.  Yes, even the ones who point fingers and tell us how racist the US is (what you expected different?)  I suspect Canada and Oz and other anglophonic-colonist cultures are about where we are.  For the others there is a reason they’re not as integrated that goes to the heart of the argument.

So, first, what do I mean by passing?  How can I not pass?

I can’t quite explain it, and I can’t quite put my finger on it.  It’s just that I belong to a minority, and I have the stigmata.  Many people belief we’re a minority by choice and think we should just get over it.  No, it’s not a sexual orientation minority (would that it were that easy to explain.) though we have an unusually high number of people with same-sex attraction in our number.  Also, an unusual number of people with attraction to squids.  And people who, to put it bluntly, might decide to marry their pillow in a small ceremony, attended only by their closest friends.

It’s not an IQ thing, though we often also score exceptionally well on that – which oddly does not translate to success in life, mostly (I think) because we tend to think sideways and backwards to normal human thought patterns.  (Yes, I do know a number of Phds who work nights at convenience stores.  Why do you ask?)

We’re not all of us science fiction fans, though that’s the way to bet.  Some of us have managed to become just as geeky as the most pointy-eared Trekker by fixating on other things: mystery, regency romance featuring one-legged dwarves (you think!) or molecular cell bio.  (I still remember when the World Fantasy Convention took place in the same hotel as a convention of neuro-researchers.  They crashed all our parties.  We fit.  We were family.

You can identify us even in kindergarten.  More importantly, so can the normals.  Recently I’ve started to suspect the unusually high number of Aspergers diagnosis, particularly among kindergartners is not EXACTLY accurate.  Again, we also have a high number of Aspergers spectrum people, but we’re not ALL Aspergers spectrum.

An editor I respect – as an editor – recently had his kid diagnosed as Aspergers and I didn’t try to argue with him, but the characteristics he was giving made me think “they’re medicalizing being one of us.”  Among others it was that the other kids just instinctively didn’t like him.  (Waves hand in the air.)  That the kid couldn’t ride a bike (I managed it at eighteen.  And then I forgot it.  To this day, btw, I can’t jump rope.  NO ONE IN MY PATERNAL LINE CAN.  My mom thinks we’re all insane.  She spent hours trying to teach me.  Hours. [It was a great part of socialization for a girl in Portugal in my generation.  So was the elastic game, in which two girls held the elastic, and another jumped in the middle, touching it or not, in increasingly elaborate patterns.  If I worked VERY hard, I could do the simplest beginning patterns.]) That his handwriting is atrocious.  That his coloring between the lines is bad for his age and, oh, yeah, that he tends to give mini-lectures.

Yes, I know a lot of that fits the Aspergers spectrum.  But it’s also “us.”  So medicalizing that, while that, is the same as medicalizing homosexuality.

Of course, “we” are a harder minority to defend, because we’re not easy to define.  We know each other, mind, and tend to gravitate to each other like a buttered surface gravitates towards expensive, white silk carpet.

The closest we come to assembling in a group, though, is science fiction conventions and/or some mystery conventions.  “Does not play well with others” is a good beginning identification point, but that’s not even true if you look at us in a group of our peers.  Our families are often unusually warm and connected, in fact, partly because we’re all odd people clinging together.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be – as such – a function of the environment.  I pity those of us who are adopted and raised by normal people, though now I think about it, an unusual number of us are adopted.  The thing is we tend to breed true, and given how we navigate social relationships (like a transatlantic going through the kiddie pool. Why do you ask?) perhaps that’s not all that surprising, either.

At some point – possibly soon – some researcher will isolate a gene we all share, which makes our brains work funny and accounts for our social presentation (which works fine with others of us, I hasten to add) and the way some of our abilities (like coloring between the lines or rope-jumping) lag WAY behind normal.  Some day.  I’m not sure if that will be better or worse.  Maybe people will decide to make us protected (which is bad and good) or maybe someone will come up with a way to “cure” us. (Shudders, because despite everything, she likes being herself.)

Until then, people will accuse us of thinking too much, tell us we are weird because we want to be weird, or accuse us not trying hard enough on the simple stuff.  (Like skipping rope.)  And though we will never be able to put a name to it, we’ll continue to identify each other on sight, and, if we find enough of us, gather in vast groups and have more fun than all the normals combined.

And we’ll continue to wish we were normal.  Or rather, because we really like who we are, dirt and grit and all, we’ll continue wishing normals were us, and that we were, therefore accepted.

In a way my gay friends have it easy – if you throw things at me, I’ll never talk to you again, boys and girls.  Besides, it’s true – in that they can at least name the way in which they’re odd.  And they can tell themselves the reason they’re not accepted is religious/cultural prejudice, not an instinctive and inexplicable recoil that goes all the way before kindergarten, before you could guess there was anything “wrong” with us.  Of course, a vast number of my gay friends are “of us” too.

Anyone of us who has kids and who has seen the kid enter a class, and find out the other kids hate him in a way toddlers can’t begin to explain, and find himself excluded out of all the games and ridiculed for the oddest things, wishes the normals were more like us.  Or that they accepted us.  Or at least that we knew why they don’t.

We might be pink monkeys amid brown monkeys, but we’re a race of monkeys that is not supposed to see in color, and we can’t figure out why we’re rejected.

I was relatively fortunate too, because I could pass.  Sort of.  Half the time, my way of “passing” was to paint myself hot pink and convince the brown monkeys I should be their ruler.  No, seriously.  I couldn’t jump rope, or do the stupid elastic thing, so I simply convinced my classmates those games were boring and for babies.  Instead, I invented RPGs based on my particular obsessions, and played out full throttle: the Musketeers, Robin Hood, Cowboys and Indians and, after I discovered mystery, police and criminals.

And then when I was sixteen, I discovered dressing up, which I approached rather in the way I approach everything else.  Hence the elaborate lace silk stockings and the short skirts.  Once I hit puberty, if I dressed up, people would leave me alone because “us” don’t dress like that, period.

Nowadays I’ve gone back to not fitting too well.  Part of it is the job.  My husband works in the tech field, and yet half the people think I’m weird because I write science fiction.  They somehow also think this makes me “racy” and “risque” and I’m at a loss to explain THAT one.  No, really.

And part of it is that I have the internet.  You see, it is the terrible curse of humanity to be social animals.  Yes, as Laura put in the comments, it is a good thing too.  But here’s the problem – social is fun and of course, rubbing together is what makes us humans (and what makes humans.  What?  Oh, come on, it’s just the tiniest of dirty jokes.  Just once?  Remember I’m one of those dangerous SF writers.  RACY.)  But the downside of being social is that it also makes us tribal.  We want to belong to a group.  We want the group to belong to us.  We want to all be “alike” inside the group, though all being sufficiently different also works for us.

Most of “us” as far as I can tell, grew up being the only pink monkey in miles around.  I suspect like other accidental, non-directly-hereditary minorities (sexual or professional or…) we used to either gravitate to large cities where we could find more of us, or live out in the middle of nowhere, and pretend normal people didn’t exist.

Now?  Most of us are in touch with a vast network of us.  And no, not all of us are late night convenience store clerks or fertilizer factory fork lift operators.  Only about half of us.  The other half are usually at the top of their fields.  (Possibly driven by not-fitting-in.)  And sometimes the ones in dead end jobs are working on time-travel in their basement.  Most of them won’t succeed, of course, but if anyone can succeed, it’s one of us.

You see, even though our condition has its problems – not fitting in is HARD particularly in childhood – it has advantages, too.  We can think at right angles to other people.  We don’t think in the box.  We can’t find the box.

A lot of us are – like other minorities – enamored of totalitarian regimes.  At the back of our heads is the idea that a sufficiently powerful government can make THEM accept US.  Unfortunately totalitarian regimes try to create uniform societies, and we’re more likely to find ourselves up against the wall.  I think as far as a society that accepts us, the anglosphere and particularly the colonial societies, which are already used to discounting body shape and color, and even a little bit of odd behavior, are as good as it gets.

And the internet is a mixed blessing, because it allows our Odds children to meet the Odds children of others like us and …  I’m not going to speculate.  I think the reason that we are disliked from kindergarten is an instinctive response to signs of mutation – signs we might eventually speciate.  In other words, we hit normal people’s uncanny valley.  And maybe their instincts are right.

However speculation on HOW we would speciate, what it would mean, and if a species that much at weird with itself could survive shall be saved for a (much) later point.

Meanwhile we’re back to us not fitting in and being unable to explain to people why.  Well, we can’t form a race.  I mean, we can, but the fact that our colors range from “so pale, it looks blue in certain lights” to “my ancestors have spent the last hundred generations working on our tan” it wouldn’t fly.  We can’t call ourselves a sexual orientation, though brainophile or geekosexual have their own appeal.

Not being able to name ourselves and group together, metaphorically, for defense, is hurting us, because they SURELY can tell who WE are.

So, I suggest we form a religion.  Or, given the nature of our people, several religions, under one umbrella faith.  It has to be – of course, since a number of us are religious – one of those umbrella faiths that allows us to believe the ‘real’ religion on the side.  I.e. our faith allows us to have other faiths, has no opinion on the existence of G-d or your fate after death.

We could call ourselves Odds.  It would have denominations.  Probably impressive and made up on the spot, so that each family – heck, each of us – could come up with a specific denomination.  “I’m an Odkin Trekker, of the first Firefly diaspora.  You?  Oh.  I see, the Buffy heresy.  My parents followed that cult for a while.”

Think about it.  If we call ourselves a religion, we can even accuse people of being racist when they pick on us.  No, it’s not right, and of course, that will bother us, but it’s common usage, and it will make us seem even MORE normal.  “What do you mean I can’t have the week off to drive to Dragon con?  It’s part of my religion.  Are you some kind of racist?”

Soon enough we’ll have them on the run, and those nasty normal kiddies who refuse to play with our sons and daughters in kindergarten will have to take sensitivity training.  AND THEN they will be made to feel abnormal.

I say it’s worth a try.  Do it for the children.

Oh, her meaning was stupid beyond belief and amounted to little more than a long sustained whine.  BUT that doesn’t mean SHE is stupid, or even that WHINING is stupid as such.  A long sustained whine with no rationality behind it is how humans react to hitting a wall or feeling they’re about to.  It was probably how our ancestors reacted to a tiger springing out of the undergrowth in front of them.  “Ah, ARRRRRGH!”

The difference is what comes after.  Some got sharp sticks and played the Maasai lion trick on the leaping tiger.  And some went “glurb” and died.

I’m not going to rehash it, but what ticked me off about her post was the implication that a) fiction writers have it easy, they just make up cr*p and b)self-publishers don’t even understand what books are – the ignorant newbies.  (This was not helped by her follow up post, in which she first failed to grasp that not only do I have 21 novels traditionally published – at this point I don’t really have any novel non-traditionally published, except perhaps A Touch Of Night and the reissue of Death Of A Musketeer, each a special case. – and then, once this point was brought home to her, that she considers me “tainted” by self publishing…  Even though 99% of what I have out – all but three short stories – were published in magazines an anthologies before.  And the whole idea that self publishing “taints” is probably blow by the fact that those three are my biggest cash cows every month.)  It’s entirely too bad of me to react to “tone” but as my grandmother would have said, “if you don’t have feelings, you weren’t born of humans.”

But in a way it was to bad I got sidetracked by the tone, because what I actually wanted to go into was the panic reaction, what it means, and how to counter.

Every writer I know has hit that panic reaction at one time or another in recent months.  The exceptions are, perhaps, those who haven’t realized what is happening to publishing yet.  (Oh, you’d think there are none.  Or at least none who aren’t cognitively impaired.  But there are, I guarantee.  H*ll, in honest truth, but for my agency going odd and a couple of other things, I might have been one of them.  And I’ll explain why.)  When we hit the panic, we all run around for a week or two or a month, or a year, as if our hair were on fire, screaming “the world is ending.”  And then…  And then we find paths out.  Which is what I want to talk about.

First of all, if you’re a writer, or a journalist, or one of the other professions where, looking ahead, you see the conveyor belt disappearing into a furnace – take a deep breath and realize you’re not alone.  This is being masked – somewhat – by the recession.  But, without going into politics, the recession is – IMO – a creature of unspeakable economic stupidity imposed from above.  (Partly from the hopeful and amiable belief that hobbling the US improves the lot of other people.  This is the sort of stupidity it takes years of education [and a willingness to ignore the real world] to achieve, which means … nothing.  If I ever get a time machine, I’m throttling Karl Marx in his swaddling blanket.)  That means sooner or later the idiocy from above quits (or we’ll all be more worried about whether we can get a leg of squirrel for telling a good story around the camp fire of what remains of human civilization) and when it does, if anything the pace of tech change is going to accelerate as we recover.  Part of it, of course, will be to cut out the severely dysfunctional parts of the economy without sinking more money into them.  And part of it will be because new tech HAS come on line but no one has invested in propagating it through society.  When they have money, they will, and the effect will be…  As though some evil villain just pushed the “fast” button on that furnace-headed conveyor belt.

(No, I’m not going to unpack the previous paragraph, not only because it’s unavoidably political, but also because it is, ultimately, fodder for several essays.  Just nod and say “Okay, Sarah, whatever, let’s assume what you said is true.”)

So, just trust me, that when economy recovers, we writers are going to be joined on the line of people going “argh” as the tiger springs out at them, by: in some order – journalists, teachers, photographers, artists, software engineers (trust me.  They’ve been in crisis since 2000 mostly because their skill is becoming less needed with machines that are more friendly to programing) and eventually real engineers (printable pieces will make a lot of difference.)  Worse, I can’t even imagine all the people who will be hit by the change – literally – and though I’d laugh if you said something like “chefs” or “car mechanics” I could think of a way – and not far off – that their professions AS EXERTED RIGHT NOW will be obsolete in no time.  I don’t even need to mention the two professions my kids are training for, right?  Doctor and aerospace engineer will FOR SURE change shortly after they start working.  Which feels many ways of wrong, but probably no “wronger” than where most writers find themselves.

You see most of my friends are between 30 and 50 or a little either way.  These were the ages at which you used to know what you were doing in your profession, and just take off.  Peak earning years and all that.  Oh, brother.

Part of the long sustained whine is because we writers, perhaps more than other humans – but we humans in general too – believe in stories.  We’re raised with stories.  Oh, sure, little Red Riding Hood, but also “don’t cross the street in front of a semi, or you’ll be a pancake on the pavement.”  It’s a story.  A just so story.  

All of us absorbed such stories growing up, as well as stories about uncle Hubert who worked hard and made good and uncle Eggbert (oh, him!) who went down to Rio where he lives in a compound peopled entirely by hookers and fueled solely by cocaine.

Okay, fine, my family has several uncle Eggberts, and it’s entirely possible that some boring families out there have none.  The point is that all of us absorbed, at some point, the idea of what it takes to make good at several points in life – what’s expected of us, as we were.  We are after all social monkeys, and monkey does what he sees, and, in this case, what he hears.

At my time of life – and a lot of the people panicking are somewhere between 40 and 50 – we expect our profession to be clear and the path ahead to make sense and be… well… expected.  And now, you know, instead of “rising acclaim, secure retirement” there’s the furnace.  Worse, because of the way things have gone in the most recent years – and no, not just in writing.  As tech change came in every field turned odd and sometimes evil (read Dilbert!)  – we are, most of us, nowhere near the acclaim and security we thought we’d attain.  And this might be “as good as it gets.”

Amazing thing is not that we’re indulging in long, sustained whining.  What IS amazing is that none of us has yet gone postal somewhere conspicuous.  My people must be better balanced than I thought.  (Or more confused.  Some psychology researcher should count the massacres in books recently.  We’ve always had trouble with that reality thing.)

The thing is, after the whine, for everyone so far, there is the moment of shaking yourself up and looking at the way of life that is dying.  Because in most cases it was SO dysfunctional these last ten or twenty years that constitute our entire working life, there is usually a time of looking at the field (whatever field) and seeing everything that was screwing us over and holding us down, and going “oh.” in relief.  Sometimes for those of us full of piss and vinegar there is – to quote a writer who is FAR more established than I – “If this new model works, I’m going to be very rude to a lot of people.”  And then… and then there is a time of thinking, a time of rebuilding.  And, at this point friends and I have been on THAT phase long enough that we have checked back with each other and compared notes.  I’m going to pass the notes along for those of you, writers and non writers alike, who are staring the furnace in the face.  Remember those are the notes NOW – for me about a year after the whine – and that the operative part of that catastrophic change thing is the “change.”  Things are changing all the time.  Retailers, tech, etc. change minutely almost daily.  We’re not at the end of the wave of change.  We’re barely at the first swell.  So, don’t take what I say and go, this is the plan for the next fifty years.  Go, rather “Um… good thing for a year or so, if I’m lucky.”  And note how much of it is the same you’d tell someone walking through a jungle full of hungry tigers – “be alert” – that’s what most of these translate to.

So, here’s the distilled wisdom from staring into the furnace (and by the way, the furnace, in most cases, is only a temporary fire, and it’s possible that you’ll emerge from it stronger than you went in, like steel.)

1 – You have to change.
Yes, I know, you’re settled into your routine, and one of the things I’ve learned through the last year of various physical ailments, is that ANYTHING can become routine.  You get used to doing six books a year, under pressure, upside down, in a sewer pipe.  (Okay, I’m exaggerating a little.)  And you like what it means: you’re still publishing.  You’re making money.  And you convince yourself things will get better.  But you don’t expect them to get better suddenly, and you don’t really, ever expect them to get better, worse and yes suddenly.  And you expect it will happen TO YOU not that you’ll have to make it happen.  So when you realize that the money or the publication is diminishing your first instinct is to panic, because it means you’ll have to change how you do things, and it’s going to be uncomfortable.  The bad news?  Yep, you have to change.  (The good news is that almost for sure things will get better – in the long run.)

2- It’s going to be a lot of work up front
Oh, G-d, is it a lot of work up front.  Part of this is because for a good long while, for many of us perhaps forever, you’ll have to work in both worlds.  Or you’ll have to work at what is bringing money in right then, and what will bring money in in the future, both of which will change as things change.  For me, right now, this means keeping up deadlines, helping NRP with covers AND trying to figure out how in heaven’s name to get my backlist up in a modicum of time.

3 – Take a deep breath and give yourself time
This will be different for each of you/each field.  Right now I have 25 (I think) short stories out, and I’m netting $100 a month from Amazon (other places take longer to report.)  I have about 250 in total stories I could put up, and I haven’t put any up in two months.  If you’re going “Are you crazy woman?  MONEY!  If the ratio holds – and so far it has – you could be making 1k a month.  Why aren’t you?”  Oh, G-d.  In this house we have a trinity of excuses we invoke for the “I just can’t” – it’s not logical, but it’s what we’ve heard someone use at some time – “Cheese, lasers, wife!”  Or in this case: “Health, kids, work.”  Or perhaps just a manifestation of Kris’ post about things bringing you to your knees.  Life has been VERY complicated, and emotionally I think I’m healing, as much has I’m (hopefully) healing physically.
I hate being late.  I’m compulsive.  But pushing seems to tie me up more.  So I’m taking deep breaths and going “I’m giving myself time.”  It will happen, once the kid graduates; once I know what is causing the endocrine disturbances, once a couple of other dominos fall in place, once life establishes itself again.
3a A caution – make sure you keep trying to fit the stuff into the routine.  Like, I’m trying to tell myself Saturday is publishing day.  So when normalcy comes back, that’s not squeezed out.
3b – you’ll make mistakes.  You’ll take the wrong projects indie and sell the wrong projects.  You’ll put awful covers on your stories (guaranteed); you’ll put up at least a story with ten typos (the others will have more, no matter how you hunt them.)  You’ll glorp a few formats.  You’ll forget the legal notice on a story.  You’ll make mistakes.  Don’t worry.  It’s more work, not the end of the world.  You’re only human. The goal is ALWAYS survive to fight another day.  If you’re alive, you’re learning.  Tomorrow YOU’ll be better.

4- Don’t Put ALL Your Eggs In the Same Henhouse.

Don’t put all your faith on one stream of income.  

Don’t go “traditional publishing is dying, so I’ll now make all my money from indie publishing.  CERTAINLY don’t go “I’ll now make all my money from writing epic novels about gay warriors” (What?  I’m sure there’s some people are!  I don’t have time to google it.  You’ll have to be pervie on your own time.)  

In the end doing that puts you in the same boat as if you’d stayed in traditional publishing.  Remember the thing about we’re only in the first swells of a tsunami of change?  If all you do is sell space nuns (what?) on Amazon, you’re setting yourself up to go under on the next wave.

For one at least at first, your stream of income from indie will be small – much less from one type of indie.  So you want to keep all your legs going.  Think of yourself as a multilegged mechanical, self-balancing spider (really?  I think of myself as that sort of thing ALL the time.)  In my case, say one leg is traditional.  One is indie.  One is art – and I need to put some of that up and on merchandise to sell.  From yesterday’s kerfuffle I realized another can be non-fiction.  As soon as I have time, I’ll resume the journalism one (two dying fields are better than none.)  And, who knows, as things stabilize health wise, there might even be stuffed dragons and fairy princess porcelain dolls to sell at cons.  (Maybe.  If I can find the time.)

5- Network
I come from a culture in which nepotism is viewed as a virtue.  A basic proverb is “He who has no godfather dies in jail.”  Being me, I rebelled against it.  And I still think that nepotism qua nepotism is a bad idea and makes a society sclerotic and not nimble at all.

BUT

We are social animals.  One thing I had to learn is that people reject you MUCH more easily if they’ve never met you – beyond the quality of your story.  Now it’s a little different, but networking is more important.  Networking and having a large group of friends is how you hear what is working and what isn’t, because the knowledge is so new there are no manuals yet – and no manuals that aren’t superannuated in five minutes.  Have as many friends as possible everywhere, particularly friends who are also trying to figure out the change.

6- Brainstorm
Every so often get together with your friends and brainstorm – not ideas.  Not stories.  Brainstorm how to make money.  Shoot wild ideas out.  Make crazy suggestions.  Look, until the kerfuffle yesterday, it never occurred to me I could sell my research as non-fiction BEFORE selling it as fiction/integrating it into stories.  But of course it should be possible (though the time thing might delay it.)  And I AM trying to be aware of new opportunities.  It’s just that the new model is so different we have to make tiny incremental changes.  So every so often, get your friends together, break out the alcohol (or whatever) and just talk.  “Hey, can you think of any other way to make money?  What if–”

And that’s all I know so far.  Like a traveler on the move in strange, mutable terrain, stay alert, move fast, be ready to see things in a completely different way (Sometimes a schmerp ISN’T a rabbit, even if he looks like one) and keep all your several legs on the run.

There’s gold in them there hills.  You just have to survive to get there.

This is the point she’s making:

But I’ve noticed: The new self-publishing king/queenpins are almost entirely novelists, meaning they write fiction rather than non-fiction. (*1)

They crank out a novel or two (or three) a YEAR. I’m sure that many of them have to do research for their books, but for MOST fiction writers (not all of them), that research is minimal and is the kind of thing that can be taken care of with good googling or a trip or two to the public library.

As a result, they don’t understand that for people like me, the “traditional” publishing industry is my only lifeline, my only means of support.

She’s not alone in her situation, or at least not as alone as she thinks she is.  While I “crank out” – why the terms implying that I’m doing less work than she is?  What if I said that non-fiction authors are “compilers” and just “jot down” stuff?  (No, I don’t think this is true.  Writing non fiction calls for different techniques that’s all.  It’s a load of work.)  How derogatory would that be? – more than three novels a year, I’d be in a world of hurt if I didn’t have Baen right now.  This year I’ll probably get 2/3 of my income from Baen, and I get it in more substantial up-front chunks.  And with two kids in college, health issues going on and various other things, I’m glad of the up front money.

I’m not alone.  In fact, almost all of us who depend on writing for some amount of our livelihood (in my case, for the butter on our daily bread – as in my husband’s income pays for food, roof, clothing and such, but repairs, tuition and the occasional weekend in Denver come from my money.  It’s the difference between living pinched and scared and living okay.  Not swimming in money, but okay) right now are doing complex calculations.  It goes somethign like this: Any book I sell to a publisher I might never see.  (Yes, even Baen.  G-d forbid, but in the convulsions of publishing, Baen has deals with Simon and Schuster which I don’t get and S & S is under scrutiny by the DOJ.  I DON’T think Baen is at risk, or at least not beyond the risk of “what if a safe falls on me during my morning walk?”, but it’s something that COULD happen and is beyond my control.)

Yeah, I know contracts say, or SHOULD say, that in case of bankruptcy you get your book back – but bankruptcy is a complex, drawn out process and … well, you’re at the mercy of the courts.  Your book could be considered “assets” and held back by some judge you never heard of.  Now, even I, with my “cranked out” books do have books that are “heart’s blood” – A Few Good Men – for instance.  If that book were put out of my grasp, in the sense that I couldn’t publish it, and no one else could, for even ten years, I’d be very, very unhappy.

I have to look at it, and look at the money, and look at the house handling it, and then bargain with myself.  “Is this worth it?”  In the case of AFGM I’m dealing with Baen, whom I trust to do the absolute best they can for me and the book (within limits of human error), I need the money, and, well… in the coming roiling waters of publishing, I think Baen has a good chance NOT to drown.  Better than other houses.  So, the risk is worth it.

BUT there is a negotiation with myself that wasn’t there before.  Indie or traditional?  Money up front versus money over a long time?  More distribution or more control?

However, this lady not only thinks she is the lone ranger (which is weird, because she doesn’t look like a teen, but apparently no one else has problems like she has) but also doesn’t seem to know her readers.  So… let me highlight a few of her ideas, and explain where I think she got it wrong.

The self-pubbers canNOT wait for the day when the entire traditional publishing complex falls into a huge hole in the ground. The self-pubbers have the funeral all planned. (If the self-pubbers spent as much time writing as they do gloating over the slow death of publishing, they could easily crank out another book or two each year.)

Dear Lady, if the publishing establishment had treated as it has treated most of us who have gone the way of self-publishing, you too couldn’t resist a little dancing on the grave.  But if you read any of us, you’ll also see that our glee is tempered with fear, and that what we write about the slow death of publishing is designed to shape what comes next as much as to “gloat.”  Oh, and I do write – crank out, you say? – more than two novels a year, and have for the last ten years.  This charming pace was imposed on me by the establishment you revere.  I had to keep it up to make a starvation wage.

As a result, they don’t understand that for people like me, the “traditional” publishing industry is my only lifeline, my only means of support.

Consider: I started working on the meat book in early 2007. I finished it in early 2012. You do the math.

Yes, I’ve DONE the math.  Tell me, just for the record – enquiring minds want to know – HOW much of that time was spent on “enjoyable” research?  Traveling for instance.  Reading.  Going to museums.  Don’t tell me that’s part of your job.  Of course it is, but you can do jobs in various ways.  HOW much of it was done in a more leisurely way than needed?  How much time off do you take?  How many hours a day do you work?

None of my business?  Fine.  We’ll talk about it later.

I spent five years researching and writing the beer book, and of that, a great deal of money and time was spent on traveling to specialized libraries. The Key West book took me two years to research and write.

How did I pay for that? By entering into a partnership with a traditional publishing house that provided financial support.

Oh, gee.  HOW NICE it must be.  How very nice.  The traditional publishing house provided financial support, you say?  Out of the goodness of their hearts, I guess.  You know, here’s the funny thing, we – crankers outers, let’s say – CAN’T do that.  I’ve written work – just for your information – that required as great a level of research as yours.  No, strangely to set a book in a time period and use a documented historical character is NOT easier than writing nonfiction.  (Who would have thought it?)  The most one of my historical books paid was 12k.  The most time I was given to write it was a year.  You see how that limited the “partnership” and the joyous feelings I had towards the publisher.

My research was done as my writing is: at my desk, usually eight to eight.  Rare books?  Oh, sure thing.  Interlibrary loan.  Travel?  Well, I traveled a good deal as a young woman and had to make do with memories, other people’s pictures, and sometimes asking people who live near the places I needed to describe.  Ideal?  Well, no.  For one, I’d like to work normal hours.  I’d also like to be able to see the places I write about.  I’d also like a pony and a flying car.  The world is what it is.  Fortunately being a cranker-outer I’m not made of fine stuff and I’m willing to work crazy hours.  And, hey, sometimes I take my birthday off!

It works like this: My agent sells my book IDEA to a publishing house. The house pays an “advance”: a sum of money upfront that I can live on while I research and write the book. It’s not much money — in fact it’s an embarrassing amount of money and I also am fortunate enough to receive financial support from my spouse.

Without that assistance, I couldn’t do what I do. Period. Again, it’s not much money, and it’s the ONLY money I earn from my books. (If I were lucky enough to write a bang ‘em up bestseller, I’d earn more than the advance, but I’m not that lucky. Er, um, not that talented a writer.)

Okay, either your embarrassing amount of money is much more than my embarrassing amount of money, or your spouse has a lot more money.  HOWEVER, let’s ignore that, okay?  Let’s talk about “I couldn’t do it.”  Sure you could.  Off the top of my head, I can give you several ideas:

First, do a book about your local area.  Do it in your spare time now.  (You know, work nights or weekends.  Think of it as a second job.)  Put it up on Amazon.  Take the money it makes, over the next two or three years, while you still work at your traditional work.  Then use that to research the next book.

Second idea – work as a resource for fiction writers.  Contrary to your idea, we do NOT pull from air.  Yes, I’ve read – and I’m sure you have too – books with embarrassingly bad research.  They’re not the majority.  They’re not the norm.  And the worst ones usually are justified.  (Say you’re asked to write a book in a month.  Just imagine it d*mn it.  It’s happened to me.  It pays 5k.  You don’t want to do it, but RIGHT THEN it’s your only chance to continue publishing.  You do the best research you can.  I was fortunate to have an expansive education and to travel a lot as a young woman.  Most people weren’t.  Bad research, in those circumstances is justified.)

I’d love to be able to reach a topic-expert who has done lovingly detailed research on a topic and pay a fee.  Say I need someone who IS a real certifiable expert on Christopher Marlowe.  I have three contradictory sources, I want to call up and go “So, what was his mother’s background?  What’s the latest research?”  Let’s suppose you teach CM for a living, or have written a book on him.  You should have your files, be able to consult.  Would I pay for that?  Yes.  My means are small, but I’d willingly pay $100 for an hour of work.  I’ve paid $80 for a book with a usable paragraph, so…  Get a few dozen writers who depend on you – I don’t know, advertise on Twitter, Facebook and tell people you’re available? – and you can continue your leisurely and expensive research.  Paid for.  A little more work?  Sure.

Third option, and I’ve never tried it, but there are sites where people will donate money for a project.  I’m sure if you ask, tons of people know where these are.  My commenters do, I’m sure.  Try it.  How do you know, till you flap your wings?

Fourth option – do articles.  Do your research in itty bitty chunks.  Put it up in itty bitty chunks.  Say, I want to write a book on Christopher Marlowe.  (Now that you mention it, yes, I do, though again it’s one of those cranked out things, right?  Which I’ve only been researching in ALL my spare time for twenty years.  Never mind.) I get money to visit England and do some primary source consulting.  I blog the experience and ask for donations.  THEN I put my diary of the trip up on Amazon for sale.  If I can make it entertaining at all it WILL sell (trust me on this, please.  I’ve seen what sells.  I have done research on self publishing.)  Which will bring in a stream of money, which will allow you to travel and… see how that works?

The self-publishers, in my opinion, have a distorted view of “books” and of “publishing.” In their minds, every writer is cranking out novels that don’t require much time to research and write, and the lag time between creation and payoff is short.

So I ask them: What happens when the agents, editors, and publishing houses go away? Who will write non-fiction then?

And here, I’ve been feeling guilty over being cranky with you.  And then I read this paragraph again.  (Takes deep breath.)

Lady, you’re an insular, blinkered and stubborn woman, clinging to the ledge of her comfort zone and creating straw men to justify yourself in not leaving it.

First, WHO do you think “self-publishers” are?  Let me disabuse your mind of this idea that they/we are all very young or very naive.  Self-publishers are EVERYONE.  Or at least every writer who is awake and aware of what is happening around them.  They come from all walks of life and all educational backgrounds.

WHY do you think we have a distorted view of books?  We are WRITERS for the love of Bob.  Do you think we don’t read?  Do you think we read only fiction?  WHY do you think that?  Before Amazon I was a member of the History Book Club so I could get hold of books my local bookstores wouldn’t carry.  The payoff between idea and publication is short?  FOR WHOM?  My Magical British Empire Trilogy took me four years to research (while writing other stuff.)  Ten years if you consider initial familiarization reading.  AND from proposal (ie. full research) to sale (let alone publication) was EIGHT YEARS.

WHY do you think we have a distorted view of publishing?  I think you have a distorted view of publishing, if you believe it’s some sort of benevolent purse-fairy ready to hand you money for your projects, so you can, in the fullness of time, give them a little gem of a perfectly researched book.  Perhaps that’s the publishing you’ve encountered.  The one I’ve worked for more closely resembles a sweatshop.  Other people’s experiences are anywhere in between.

However, if you don’t want me to wax sarcastic about your views, do respect other people’s views.  Do a little research about what these strange creatures “self-publishers” are and the reasons they’re venturing into these nasty, nasty self-publishing waters.  Right now the way you refer to us doesn’t fill me with a desire to go and look up your books.  Why not?  Because you didn’t do even the minimal “googling” research you imagine we do for whole novels.

And then there’s… who’ll do the serious research?  We will.  The people who have a passion for a subject and for learning it.  We will do the research.  We will do the publishing.  Who will pay for it?  We will.  PUBLISHING IS NOT A GOOD FAIRY.  If they’re advancing you money it’s because they make it back.  And they make it back on a model that’s so outdated and cumbersome, that they’re wasting a great deal of it.  They’re making it back by selling it to READERS.  Which means you have READERS out there.

By cutting out the middle man, you can get 70% (or worst case scenario 30%) of the net sales.  And if your books are worth it, you WILL get it.

Contrary to your vision of us, most of us cranker-outers read non-fiction as much as we read fiction.  In the last year I’ve read obsessively about: WWI, WWI the home front (England and the US), Prohibition and life in the 1930s, degenerative diseases of the brain, a history of Cleveland.  ALL of this against the background of my constant preoccupations: The French Revolution, Tudor England, Space Exploration.

I know you’re looking at that and saying “But there is no way you can do all that research SERIOUSLY.”  This is akin to saying “But you write fast, so it must be crap.”

Judge not lest you shall be judged applies here too.  Look, I’ve had people say “When you write four books a year they have to all be bad.”  Until they read them.  And until they realize the time I put into each of those books is as much as they put into each of theirs.  I just have no downtime.

Burning the candle at both ends?  Sure.  But we each are the way we’re made.  This is how I’m made.  I bore easily.  I have friends who work both faster and slower than I.  THAT doesn’t reflect on their work.  Rid yourself of that idea.

Take with you ONLY the idea that yes, the world is full of readers of serious non-fiction.  Many, if not most of them, are fiction writers.  So, instead of insulting us, start talking to us.  You have stuff (original research) we need.  Who knows, we might have stuff you need – like ideas on how to make money.

Meanwhile, you opened your post by saying it’s exciting to watch history in action.  Yes, it is.  Just remember, if you were a carriage maker at the time of the automobile revolution, screaming that the new horseless carriages were just shoddily built wasn’t going to bring back your steady work.  Telling us automobile plants are uncouth places won’t either.  On the other hand, perhaps, offering to make seats for the upper-level automobiles will net you a very good living, and allow you to do what you want to.

Life is full of these little trade offs.  Like the calculation of whether to go indie or not, the tradeoffs can be difficult.  But if you’re not so busy looking down your nose at the rest of us, you might spy the path of least pain through the brambles.

I wish you good luck.

I won’t say I never wanted to be a mother, because that isn’t true – precisely.  I wasn’t opposed to motherhood and at various times in my life had sort of distant dreams of having kids one day.  But here’s the thing, mostly I saw myself adopting kids.

You see, I never expected to get married.  Okay, so it went well beyond logic, but I thought of myself as the world’s most unattractive woman.  In retrospect, I wasn’t – not physically, not by a long shot – but I was “awkwardly in the world.”

One of the ways in which I am stupid is this tendency to forget I have a body.  What I mean by that is rather literal.  I’ll get involved with pursuing some line of research, or get thoroughly ensconced in some imaginary world I just created and other than the obvious necessities and routines – which I do more or less by rote, from eating to showering – I forget I’m present physically (or I used to, before I was responsible for other people’s physical existence.  More on that later.)

Anyway, it might not be obvious, but this lack of attention to physicality can present issues when one hits what we’ll delicately call a romantic age.  As in, if you don’t much pay attention to how you dress, and periodically remember to style your hair but most of the time don’t (Recently – two years ago – I had hair I could sit on.  Not on purpose.  I forgot to make an appointment to cut it.  For five years) guys aren’t likely to notice you’re there.

Add to that that most young men (and many older ones) bored me out of my gourd, and you’ll understand why I never expected to be a mother in the natural way.  Besides, the whole thing seemed very awkwardly put together, as a physical process.  I mean, kissing was bad enough with one never knowing what to do with one’s nose, but that?  You’d got to be kidding.

Then interest in boys – real interest, not the pretend-romantic one that inspired hundreds of sonnets to a young man who never knew I existed – hit suddenly and devastatingly at eighteen.  And I realized my inadequacies.  I’m a quick study.  I observed other young women and what they did to attract men.  It worked.  I started to have a dating life.

None of which made me think of motherhood in more than a theoretical way.

You see, I didn’t want to get married.  Most men still bored me – particularly long term – and good gravy marriage was SO final.  Between 18 and 22 I rejected six marriage proposals that I remember/got I was being asked (I suspect there were others, because I had a tendency not to get “subtle.”  My idea of subtle is a two by four to the skull.)

Then Dan asked me.  Let me right now assure you I intended to say “no.”  Yeah, I loved him.  Yeah, I wanted to live in the US.  BUT my degree was not valid here (being a teaching degree.)  And besides, one travels lighter.  And besides…

I can’t really explain it.  This has happened a dozen times in my life, at crucial points.  I just couldn’t say no.  The option didn’t exist.

So I got married.  And suddenly, like the boy thing had hit, the motherhood-thing hit.  I wanted children.

In retrospect this is vaguely puzzling.  Look, guys, I was always awkward around babies, vaguely puzzled by toddlers and often outright scared of school age mons– er… children.  So why the heck did I want kids?  Who knows?  Perhaps biological imperative.  Perhaps insanity.  I wanted eleven children.

We waited a year then started trying and…  Nothing happened for almost six years.  Of course, infertility made me more determined than ever to have children.  I don’t like failing at things.

What I never paused to think about is why I’d want to have a child, or what in heaven’s name I intended to do to him/her.

So, when I had Robert – actually had him – it shocked me out of my gourd.

To begin with, pregnancy shocked me.  Why?  Well…  I don’t know how I imagined it before.  Like Alien, I think.  BUT … well…  Would you believe me if I told you I knew I was pregnant two hours after Robert was conceived?  And I knew he was a boy?  And I could SENSE him, clearly?

It is very WEIRD.  The idea that there’s a human inside you is one of the weirdest things you can experience, I think.

It gets weirder when they’re born.  There’s not only a sense of crushing responsibility – you brought him into the world.  What are you going to do about it? – but a sense of being “divided.”  Your soul – for lack of a better word – is riding along in two bodies…  Three, when Marshall came along.  (And, for sheer confusion, with Marshall I not only didn’t sense him from the beginning.  I couldn’t sense him even after I’d SEEN him on ultrasound.  I thought to the end something horrible would happen and he’d die before being born.  Turns out, no, he’s just very reserved.  That sense you have of someone else there when someone is in the room with you?  Yeah, he turns that off often enough, seemingly on purpose.)

I don’t know how to explain this without sounding new agey, though I think it’s more a matter of “attuning” your senses to the kids, but the “link,” the sense of being a soul in several bodies, grows fainter as they grow up, but I don’t think it ever goes away completely.  Right now, a part of me is listening for their movements, in their rooms, the sound of typing.  It’s not that I want to pry on them – it’s just a vestigial mother-thing.  Even when they’re out of town and too far away for me to hear/feel/sense, my mind tries to follow them.

I used to think, as a kid, that mothers had this special power.  I wanted to impress my mother.  I wanted her to be in awe of my achievements.  (Yes, there is a story there, but mom is mom and she did the best she could, and I love her.) To me, she was a figure of power, the center of the family.

Being a mother, it feels completely different.  I feel small and humble, dwarfed by the task and always aware I’ll never be good enough for it.  No matter what I do, I’ll always do/have done something spectacularly wrong.

And yet… and yet…

Despite my claims – loud and frequent – that I should have stuck to raising cats, things are not that simple.   They never are.  The truth is now that they are young adults we are ALMOST equals (no, not quite equals.  I’ll claim the rights of experience and knowledge.  And yes, I AM one of those sticks in the mud that insists in a difference in how they treat me, and how they treat their friends.) And I find I enjoy their company.  I enjoy their minds.  I enjoy going for walks with them, and woodworking, and those late night discussions where we unhook the universe and spin it around just for fun.

And in retrospect, I enjoyed the process, too.  They never scared me – except with the fear that I was raising them wrong – they never had a “feral” phase.  And even as toddlers, they interested me – perhaps instinct over brain.

I miss the sticky kisses, the odd collections of pebbles, the children’s books, the stories.  I enjoy the rational discussions, the stories about college, the sharing of esoteric scientific knowledge.

And I look forward to the future – scared and confused, happy and terrified, confident and humble – glad I got to be a mom, even if I was the least likely person to be so.

To my mom, whom at various times growing up I judged far too harshly but who did an amazing job, given that she never wanted to be a mother and that she had no happy childhood on which to model mine, I wish a happy mother’s day and I hope we still share many years among the living and have time, now and then, over those years, to share the joys and fears of motherhood.

To my (paternal) grandmother who was very much my secondary mother, and whom I lost nineteen years ago, wherever she is (keep your opinions to yourself, okay?  I might or might not have an afterlife, but I’m sure grandma did/does) I hope she’s not shaking her head too much at my efforts at being a mother.  In many ways, now as when I was a little toddler, following around in her wake, reaching up my hand for hers, I’m still following in her footsteps – and I’ll never be big enough to fill her shadow.

And to all the mothers, fathers and children out there: Happy Mother’s Day.

UPDATE: the free short story is up.