Hearing Trumpets

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Years ago, during one of the Oregon WRITING (as opposed to publishing) workshops Kris kept complaining everything we sent in had “occluded” voice.  I know what she means.  It’s like when I do a painting, then scan it in, and something goes wrong.  All my vibrant colors go faded, like they’ve been under the sun a long time.

To remedy this she had us do a very odd exercise, which I’m not going to explain, but let’s just say it took us WAY out of our comfort zone.

When reading it, she said it was like spending the whole week hearing tin whistles and now there were trumpets.

This is kind of what I feel like with A Few Good Men vs. Darkship Thieves (or Darkship Renegades.)  Which is why I’ve done something unprecedented and asked my publisher to stop mid-read on DSR and let me fix it.  Most of what I’m fixing is the end, mind, but I’m also redoing the first five pages, and doing a thorough clean up in the middle.  Because after all my fights with that book, this is a matter of “I was blind, but now I see.”

Now, this might happen anytime you let a book rest for a few years, but I didn’t, of course.  It was only a couple of months.  And I’d tried that before, which is why it’s so late.

So, what changed?  The transformative (no other explanation) experience of writing AFGM.
Why was it transformative?  I’ve been thinking about that, because of course, I want to replicate it.

I think for me – and mind you, this is JUST for me.  You’re a different person – these are the main factors:

1 – I wrote it on spec, not under contract.

I’ve suspected for a LONG time this was a problem for me, and have in fact discussed it with Toni at Baen (My long-suffering, very patient publisher mentioned above.)  No, this is not something I’d choose to be like, if I’d got a choice.  Writing things to contract is better because you have security.  Much better.  Except that my mind locks into “It’s due and I don’t want to do it.”  Possibly it’s my issues with authority.  Possibly it’s that I’m broken, but I think it’s more and less than that.  Yeah, if it’s due it becomes “homework” – I remember when I had an history test ALL I wanted to read was physics and vice-versa.  BUT the other part of it is that if it’s not sold, there’s no one looking over my shoulder.  I don’t subconsciously try to prod the book in “a direction the publisher will like” or stop myself if it goes away from that.  This allows me to experience the book, to live it, to make it truly mine.  Hence, the trumpets as opposed to tin whistles.

2 – I knew if it didn’t sell I could bring it out myself
This too is important because before I tried to write things out of contract and they just died halfway through, normally when I went “Oh, no, this will never sell, why am I wasting time.  So, this again frees me to create the way I WANT to.

3 – I wrote it when it wanted to be written.  Oh, I made it wait while I delivered DSR and the mystery, so the first fifty pages were there.  But then I pushed the other three due books aside and let it come through.  And it did.  Poured.  At the rate it wanted to.  I can honestly say the most apt phrases in the book I don’t remember writing.  (Not the most beautiful, I don’t write for beautiful language) but the one sthat completely capture it.  Once or twice while reading over AFGM I went “I wrote that?”  So…

So, what to do going forward?  I shall see if publisher is willing to work with letting me just do books on spec – she’ll probably get them faster, to be honest, if I’m not fighting myself.

And, once contracts ARE finished, I’m going to let popcorn kittens have their way, with only one rule: must finish one book before picking up next one.

My guess is the trumpets will sound loudly.  I’ll let you know if I turn out to be wrong.

53 thoughts on “Hearing Trumpets”

  1. I said before, AFGM is a much better book than DST. I’m glad you feel this way too. Not taking anything away from DST, AFGM is just much “clearer”. I don’t really know how to explain it better than that. DST was a nice midlister book by a juourneyman author whom I like and admire, both as an artist and a person. AFGM is a book by a top line author that I am happy to know.
    Sanford

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  4. No, this is not something I’d choose to be like, if I’d got a choice.

    A world of possibilities there, en’ it? What would we choose if we could choose what we (our children, our parents, our spouses) would be like? And would we choose wisely, would we like our choices (well, if we did like them it would probably mean we did not choose to be human, eh?), would we call out for a do-over?

    A case can be made for some authors not being allowed the freedom to write what they want, based on authors who achieved such a level of success … and then demonstrated the utility of discipline and the value of editors. Some have even suggested this is the case with Heinlein’s later works, although why such heresies are not met with stoning is beyond me.

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    1. Because the Church of Heinlein hasn’t formed an inquisition. They flaunt their heresies on my blog, even. (GLARES.) I maintain that save for one or two — and which of us doesn’t have flawed works? In any field — Heinlein was simply examining questions that made people REALLY uncomfortable and which — mark me — we’ll confront should we extend our lives enough. I like them, but I like the hard questions. (Stop giggling, you in the back row, or RES WILL get me stones. — oh, giggling more, are you? GAH)

      But yeah, there is a level of “too big to fail” that means no editing. But I think there are other factors contributing to what I call “Old age flab” in writers’ books. Part of this is that the publishing machine was sure they could sell it even if it sucked. It was in the distro/pushing, etc. They could make sure it would sell a minimum of x copies. So they didn’t care. And the writer either didn’t care, or had always had a lot of distro.

      In the new each man (in my case woman) for himself world, writers have a built in reason to keep pushing and trying to get better. An example of this would be Terry Pratchett, who is STILL doing some of his best work.

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      2. Ditto on Pratchett. My wife is hoarding Wee Free Men, says it’s one of his best.

        I think Rowling got a bit lazy in the last books too. She couldn’t keep the details of the books separate from the very different details of the movies. Continuity errors galore! The worst was Hermione declaring she’d never done a proper obliterate charm just seven pages after saying she wiped the memories of her parents and sent them to Australia! But at that point, what editor was going to call her on it?!

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        1. Ha! Just googled “continuity errors in” and Harry Potter was the fourth entry! Dr. Who was the first but please, calling continuity errors on Dr. Who is like calling hypocrisy on Hollywood libs. Gun. Barrel. Fish.

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      3. I agree Heinlein is thinking about some lifestyle issues that would have to change if we were functionally immortal, but a lot of it was just wild weird fantasy. I mean seriously, even if I live to see the singularity, I won’t become my own father.

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        1. I won’t become my own father.

          Oh sure, that’s what everyone says.

          I am not sure that Heinlein was actually thinking about those issues so much as he might have been saying: This’ll twist their brains inside out. never underestimate the proclivity of writers (esp. SF writers) to eff with their readers’ heads.

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          2. Maybe. Like Pratchett Heinlein always surprises me by coming up with stuff that fits science. Do you know recent tests say people are most attracted to those who look like them. (I’m not sure what this means about the human race. In the future we all have six toes and play banjos, or perhaps are simply members of one side of my family.) But he seems to have been right on “you can’t resist seducing yourself.” And under the many reasons I’m going to burn in hell forever, All You Zombies was the first sf short story I assigned my 12 year old while homeschooling. Of course the fact he still loves it is why HE’s going to burn in hell forever.

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    2. But… I did choose my spouse! I didn’t know I was doing it at the time, but I spent at least a year obsessing over a teenage wish-fulfilment fantasy, and then I met someone who is the Romantic Interest, with just enough changes to account for the lack of being in a fantasy universe. Seriously. It’s spooky.

      The kid… Yeah, well, the kid’s an extrovert, but kids are a random throw of the dice anyway. :)

      (The writing quirks? Yeah, I’d probably love to be an outliner. It seems like it would be so much easier! But as long as I can keep finishing stuff by the seat of my pants, with a really vague map that’s mostly in my head, I’ll cope…)

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      1. er… I wrote my spouse. When I was fourteen I had this character/imaginary boyfriend named Dan Holtz… Okay, okay, so he was an astronaut and a red-headed. But other than those two characteristics though, I nailed his looks, his disposition, his interests and even his parents’ names. Now think about it… I was in Portugal at the time. Two wrong letters, the wrong profession (perhaps right in another universe?) and the wrong hair color (but it runs in the family.) … it’s not that bad.

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        1. Seeeeeee? If you lay out, clearly enough, what you want… Sometimes the universe listens! (I figure that “wizard from another dimension” maps well enough to “computer wizard from a state 2000 miles away,” yes?) I got the hair and eye color wrong, though; not a deal-breaker.

          *beth hi-5s fellow spouse-writer!*

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        2. I remember a road trip with my best friend in the early 90’s. Both of us had sworn off women. Then he says…well…if she was… and then he commenced to describe his ideal mate, looks, personality, quirks, the whole works.

          Two weeks later, he met her. She was EXACTLY as he described. Weirdest thing. Two months later they were married. Just weird.

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      2. My kid (younger) is an introvert. EXTREME introvert. We thought he was ill until we went to psychologist (had to have him IQ tested to beat the school with. Long story) and psychologist told us he was a nice, normal introvert in a family of extroverts. She’s wrong. We’re not extroverts. We’re… odd. I test introvert or extrovert depending on mood. But she’s right, he’s extreme, pure introvert and we just don’t GET that. And then there’s #1 son whose name is Robert Anson and who is a screaming case of “Be careful what you ask for.”

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        1. Heh – I once took a personality profile test and pegged the meter at 14 out of 15 on the introvert scale, similarly on whatever the second scale was, and 7 out of 14 on the third metric. I had simply picked up on what the questions were actually seeking and provided consistent answers … except for the one metric I just didn’t care about and had flipped me response with each new question. The Deranged Daughter aced her GED Socialist Studies test by ignoring the right answers in favor of the PC ones.

          And no, i am not particularly introverted, but I do understand Mycroft’s complaint about most humans being stupids. Believe it or not, kiddies, there once was a time in this country when reading SF marked you as an outlier, as weird with a capital ew and somebody with whom no decent person (esp. of opp. sex) was interested in conversing. So I don’t start conversations that I expect will merely frustrate both participants.

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  5. I’ll say it. Heinlein’s later works lapsed into old man fantasies. Still good, but seriously flawed by his sexual preoccupations. I love “Friday” as a teenager, but as an adult I find it a bit embarrassing.

    Let the stoning begin!!

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      1. But Sanford, those are the ones I fell in love with. The other ones were okay. And while arguably NOW The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Puppet Masters are my favorite books, the teen me loved Stranger and yes, wait for it, The Number Of The Beast. Now I’d say TMIAHM, Puppet Masters, The Door Into Summer & Have Space Suit Will Travel are my very favorites, but I’ll read any of Heinlein, and I wish frigging audible would get a good recording of Glory Road already, and replace the ABSOLUTELY ABYSMAL smarmy reader of Friday because I can’t finish it.

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        1. The Number of the Beast was the first Heinlein that I ever read, and I still love it. There were thoat puns! And Oz! And the Gay Deceiver! (I like attitudinal AIs; what can I say?) I’m just a sucker for hopping universes.

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          1. TNotB is the last Heinlein I read — after that I bought each as it came out and carefully laid it aside, to be read when i wasn’t under the pressures of school and work, to be savored like a fine Port. Then we moved and I still haven’t found the box they got packed in almost twenty years ago.

            Odd thing about TNotB is that although I know I have read it, and have ample evidence I’ve an inordinately good memory for things I’ve read, when I pick it up in stores for a glance the book is totally unfamiliar! Perhaps I should NOT have read it quite so immediately following major surgery …

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            1. Some books are like that. I’ve now read Foundation THREE times. I remember NOTHING that’s in it. Not one word. When someone read DST and said “Mules” was a nod to Foundation, I had to look it up. (I grew up in farm country. Mules, logical name for what they ARE).

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              1. A whole lot of Asmov (erm … all his fiction? Except for the one where the stars appear every thousand years) are like that for me. Just haze. Don’t know why. I enjoy his non-fiction, but his fiction just .. glides away, somehow. (Oh, Noz! The Asimovians are stealing rocks from Heinleinian’s pile!)

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        2. Separate standards for defining “good”, I believe. In some cases “good” means: a tightly plotted, well-crafted, disciplined work of art. In other cases, “good” means: a rollicking, can’t put it down, blow past the flaws heckuva read.

          And then there are the books which you either a) slow down over the last twenty or so pages, desperate to extend the experience of the tale as long as possible, reluctant to reach “The End.” And the ones which you rush to the conclusion of so that you can start all over again on page 1 and observe how the author put everything out in plain sight and still managed to make you miss the construction.

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    2. I love them all, but I also recognize I have ZERO objectivity. By definition, my opinion doesn’t count.
      I don’t mind that your opinion differs from mine because I don’t read Heinlein to make you happy. I read Heinlein to make me happy.

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    3. Travis,
      I maintain you just didn’t get or feel really uncomfortable with what he was doing. Both of which are permissible, so no stoning. However — she says meanly — I HATE your new icon picture. That is my prerogative too. (RUNS.)

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      1. I think I can echo the statements above. His 50’s era stuff was more focused. I loved Friday as a young man, but it doesn’t hold up for me. Neither does Stranger or Number of the Beast, but I should qualify that…”doesn’t hold up” means that wherever I am now, it doesn’t speak to me anymore or falls flat. I can only judge what goes on in my own head, but I find a lot of my generation feel the same way about Heinlein’s stuff and lots of other stuff too.

        I had a similar experience with Tolkein and Watchman. LOTR was THE BEST THING EVER when I was fourteen. Re-read it at 18 and thought…boooooring. So very, very long. Ugh. Watchmen by Alan Moore was where it was at that age. It was the epitome of what a story should be. Then when I crossed 30 I went back and reread both. LOTR was this masterwork of historical world-building subtlety beneath the adventure I loved as a 14 yr old. And Watchmen? Watchmen was a flaming pile of gimmicks sprinkled with literary pretension. What the heck was wrong with me when I was eighteen?! Turns out, everything, but nearly every other 18 yr old boy went through the same phase, so I feel the burn less now.

        Re-reading Heinlein’s 50’s stuff has the feel of rediscovering LOTR, while rereading his later stuff feels like Watchmen.

        On, and on the icon, it changes all the time on your site, I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Which one do you mean? The skull? That’s my
        latest commission.

        More here: http://tlclark.deviantart.com/#/d4hyfh7

        if you are interested.

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  6. You know, if you were in the business of making widgets, I would think your widget distributers wouldn’t care how you went about manufacturing your widgets. They’d only care if they were widgets they could sell, and at a price they could make a profit on.

    If I were you, I would write the best way I knew how, and if a story distributer did not like my process, I would take my trade elsewhere, or even do it myself.

    This is the best part about being self-employed (which in fact you are, though no one bothered to tell you). You get to chose. This is also the worst part about being self employed. You get to live with your choices.

    Maybe I’m not seeing all the pieces on your game board, but I don’t see a downside from over here. You have obviously caught a nice wave. So ride it! It may not lead to greater riches, but already it has made you happier, which is something that is both rare and treasured.

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    1. Tolladay, “This is the best part about being self-employed (which in fact you are, though no one bothered to tell you).” misses the whole *point* of Sarah’s post. And is more than a bit condescendinig.

      Writers, for the last sixty or so years, were *not* self-employed. They were contract workers who had to submit a proposal for *each* job — even to people who had hired them before and knew the quality of their work.

      That’s all changed in the last year, and huge changes are still going on month to month (if not week to week). Sarah is saying how freeing it is that she doesn’t *have* to do the proposal and all the other stuff, but *can* work the way she wishes.

      This is going to be so much fun to see … and even more fun to read!!!!

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      1. Lin, I apologize if my tone sounded condescending as this was not my intent. I was raised in a family in which being polite was secondary to being combative. Though I work hard to not show my fangs, I was raised by wolves. Sometimes they come through unintentionally.

        If you are a writer who is employed, then generally you receive a salary, a W-2 statement at the end of the year, and have an employer. If you are a writer who gets paid royalties twice a year (if that), a 1099 (or the like, I don’t know how royalty wages are dealt with) then you are in fact self-employed.

        There might be some legal bits I missed, but I think the law is pretty cut and dried on this. A contract does not make one an employee. Quite the opposite. It makes one an independent contractor, which is just a fancy way of saying self-employed, IMO.

        Now if you find it more comfortable for you to think of yourself as being an employee, then knock yourself out. Really. I don’t mind. Having started 4 businesses (2 of which I crashed into the ground so hard they should have counted as earthquakes), and been self-employed for almost 20 years, I see things differently. And no, I’m not particularly objective about it either.

        I used to find being an employee was grand. It not only gave me a steady paycheck, if also gave me a handy relationship. I found it a lot like being in a bad marriage, I had an excuse for everything that didn’t go well; my boss. Everything that went bad I could blame on him (or her, or the company), and everything that went well I could blame on me.

        The problem I found with being self-employed was that I no longer had someone to blame, besides myself. It took me years to get over this. Man I hated not having a boss to be mad at. Finally, I figured it out, and have been reasonably happy since. Successful too, but I will own that I have been as lucky as I am skilled. Possibly more so.

        Like you, I am eager to read this next book to see. It should be fun.

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        1. I wasn’t speaking legally, I speaking of how writing *worked*. Proposals. Query letters. Every. Single. Time.

          I’m not being combative, I think you just weren’t following what Sarah *wrote* about how freeing it is not to have to do that, and decided she didn’t realize she was now “self employed” when that was what this whole post was about — not having to worry about pleasing anybody other than herself and her readers. Being able to write what *wants* to be written, instead of always wondering if the publisher (NOT the public. The publisher was the one who decided what the public got to read) would like it.

          I was not being argumentative. I was trying to point on a certain fallacy that seemed inherent in your reading of Sarah’s post.

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          1. Lin, yes, you’re right, but you can’t kill him. He’s helping me pick stones. And I don’t think he meant you were argumentative. He thought HE’d been.

            As turns out you’re both right. I was, of sorts, self employed. But I was selling to a cartel which means there were things I HAD to do, etc.

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            1. Self-employed + Selling to cartel = worst of both worlds

              Given that the cartel could (effectively, if not in actuality) black-list “difficult” writers (e.g., those who resist inserting sex scenes gratuitously and in contradiction of character, aka: refusing to write to specification), writers under the prior (and still lingering) regime were employees without any of the benefits of employment.

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              1. I’m sorry but I have issues with the “cartel” characterization. If someone is paying you to write something, and they ask you to add gratuitous sex scenes to it (or whatever stupid thing they ask), isn’t that a part of the gig? Mind you what they are asking for could very well be bone-head stupid, but doesn’t the very fact that they are signing a check to you give them “some” voice?

                Here in Los Angeles there are several industries in which there are more people who want a job then there are jobs available. Much more people. I’m talking about actors, musicians, screenwriters, directors; all of them trying to get a break in an industry that is stacked against them. On a hunch I would say maybe 65-80% of the people who want to be an (actor, musician, writer) never make enough money from it to have to report their income to the IRS. Then another 15-20% make a moderate income from the work (what you might call a mid list author). Maybe 2-5% make 100k/year from the work, and 1-2% make LOTs of money. Perhaps fiction writing is different, but from what I’ve seen of the figures especially for genre writing, its pretty much in line with the other professions I listed.

                So if you are trying to make a living in one of these jobs, it often sucks, especially if you are an unknown because the gatekeepers know there is always someone else who is looking take your place. That’s just the nature of the gig.

                In my day job I often give up control in exchange for money, and that’s okay with me because I have a house to pay for and a wife and kid to support. But when there is no money in the deal, then I retain full control. That is how I understand employment to work. Mind you there are times when the person who is paying for my services demands more than I want to do. It is at that point that I have the choice. I can tell them to take a hike (and not get paid), or I can suck it up, and cry all the way to the bank. I’ve done both.

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                1. No. I said cartel and I stand by cartel. They CONTROLLED how much you could sell, by controlling distribution. They treated their suppliers like crap and their buyers as irrelevant. Which meant you weren’t sacrificing what you wanted to do for commerciality, you were sacrificing what you wanted to do and making a much inferior less saleable product to gratify ONE PERSON’S whim. And yes, I did it. Did it make me happy to be working? Well, no. Was happiness important. Well, I wasn’t getting the money, so yeah.

                  Read Passive guy on this.

                  As for all that crap about how many people make a living, etc, is just that crap. Yeah, it was like that for years, and yeah, there was a way to get up there. But see, book publishers established total control over bookstores (the same that are now collapsing, savvy? For cause.) So they didn’t have to “build” careers. They didn’t have to care about reader loyalty or building readership. Laydown was ALL. And they could control that. Most beginner authors NEVER got on shelves. Hell, most of my first book was never unpacked in the bookstores it made it to. Was this on quality? No. Fact, the house rep never READ it. Why not? The editor didn’t tell him to read it. Is this a good mark of quality? Well, unless that editor knows everyone’s tastes in the country… no. I don’t have time to reprise this, so go here and here

                  What this meant is that for the last ten years, most people got a book or two, for an average of 5k apiece, then got kicked out, period. REGARDLESS of how good they were. Unless they somehow interested someone in the house (and this was not always due to saleability.) In a system like this, sheer sadism develops on the part of those with power. Do you jump when they say frog? Of course you do. But I was getting to the point I’d have walked away anyway, so thank G-d for Indie and Baen.

                  BUT if you think a system that fixes access, etc. and results is not a cartel you’re fooling yourself. (And Musicians are no more confined now than writers are. In fact, they’re a few years ahead of us.) Will every one who “wants to be” x make it. No, the percentages will be small. BUT now they’ll have something to do with how hard you’re willing to work and whether people want to read you. Not whether a tight circle of people in NYC decided you’re “hot” or “cool”

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        1. Yeth, Mithreth.

          BTW, *why* do I have a carniverous, mutant poinsettia as my icon? When I go to Gravatar, it says I don’t have one associated with my email. Yet…. this … this … whatever keeps showing up!

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          1. Oh. I er… tweaked the blog. We can now nest ten comments, and people without gravatar get assigned a “monster” by my blog. I think the mutant poinsettia is cute. Children, grow mushrooms in your basements!

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            1. I log in with FB yet the icon changes all the time. Sometimes its the Japanese lantern and ghost, other times it’s the skull sculpture, it makes no sense. I haven’t used the japanese ghost icon on FB in a couple months. Why is it still here? Hmmm.

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            4. My gravatar is my jack. His name is Xhoti. This is a sample of my wife’s humor, back when she was able to express herself. I miss it.
              I should probably change it, but “jackass” is fairly accurate, I think.
              Regards,
              Ric

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  7. I can live on my social security. It wouldn’t be much fun, but I could eat and pay the bills. Even before my book came out on Amazon, I had a part-time job; it doesn’t pay much, but even without the book money I could eat out instead of cooking and buy books. Now that the book is selling, I could do that for a good while (I’m a cheap date) without even the job.
    One day not long ago my boss was talking about having to be somewhere at a certain time. “J–,” I told him, “the nice thing about my life right now is that I don’t have to be anywhere.”
    And it’s true. I don’t have to go to work; I don’t even have to get up in the morning. I do both, because life is more fun that way, but it’s not required for survival. It’s remarkably liberating. For one thing, I’ve never in my life gotten along so well with a boss. He tells me what to do, and I do it; fine; that’s what a boss is supposed to do; but there isn’t the standard adversarial relationship, because he knows I can walk off without losing much. Anything valuable, really.
    I think Sarah’s having the same experience. She still has to write, but that’s an internal urge, not an external force. She doesn’t have to write any particular thing because of outside requirements. If she was less good at it, or didn’t have that internal drive, the result would be disaster — but she is good and does have the drive, and I for one am expecting great things.
    Regards,
    Ric

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