The Writer of No Future

Do you guys wake up sometimes and get the impression you’ve stumbled into a parallel universe where your history/life is completely different?

Yesterday was one of those days for me, due to the comments of two completely different people. One of them was a face book friend – one of my early ones – and another was the troll on the airline post.

My face book friend told me that some other writer knew me and had talked about me. I was curious since I didn’t remember her name at all. (Mind you, I have a stainless steel sieve for a brain and if you meet me at a con, no matter how well we hit it off, count on introducing yourself to me two more times at least. There are exceptions, but mostly those are people I’ve read for years. But usually I retain some vague inkling of “I’ve heard this name before.”) And he came back and said she’d mentioned in her forum that we were together in a panel about how hard it was to break in, and I’d said that I sold the first thing I ever sent in and got a contract for two more.

In the airline post, the troll went into my writing after insisting that somehow I was a “bad customer” which through “something happens here” had caused the airline to strand me twice in the space of five days (for those who are wondering, no I didn’t bitch until the “manager” on the return leg tried to pull the “poor me” bit. For one I didn’t bitch because airline employees, in the days of “security” have broad powers to ban you from flights if they think you’re “threatening” which can include scowling at them. So, that entire sequence happened with us being as polite and accommodating as possible.) This “helpful” creature informed me that if I could take criticism and see other’s point of view maybe I wouldn’t be such a “terrible, self proclaimed author.”

Neither of these incidents hurt. The first was a “uh?” and the second was more of a “uh?” because of the “self proclaimed” thing. They both worried me though for various reasons. The troll’s one less than the other, of course, since DUH he was clearly just pulling stuff from air.

One of them is that in this field, particularly as it’s spinning out as traditional publishing dies, you need the good will of your colleagues. And both of those perceptions – that I’m G-d’s special little snowflake, and that I think I’m G-d’s gift to writing – could cost me the good will, or at least earn me the resentment of my peers. Again, the first one is particularly worrisome because it comes from a writer who said it on her forum*, which means more than likely she told it to a dozen people at conferences already. And this field runs on rumor.

And if you think that writers shouldn’t resent other writers who had an easier journey, you’re not a writer. It’s sort of like boot camp. Oh, it’s changing, and people who come in in the brave new era will feel completely different, I think. But breaking in used to mean going through an unreasonably difficult and long process. You resent the ones who skipped that process like an army man in the regency hated the officers who bought their way into their position. Even the best ones will be considered suspect until they’ve seen action and paid their dues.

And, oh, yeah, both of those comments are wrong. Not just wrong, but “h*ll, yes, wrong.” (Oh, okay, the troll might have a point, and I might be a terrible writer by some ways of looking at it. Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m not aspiring to Shakespeare here, just to writing entertaining stuff that provides people with a few hours of escapism.)

First the breaking in, which, by itself, will explain why the other is ridiculous.

This week is the twenty sixth anniversary of our civil wedding. It’s convenient as a marker, because I started writing with the intent to publish shortly thereafter. I’d always wanted to write, and newly wed I found I couldn’t do anything else: my teaching credentials were not accepted in the US, I knew no one, and my husband was gone most of the day. So, I grabbed my husband’s semi-broken typewriter, taught myself touch typing and plunged in.

I wrote a novel that summer. And two more in the next couple of years. They all got rejected everywhere. (And they should be, btw. No, they were not bad novels. In fact, with the rewrites, I learned most of the writing I know in those three years. But they were unpublishable for reasons of non-commercial world building. So, unsaleable.) After that I plunged into a novel that took me six years to write, and which might be publishable, except it’s not a novel… it’s a trilogy or perhaps a series. This is a mistake EVERY writer seems to make on their way to publication. (Some poor sods make it halfway through their career. The lucky ones don’t sell it.) I call it the “everything” novel. It will eventually be written as the Saga Of Horse And Bull, a series, now with more b… never mind. I outlined the rewrite about four years ago. At least three books, probably six. Eventually I’ll find time. Maybe when the kids move out.

Weirdly, the three first novels, despite their unsaleable concept, were other than that more commercial than the poor, misbegotten jumble that was mirror play.

After that, I wrote… Four more novels, and started ten others in proposal format. Of the four I wrote, I’ve since sold three, one of them after a significant rewrite. But I didn’t sell the first one of those until 2006 (I think.)

I also – because I heard that was how you broke in – wrote about a hundred short stories, and yes, sent them out. Over and over again. Again, I’ve now sold most of those short stories – some of them more than once – but didn’t sell the first till 94 and didn’t sell the first that saw the light of day (the first sale the magazine was shut down) till 98. Until then – so you see how much I actually sent things out – I got 100 rejections by March. I used to keep them in a big plastic bin in the bathroom. (In case the IRS wanted to verify I was trying to get published.)

I sold my first novel (more on that later) in 99 (I think.) It came out in 2001. By the time I sold my first novel, I’d sold exactly two pro short stories, to Absolute Magnitude and Pirate Writings (I think. I can’t remember the name exactly.) I had also sold about five non-pro shorts. The biggest sale I could brag about in my bio for the book cover was Weird Tales, and it was so new I hadn’t been PAID yet.

Depending on how you look at it, it took me either 9 or 13 or 14 or 16 years. In any case, I THINK the normal time for people to break in (from what I’ve seen with other people coming up) is between three and five years and, btw, a lot less persistence and rejection involved.

So, not only wasn’t I G-d’s own little snowflake, I was the Writer Of No Future. In fact, looking back I can only attribute my persistence to extreme insanity. Surely anyone sane would have decided that they had had enough and given up on this gig long before publication.

But my story is only abnormal as to length, and that was complicated probably by making the transition from Portuguese to English and by (more importantly) making the CULTURAL transition to what was “publishable” or “commercial” in the US. Also, at the time I was very young, coming from completely outside the field, not even knowing there existed such a thing as “organized fandom.” If I had to do it over again, I would have started going to cons early on, and probably could have sold those novels and shorts that have sold since MUCH earlier. In fact, my journey, if you count those novels and stories eventually sold, would be about average length.

As it turned out the years of getting kicked in the teeth were excellent preparation for a writing career in the oughts, when I broke in in novels.

Look, nothing worse can happen to a writer than breaking in too easily. That means you fold at the first bad review/laydown/critique. I’ve seen it. People who publish the first novel they ever finish, then get the next rejected and go into a mental fetal curl never to emerge. Which is a pity as those writers are usually much more gifted than I’ll ever be.

I’m not sure how the post-publication kicks in the teeth will be delivered in the new market, but rest assured they will. Perhaps like that poor woman who wrote a novel full of typos and grammatical issues and didn’t bother getting it copyedited, you’ll become a household name synonymous with “loser.” Or perhaps you’ll put something up and it will sell two copies. EVER. And those to your mother and your cat. Or perhaps your novel will become loved for all the wrong reasons, and interpreted in ways you never meant, like “Hey man, this is great, she says we should have sex with automobiles.”

Any of those can cause the unhardened writer to crawl into a hole and pull it closed after themselves. And it shouldn’t.

Oh, take criticism. With a grain of salt, but take it. The woman who went ballistic on her critics would have been better served by trying hard to improve her writing – which is something the rejection process taught me. And why I say the first three novels with the rewrites taught me the most about how to be a writer. Because even though I started out as a voracious reader, clue I got none how to actually engage a reader. Language and characters I got for free, but most of my novels consisted of characters noodling around in search of a plot.

But beyond that… well… Sometimes your best beloved works won’t sell. This doesn’t mean they’re bad. It might mean you crawled so far into your internal mythos that you can’t communicate it to anyone.

In the old days, the publishing process took care of keeping those out. In the new process, that won’t happen. So shrug off the “no sale” bits and try to figure out how to make it more appealing to a larger group of people. (To an extent. “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself” still applies.)

And then keep writing. Even if you are the writer of no future.

*I’m not accusing this writer of lying, btw, but I think she’s confused. Either she got me confused with someone else (tons of people confuse me with Tanya Huff. I’ll hear some panel I was at described and they call me Tanya Huff. No idea why. Does SHE have a Russian accent? I’ve never met her) or she misinterpreted part of my story. It’s possible if she said something like “You have to finish your first novel, it will never sell on proposal” I said “I sold my first novel on proposal. And then I sold two more on proposal.” And she interpreted that to mean “the first novel I ever sent out” instead of “the first novel I sold.” The term “first novel” is used in both senses, of course.