Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

First let me point out no one beats me. Not literally. For those of you who’ve read Athena (Darkship Thieves) this should not be an incredible surprise.

The title is denoting of the relationship existing in traditional publishing between the writer and the publishing house. It is also the sort of thing I heard many women say about their husbands in the village where I grew up. Portugal, like most countries whose cultures were strongly influenced by Islam, had a streak of wife-abuse running through the poorer or more culturally backward classes. Since in the village where I lived my dad was one of the very few white collar workers, this meant my mother and my grandmother were forever saving women who ran away from home when they were two steps from landing in the emergency room… Only to see them go back to their husbands because “He beats me but he’s my man.” Or “He beats me because I’m not good enough.” Or “He beats me because he loves me so much.” Or even “Whom should he beat but his own.”

Needless to say, the one thing my family told me, from – I think – before I could toddle (I could talk before I could walk. No. Don’t ask.) was “If your husband ever so much as slaps you, you leave. That day. And you don’t go back.”

Unfortunately my family never knew about publishers and the status of the mid-list author.

I wasn’t going to talk about any of this. I wasn’t. I like at least one of my publishers immensely, and I do understand how their hands are tied. On the other hand the last few days have been very trying. First, is it my impression or are all the establishment’s blue eyed boys going out of their way to tell us how we’ll starve in the gutter without traditional publishing? They remind me of my first agent, who btw, ONLY made official the sale I had already made to the publisher, and who then told me I’d die in the gutter without her, when I fired her. (Yeah. That… didn’t work as she thought, curiously enough.)

But then yesterday, in the Baen bar, someone posted that he sent letters to WRITERS complaining about their publishers’ DRM policies and pricing for ebooks because, I don’t know, the Kool-Aid man is red? Oh, wait, no, it’s more nonsensical than that. Because and – clears throat – I am quoting: writers choose their publishers. I want them to choose publishers who don’t do these things.

And that pushed me over the top. Call it hormonal, all right? I’m getting to be the same age when my mom was more likely to take off with the cast iron frying pan to talk to one of the abusive husbands than she was to simply bandage the woman’s wounds.

So, to begin with, let me tell you right now that the chances of a midlist author dictating terms to his/her publisher are about the same as those of a village working class woman finding a man who doesn’t beat her. She might get lucky. She MIGHT. But she can’t count on it. In fact, a village woman once told me “If you think you’ll find a man who doesn’t beat you–” (And let me say, yes I have.)

Heck, as some of you know I have a lot of friends who are bestsellers. The way the market is right now, the chance of a bestseller dictating terms to his publisher are close to nill as well – unless he’s one of those blockbuster bestsellers that defy all classification. In our field you can probably count those in the fingers of both hands and have some fingers left over. And unfortunately none of them are close enough friends for me to ask if they, too, are worried.

Now, let me describe to you how much power the typical author has. Let me tell you how traditional publishing works for the unconnected, the non-fashionable and the doomed.

First of all, it’s a buyer’s market. Since the mega mergers of the eighties, there are five overarching houses. There might be more imprints, but, at least when submitting through an agent, you can’t submit twice to the same house. (Well, at least not using any agent I’ve had.)

Second, for each slot available on the publishing schedule there are thousands upon thousands of submissions. Even assuming the vast majority of those are either horrible or “don’t fit” the publisher’s “needs” there have to be at least ten books that would fit the slot at any given time.

So, let’s say YOUR book takes the editor’s fancy. Or maybe they owed your agent a favor. Or maybe they liked the title better than the other ten. Who knows?

You’re a brand new author, and they pick you out of slush. Oooh. Oooh. You’re in the money now, right?

Um… maybe. But first let’s talk about the important considerations: how powerful is your agent? How much does he/she believe in you? And do you know anyone in a publishing house? If all those are negative, you have one more chance at the big money – are you a “sexy package”? Part of this is literal. Are you cute and young? Can they count on displaying you and having people tumble over themselves? Part is metaphorical – do you have a hard luck story? Do you have something interesting about you? Do you perhaps have a well-followed blog? Or are you a politically correct refugee? (When my first series tanked the publisher told me she would buy me again and “make me a bestseller” if I wrote an autobiography. I was thirty eight. I’d done nothing but get married, have kids and write three failed books. So… she wanted me to write about my childhood in Portugal and make it “sexy.” No, I didn’t. What, am I stupid? No. I respect my family and friends there too much. I want to sell my books, not my unremarkable self. Also there are other reasons which are none of their business. Or anyone else’s.)

Let’s suppose you’re either white-bread American and unconnected to the publishing industry in any way. (Or you’re not white American but are stupid or honorable enough not to let them make a big deal of your life or treat you as an oppressed minority.) Let’s also suppose you wasted your twenties trying to break in, and in your thirties you’re blousy, somewhat overweight, with two small children.

Ah, my dear, welcome to hell. Here’s your accordion.

Having looked at this, your editor “forecasts” your numbers. I have it on good authority this doesn’t involve the bones of sacrificed animals. What they do is go “White, American, unremarkable and not sexy.” And you get the standard beginner’s advance. It used to be the princely sum of five thousand dollars (what, you can’t live on that for a year? Foolish you. Appliance boxes are free, and there are some nice underpasses. You can write at the library.) It is now three thousand.

Now the book and its advance pass on to the marketing department. Who… barely glance at it. To get back the money they invested in you, they don’t really need to do anything. No, look, I know what you’ve heard. They say that printing the average book costs 100k or some fantastical sum. But that’s because they’re charging to every book the same percentage of editor/publicist/secretary/etc salaries. (Many books at this level, if bought on proposal, never get READ in full. Except presumably by the copyeditor. That’s how much time you take of those salaries.)

Next, you get assigned to someone – probably someone’s secretary – who procures a cover for you. Usually you get a beginner artist (and some are darn good) but they might also use some form of out of copyright art – like my first three books. And then… and then you go to copyedit. And thence to the marketing department again.

I’ve been privileged to listen to a book reps spiel back before I was published, at my favorite independent bookstore, while I was waiting to ask the manager a question. Back then this was done with a huge catalogue with covers, and one or two books in actual advance printing. First these came up. They were either bestsellers or those the publisher had slated as bestsellers. They got handed to the bookstore manager and the manager was told “Well, we have strong confidence in these books. You’ll want to take…” twenty of each, I think, at a minimum. Might have been fifty. It’s been a long time. Then came the books in “second slot” for that quarter. For these the rep had the covers. He’d hand them over, do a little song and dance, and say “you want to take” – five or ten of these. He’d tell you how the publisher was promoting these books this way or that, or how interesting the life story of the author was, or what have you.

AND THEN, at the end, he’d say “You also can take these.” THAT, Mr. or Ms. Whitebread, is where you are. And if your cover is exceptionally pretty or the manager recently watched a movie that sounds somewhat like your book, they might take one or two.

At that point, you’re in the midlist zone. You’re also more than likely in the sales death spiral (no, I’m not going to explain that. This would run to ten pages. Google Books and Death Spiral.) After that, any book you sell, those numbers will be brought up. Can you escape the midlist, once you’ve been cast into it? I don’t know. One hears stories, but those are usually from before the computer number system. Perhaps, as with hell, you can swim out of it but I doubt it’s on a sea of tears of true repentance. More likely you’d have to marry a movie star, or perhaps run for president.

Note that SO FAR the writer has had exactly zero choice. Oh, he can chose NOT to sell his book and remain obscure forever. Does how good his book is influence anything? Well… it could. Supposing that word of mouth got going among readers. Except that, for all but one of my publishers (yes, you know which one) until very recently, it was one print run, one time, it sells out and the book is no longer available in any format. Too bad so sad. One of my publishers until the last two books made it a point of taking the books out of print at the year mark or when the book started earning royalties.

This meant the chances of your being discovered in back inventory were… you’re right. Zero. (I know through my fanmail a lot of people are NOW discovering my Shakespeare series which came out eleven years ago. I get no money for those, because they’re out of print and either used or remaindered. I don’t even get statements for them anymore. And there weren’t enough of them printed, so even if they all sold twenty times, my name recognition would be limited.)

In fact, if your book had been completely blank, or a compilation of nursery rhymes, it would have got exactly the same distribution and sales as it got with your words in it. You didn’t choose the cover. You didn’t choose the price. You didn’t choose the push. You didn’t choose the distribution.

More importantly and more than likely, the person who chose these things chose them NOT based on the book – which they might or might not have read – but on YOU and their perceived marketability of YOU. (And let me tell you, as a reader, that’s many shades of wrong.)

Most people don’t know your book even exists, and therefore they can’t ask for it. And if they do, they might get told it can’t be ordered.

And then… and then the fun starts. When the numbers are in, you’re told your numbers are only “midlist” and barely good enough (if you’re lucky) for them to buy the next one. And the next. they all get the exact same treatment. You might grow your fans, but it will be very slow. And even if you sign with a publisher who wishes they could do more for you, at that point the publisher is hamstrung by the numbers in the computer about your previous distribution.

You might (or might not) be asked to change your name again and again and again (one of my publishers has a fetish for this.)

And all along you’ll be told the fault for your lackluster sales is … yours. Yep. You wrote the book, and if it doesn’t sell, it’s ALWAYS your fault. No matter how demonstrably it ISN’T.

And under the old model, you swallowed and took it. You did what the village women did when I was a kid. You bandaged your worse wounds, and you made up stories. “I fell down the stairs.” “I bumped into bad sales figures in the night.” “I am so clumsy.” “It’s all my fault.” “They beat me because they love me.” And you crawled back. Because the alternative was unthinkable. The alternative was to never publish again.

And if you complained – if you so much as opened your mouth and said something along the lines as perhaps the crash of the books wasn’t ENTIRELY your fault (I’m not a conspiracy theorist, for instance, but I’m100 % sure that the crash of my first book was exacerbated by coming out exactly one month after 9/11 and while I’ve done many weird things in my life I’m SURE I never committed any terrorist attacks. But those numbers were SOLELY my fault, as far as the industry was concerned.) you got told how grateful you should be to the house for continuing to publish your worthless self, how each of your no-good books cost them 100k to get to the printing stage, and how they only did it out of the goodness of their hearts. And you had to swallow it, no matter how nonsensical it was.

THIS model. THIS MODEL is what the bright eyed harbingers of the establishment, the blue eyed boys of privilege want me to get maudlin about. Both as a reader and as a writer, let me say RIGHT NOW that I’m not going to.

No, I don’t know where the buck will stop in digital publishing. No, I don’t know what will emerge or what shape it will take. I do know just being able to say “It wasn’t my fault. I’m not the world’s best writer, but there’s something mighty weird with the system.” Or “I will not be grateful for hind teat” is good enough for me.

A biography of Marlowe claims that among his last words were “Just to tell the truth once, would be worth dying for.” This, it turns out, is also true when the result is the metaphorical death of a career. Particularly when there are alternatives.

No, I will not eat what’s put before me. No, I’m not the world’s most wonderful writer – every year I look at what I wrote the year before and cringe, so I know there’s room for improvement – but I KNOW I’m not a million times worse than J. K. Rowling. Sorry, that’s not just impossible. That’s obscene. I also know that until Pratchett got a new agent and editor, he was lost in mid-list hell in the US while a bestseller in the UK. His writing did not change. His marketing did.

Will I continue selling to big houses? Only if I like them. I write for a house I like, and there’s one other house I wouldn’t mind writing for.

As for the rest of them, they can go to hell. I’m going Indie.

*Crossposted at Mad Genius Club*

Welcome Vodka Pundit Readers. Thanks to Stephen Green for the link. Poke around. We don’t have Vodka, but we have Port. (Have to. I was born in Porto, Portugal.) It’s in the decanter over there. Go easy on it. It’s stronger than it looks.

Yesterday’s post at Mad Genius Club* (Yes, Dave, that was amazingly concise when I can’t say things in less than five pages) as well as Bill Quick ’s on the roughly same subject – that the establishment is trying to convince ebooks will be the death of all books (what they think we can do about it, even if it were true, is beyond me. They do know, right, that tech can’t be put back in the bottle?) – has led me to think about editing, copy-editing and proofreading.

Why has it led me to think about that?

Because Dave’s comments turned to the art of editing and because of Bill’s exchange with a commenter on his blog who said the country is awash in talent that simply didn’t fit the old model. Bill said that no. He’s read slush, and most of it is painfully bad.

He’s right of course. And so is the commenter.

Which brings me to the first point of this post. Writing is an art, true. Writing is also a craft. The country might be awash in art – it is not awash in craft. It will never be because craft is work and not everyone who is artistically gifted is willing to work at it. Or even has any clue in which direction to work. This is sort of like saying the country is awash in people with talent for sculpture. It might be true, but it doesn’t mean that every barn and every garage shelters the equivalent of Michael Angelo’s David.

This is the point at which, usually, my colleagues start running in circles like their head is on fire and yelling “oh, no, my precious gems will be lost in showers of sh*t” and “readers will never wade through slush.” These might be true for some people. I have heard some readers will no longer buy independent works at 99c because they assume it will be raw slush. It’s not true for me, though, and probably not for a lot of other people, because a) I’m cheap. b) I will read three paragraphs and if the writer is not competent enough to draw me in, I set it aside. And this happens as mucht o independent books as to well-published ones.

No, what worries me about every beginner being able to publish himself is not that my gems will get lost in the muck. There’s word of mouth. And there’s other considerations. I’ve made a post about it here: http://accordingtohoyt.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=918&action=edit. The establishment (or even one of us when we read slush) cull for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with quality. Like “does it fit the publisher?” Or “will it sell enough to justify investment?” And independent publishing has the potential to free up a lot of talent that otherwise would have no outlet.

What worries me and has worried me since I heard a self-published author read five years ago, is more the Michael Angelos who will be lost because they had no clue how to learn or that their sculpture wasn’t perfect and – having shown it to the public – it didn’t do well.

Both as a once-upon-a-time clueless writer and as reader, I don’t like to see that talent wasted.

This was brought home by reading for a contest. I’ve done this over the years for contests ranging from sf to mystery to romance. Not a single entry in a contest was publishable as was, though several of the people I judged and encouraged (hi Connie!) have gone on to be published. And though this is hard to judge, I’d say 90% of the writers are more talented than I am.

What they lack is craft.

Now, this is the point at which my colleagues start running around in circles, screaming “without editing we’re lost, lost, lost.” Okay, all I can say is that these colleagues either came into the field much earlier than I did, or they’re G-d’s little precious snow flakes.

I didn’t even know what in heaven’s name they were talking about when they threw these hissy fits. Because, look, most of the contest entries – most of slush too – is grammatically correct and properly spelled. The exceptions, like the mention of a copulant face (they meant corpulent, and yes, that would be wrong too) on the first line, were easily fixable.

And then I read Heinlein’s bio by Patterson, and about how Campbell worked with him, sometimes sending things back for rewrite three or four times. All you have to do is read Heinlein’s short stories of the time in sequence to see Campbell taking him from a raw beginner to a master.

Children, if this has happened to anyone in my generation, it wasn’t to those of us who were thrown into the mid list to sink or swim. And I doubt it happened to very many people for one reason: there weren’t enough editors. Oh, one additional reason: the editor who can do this is rare. When you have fewer editors the chances of one of these are… zero.

I came in the hard way, by getting rejected so much any sane person would have walked away. In between, I read how to books, most of which are of course useless and a few of which are invaluable. At some point I started getting nuggets of editorial wisdom (not always from editors) which did help. Like my first agent told me to forget about coincidences as plotting devices. Toni Weisskopf at Baen told me I had to get past the “there’s a secret to be discovered” plot. (This was true and false. It’s a type of plot, and a type I like, so all my books have a “mystery” in them. But I had a tendency to try to play keep away with all knowledge and that was wrong, wrong, wrong.) But mostly I learned on my own.

The thing is, I learned because I wanted to get published. Will self-published authors do that, or just give up? I don’t know. I do know that I would love to find an editor like Campbell. And that I feel bad for newbies who are paying for “editing” and getting proof reading.

This is not a scam. It’s just what most people understand for “editing.” It’s what most writers’ groups obsess about. It’s what most first readers THINK they’re supposed to do.

I don’t know where this comes from. Perhaps it is because proofing is hard and fast and we all learn it in school. Editing, OTOH is an art as well as a science, and it requires not only that one be a voracious reader, but that one be a voracious reader who can extrapolate why things work and why things don’t.

Most writers who came in the hard way and had to edit themselves into success can do it.

Whether they WILL do it is something else. (I can do it, and do it for my mentees and my kids. I also hate it with a passion. Yes, this is why I’m the world’s worst mentor, and if you send me something to read, you have to KEEP on me, or I’ll forget it.)

Again – most of what I’ve seen in contests and slush could be salvaged with expert editing and a few rewrites. And none of it had anything to do with proofing. Proofing is easy. Any monkey can do it, editing is very difficult and you need a good match between writer and editor, or it will only get worse.

So, a quick, handy guide:

Editing – if you are a beginner writer and you can get good editing, you should definitely do so. How do you get good editing? Oh, search me. Here is what you should shop for: someone who has experience making books marketable. Here is what you should beware of: someone whose experience making books marketable has been thoroughly directed to making them fit the old model. That might no longer apply and it might be counterproductive.*

One of the best editors I’ve had, I paid to copy-edit/proofread, and was shocked he was also tightening my sentences, pointing out where the plot went weird, and tweaking scenes.

What was shocking about this, is that he’s GOOD at it. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, since he’s a voracious reader, an introspective one, and has worked as a non-fiction editor for years. (Yes, that helps, because he’s used to making things sound clear.) He’s also the Seneschal of Snark, but you take the bitter with the sweet.

So, editing involves telling you when your plot gets incoherent within a chapter. It involves telling you things like “if your character is allergic to oak trees, why does she live in an oak forest?” For a very gifted editor, it might mean also telling you how to fix it without ditching the whole plot “she’s under a geas that makes her cleave to the oaks.”

To figure out what editing IS you should go out and buy Self Editing for Fiction Writers. It will at least point you in the direction of what editing is and isn’t, and maybe even get you to edit yourself into publication.

Chances you’ll be your own Campbell are minimal, but miracles do happen.

Copy Editing – copy editing is something completely different from editing. Yes, I know it says editing in the title. Note it also says “copy.” Copy means the story has been accepted and is being prepared for publication. In old newspaper parlance, articles are “copy.”

One of the reasons that writers groups and first readers harping on the copy edit drives me nuts is that in most traditional publishing this is done, anyway. So, unless it’s really, really, really in your face distracting, you shouldn’t bother, because it’s going to happen and it’s going to happen by people who are trained to do it and who know “house style.” (For instance, most houses use FAR fewer commas than are strictly indicated in grammar manuals. Some houses – I’m looking at you Berkley! – try to remove the subjunctive. Etc.) There’s a good chance what you’re doing to the book is going cause more trouble in the long run and browbeating the author in the process.

Proofing – I view this as a different stage from copy editting, though feel free to consider it the same. Proofing is that last, last, just before print stage you go through to make sure your search-replace didn’t get funny, and that you didn’t enter a word wrong after copyedit.

All works, whether indy or traditional should have all three stages – Editing, copy editing and proofing. For years now, the traditional have only had the last two, but the publishers kept out those that needed heavy editing. Now, that’s each author’s responsibility. And figuring out what editing means is a good beginning.

*A bad editor is worse than no editor. Actually where I see this the most is where writers’ groups or first readers think they’re editors and the writer is too green to know better. The reason first readers come in bunches is that the writer is supposed to FILTER the comments. For instance, if less than three first readers have a problem with a scene (for a group of say ten first readers) you ignore it. No matter how vehement the first reader was. I am currently editing a friend’s book which has been glopped into an utter mess by integrating in explanations for everything someone failed to get. So, in case you need to know this, first readers are ALSO not editors. They are useful, but only if corroborated.

A fan of mine, and someone who is one of my favorite people online, recently asked me how to outline a story. I don’t know if this was a short story or a novel. The outlines are vastly different. However, I thought I’d give him a quick overview of my process. You non-writers hum along with the tune or something. (Actually I think it would be fascinating as a reader to know how a writer one likes plots/outlines. I know it fascinated me to find out Terry Pratchett can reach the end of a novel with no clue what the closure incident will be.)

A few things to keep in mind before we start – think of this as our pre-flight announcements.

1) Everyone’s process varies. Kevin J. Anderson would no more reach the climatic incident of his novel with no idea what it would be than he would set his hair on fire. Clearly HIS process works for him, and Pratchett’s works for Pratchett. If your process is completely different from mine, it probably just means you’re not Sarah Hoyt. This is a good thing, now I think about it. The world is rather overfull with Sarah Hoyt most of the time.

2) A working outline is different from a proposal. Both are different from a synopsis. And both are yet again different from a concept. A proposal is made to read pleasantly and slanted for the house you’re sending it too. It is written in the present tense. It must start with some sort of hook paragraph, and you must have sort of a general road map before you go into what happens. Say, the proposal for DST should start with “It is the 25^th century.” That level sets the editor reading it. A synopsis is sort of the same as a proposal, but often sketchier, more condensed for shorter attention spans. (At least that’s what I call it. This term is not absolutely nailed down. Some people call a synopsis + 3 chapters a proposal.) A concept (And so far I’ve sold three books on concept) is something much shorter, often no more than a paragraph. Say “Urban Fantasy in Space with tough girl and gene-modified man with a hard past.”

3 – For the purposes of this post, I’m talking about a working outline: a road map to your story, which you create to help you figure out where you’re going. Kevin J. Anderson says to think of it as looking up the road ahead in a map. It doesn’t mean you won’t stop at lookout point or take a picture of the pretty wild flowers. It just means you’ll have some idea where to turn and which exit number you’re aiming for.

4 – I won’t simply post one of my working outlines because a) they’re usually written long hand – that, editing and trying to find a voice are the only things I still do long hand. b) they would make no sense whatsoever to anyone else, not even my nearest and dearest. I will forever cherish the image of my husband having stumbled on the working outline for one of my unpublished novels while I was writing it, saying in a totally puzzled voice, “Allyra is a banana tree – WHAT THE HECK DO YOU MEAN?”

Now, ladies and gentlemen, tighten your seatbelts, and bring your seat to its full upright position. We are in line for take off.

So, where do we start? That is often the big stopping point. Unfortunately, I can’t help you with it. Where you start depends on who you are, and the little snag is that I’m not you. (Yes, I know, it vexes me immensely, too.)

It all depends on how ideas come to you. For most men, they seem to come as story. As in “I have this story about this guy who steals a spaceship, and then the space police is after him and…” For most women, it seems to come as character. As in “There’s this guy, and he’s really desperate. He’s lost his job and his woman and… He has to do something. So, he steals a spaceship–” Your mileage may and will vary, but I found this held startlingly true for middle schoolers when I acted as advisor a young writers’ club.

Both of those beginnings will carry you through the first chapter. The slant will be slightly different, but they will get you there, and perhaps part of the second. And then your grind to a halt. You’ve run out of the spark that motivated the story. Now what?

(I’ll note often when I get ideas I write down the first chapter and a half to get them to leave me alone. Unfortunately they’ve gotten really cunning and now make me write an outline, too. Yes, I have an ongoing fight with ideas. Yes, they seem like foreign entities. Yes, it is entirely possible I’m insane, why else would I be a writer?)

Now you sit down and think about it. Unfold that map.

There are two ways of maping the story depending on how you got it.

If you got the character, figure out how you want him to change. Then figure out what incidents will be needed to make him change. Backwards. I.e. figure out who you want him to be at the end of the book, and then figure out how he sees the error of his ways.

For instance, take our scrappy spaceship thief. First we need some background for him. Let’s say he is the son of a wealthy man who ran away to establish himself in this casino planet. (What, I was in Reno last week?) His father has found him, got him fired, got some big wheeler to seduce the girlfriend for whom Scrap McThief was doing everything. He has no money, and he must do something.

At the end of the book, say, you want him to have found true love (not that tramp he was hanging out with in the beginning) and have discovered that his father only did what he did out of concern. Also, he’s figured out he’s a lot like his father and ready to assume his position at McThief’s inc.

Okay. So, to get there… Scrap needs to start off trying to find his girlfriend, but things need to happen along the way to make him change. Um… why is he the way he is? Well, let’s say (a lot of this is arbitrary but since you want him to grow into responsibility it makes sense to start out at the other end) that Scrap has been raised by his indulgent father to not have a sense of responsibility. So, being responsible for himself would be an odd experience. Being responsible for someone else…

So, when Scrap steals his spaceship, and while he’s on the run, he comes across a young girl, stranded on an asteroid.

Okay, from here on I can’t get more detailed without writing the whole d*mn outline and making this ten pages. So, you take it from there. What incidents does he need to learn what he needs to learn to get to the end? Keep in mind that all the time he’s chasing his lost love, and being chased by intergalactic police.

What is the culminating incident where he has the dark night of the soul and has to change? Once you have those in place, writing the book is a matter of going finer-grained on events.

You’ve reached cruising altitude. Now go!

Now say you start from plot. You know that Scrap McThief will be on the run from the police the whole book, or just about. And that he’ll be chasing his wayward girlfriend. You know in the end he is in a position where the police can’t touch him and his girlfriend is punished. But all you have in the middle is this hazzy feeling of a loooooooooooong car chase in space. And you have the sneaky (and correct) suspicion that the reader will get bored.

(Understand I’m gaming the system here to get more or less the same plot. Yes, these two could end up as completely different stories. But it’s easier for me if they don’t.)

All right, then, Scrap-boy needs to up his jeopardy. There’s this girl abandoned in an asteroid, and she’s running away from something terrible. He has to take her up, but he has no idea exactly what she is, or what taking her up will mean. And it’s clear there’s another set of bad guys after her as there are after him.

What type of incidents would make this interesting? Well, as they land in a world, she seems to have connections. She acts in unpredictable ways. She puts them in danger, until the time she saves his *ss. He can’t drop her now, but she seems to put them in yet more danger. And all the time they’re chasing the tramp.

It ends up in a confrontation in McThief’s headquarters and the girl, in addition to the eventual true love, is a police spy/mole who got figured out by the bad guys in the casino, who are chasing her and who find that… Anyway, in the end, she justifies McThief to the police, speaks highly of him to his father, and voila!

You too have reached cruising altitude. Now it’s all a matter of finer-graining and going chapter by chapter.

If you get the sense using both approaches would make for a better story, you are indeed correct. It’s something I’m only slowly learning. (How slowly? Well, outlines from ten years ago seem really bad. From five years ago they merely seem insipid. I’m sure in ten years today’s will seem horrible.)

Anyway, I hope this answered at least some of your questions about outlining. Thank you for flying Crazy Writer Airlines, and I hope you think of us for all your future story needs.

I don’t feel like blogging today and I’m not going to. So, what is this post about, you wonder?

Well, it’s a list of the excuses I’m not going to use.

1^st – I’m not going to tell you the hurricane ate my homework. Though it seems a bit odd to blog about something frivolous while Irene is beating the living tar out of the eastern coast. So I won’t. Clearly my subconscious is far more concerned with Irene than I am, btw. I have no clue what I dreamed last night, but I woke up convinced our windows must have blown up due to wind. Go figure.

2^nd – I’m not going to tell you it was because I was without internet access till late in the day. It’s probably true. Our internet is flakier than a croissant wrapped in philo, but the truth is that I got up late and only connected now.

3^rd – I’m not going to tell you that I need to do a quick dusting, or at least riding the house of cat hair (Specifically Havelock hair) though that’s true too.

4^th – I’m not going to tell you I have mount laundrymanjaro to do then iron – though that’s true too. I did almost no laundry last week, so I have it all to do.

5^th I will not tell you that the great book culling of 11 demands my attention, though it does.

6^th I’m not going to tell you I have stories to judge for a contest

7^th and I’m not going to tell you that I have a novel to go over with a fine tooth comb and an outline to finish.

I’m not telling you those, not because they’re not true, or they’re not sufficient excuse not to blog today, but because if I wanted to blog, I’d still have done it, anyway. I do most days, and that list is not atypical of my normal day, only on school days I have to make sure everyone is out of the house on time, too. This is kind of like writing – the kind that pays. There are always ten thousand reasons I don’t have time to write any given day, but it still happens, anyway. So they’re reasons, but they’re not excuses.

Mostly, I’m not going to blog because they thoughts are scattered and unfocused and the themes I really want to hit are too big to do today, when I don’t feel like my head is fully screwed on.

So, you’ll have to be patient till tomorrow. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to see a washer about a load of laundry.

I was going to write this seriously and reassure those of my fledglings who are of a nervous disposition that they really, really, really didn’t ruin their chances of a future writing career by — say – sending a submission to Analog with the address printed upside down on the SASE (stop laughing. Yes, I’ve had one fledgling in a tizzy over that. And that’s not the most puerile thing my “writing children” have chosen to be scared over.)

So, instead, I decided to write a guide on how to ruin your chances of a writing career. Mind you, all of them but the first fail to be foolproof, so you’ll probably have to use all ten if you really want to ensure all your chances at making a living from writing are THOROUGHLY dead. After all, I did at least half of them. (I’m not telling you which half.) And even if you use nine of them (the first is almost fool proof, unless you hit a psychic editor who sends you a check for something you’re only planning on writing. This only happens to my husband, so you’re fairly safe) if you have extraordinary talent it might not work. So, mind you, if you have extraordinary talent, come up with some new ways to put the knife through the beating heart of your career.

1- Never write anything. Talk about writing. Make poses as a tormented writer. Let everyone know that you could have been the best of the best if only. (We call this the Lady Catherine de Bourgh method, after the character in Pride and Prejudice. “And if I had ever learned to play, I’d have been a true virtuoso.”) If your name is not Dan Hoyt, you’re safe. (And even Dan Hoyt only got the call from the editor wishing to pay him for something not yet written or even planned, after he published a dozen pro short stories.)

2 – Write furiously, but never send anything out. This strategy is a little more risky than #1. I employed it myself with success for some seven years, but eventually you’ll want to send them out just because there’s no more room under the bed and even though you keep breaking the sofa legs, you don’t need any more manuscripts to prop them out. Also, you should make sure that no prying relatives or friends find the manuscripts and send them out. Remember Gone With The Wind.

3 – Write on butcher paper with crayon and illustrate the material with your hand-drawings of the characters. Make sure you’re not better than a first grade kid. Be careful to employ this with strategy #2, though. If you send it in, you might have the misfortune of stumbling on the one editor who finds it charming or refreshing and find yourself with a giant advance check, particularly if the book is of a disgusting nature and about the life of people whom the NY establishment imagines hold up their pants with bits of string and copulate with their own sisters. There was an author who tried this strategy in the early eighties and succeed became – briefly – a bestseller by dint of pushing.

4 – Violate every rule of spelling and grammar you can think of. Beware this is not a foolproof strategy. Some of the stories I sold on first try seem to have been reverse-copyedited before I sent them out. (What can I say, I have a tendency to “read” what I meant to write.) More carefully spell checked ones take longer to sell. Not sure why. Perhaps editors took pity on me? DO NOT combine with #3 which will only guarantee you’re considered more quaintly interesting. DO NOT employ this strategy in Portugal, particularly while carrying a communist party card. It will get you a Nobel prize, and then you’ll never kill that career.

5 – Be loud, obnoxious and boastful at cons. Before you publish a single line, tell everyone ad-nauseam how great you are and how you dwarf all the greats of the past. Be VERY aware this can backfire. You see, science fiction nerds don’t have much self esteem, and if you come across as self confident enough, they might take you at your word, and give you extremely large advance checks.

6 – Hold political opinions held in disdain by anyone who knows history and whose proponents are responsible for the death of millions of people. Expound on them at length both in public and private and in your published works as well. Please keep in mind this works if your views are those that once flourished in Germany. Not so much with any others. In fact, wearing a Mao shirt to cons might result in your having to build new shelves for all your Hugos and Nebulas.

7- Get in a huge hissy fit argument with your editor over nothing. Not a foolproof strategy. Laurell Hamilton tells everyone she did this with her first bought work. No, it was never published, but she sold the Anita Blake ones a few years later.

8 – Make fun of all the greats of the field in public. Tell everyone you never read them. Be careful, though, unless these people are living “greats” of the field, you might simply be echoing what most bestsellers say. This will just ensure you become a bestseller.

9 – A variation on #8 – gore all the sacred cows. Be careful though to be up to date on sacred cows. The real sacred cows are the ones that are never mentioned. The ones continuously mentioned stopped being sacred cows somewhere in the sixties. If you gore THOSE you’ll just find yourself building additional shelves for awards AND possibly considered literary. Think of the banquets you’d be invited to and the weight you’d gain. No, you must be very careful to gore LIVING sacred cows. Like, say, the idea that sex is some sort of universal panacea and there’s no virtue ever in abstinence. That one by itself should ensure your career is dead aborning. There are, of course, several other shibboleths you can mock. Investigate for yourself.

10 – Completely lose it and hold an editor (or more) hostage while you force them to read your stories. This comes with several caveats: Make sure said editor isn’t drunk, in which case he/she might find the escapade funny and/or get amorous; make sure editor understands he/she/it is being held hostage, not merely besieged; make sure the work you show him/her has no spark of talent, imagination or craft. At least one well known (mainstream) writer actually did this and ended up a bestseller. We still don’t recommend this strategy under any circumstances. It’s more likely to land you in jail. And then someone will buy your prison memoirs.

Someone should write Science Fiction And the Search For Literary Respectability. It won’t be me, though. I don’t string readers on across an entire novel plus only to end badly. And this would be one of those grand – literary – novels in which the main character gives up everything that makes him great and happy, while in search for the glamour it can’t get. And then he dies.

Okay, I realize this is a gross simplification. There are many currents in the field and out killing science fiction. But, as perhaps because for my sins I have a literature degree, (It’s a long story and complex, and I wanted engineering, but… You can’t always get what you want.) I keep running into the “we want to be literary” crowd and into the “science fiction is not real litcharatchure” crowd.

And in case you think it’s not a direction one is pushed in, let me tell you that every agent I ever had and every editor I had save Toni (Yay, Toni) Weisskopf at Baen fought like living heck to get me pushed in a “more literary” direction. Worse, they did that without consulting me and finding out if that was where I was aiming. It was simply and tactically assumed that since I could do it – proved it with the first Shakespeare series, more or less – that must be what I aspired to.

It’s entirely possible – of course – that I’m special, but I don’t think so. I think “literary” is what these people are all aiming for, right or wrong.

Part of the problem, as someone pointed out in the comments of the post yesterday (I’ll respond tonight. I’m going away to office-ish all day) the field is flooded with liberal arts degrees.

I’d like to point out that I never felt as out of place – in a lifetime of feeling out of place – as I did while taking my degree. Part of the reason I felt wrong is that studying “modern literature” is just… silly. To an extent all study of literature is.

Oh, sure, there is a lot to study in Shakespeare or Austen. Even Dumas (who was as sloppy as I am) can teach a lot particularly to a budding writer.

But the problem is these people by and large weren’t budding writers. (Or readers. One of my friends in college read ONLY comics. Disney comics.) And they had no clue what to study about literature. My classes ranged from the useful to the appalling, their aim shifting from technique analysis to indoctrination. (Though even that doesn’t explain what in the name of sweet Daphne my German Literature Professor thought he was doing when he made us memorize Wagner’s libretos.)

The useful did what fits within the study of literature as an art – study the techniques the writer used. How does Shakespeare make us feel Cordelia’s death? That type of thing. The appalling looked for “social protest” in works. Or dug through with Marxist analysis to turn the book into something it never was. (Does Marxist analysis work? Sure, up to a point. But it’s sort of like the fact that you can sing all of Emily Dickenson’s poems to the Yellow Rose Of Texas. Just because you can fit an author’s output into a pattern, it doesn’t mean the author meant it that way or that the pattern reveals anything useful. And in the case of Marxist analysis, it also fails to connect with reality at any point. At least The Yellow Rose Of Texas has the utility of being a catchy tune and allowing me to shock my kids when I sing Because I Would Not Stop For Death.)

Anyway, all of this is sillier when it comes to modern literature – i.e. contemporary with us – because you can’t tell what is going to be considered “literature” a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years from now. By definition – well, at least my definition – literature is that which appeals to humans across time because it touched something fundamentally human.

We have no way of knowing what of today will appeal across time. Sure, popularity has something to do with it, but not always. For instance Austen is much more popular (and readable!) today than the Bronte sisters. And while Shakespeare was a Mega Block Buster, not all of what we revere today was.

For the record, I don’t aspire to literature. I don’t even think about it, except to enjoy it. In four hundred years there’s a very good chance I’ll be dead. What my great great great grandkids think of my writing is a matter of profound and unaloyed unimportance to me.

BUT there is a strand of things that people think are literature. Part of this is that they fit Marxist analysis so well, and also they’re a little difficult to read, which of course, every liberal arts graduate knows it should be. (Of course. If it were easy, you wouldn’t need a degree to read it.) And needless to say they bow rather obsessively towards all the sacred cows of our culture, while goring the sacred cows of the now safely disapproved of past. (No? Yeah. When is the last time a darling of the literary establishment wrote a book suggesting men and women neither are nor should be absolutely alike – or the women superior – in ability and achievement? Really? Why not? Aren’t we supposed to challenge convention? Right.)

In other words, they’re the perfect read for the smug and comfortable. If your purpose in reading is to reassure yourself again that you are smart, that you are special, and that only you understand the heartbreak of psoriasis (joke from last post. There will be a quiz) then these books are perfect for you. For me, life is too short. I don’t care what people think of my reading material and I don’t discriminate against the amusing parts of the written word. I read for fun. Yes, that does sometimes mean Borges (so, sue me, I’m weird.) Sometimes it means obscure Portuguese poets. More often it means science fiction, fantasy, mystery and the occasional romance.

I don’t know why or how SF decided to aspire to literature. I suspect I’m not old enough. But to me it looks like a nouveau rich thing. Science Fiction was selling well, so it decided to go for social acceptance. I suspect a lot of involved the boomers, too, but that’s because, hey, you guys, I came right after you, and you have no idea how annoying the view is from where I stand. From where I stand (born in 62 and no, we’re not boomers. I’d put the cutoff date around 53 or so, but never mind the side discussion) ya’ll were some smug sons and daughters of a boom. Ya’ll were SO MUCH smarter than the old man (and woman.)

I suspect ya’ll were involved in this, because I’ve seen the fingerprints in the way you guys refer to the greats of the past, including Heinlein. It’s all “Oh, but they weren’t real litchratchure.” (Besides, of course, standing accused of not being enlightened.)

Anyway, at some point SF decided it wanted a seat at the “literary” table. So…

So, being full of liberal arts graduates, it started aiming for what it had been taught was literature: very compatible with Marxist analysis, a little difficult to read and, oh, yeah, careful not to tread on the toes of any accepted shibboleth.

Weirdly, this didn’t sell even though it was marketed and promoted like the next best thing. Even more weirdly, reader interest moved into the fields that were beneath the touch of literary critics: fantasy first, till that too started getting taken over, and then to the sort of Urban Fantasy that might as well be Paranormal Romance.

Mind you, given enough time, and the establishment retaining enough power (I don’t think it will) they’ll come for Urban Fantasy next. Perhaps they already are. (I don’t read it enough to know.)

But at least science fiction is now respectable, right? We’re accepted as literature?

Oh, sweet heavens, NO! If I had a dime for every time I come across – in an how to book, in a magazine, in a social discussion – the recoil of horror of the “literature crowd” at the mention of science fiction, I could sculpt Versailles in dimes.

Perhaps in a fitting punishment for the fact that SF “challenges” a long dead establishment, literature people view us still as the sf of the fifties. “Oh, you guys write rockets and big-bosomed women.” (Guilty! I like writing it too. AND muscular men!)

Do some of our people – particularly our more literary people – make it to mainstream and/or literary respectability? Sure they do. But then they’re very careful to tell everyone they’re not REALLY SF or even Fantasy. “My family? Never met them. I’m a lost prince. I was found under a cabbage leaf on a spring morn.”

So, what do we take from this sad tale, other than the end of the Romeo and Juliet that “all are punished?”

I don’t know.* I know that it’s got to change. It’s got to change because I like SF too much to watch it die, and because, as Dave Freer said, we need it now. We need to believe the future can be better than the past if we just put our back to its and push.

So, what are you waiting for? Roll up your sleeves.

*Though my friends Charlie Martin and Patrick Richardson and I are going to start a project.  More on this later.

As we all know the ticket to fame, fortune and er… whatever it is we get from writing is to write fantasy. At least I was told as far back as the early nineties that science fiction didn’t sell.  As well as being told as soon as I broke in that ladies wrote fantasy. (No use telling them I wasn’t a lady. At that I escaped only lightly insulted. My friend Rebecca Lickiss was told she had the heart of a fantasy writer. She says she has the keys to that drawer and she can’t figure out how her agent knew.)

My clue to why science fiction isn’t selling came both with a review that insisted there was nothing new and no big idea to Darkship Thieves and therefore it wasn’t “important” and when a reader at Mad Genius Club – Hi Synova! – told me that she liked Darkship Thieves because it was science fiction as it used to be “before we made ourselves small.”

Before I proceed – and because this isn’t about me – the big idea in Darkship Thieves is that laws can worsen the problem they’re trying to control. Yes, I know the idea of growing someone as a spare body or spare parts isn’t new. You think I’m stupid? But I got sick and tired onto nausea of this being portrayed as an evil of OPEN and free market societies and “there ought to be a law” being recommended as a remedy for it.

Quickly – I’ve been told by no smaller authority than my son that these posts run way too long – laws don’t stop things. They certainly don’t stop technology. They just make it go underground. And in an open, free market society growing a full human being for parts or as a replacement body is inane. Humans are EXPENSIVE to grow. No matter what you do, you still have to feed them, clothe them, educate them at least enough to control them. In a society that doesn’t restrict science with stupid laws, ways will be found to grow the needed organ. Probably a lot faster, too. And anyone trying to grow a whole human as a replacement body will at the very least get shunned. (It is still murder!) OTOH in a society in which the IDEA of cloning has been forbidden for so long it’s literally unthinkable, people with money and power can have an “heir” grown as a spare body.

Unfortunately science fiction – excepting Baen, of course, (though that gets dismissed as “mostly military sf”) and a few non baen books that managed to get through the gauntlet – has devolved to a state in which two types of science fiction are accepted: 1- Hard science fiction in which the “new idea” has to be something startling, different and never used (this btw, is insane when it comes to readers. Readers don’t demand that every fantasy novel come up with a new, startling, totally different form of magic. The exploration of tropes happens incrementally, not by startling, totally new, never before voiced ideas. All of us, as readers, like the familiar with a new twist.) And 2- sociological science fiction.

For some reason to count as the second you have to pile on some social “issue” or danger that has been discussed to death in liberal arts courses in the last forty years. The anomie of modern society say. Or the aching pain of gender differences. To my knowledge the only reason the heartbreak of psoriasis hasn’t been mentioned is that liberal arts professors have yet to take it up. (And why should day? Eczema is a much more achy breaky hearty thingy. I mean, I have it, and this is ALL about my belly button, right?)

So, how was it different, before we made ourselves small? Well… Heinlein wrote about slavery and its social consequences in Citizen of the Galaxy. You don’t get much bigger social issue than with a young man being sold at the very opening. Stripping it of the racial overtones it has mostly in the US allowed him to analyze the institution in its full peculiarity (and irrationality) as well as the conditions that allowed it to occur. Ditto in one of the stories in Green Hills of Earth, whose name escapes me now.  Starman Jones?  A society controlled by guilds and unions.  Podkayne of Mars? Treat your children as commodities and see the results. Stranger? What the meaning of being human is. Is it genetic or inborn? The Lazarus Long cycle? What happens when our taboos meet life that’s prolonged beyond our wildest dreams.

Let’s take someone else – Clifford D Simak. They Walked Like Men. The big idea? Is fiat currency a good idea? City? What happens after Man and what is unique to Man? Way Station? Can a man live on out of his time? The werewolf principle? Can star travel change us to the point where we can’t be human on Earth anymore?

 Other big idea books and series: A canticle for Leibowitz; the World of Tiers; anything A E Van Vogt wrote (the man threw out three big ideas per page,) Foundation and a ton others which I’d tell you if I weren’t too lazy to walk over to my science fiction bookcase this early in the morning.

What do all those have in common? Shout louder, I can’t hear you!

Oh, yeah, I KNOW! They were fun.  People enjoyed reading them.  They sold.  The ideas were wrapped around an adventure, something that made it fun. And they were written in such a way that people in hopeless situations knew they could get out, if they worked hard enough and had just the right breaks.

Polyanish, you say? Oh, sure. It’s so much better to pound into people’s heads, over and over again that they’re victims, can’t escape and are ultimately doomed. What are you? The guardian of Hades? “Abandon all hope ye who enter here?” Or do you abrogate to yourself the power of pulling people out of their hopeless situation through your “art” or perhaps the power of “advocacy” so “government” can intervene and save them? (Flash – government is composed of people too. If the individual can do nothing, government can do nothing too – only they do it faster, harder and with somebody else’s money.)

At the end of this we’re seeing science fiction which SERIOUSLY advocates that all our destiny and actions on Earth are set by our genes (oh, I kid you not) and that this is a “good” thing, and science fiction in which good aliens come to save us from ourselves (because they have nothing better to do with their time?  Save two humans and get an interest rate of a human per millenium.)

And then people are astounded – shocked, shocked, I tell you – that this stuff doesn’t sell well. Because you know, people are a) dying to hear again all the sad stories that were pounded into them in college. b) people like to be told they can’t do anything and are without the ability to save themselves. c) hard luck sob stories that don’t end well always are good sellers. This is why people stop to read the cardboard of beggars by the side of the road. “Homeless; parents died in a fire; dog got run over; have seizures; child has the gnats; can’t work.” Riveting stuff that. And totally plausible.

Will the future bring us big problems? I should hope so. The past had big problems too. Will we be able to solve them? I should hope so. After some truly horrible interregnums we have by and large solved the problems thrown at us.

To face the future we need to think about the future. (I have nothing against fantasy. I’ve been known to write fantasy. But a different muscle gets used for that. And it prepares for different things.) To have the confidence in what is right, we need to know what is right and not continuously berate ourselves and doubt our judgement because of what distant ancestors did before our grandparents were born. But to solve big problems, we need to be big.

Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.

As I’ve said before, right now there is a novel dictating itself to me, hampered and slowed only by the time I take away to do research.

Why research if the novel is dictating itself?

Well, because for me at least, it doesn’t work effortlessly. Actually, I don’t think it works for anyone. The character of my novel is not a writer. He knows his story, but he doesn’t know how to tell it. Or if you prefer – I prefer too, if it keeps the men in white coats from knocking at my door – my subconscious has latched onto this story, this voice, these large movements of events and characters, these principles that guide the characters. But my subconscious hasn’t spent the last twenty years carefully analyzing the techniques writers use to get a story across.

I’ll grant you my subconscious is along for the ride when I’m reading – of course – and it is what gives me the indication of what thrills me and what speaks deeply to me (which is very important. I’ll why explain later). But it doesn’t go “oh. Look how she avoids going THERE and fully explaining what happened as he died, to keep it sad and not gross.” Or “Ah, that sentence is enough to tell us he’s noticing the woman. More would be a plot-slowing infodump.”

My conscious knows that. My conscious knows more things too. It knows that I can’t write a book in which the characters consciously and in very different circumstances try to recreate the American revolution and finish the revolution in one book. Look, beyond the initial impetus, there were wars for independence over years, and the system of government wasn’t really stable for a long time (some would say till the Civil War but I’m so not getting into that argument, particularly since I have very definite – and if you know my politics – predictable ideas on centralized government and it’s a pointless argument and one that in fact that was mirrored at the founding of the nation. I can do it better with fiction.) And the American revolution was taking place in thirteen small (population wise) colonies, which had no real experience of self-rule in terms of nations, even in a limited sense for the last few thousands of years. While my book takes place in all of Earth, administratively united but culturally and even politically fractured.

Realistically? This revolution will take centuries to work itself through the system. It will go well in some places and very badly (as in buckets of blood) in others. It will end in freedom in some places, economic freedom in others, and in insanity in not a few. Other places will devolve into dictatorship, even while the stragglers are still freeing themselves.

How do you write that? Well, you do it only in portions. The struggle of people we don’t know anything about is as interesting, of course, but as humans we care most about ours and our friends’ struggles. So it starts there. Pick – to begin with – an interesting place and an interesting character – preferably one who can’t help fight the current regime, because otherwise he’s going to be dead. Then have him free as much of that area as he can reach. Then let the dominos fall. Take one of his associates from quite a different area. Push….

My subconscious however, thinks in terms of “and then they killed the bad guy and the whole world rejoiced.” My subconscious has watched too much Star Trek and fails to understand that whole worlds are too complex a thing.

So I’m sitting here, studying strategy and approaches, and it is merrily dictating along. And I’m slowing it down enough to let me study.

This is btw where the legal pads come in. I can’t write in them, long term, because my mind goes much much faster than my hand in handwriting. OTOH I can write in them for three pages or so to get a voice that’s not flowing right or to find just the right words to open a book or a chapter. And I DO write, draw and sometimes doodle on them while trying to get the PLOT right. I do also make notes along the lines of “Make sure there is a similar incident to x” while reading for research.

Anyway, art and craft intertwine for me. Art is the rush of excitement and interest when an idea first appears. I can’t explain it. It’s a little like falling in love.

Sometimes the idea isn’t even clear in my mind. I don’t know who the main character is, or what he wants. I have clue zero where she lives. I don’t know if it is even human. BUT I get a feeling for the character, a sense of what he/she/it is trying to do or overcome. It’s like… glimpsing someone across a crowded room and catching the movement of the head, the sweep of the hair and thinking “wow.” Then you start crossing the room to meet the person or start allowing the idea to shape.

Does it change sometimes, and do you lose interest after a while. Sure. Sometimes the person isn’t for you. Same with ideas. One of the things that seem to be universal is that not everyone can stay with an idea no matter how good. I used to write down all my ideas when I first started writing. After about a year, with some experience, I realized about half weren’t for me. Oh, they were my ideas, I’d just never write them. And if I wrote them, I’d never make them good because they didn’t make me that excited.

This is like teenagers who fall in love with everyone. It is only when they start considering people in terms of marriage or at least long term relationships, that they realize a lot of those people simply aren’t compatible. Or they don’t like those people enough.

Take me for instance – in my ten years as a professional I turned down exactly one assignment, even though I wasn’t doing anything else at the time. Yes, it was write for hire. Yes, I’ve done very few of those. But if that book had been something I could do, I’d have taken it. You see, I had a refrigerator to replace.

But the book took place in DC corridors of power. It was all about lobbyists and ambassadors and what not.

So, Sarah, you say, you do books set in Tudor courts. Why couldn’t you research the power machinations in DC? Because they don’t interest me that way. They interest me passionately in terms of “what are they doing to us?” and “How fast are the founders spinning in their graves?” but not in terms of writing. I hate books set in that type of place with that type of plot. I don’t read them. Forcing myself to write one would be torture. And it would show.

There are other books I can read but not write. I’m not saying which because they’ll attack me and try to make me write one. (NO, I’m not crazy. I’m just a little unwell. Or I’ll be after writing a fashion mystery, say.)

Anyway, so a year or so of writing practice rendered half of my list moot.

I watched a lot of my fledgelings go through the same process and I can tell you it seems to be universal. There are some characters and settings you can’t write, or at least can’t finish because you don’t care enough.

In the same way there are characters each of you finds irresistible. Mine seems to be the Fallen Caryatid type of character as per Heinlein’s quote: This poor little caryatid has fallen under the load. She’s a good girl—look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her failure, not blaming anyone, not even the gods…and still trying to shoulder her load, after she’s crumpled under it.

But she’s more than just good art denouncing bad art; she’s a symbol for every woman who ever shouldered a load too heavy. But not alone women—this symbol means every man and woman who ever sweated out life in uncomplaining fortitude until they crumpled under their loads. It’s courage…and victory.

Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn’t give up…she’s still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her…she’s all the unsung heroes who couldn’t make it but never quit.

They can be male or female, but they tend to have at least a little of this in them. (Yes, even Athena.) This is not volational. It’s simply the type of character that makes me interested and passionate.

My son, Robert, seems to go for… well… weird. He’s written intelligent cats who drink tea. He’s written intelligent pterodactyls. When dealing with human characters he pits them up against … zombie dinosaurs or intelligent vampire shopping carts. Weird is his muse and what makes his heart sing. (Yes, I do live in fear of the Weird-in-Law I’ll inevitably land.)

My friend Kate Paulk, otoh, goes for evil sobs. I’m not going to say they’re lovable evil sobs, or even redeemable (though some are) but that she makes you interested in them even as you’re thinking you need to take a shower.

And I think Amanda Green invented strong women. Or if not at least she makes it sound like she did. And look you, they’re real strong women, not the shrews screaming their way through plots that most of Hollywood thinks mean “strong.” They’re strong despite their vulnerabilities and they take honor as seriously as any man.

Dave Freer … well, Dave writes outliers who steal your heart and misfits that make the whole work for the non-outliers. And he writes good people. Good but not sappy. (Yes, there is a difference.) You can be good without being nice. And he layers them. And uh… I’m just going to stop there because I shouldn’t be required to analyze the work of someone that far out of my league. It’s cruel and unusual and I’ll decide I am a hack who shouldn’t even be writing, if I try.

I could take one of their character types on, I could – but it would just end up as another fallen caryatid.

The same goes for every element of story, from setting – I tend to the Mediterranean type setting. Look, it’s what I was surrounded with growing up. If I say “Wall” in my mind it’s a stone wall, a little cracked, with plants growing in the cracks. It was a shock to me to see Elis Peters mysteries on TV because they had so much wood where I expected stone. Other people’s preference varies. My futures tend to have gritty sides of town and people who live by manual labor, because I like cities, and I like the working class part of cities, not just the scenic for tourist parts.

So, when a story starts circling, first I determine if I love it enough to stay with it till the end. And then… And then I start trying to figure out accommodations and ways we can live together. “No, I’m not writing a hard science fiction story about the moon landings. I’d have to study it for three years to get good enough to fool the experts. So… we’ll set it in an alternate world. There will be… humans on the moon. And…”

Sometimes in the middle of that, as in A Few Good Men, a character emerges from the swamp of my fervid mind, and is definite and strong enough to feel like “someone else” and to start dictating. And in this case, Lucius is very definite that he knows his story and why am I dawdling. Then the trick is to write just enough to keep him going, but not enough to overrun what I know I need to research, fix and plot.

And that is what I’m doing this week. (Which explains the lame but rather long post.)

And don’t send the men in white coats. I’m too busy writing. Besides, Lucius is one bad dude, and I can TOO send him to deal with them. See if I can’t. Then he’ll leave me alone long enough to figure out the secondary inciting incident in the story……

*If It’s Wednesday, this must be crossposted at Mad Genius Club*

Before I start explaining how cons have changed for me (and I for them) over the last several years, I’d like to tell you about what happened when my older son told a college friend about cons and going to cons and how attending these cons was a family affair. I don’t know how Robert said it. I first sold when he was three and he grew up in the business, so to him a lot of these things are “how life happens.” But after a while his friend asked, “So, these cons your family pulls – on whom do you pull them and have you ever been arrested?” Which of course is when Robert said “What? No.”

For those similarly unenlightened, by cons I mean conventions, specifically science fiction conventions. (I’ve also attended Romance, Mystery and Writers conventions which are very different. I had to explain to my son, after his G_d is a pantser post that sf cons are NOT writing cons as such, it’s just where our people gather.)

I am somewhat of an aberration for an American sf/f writer. Most of them seem to have come up through fandom and started attending cons either in diapers or as soon as they could get away from their parents, if they had the infelicity of being born to a non sf family.

Me, I didn’t know organized fandom existed. It didn’t in Portugal when I was growing up – though it might now, as a lot of other countries have fandoms in imitation of the US. (Though knowing Portugal, and I reallly DO say this with the deepest possible affection, as it’s one of the traits I can’t expunge from my character, I can confidently say it is at best a SEMI-organized fandom.) In a country that prizes its place in world lit’chature SF was a shameful habit, somewhat less objectionable than heroine, but more shameful than pot, and we addicts would gather in the grey light of morn outside bookstores on the days when a popular release from the single SF imprint – Argonauta – brought out a popular writer, so we could snag one of the books of the – limited, no reprints – print run. We rummaged hotel trash bins for books discarded by American tourists. Strung out and shaking with our dreadful need, we’d sometimes plunge into the backs of closets of our friends parents to find a pittiful half dozen Simaks or Heinleins hidden away beneath the porn. (You only think I’m joking.)

So the idea that I could gather with like addicts, in the bright light of day – or at least of hotel conference rooms – and discuss the intricacies of our shameful vice took a while to penetrate my admittedly thick skull. I started reading Locus sometime in the late eighties, to put faces to the names I read, but it took much longer than that for me to even look at the con listings. I THINK I attended a Mile Hi Con when all I’d sold were a couple of short stories. I THINK, but I’m not sure. The first major con I attended was World Fantasy after I sold my novel, and I went there to shop for an agent. (Got him, too, for my sins.)

For the next few years we attended both World Fantasy and World Con. World Con was daunting. No one had ever heard of me, I had no fans to meet and because the editors were busy with much bigger names – and fans – I got no business done. World Fantasy, OTOH, which is a business con in fannish trappings, allowed me to talk to editors and agents, and I almost always “did enough business” there to pay for my trip and more. So we attended WF for … seven years, I think, and World con sporadically.

I can’t mark when World Fantasy stopped paying off, but I’d say somewhere around 07? Part of this was because my career had taken a sharp turn away from the more literary fantasy and towards the more popular kinds. The other part was that WF had taken an even more so turn the other way (It was always a bit on the literary side.) I was mostly writing spec fic for Baen, which wasn’t even at WF.

So we stopped attending that too, except for last year, when we had business in Ohio at that time anyway. Of course we attended Denvention World con, though, because well… it’s in our backyard. At the time I was surprised at how different the con experience was for a mid list writer than for a raw newbie.

I still didn’t do business with editors/agents in the sense of getting work/assignments, but then to be honest, I was booked up to my hair roots, so that wasn’t even a consideration. OTOH I got to see old friends and people I’d lost touch with and go to dinner with other pros, and discuss what was going on. It was fun and interesting. Also, I met a LOT of fans. People who’d come from across the country or across the world, clutching my books to be signed. (Well, many of them probably packed them, but you know what I mean.) And I wondered if I needed to do more worldcons, just for the fans.

After this year’s world con, that question is still up in the air. I didn’t have the lines I had at Denvention, partly – I think – because I was a late addition to the program. Judging by the people approaching me in hallways and saying “I wish–” a lot of people didn’t know I’d been there. But I was accosted every ten paces in the hallway by fans, some of which were raving. (Mostly about Darkship Thieves.) Between that and running into old friends we hadn’t seen in a LONG time, it took us three tries to get through the art show (which I always love to look at even when I can’t afford it) and we never did make it through the huckster’s alley. (I always confuse this with hustler’s alley, which of course would make cons FAR MORE exciting.) On the sad side, some of the fans I know from my conference and wanted to see – like Chris French – I only got to drive by hug (to compensate, I’ll need to have him in A Few Good Men).

So… I still don’t know if Worldcon is worth the travel and the expense. I should point out that I don’t “like” cons. Oh, I love meeting fans. And I love talking to my colleagues. The problem is that instead of having an immune system, I have a velcro layer. Anything ANYONE brings to a con, I catch. (And if you saw me throwing up into a trash can at Reno airport at six am, no it wasn’t because I’d drunk too much. I had a glass of wine and a sip of Port ten hours earlier at the Baen party. It seems to be a stomach bug.) This means that a weekend con will in fact cost me three to four weeks. And you guys know I really like to write, and I’m impatient of ANYTHING that slows me down.

The other part of this is that I work seven days a week. I usually take my birthday and New Years off (and sometimes half of Christmas. Most of the time all of it.) We eat out at Thanksgiving, so I can come home to work afterwards (and work before.) I DESPERATELY need a vacation, most of the time, and don’t get it. Now, cons are like a vacation tease. The fans are in vacation mode, and I feel like I should be, only… of course, it’s work for me. I’m “on” all the time. (The exception to this was the Discworldcon before last, where I DID go as a fan and have a blast.)

Liberty con, in Chattanooga TN is my (adopted) home con because it’s more relaxing than the others. They bill themselves as the World’s largest family reunion – and they are. And frankly, I get to see most of my core fandom there. When I can afford it, I also do Constellation where I see the other half of my core fandom. I am booked for Fencon this year, and if I continue going to Dallas around that time of year, (for other reasons) I’ll continue doing it.

As for the big cons… I don’t know. All my peers tell me I need to do Comicon, but I’m afraid it will be like my early exposure to worldcon. I’ll just get lost. I keep meaning to do Dragoncon and will probably try next year.

I don’t want to be one of those writers no one ever sees, and frankly rubbing elbows with my colleagues and seeing my fans helps keep me human. With things moving in a more indie direction for all of us, knowing the fans are out there, eagerly waiting REALLY helps. And with things moving in a more indie direction for all of us the comparing of experiences with other pros ALSO helps. (I found for instance that nine out of ten pros are following The Business Rusch VERY closely indeed.)

As far as promotion and networking, though, which used to be the really important things in cons, I’m not sure how much it helps. My friend Kate Paulk has found these useful for getting word of mouth going on her books, but my friend Kate Paulk lives in the North East, which means there’s a largish con every weekend over summer, and half a dozen during the week. For me … I have two or three mediumish cons a year that I can make I to without braving the dreaded airline juggernaut (Our flights were fine and on time this time, btw.), without breaking the bank, and without taking way too long out of my schedule.

Most networking and promo I do online. So…

I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted as it goes. Meanwhile something I’ve decided to do is print the slightly bigger bookmarks – rack cards, actually – so I can sign them when people can’t fly with all their books (like us. We fly with only carry on, of course, if we can help it.) Also so I have something to sign for “ebooks.” And I think I’ll do chapbooks with some of my indie collections/novellas (no, not yet, but there WILL be some) which I can sell at cons for 99c, not so much as a money-making thing but as a “start the word of mouth rolling” move.

And then I’ll report back on these efforts….

Of course, we know that Pratchett was talking about witches when he said they’re the one who watch and the one who does.

At the same time he was, of course, also talking about writers, because I don’t know if he’s ever met a witch as they exist in his universe, but I know he lives full time in the mind of a writer.

The mind of a writer is a terrible place to live. Mostly, because you can never live something fully. You can never immerse yourself in the moment. Worse, you go through life suspecting yourself of insincerity. How can you suspect yourself of insincerity? Easy. Say, your beloved grandmother just died and you’re plunged into darkest grief (actually started to understand the mourning clothes thing, since any bright colors made me feel distraught.) At the same time, you notice yourself observing yourself grieving. And making notes.

It’s hard not to despise yourself in those circumstances, but I have it on good authority that every writer does this. Or at least every writer that’s even halfway as obsessive as I am.

This intrudes on every moment of life. I believe when giving birth I lectured everyone on the fact that pain was essential in the process of attaching to your child.

It also intrudes – sigh – on winning awards. It felt unreal and strange. I was the one who would be receiving the Prometheus but at the same time I was the kid growing up in Portugal, who knew she could never be a writer, much less win an award.

What this does, however, is also give you a sense for… the dignity of the occasion. I’ve posted here before about what I chose to wear. And part of it absolutely was “well, it’s my chance to dress up” but the other part was more than that. I’ve seen Heinlein give speeches when he was the guest of honor here and there. I’ve listened to them as it’s my only chance to hear the man, barring time-travel.

Now, I haven’t gone so completely around the bend delusional that I think that I am Heinlein. But I do think that my kids or grandkids, or even perhaps great grandkids might listen to this speech someday. You wouldn’t want them to think I was a slob.

Beyond that, there is … how do I put this? What you owe the award itself. I am a winner, in a chain of winners. Yes, it is a Libertarian award, which means it’s amazing no one has shown up to receive it naked. But in the same sense you dress up to attend someone else’s wedding (and for a given meaning of dress up, depending on the groom and bride. New jeans might be dressing up) not because you couldn’t attend it as well in your pajamas, but because you owe it to them and their occasion to look nice and like it’s a special moment – I felt like I owed it to all past winners and all future winners to translate into my attire how important the occasion was to me.

And now, I look at the pictures and I think “Gosh, that’s not me receiving that award. That’s clearly someone important.” So, there is that. I think my speech was incoherent, as I forgot half of it. I might have said that it was a bad thing to legislate equality, instead of specifying that equality before the law was fine – it’s equality of results that’s bad to enforce. BUT at least I looked the part and future people won’t know how scared I was.

More on the convention and the friends I got to see again for first time in years later. For now, I’ve got to go and clean the house which is drowned in cat hair and finish painting the fence (no, no neighborhood kids want to pay to do it. They’ve all read Tom Sawyer.)

And that’s the other part of being a writer. Reading Grumbles From The Grave I kept gritting my teeth and going “Okay, then. WHY was he building these water features, instead of writing another book? Didn’t he know he had limited time?”

But of course it is doing these other things that feeds the writing. If you sealed us in a chamber that took care of al our physical necessities and made us write, we’d soon stop, or go insane.

After all, my characters clean house, change litter boxes and paint fences too.

And I’ll be taking notes.