But My Mommy Loves It!*

I was reminded yesterday, while talking to a lot of young would-be writers, on the verge of starting their careers, of the whole concept of mixed blessings.

Inevitably, in the twenty-to-thirty crowd (but even among older folks, who didn’t start writing until they were much older and are just starting out) there is the “How do you break in?” question, which these days is followed closely by the “Should I self publish on Amazon?” question.

It’s fine how life changes. Five years ago I’d have slammed my foot down and said “Do not – absolutely DO NOT – self publish. It will only lead to your being considered damaged goods with the big publishers.

In the age of Amanda Hocking, this is not a given. And for a moment, I felt just a little jealous of these “kids” (Yes, even the ones older than I.)

I’d just given them a list of resources on line for figuring out how to research, someone else gave them market place resources, and you know… It beat the heck out of pre-history, 20 years ago, when I was sending stuff out to the publishing address, wrongly formatted because I’d got hold of an out of date advice book, and in two cases completely wrong for the publication. And to top it all off, they wouldn’t be held in the outer darkness even after they’d become competent. They wouldn’t have to wait for a publishing slot to open up on the diminishing big house schedule. They could take it to the public and while most of them would flounder or at best make a small income (but then that’s what we midlisters do!) a significant minority would find gold in them there hills.

And then I went to my hotel room and slept on it. And in the morning I woke up grateful that I wasn’t able to self publish when I started out.

Why? Oh, I like to think I started out at “competent.” Maybe I did. Rationally I doubt it. Look, my first novel is completely lost. The one printed copy was handed out to a friend twenty three years ago and when last heard of – sixteen years ago – he’d lent it to a friend who lent it to a friend. But it’s under another name and I was never there, and besides I was led astray by evil companions. The original electronic version died with my first computer, Joaquim, the one that took real floppies, and whose carcass is still in the attic, for sentimental reasons. But the information in there won’t come out.

And all this is a good thing.

Yes, I wrote that novel and five sequels to it. No, I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t selling. But now I do, even at the “commercial” level, for concept and idea and plot – much less for the level of writing which I, fortunately, haven’t been able to evaluate in twenty some years. I suspect if I could I’d cringe and realize what a raw beginner I’d been, and how awful the stuff is.

Look, I’m not saying there isn’t the rare genius whose first novel leaves his/her fingers perfectly polished and brilliant. Of course there are. Or at least so I’m told. Fact is, I never met one of these, or even heard of one from verifiable sources.

Yeah, you know, my parents told me, when I was little, that Mozart sat down the first time he saw a piano and started playing. It took me a few decades to realize it was a load of hooey and that the poor kid had been the victim of a stage father who made d*mn sure he knew how to play. It’s sort of the same thing. A lot of writers will tell you “oh, golly gee, I just sat down one day and wrote this novel, which a house was excited to buy, and which rocketed to the bestseller list.” Um… right. What they’re not telling you about is their years of novel beginnings that are stashed somewhere under the bed, the short stories they were penning since the age of three or even the essays they’ve been publishing weekly in their local newspaper. It’s possible this is the first novel they finished – the first they attempted… I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I just never heard of a case I could verify.

Most first novels are bad enough to make Jane Austen turn in her grave (yes, even her juvenalia.)

I had confirmation of this when I read For Us The Living. But I was surprised when I found out far from realizing how bad it was in a timely manner, Heinlein continued trying to publish the thing for ten? Fifteen years? Long after he WAS writing publishable material at any rate.

This emphasizes how hard it is to evaluate your work – your first novel in particular. (It also emphasizes that if either of my kids, grandkids or great grandkids should get hold of a copy of Glass Pedestal and sell it, I will come back and give a whole new meaning to the term “haunting.”)

There are reasons for this. It’s kind of like what I do every other morning, when I take my glasses off en route to the shower and don’t pay attention where I put them. I come out of the shower and take half an hour to find them because… I don’t have my glasses on.

Your first novel looks wonderful and perfect to you or at least much better than it looks to others because: you don’t have the skills needed to make it better, which means you also don’t have the skills needed to evaluate it better.

Yeah, I know you’re saying “But I evaluated other people’s novels just fine, as a reader, for decades before I started writing.” So you did. It’s not the same. When you’re reading with an eye to being entertained, your demands are different. It’s physically impossible for you to read these other novels like you read yours. Why? Oh, you’re perfectly objective, are you? Yeah, you might be, but unless you got a massive blow to the head and forgot the last few years, you can’t read your novel with an eye to being entertained. A year or two distance from it might help. But even so, short of a blow to the head, you’ll remember a lot about the characters, the world and the situation that is not actually on the page, but which you’ll subconsciously add. Or, if you’re of a nervous disposition, you’ll be driven to add EVERYTHING in your head and swamp the poor reader in uneeded detail. (That was my failing.)

So most first – and second, and occasionally third – novels are wretched things. Mine was.

The problem is nothing is wretched enough not to sell a FEW copies. If I had had it published – given a time machine to where I was writing it and publishing it today – it might have sold a couple hundred copies.

I’d probably have continued trying, in the same way I did, and improving and struggling to get more commercial and better and acquire my readers, and I might have ended up roughly where I am today.

So… what is the problem? Well… Heinlein didn’t have to live down For Us The Living throughout his long and prolific career and I’m forever grateful that no one can come up to me at a signing with a dog-eared (or scribbled) copy of Glass Pedestal and point out that the world is impossible and internally inconsistent and I have infodumps that could sink a medium-sized ocean liner. I rather like it that way.

I suppose the people breaking in today will get used to this, and that eventually it will seem weird not to have an author’s wretched beginnings to marvel at when you discover him/her in his/her polished and professional phase. But I am glad I didn’t publish THAT.

My advice to any first-time-novelist contemplating it would be tripartite:

First – make sure someone who knows about writing and publishing reads it. No, not your dear mama. And if it’s a friend, make sure this friend can both be merciless and has read a lot of fiction in that genre. (A caveat is NOT to pay book doctor’s fees unless you’re swimming in dough. I’m going to guess it’s not difficult to find laid-off editors at various levels who will probably read/do a good job with your book in the low four figures. Okay, not executive editors, unless they’re your friends. But stay away from book doctors unless they’re multi-professionally-published themselves or unless they were editors for a professional house once.)

Second – find a copy editor. For this your dear old mama is doable, if dear old mama used to free-lance hunting typos for the local paper or is an Advanced Grammar Teacher AND understands that dialogue is not always excruciatingly grammatically correct.

Third – Make sure in your heart of hearts this is something you want out there. Contemplate the fact that while you might be in your late twenties and unmarried and never going to marry and live the life of an independent and Bohemian artist, life throws you curve balls, and that the entire point of the unforeseen is that it CAN’T be foreseen. And then ask yourself if, say, your urban fantasy which is a thinly disguised episode of your sexual experimentation in college is suitable reading for the teenage children you might eventually have. Or for your dear old mama. You might not care, though I personally have a file called “only if my parents and all descendants are dead or illiterate”. If you don’t care, go right ahead and publish. If you think there is a slight chance you’ll be mortally embarrassed, hold back.

Other than that, go for it. Make your own day…

* Your mommy, perhaps. Mine doesn’t read much fiction (like my younger son, she prefers to read “real” stuff.) And if she did, and even if she thought it was good, she’d tell me I could do better. This is the woman who upon my graduating with honors from elementary school informed me I could do better. “You could have graduated with honors and distinction.” “But mom, that doesn’t exist.” “If you were good enough, they’d create it for you.” (And no, I’m not complaining. Heck, I’ve grown up to be just like her, though it’s me I hold to that standard, and not my kids. Yeah, okay, it’s neurotic-making. But what the heck, it’s high-achieving neurotic.)