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The kindle screen saver picture of James Joyce shows him sitting, his forehead on his hand and an expression of intense concentration/pain on his face.

Every time my husband or I hit that screen saver we say “I suffer for my art.” This is churlish of course, since Joyce is dead and can’t defend himself, and also since the idea that a writer was a “tormented soul” was part and parcel of the myths of the time.

But what goads us is that this myth is still there, as are a lot of others. And those myths are not only annoying when you encounter them applied to you, but they make many young writers think that writing is like stew: all flavoring and smell.

Instead of sitting their behinds at the office chair and setting fingers to keyboard, a lot of writers think they have to go out and “suffer.” This usually – humans being humans! – translates not so much into suffering as into the appearance of suffering. One of my favorite books as a kid as Tom Bailey, Story of a bad boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. In one chapter he describes the time he spent being “an unfortunate being.” This was while he was a teen boy and having much fun at “being in unrequited love.” The chapter closes with “Never have I been so happy as when I was an unfortunate being.”

When I read it, I was playing the same sort of game – sonnets my dears, I wrote something like 250 to a blond, green-eyed gentleman. Foolishness and mumming, but it made me feel grown up and important and suffering for love. That passage in the book should have annoyed me, but instead it reassured me that I was “normal” – always a difficult assurance to come by.

Most of the young writers – and other artists – who suffer for their art do the same sort of thing. They’ll take some menial work, but not too strenuous, and spend their free time – instead of writing – sitting at a café, wearing a melancholy expression and aching, aching I tell you, with unexpressed genius.

This is much easier than aching with expressed genius, which actually requires one to work one’s butt off and which always allows one to fall short of the greatness we perceive within ourselves.

So, why do I care? If they’re having fun and not hurting anyone?

I shouldn’t care. They really aren’t hurting anyone else, beyond making half the real estate agents who show us homes and know I’m a writer say something like “You’ll love this house, it has this room where the view of the mountains will just inspire you.” Which of course, would be very useful if I wrote poems about mountains, instead of workaday novels about flawed human beings. Okay, I concede there probably are flawed human beings all over those mountains, but it would take a really powerful telescope to find them, and the gentleman across the alley who paints naked in the room facing mine (no, don’t ask. WHY would you ask?) with the lights on in the early morning dark, is likely to think I’m using the telescope on OTHER things. It also makes strangers say kindly things like “I imagine how difficult it must be to suffer for your art.” (Somehow “carpal tunnel IS terrible” doesn’t seem to be the expected answer.)

But overall the person it hurts is the young writer himself.

Yes, I know that’s none of my business. Hurting others is evil, hurting yourself is simply stupid.

But I’ve seen too many – usually extremely talented – young writers become older writers who don’t write, though they talk about writing and suffer, suffer for their art.

The problem is by the time they reach middle age, the suffering has become real. Their entirely lives, they’ve defined themselves as writers. They often have taken jobs of little account or refused to pursue extensive education because they must “save time for writing.” Often they even have created worlds and characters that they want to write.

But by that time, they’ve created such and… expectancy of art, of how great their book will be, of everything it will incorporate, that writing – actual writing that involves putting words to paper – becomes impossible. Or at least highly improbable. Because if every sentence you put down doesn’t throb with inexpressible genius, then how do you justify all the years you spent, suffering for your art?

So you block yourself before you start, and your own expectations make your ambition moot. And what could have been several pleasant, entertaining and perhaps, even, in the end, enlightening books, die in the vine. Oh, and the “author” might go to his grave considered a great unacknowledged genius by all his family and his two friends, but in fact, even if he were a genius, he never did anything with it. Oh, and he’s added to the whole myth that the really good ones never write.

If you or someone you know, young and old are in that trap, here’s how to find the way back (I fell into that trap fortunately only between fourteen and twenty two, when my husband pushed me out of it, more or less unwittingly.)

1 – what my husband, an amateur musician, told me within a week of marriage. “Real writers write every day” was the beginning of my way out of the trap. Partly because – his being from another artistic tradition, one in which practice is important – he made me realize how much of anything is just habit and practice. How could I expect to write perfectly if I hadn’t made it an habit? If I hadn’t trained to?

2- Come to terms with the fact nothing will be as good on paper as it is in your head. This happens to every single one of us. You do the best you can at that time, and you trust your craft to improve with practice. (Dean Wesley Smith calls this “trusting the process.” I’m not a very trusting woman and this is almost impossible to me, but it DOES work. I’ve seen it. For me, it’s almost the only things that works.)

　

3- Forget writing one book that will live forever. Oh, it might happen. But IF it does happen it’s not because you sat down and ached with unexpressed genius and distilled from your emotions a book that is, to paraphrase my friend Alan Lickiss “a metaphor for the human existence.” Expecting this of any one book is sort of like if you could design your kid and you wanted him to have every talent and virtue that humans ever had. You’d end up childless. (um… nice short story idea.) Instead, work at writing several books that are worth reading. Preferably, though I understand this is MY personal preference, that are worth reading with little effort and that amuse, entertain, make the reader cry or worry or thing. You might get lucky and your entire output in aggregate might be a work of staggering genius that changes the world. Or you might write your tenth, or twentieth book, and find you finally produced that work of genius you wanted to create all along. Or you might simply make a living from this, and make a few people happy for a while. All of those are worthy outcomes, and you’ll never get any of them unless you write.

4 – Forget suffering for your art. There is enough suffering in the normal human life: making enough money to survive; living up to your commitments to spouse, children, even pets; the aches of advancing age; the frustration of never being as good as you want to be. It is part of being human that we can imagine perfection, but none of us can achieve it. The course of true love never runs straight, and that’s not just romantic love, but the relationship with your parents, for instance. How tangled is that? If you say not at all it’s because you’re not looking with open eyes. And that’s part of the problem. If you’re concentrating on suffering for your art, you’re not paying attention to the suffering inherent in being human. All those people who live normal every day lives? You’re seeing them as things, as stereotypes. This is the worst thing you could believe when you set out to create worlds that live.

5- Forget writing what you know. Or don’t. I have a fan who is a long-distance trucker, and reading his blog about his profession was fascinating. I remember a series of mysteries about a woman working construction. Again, it was fascinating because there’s so much about that trade I don’t KNOW. OTOH a lot of people interpret this to mean “write only what you know from personal experience.” Look, children, seriously, slice of life is boring. Oh, some details might be fascinating, but in general? We all live lives of quiet “snuffle. Yawn.” So if you feel a need to “write what you know” a) stop trying to do exotic stuff. You’ll find that normal human beings (well, and me) are just as curious about things like “who do bookstores work, inside?” “I wonder what it’s like to come to the mall before it opens.” “How do bus drivers really do what they do? How are shifts arranged?” etc as about “How do you run with bulls in Pamplona.” And b) unless you’re writing slice of life literary (and for that I’m not qualified to advise you) throw in a murder or an alien landing or a vampire, or for all I care all of them, provided you do it WELL. And no, you don’t need to kill someone to write about it. You can research in books and by attending classes. (There are usually a few on police investigation, run by local officers.)

6 – Read. Read every day. Read several hours a day if you can manage it. Take your favorite books from the shelf and take them apart (not physically) by analyzing how the author introduces characters, how he evokes what emotion. Now, how could you do that in your as yet unwritten opus.

7 – Write. Write every day. Write what you mean to write professionally and write other stuff too. Set yourself a minimum quota of words and write.

8 – Don’t take yourself seriously. Toss out all preconceptions about what a writer is, or what writing means. Throw out all the nonsense I know you’ve heard (I have) about process, like “A novel isn’t any good unless it takes 3 years (or five, or ten) to write.” Or “A story must be revised ten or twenty or fifty times before it’s any good.” (I came across this recently, of all things in a book aimed at indie writers: “If you don’t have the patience, persistence and pride to revise a story fifty times, you shouldn’t do this.” If I’d been unpublished, I’d have quaked. FIFTY times? My most revised story was revised probably twenty, and it KILLED it, and I didn’t sell it till I went back to the original. Ignore that nonsense. These people are crazy. By all means, if you NEED to revise fifty times [I can’t even imagine it. Do you write in Sanskrit in first draft?] by all means, do it. BUT you don’t HAVE to in order to make it “good” and it’s not a universal process.) Do what you have to do to create stories. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t sweat prescriptive dictates.

And now shut up and write. Ignore all the years you might have wasted. Start today. Sit down. Write.

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I really would like to send Darkship Renegade to my publisher before I go to worldcon. Whether or not this is possible, it depends on whether or not I find anything major – like scenes that are missing but should be in there. But, for now, I’m trying to at least figure out if it can be done.

Revision is never easy, particularly the “final revision before it goes out.” On the one hand I find myself cringing at sentences and expressions or wondering if I truly confused Earth and Eden just because they both start with E. And what bright idea that was! Don’t I know better not to have covalent entities (two planets, two cities, two humans) with names starting with same letter? What an amateur mistake to make.

But of course Eden was Eden for reasons that will become obvious as the series goes on, (if it does, of course) and also because the Mules had a sense of humor. Same sense of humor inspired that as the escape ship named Je Reviens. Or, as my older son put it, “Don’t ya’ll go celebrating our departure too hard. We’ll be back!”

Besides, and this is very, very hard – you can’t change something like that on the second book.

Anyway, when mark the first page in editorial symbols it always worries me a little. I think I’m being rational “How to make this easier to understand” and not over-severe as in “Ah! That is so bad! I can’t believe I wrote that.”

But the truth is, I can’t know except when it comes back to me in copy edited format. By then I should have written another one or two books and be able to face this dispassionately. At which point if I have removed flavor, I’ll add it back in.

But it’s sad when you can’t trust yourself and aren’t sure you did the right thing. However, that’s sort of how revision works. You’re always wondering if you’re being too defensive, or not defensive enough, patting the little darling on the head, or parting its hair with an ax.

No wonder other people think all writers are crazy. (We’re at worst somewhat sanity challenged!)

And now I’ll go load up on caffeine and return to the crazy-making.

A realistic guide to new publishing economics for the Idealistic, the Angry and the Fearful.

In one of my articles on another site, in response to comments about teens not reading (which made any teen reading it justifiably indignant) a – from spelling and word markings – very young woman yelled back that they read all the time, they just do not buy the books. They get them from torrents and friends because “information wants to be free.” She also informed us, in no uncertain – if clearly thumb typed – terms that this was the way of the future, and if we don’t like it, deal with it.

This of course, feeds directly into the fears of the majority of my friends and contemporaries, roughly described as between thirty and sixty.

And both the innocent young lady and my contemporaries are wrong.

Let’s start from the top – this is not a post seeking to prove the concept that information or data “wants” to be free. (Though the animist, not so say personifying statement makes me cringe a little.)

I believe any raw data, and to an extent data collected with governmental money and support, (with caveats on that*), should be “free” to access. This is not out of any deep redistributionist impulse but as a qualification of informed citizenry. For instance, if you hear that during superbowl most assaults by men on women occur, you should be able to trace that factoid and prove it or disprove it. (You’ll disprove it. Or at least you’ll prove it can’t be proven. Try it if you don’t believe me. Yes, tons of people say it, but the statistics don’t back it up. At any rate, it’s flawed psychology. If you believe that, you also believe every teen playing first person shooter games is a murderer waiting to happen. That is something like 90% of teens. [rolls eyes.])

However most books aren’t raw data. And I’m not setting out to prove it wouldn’t be “fair” to not pay for them because “blah blah blah.” Neither the idealistic young, nor the scared old pay the least bit of attention to those bromides, nor should they. “Fair” is a beautiful word and works great in kindergarten where the teacher can enforce the distribution of crackers. And appealing to people’s morality is always risky. Most of them might not have any. And some of it might be different from yours.

Instead, what I’m setting out to do is explain both to the idealistic and the fearful why this model cannot and will not apply to either fiction or researched-non-fiction books. Or if it does apply, it will be for a vanishingly brief time and then collapse under its own weight, and something else will succeed it. Because what this “system” is happens to be economic Marxism by another name. And Marxism, whether called that or “happiness” or “social justice” has never worked as an economic system anywhere, since the dawn of time to now.

I know, I know. Look, I was young once, too. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ve got the pictures to prove it. And though I was always reflexively, knee-jerkingly anti-communist, I grew up in a society even more steeped in Marxist principles than ours, from the elementary school room on. And I thought that “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” was a lovely principle. And then I stumbled across the essential question “Who shaves the barber?” and was floored. Because the question that principle begs is “who decides?” Back then I was a teen, and I ran my nearest and dearest, the people who purported to know me best, through my mind. Who would I trust to decide what I could “give” and what I should “take” – my mom, the woman with whom I had knock down, drag out fights on the subject of what shoes I should buy? And how much housecleaning I could do while attending school? My brother, the sixties idealist who thought I could write great literature by the time I was sixteen? And who thought everyone should subsist on love and a crust of bread? My dad, the poet, who had the vague idea I should write whether anyone bought it or not and perhaps live in a garret and talk to the sparrows or something? (Eating them would be out of the question. Dad likes sparrows. And not on his plate.)

The absurdity of trusting even these people, more likely to have my best interests at heart than any bureaucrat could, to decide for me what I wanted and could do made the entire thing a ridiculous notion. I decided it would be a great system if we could get angels who could see into every heart to come and administer it for us. Until then we had to make do with what each individual knew he wanted, and what he knew he could give. And it was all arranged through this wonderful means of exchange – money – which seems to appear in every society large and complex enough to require it. With money as a reward of effort (not of want, because as the wise man said “you can’t always get what you want) and ability, the person being rewarded (or in the case of midlisters trust me, children, punished) with it can then provide for his or her own wants and needs. It’s not a perfect system – see the part where we’re not angels – but it is the best we can get. And now that I’m older and wiser, if an angel descended from heaven, who could look into every heart, determine everyone’s wants and needs, and undertake to govern us, the shield for minds and hearts and the assassination plot couldn’t come fast enough for my taste.

Now, after this digression to explain what’s wrong with the system, lets look at the whole information versus novels or investigative journalism bit, shall we?

I realize that what we’ll call for lack of a better term creative writing, like raw data, is composed of words, and that it can even convey factual information, as well as emotions, feelings and point of view. This doesn’t make it raw information.

I can give you most of the raw information about the novel currently holding me prisoner in one paragraph. “Man who has been confined for fifteen years to one of the most high tech and unbreakable dungeons humanity has created, escapes. He finds he’s the heir to one of the highest-power positions in his world. He also becomes convinced that the system under which his world is governed is both unfair, unjust and ultimately counterproductive at providing for most people’s needs, let alone wants. Spurred on by the fact a lot of his co-rulers want him dead, he finds himself getting involved in the coils of a revolution to overturn the system.” There. Now you don’t need to read the book, right? Oh, wait, silly me. I forgot a little bit. “There is also a love interest.” So, now you don’t need to read the book, right?

Oh, you do? But why? You already have the information.

The answer to that, of course, is that creative writing is not information. While it uses words as its raw material, its objective is not to convey “what happens” but to make you experience it, feel it. Well done novels (and some creative non-fiction) are the only way you can experience being someone else for a while. It is in fact an “entertainment experience.” The difference between te raw data that goes into the novel and what the author does with it, is the equivalent of reading the lyrics of a song, or hearing it performed by a talented singer.

“But, Oh Sarah,” say the most classically minded of my frightened colleagues, “what you define writing as doesn’t matter. These children think they can get it for free. They’ll steal it. They’ll break our DRM. They’ll read our books without permission and we’ll starve in the gutter and dogs will eat us.”

To which I say, take deep breaths, reconsider DRM and think the situation over.

DRM is at best an irritating barrier, and at worst an annoying one. No DRM will keep your books free, that’s true. So, ignore DRM. I don’t believe in it, and it’s never applied to anything of mine by my request. Some of my publishers insist on it, and I let them because there isn’t enough time in the world to talk everyone out of it.

It is not DRM that will keep your livelihood safe. It’s your talent and – yes – your craft. Why? Because no one has ever worked for free, while starving to death, with no expectation of ever being paid and created good crafts or art. Even those romantic artists of my dad’s imagination, starving their garrets for the love of creation, weren’t doing it without the expectation of ever being paid.

We do have examples of artists who were paid what their betters thought they should be (usually not much, unless you kissed the right #sses) and trust me, children, it is painful to see.

As part of one of my native countries forays into socialist correctness, our TV played eastern European movies. A lot. Let’s say the only time they worked as entertainment was when my brother and I sat together and made a running commentary about the movie, ascribing the characters and events the most outrageous motivations.

And mind you, these artists were being sort of paid – with greater access to the stores, or with villas in the country, or… But the thing is they weren’t being paid to produce entertainment. They were paid to produce “messages” and it didn’t matter how painfully bad those were as entertainment. They got “paid” per message.

How does that correlate with working for free? And – say my colleagues, pulling their hair – how can you say that when you work for free? Like, all your Austen fanfic?

To which I say stop pulling your hair. Half of you are already bald anyway. Also, yeah, I do Austen fanfic for free. I also embroider for free. And I make stuffed animals for free and, occasionally – I don’t have as much time as I’d like to, these days – I draw or paint for free. However, the Austen fanfic, when done for free, is done at the same level as drawing or painting. It’s done as an amusement. Before Naked Reader Press published A Touch of Night, which was the most professional of my fanfics, they had to do extensive editing and chapters and clarifications had to be added.

Let’s just say I enjoy the heck out of writing fanfic because it is NOT my best work, it comes without the pressures of oh… self editing; fact checking; making sense… etc. It’s also highly targeted and I cater irrepressibly to the people who read that site. I use fanfic, in fact, to try out techniques and because of the ready comments, to see how they play to “normal” people defined as “people who don’t write for a living.”

It is no more serious than a professional seamstress doing cross stitch in her spare time. And the work is not the same as that of a professional embroiderer. It’s relaxing because it’s not being done for a living. And I can do it because I make a living elsewhere.

And here comes the rub. The idealists believe it is possible to have a “right” to other people’s labor because they’re by and large not supporting themselves. Their livelihood comes from elsewhere, in large measure parents or other arrangements. So it’s perfectly plausible to them to imagine a world in which “people just work if they want to.”

Of course, when you’re a college student you do a lot of that on the side, because you want to. But let me tell you, as someone who has had to work for a living (besides writing) that while many of my friends manage it they do it for extra money on the side and in the hope of one day quitting and writing full time. There is no one who writes forever, on the side, with no expectation of reward. EVER. And no status is not enough, not when you grow up and have kids and start thinking that this time could be better employed, perhaps, doing something you could sell.

Yes, I’ve heard the utopian nonsense about a society that provides the basics for everyone and where people can work or not. Even if it were possible – it’s not. These are dreams of academics and white collar workers who’ve never been near enough to a farm to get cow muck on their toes. Yes, I can explain it one of these days, but not now – this society would last maybe a generation. We are not angels. We’re creatures designed by evolution. To a vast – and possibly sanest – majority of us “basic needs provided for” translates to “do nothing, wallow in your own favorite vices, get bored as heck, get suicidal.” At the very least it translates to no reproduction. Those people that survive will not be the contented aesthetes people who write about this tend to imagine, but nasty, brutish and short lived. And barbarism will come shortly after.

Yes, I’ve also heard “So writers stop writing. Big deal. We still have nineteen centuries of literature.” Right…. Look, chilluns, if you think you can pleasurably read anything pre-Shakespeare, power to you. I can, but I was trained. (Not for free.) And even I don’t do it for a lark.

If you think you can read nineteenth century fiction for fun the same way you read the latest Urban Fantasy, you’re either highly unusual or you haven’t read much of that.

Science fiction ages, of course. Quickly and badly. Heinlein is now alternate history (and others, more recent, are worse.) But – you might not realize this – fantasy ages just as badly. No, seriously. A lot of it (granted not all) is near unreadable now, because the language feels “stilted” and this is less than 30 years old. Mystery? Well… A lot of it has also aged badly. I know, I know, but mystery when contemporary is steeped in the moment. Even to me references to phone booths, let alone phone books, and encyclopedias, feel odd and stilted, and I have to put myself in an “historical” frame of mind to read that. Only it’s not written as historical, with support and cluing of the anachronisms, so it’s harder work. Romance? Well… Let’s put it this way: I love Heyer. Do I love other romance writers from her day? Children, I can’t even read romance writers from the sixties, for the greatest part. The way people interacted in the sixties taints even the historical stuff. And since I spent the sixties learning to walk and getting potty trained and, at the very end of it, learning to read and write, it also feels stilted and weird to me. And much as I love Austen, I can’t stand the Brontes, let alone any of their lesser contemporaries. I’m not alone in this. If I were, Gutenberg would be a SERIOUS challenge to Amazon. Particularly in these days of tight funds. (And heck, I’ve been known to buy books on Amazon that I KNOW are on Gutenberg, because they’re better formatted or have an active index on Amazon.)

So, let’s suppose the idealists managed to make all “data” to include artistic performances, such as novels, “free” – what then? Well, I predict within a very short time – probably within a year – some writer a lot of people want to read and who has stopped writing to work as a cashier in the local store, will be accosted and offered money to finish the next book in a well loved series. And then the old system will be back.

So, to the frightened I say, Stop pulling your hair! Wipe your nose! Wash your hands before you touch that keyboard. And don’t be afraid. Economics is a natural system (natural to humans, at least) and can’t be abolished by fiat. If you have something worth the selling, people will pay your for it. There might be some lean months or years, but eventually you’ll get paid. Will the pay be commensurate with your effort, craftsmanship and talent? Who knows? There’s a factor of luck in all this. But at least you can try and don’t have some know-it-all angel (or – shudder – bureaucrat) dictating what you can do, and how much you can get.

To the idealist I say, go ahead. Pirate that book. Steal that entertainment. You’re young. We were all young once. (Except my older son, who was born at the age of fifty three.) And you’re broke. We were all broke once. (Some of us have been broke for years. We’re EXPERTS.) And you really don’t have a clue what it’s like to be responsible for your own survival, your own comfort. Worse, you don’t have a clue what it’s like to be responsible for the survival and comfort of creatures – cats, kids, dogs, etc – wholly dependent on you.

So steal those books. Get hooked on them, now when you have tons of time to read. Please do. Because in five or six years, you’re going to want more. And then you’re going to realize you’re not entitled to having someone work for you for free. That’s called slavery and it’s illegal. And you’re going to realize that no one does their best work for promises and prestige.

And then you’ll buy the books.

* Note – The caveat on any data gathered by government programs being free is that some of that data can endanger innocent lives and also that (for continuing research) other data can rob the people who gathered it of their reward. Suppose scientists have been working for years, tracking a gene that allows humans to be far smarter. If all data is published as collected, then someone else can come in at the last minute and scoop them, rendering all their work useless. Why would anyone – government or not – pay for research only to be “scooped” at the last minute. The same caveat applies to proprietary systems and discoveries. If people won’t be rewarded for them, everyone will lose because this type of research just won’t happen. Sorry. “All data should be free” is a fantasy. A pernicious one that – in the end – means “wha, wha wha, why can’t I have a right to other people’s work?”

　

　

　

　

　

　

*I did this for my agency’s holiday newsletter and of course it’s brutally out of season.  But I thought fans of shifters might appreciate it.  Yes, this girl shows up in Noah’s boy.

Yes, I’m fobbing you off, but today I have to finish cleaning the office and I’ve been attacked by a novel that is pouring out as fast as I can write it.  I’ll try to have a toughtful post up tomorrow.*

Three Matches

　

You shouldn’t cry when it’s snowing. Besides, crying wasn’t going to do me a bit of good. Not on New Year’s Night with a blizzard blowing in low and tight over the city of Goldport, Colorado and turning everything further than two inches from my nose into vague shapes that I no more than suspected might exist.

I abandoned my car on Fairfax Avenue. People say Fairfax is the longest straight street in the western states. Perhaps it is, since it runs from one end of Goldport to the other and clean out of town on the other side. Which makes it a very easy street to follow, even in pitch dark night and under the snow. But not when your car was low on gas and the street was coated in ice.

As I got out of the car, pulling my gloves on and wishing I were wearing my snowboots and not the tennis shoes, I thought mom might have been right at that, when she said dad hadn’t left her so much as he’d left Colorado. You see, my father was a meteorologist, and mom said the Colorado weather had driven him insane being completely unpredictable. You could start the day with eighty degrees and bright sunshine and end up at noon in a hard frost and subzero temperatures. I’d always suspected dad had other reasons for leaving, but now I wasn’t so sure.

I’d left Denver, three hours ago, in eighty degree weather and bright sunshine and look at me now.

Blinking, because it felt like my eyes would be frozen in their sockets, I walked carefully along the street, heading for the sidewalk. There should be a space near the buildings where it was relatively warmer and perhaps not quite so icy. Also there was a chance – okay, a chance in Hades – that a coffee shop or restaurant or something had left its door unlocked. And that would be good, even if no one where there, because then there was the chance I wouldn’t die.

The thought surprised me, because I had been thinking of it in terms of stupidity and annoyance. Stupid, stupid Rya had left home without her snow boots, or her emergency kit in the car. Stupid, stupid Rya had blown past the small towns on the way here without thinking to get her tank filled up. Now the thought came, stark and naked. Stupid, stupid Rya is going to die.

Which stopped my mind from spinning on the track it had been playing since I’d left Denver – how to tell one’s mom and step dad about one’s little embarrassing problem. Particularly when said embarrassing problem is of a bizarre enough nature they’ll consider having one committed?

In the sudden blankness of thought, I patted my pockets, suddenly wondering if I had what it took to survive this, if perhaps there would be a reprieve from my fatal idiocy. This was when I realized my stupidity was greater than it seemed. I’d brought my mom’s jacket instead of my own. Which meant I didn’t have my cell phone, or my lip balm – so I’d die with cracked lips – or the mini candy bar I’d put there after grandma’s holiday party. On the other hand, I had a matchbook, that mom must have picked up somewhere and put in there. I brought the matchbook out, wondering why people even gave them out considering that there was no smoking in bars or restaurants in Colorado anymore. It was black, with a name and address printed on it.

I blinked. The George. On Fairfax Avenue. In Goldport. That didn’t even make any sense. I’d come to Goldport to University, but I didn’t think my mom had even bothered to visit since the first weekend of my freshman year. It was all “Rya, won’t you come home.” And “Rya, darling, grandma is having a party.”

Grandma wasn’t really. She was my stepdad’s mom. Not that there was anything wrong with her. Or with Mark, my stepdad, except I always got the impression that they were more interested in having me there so they could show what a great family we were than in me, as such.

How long had mom been carting this around? On the one hand the matchbook looked barely creased. On the other hand, there were only three matches in it. Right. Three matches.

I found the edge of the sidewalk next to the buildings. I was right there was less ice there, except for little patches there the water had melted and run or perhaps run before it froze. I could watch for those, as I moved along, looking at the numbers. From the numbers, the George was about eighteen blocks that way which, of course, gave me plenty of time to freeze to death.

But hey, I had three matches. I flashed on my favorite holiday story as a kid, The Little Match Girl. My dad had read it to me on Christmas every year, with a bunch of others – which was kind of odd since The Little Match Girl takes place on New Years. Even odder since – as far as I knew – my dad didn’t have anything against little girls, and a holiday story where the happy ending is that she froze to death while dreaming of her grandma seemed kind of strange.

I patted the pocket of my jeans, on the off chance I had anything useful there. This was Colorado. We read about people who survived blizzards on three cough drops and snow melt all the time. Not that my big issue was hunger – even if I hadn’t eaten since breakfast – but more cold. And that… well… I’d just have to keep walking.

I stomped my feet, to make sure I could still feel my toes.

As though in answer to my stomping, there was a weird sound to the right, like a muffled hiss/growl.

“Who? Who– ” I said, sounding exactly like a very enthusiastic owl. The hiss/growl came again. All I could think was that someone’s dog must have got out of their yard, but if that was a dog, then it had laryngitis problems. Scare it away with something flashed through my mind which, unfortunately neglected to tell me what I should scare it away with? My keys? The way my lanky brown hair must be all messy and now getting crusted with snow? The matches?

As the hiss/growl came again, I figured what the heck I might as well try, right? I mean, what was the worst that could happen? I’d use up the match and that would seriously cut down my possibilities of smoking three cigarette…which I didn’t have. Right.

And besides, maybe if I lit a match I would see angels or get a great dinner. Right now an hallucinatory dinner seemed preferable to dying out here knowing how cold and how alone I was. I lit the match as the hiss/growl, followed by a slithery noise, dragged closer. And there, in the middle of the snow stood… I blinked. Okay, I was hallucinating, but this was no angel known to man. It was an alligator. A very old alligator, its hide scarred and marked by past fights.

 

The thing is that, though it was walking through the snow, straight at me – and were alligators supposed to even be alive in the snow? Weren’t they cold-blooded? Shouldn’t it be comatose or dead or something – clacking its teeth, it didn’t look dangerous. It looked like a happy alligator, out for a jaunt. Like… something out of a live animation movie about animals who move to the city, or perhaps what happens to discarded pets.

I blinked, but he didn’t suddenly sport a little jacket or a jaunty bowler hat, so I was at least not that far gone. Or perhaps he – for some reason I was sure it was a he – was real.

The idea had me backing up, feeling tentatively with my feet, till my back hit a street lamp and I stopped. “Please don’t hurt me,” I said, as the match burned down towards my fingers. “Please don’t… I’m not… I’m only out here because I couldn’t explain to mom I was a shape shifter. I kept trying to tell her, and she kept asking me if I was gay.” My fingers burned, and I dropped the match, and it was all dark again, except for the snow swirling around. I snorted, a snort half laughter-half panic. “As if that would be such a big deal today. But how do you say Dear mom, I thought I was dreaming of turning into a fox, but my roommate told me she’d seen a fox, and dear Lord, it was running in the gardens, where I’d dreamed of being. And then I started following footprints in the snow, and I think I am a were fox. My mom would have me committed.” From the darkness came a clack-clack that could be the alligator’s mouth opening and closing. “And then I had to storm out, with nothing and without filling the gas tank. Because I didn’t know how to talk to my mom. I am so stupid.”

The clacking of teeth somehow seemed like someone saying tut-tut, and then the alligator’s nose was so near I could see it, despite the darkness and the snow. He… sniffed delicately at my jeans and my shoes, and then looked up, his eyes contriving to look very amused and strangely human. Right. Now I was going nuts.

Fine if it was going to bite me, it could bite me as I was walking towards the more populated areas of town. I thought around that address on the matchbox there were apartments. Someone was bound to find me, right?

The alligator didn’t try to follow me, as I walked on, which was good but also, inexplicably, felt really lonely. Yeah, because you know, a girl and her gator was infinitely better than being alone.

I walked another three blocks, and it felt like my head was going to freeze solid by then, when I heard a weird flapping ahead and a little to the left of me. It sounded like someone was flapping sheets in a really high wind. And while the wind was there all right, the only thing blowing around in it were snow flakes. I tried to see ahead and could see nothing, and reached for my matchbox, because maybe these were magic matches, since they could scare away gators. if I hadn’t dreamed up the whole thing.

I paused, and tried to light my match, then realized there was a parking lot to my left – leaving a space without buildings, but somewhat sheltered, since the parking lot was bordered in warehouse walls on all three sides. I lit my match, then looked up.

The snow was less thick here, and the match did give a good amount of light.

None of which explained what I saw. I’d almost have preferred angels.

Right in front of me, looking like it had just alighted on the parking lot was a dragon. Not just any dragon, no. It was a red Chinese dragon, cute lion face and all.

Okay,

I thought as I blinked at it in the light of my match. I’ve gone completely around a bend.

I registered that it was holding something in its right paw. And then it started coughing. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. The match burned towards my fingers, as it coughed and spasmed. it looked like what it felt like when I transformed into the fox. But… a dragon? Dragons didn’t exist, did they?

Of course, neither did shape shifters.

As I dropped the match, I could barely see the naked young man in front of me. Which was probably good, as he seemed to be trying – simultaneously – to cover his privates and put his clothes on.

I had glimpsed enough to see he looked Chinese and about my age. He had a red dragon tattoo on his arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice an unexpected surprise as not only did he lack any foreign accent, but he had a southern drawl thick as corn bread and slow and molasses. “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. Only old Joe called and said you were one of us and you were lost in the snow.”

“One of… one of … us?”

　

“Yeah, a shape shifter,” he said.

“I’m not a dragon!”

He smiled. He was now dressed and very close, and he had a sweet smile. “No,” he said. “Dragons rarely get caught like this in storms. We fly. But Old Joe said you needed help. Where do you need to go? I’ll shift again and give you a ride.” The smile again. It was impossible not to trust him when he smiled like that.

I thought about it. My dorm would be good, but it was in the middle of campus, and someone would see me arrive on dragon back. I took the matchbox out, “I wonder,” I said, speaking as much to myself as to him, “If the George has a parking lot where no one would see you land.”

He blinked. “The… Why the George?”

“I don’t know. My mom had this matchbook with the address. I just found it in her jacket pocket.”

He gave me a half-evaluating half-puzzled look, then smiled. “The George it is, then. If you’ll just let me change…”

Modestly, he stepped just far enough away from me that he could shape shift without my seeing him naked, which was reassuring. Then the coughing started, and the sort of odd sound that suggested flesh being compressed and twisted and… a red dragon walked through the snow towards me. When it scrunched its face and let down its wing, it looked exactly like the young man’s expression when he smiled. I climbed the wing, carefully, hoping not to hurt him, and sat astride him then, because he seemed to be waiting for something, and because dragons – apparently – don’t come equipped with seatbelts, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his neck.

It was oddly intimate, but also very warm. Blessedly warm. I had to fight to keep awake, it was so… cozy and also because the relief of being rescued hit me.

In almost no time, we were flying over a diner. I could see even through the snow, a neon dragon flipping pancakes, and neon letters proclaiming The George.

My dragon friend flew over the dragon, to a parking lot at the back and let me down. I went around the front door which – surprisingly – was open. And the George was lighted and filled with groups of people. A young man with long dark hair, tied back, was at the grill. He turned and gave me a curious look as I came in, but I didn’t care. I was so exhausted. Of course, I didn’t have any money, but perhaps they’d just let me sit down and make a phone call.

I collapsed into a seat and closed my eyes and next thing I knew, I heard the southern drawn, “Kyrie this is the young woman that Old Joe called about.” I opened my eyes to look into the familiar face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never even asked your name.”

“Rya Stevens,” I said.

“Ah. I’m Conan Lung,” and then as though he feared I’d laugh, “My parents used comic books to study English. They thought it was a good American name.”

“Sounds like a lovely name. And you were a hero. I mean, you rescued me.”

I swear he blushed bright red. “Oh, it was nothing.”

The young woman he had introduced me to – Kyrie – grinned at me. “You poor thing must be frozen. Relax and I’ll get you coffee. Do you want a clam chowder?”

“I don’t have any money on me. I–”

“Oh, never mind that, we’ll just get you warmed up. You can pay some other time.”

She bustled away and Conan said, “that’s Kyrie. She and her boyfriend Tom own the diner.” I felt ridiculously relieved she wasn’t Conan’s girlfriend. Like I had some claim on him, or something.

“You said Old Joe told you about me?” I said.

“Yeah.” And at my look. “Alligator shifter. He said you were nice.” The blush came again. It was fascinating. I’d never met a man who blushed like that.

To stop staring at him, I looked around the diner. So many people, and none of them seemed very interested in us. In the next table over, there was a man scribbling in a notebook. He was probably fifty and he had… I stopped. He had hair exactly the color of mine. And I knew him. Oh, I hadn’t seen him since I was five, but a girl knows her own father.

“Dad,” I said.

He turned around, and he was dad. His mouth dropped open. “Rya!”

“Dad.”

“You… did your mom tell you where to find me?”

I shook my head. “My mom knew where to find you?” She’d told me he’d left the state. She’d told me he never wrote.

He nodded and frowned at me a little, then squinted. “Are you… the one they called about?”

I nodded.

“So you’re one of us?”

“Us?” That again.

“Most people who come to the diner, and all here today are shape shifters. This is our safe place. The owners are shape shifters too. You… shift?”

I nodded.

“Fox?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Your mom was afraid… she wanted me to leave. She made me leave and she told me never to contact you or she would… She has pictures. I didn’t…”

“Oh, dad,” I said.

Later on I said a lot more, as we talked over the sixteen years of my life he’d missed. He’d been living in Goldport all along, but mom hadn’t told him I’d gone to college there. Now I understood why she’d tried to convince me to go to UC Boulder – because Dad was living in Goldport, retired and writing a novel. She’d been trying to convince him to move. She’d met him at the George just last week.

“Well,” I said. “She won’t want to ruin me and herself by implication. I mean, she’s my mother.” Though she might cut me off completely now she knew I too was a shape shifter. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I’d be left without any family now.

When the chowder came, I noticed there was an unlit candle on the table, and I struck my last match and lit the candle from it.

This time, the story of the little match girl did have a happy ending.

Since I’ve realized how much publishing has changed and decided I need to try something different, I’ve been realizing how much and how fast things are changing all around us and I’m no longer surprised at the economic turmoil the world is in – I’m only surprised it’s not worse.

We will steer away from the political implications of this and – for now. I’ll probably do a post on it for Classical Values later – because they feed into and are fed by this (of course) and concentrate on what is going on with various career and professions.

First let me share a nightmare I had when I was a teen, of driving down this road, and the car stops responding to the pedals and when I try twisting the wheel, it comes off in my hand and the car just speeds on, faster and more out of control until I wake up screaming.

Turned out it would be a an omen about my publishing career so far. Okay, joking, though there’s a grain of truth in it.

That nightmare has come back as an image that plays itself in my mind when I hear of another fast-change that people don’t seem to negotiate so well.

Change always happened. I mentioned the secretarial field, but that change was relatively slow. I was talking to a friend the other day who told me her father in law – in his nineties – and his cronies lament the disappearance of “a good secretary.” They do this because the tech of their lifetime has informed their view of the world. I don’t know how many of you ever used a typewriter particularly for a long and/or complex document, but doing so is boring, slow and near-mindless work. You train yourself to let your fingers take the flow of work – eyes, fingers. And if you’re not a robot – and few people are – you then go back with white out and cover up all mistakes and type over them. This made typing demanding, boring and low status.

These gentlemen retain the low-status idea, and therefore will not type their own documents, even if they could.

This type of idea slowed change at first. Not just in secretarial – I worked as one in the early nineties, and yes, taking dictation was part of my duties – but in all other fields, including writing, the first defense is “but we’ve always done it this way.” And “but it’s not prestigious.” Even now, I’m still facing enquiries from people I mentor and other beginners about how to get traditionally published because “it’s more prestigious.”

That’s how humans work. We’re apes, guys. We have our status markers and our distinctions, so everyone in the band knows how great we are and gives us status-preference.

So status-seeking and tradition slowed things up for secretarial transition, but they don’t seem to be holding as strongly in other fields. (In music and books this might be complicated by the fact that the industries were trying their hardest to commit suicide when technology did the equivalent of people at the foot of the bridge and started shouting “Jump, jump, jump.”)

But I’m starting to see the signs everywhere of the sort of slow domino pile-up we’ve seen in writing for five years (Kris Rusch says ten, and she might be right, but if I came in at the beginning, I only noticed it halfway through – which makes sense.)

For instance, I took the kid to register for his senior year in highschool, and had a strong feeling this too shall pass away – and soon – particularly for those who can afford it. (It will linger, I think, much longer, as a warehousing system.) This is fed of course, by my having home schooled the same kid 4 years ago and having found that I actually needed to do very little of the teaching. Even though we didn’t join the local home schooling league because the situation was temporary and designed to work with some issues he was having, I could avail myself of online classes, recorded lectures and a lot of other “help.”

After a while the kid started picking those and pulling rather than being pushed, till the hardest thing was to test him.

Well, as “advanced” as the field seemed to me when I wadded in, it was actually primitive compared to now, where there are a lot more schools, classes and even testing services. But, more than that, it is amazing how much of this is being integrated into regular public school and college. My kids will often do tests from home (on the weekend, which my husband finds an abomination against youth.) There will be units that are put online, rather than taught in school. And, of course, preliminary reading, at least to find sources, is always done on line.

I don’t need to mention travel agents, right? An acquaintance of mine was training ten years ago to be a travel agent, on the idea that it would provide for her the rest of her life…

Phone books. We still get them, every year. They get dropped on our front porch. I confess they retained some use for us even after we were looking up phone numbers on line – we used to take them in the car with us, so if we were out, we could quickly look up the address of a restaurant or store. Uh… now we have GPS (or as we call it around here, the recalculator.) How many people worked on or for phone books?

Stores… Well, book stores are hurting. I don’t know a lot about the others, but I wonder how much competition online shopping is providing. I know for a fact that Christmas season is nowhere near as crazy in terms of parking and local shopping, and hasn’t been since well before the economic crisis.

And I’m making a prediction right now – remember this is hard, particularly about the future, so there’s a good chance I’ll be wrong – that in two/three years those of us/you whose jobs lend themselves to it will be mostly working from home, with maybe a day or two at the office a week. It’s also possible – I’m seeing this in computers – most people will be “piece-jobbers.” I.e. that most people will be working as loosely attached short term contractors or free lancers for many different companies. What will make up a “full time” job will actually be a patchwork of single-short, by the job payments.

Of course there are businesses that don’t lend themselves to this. Long distance trucking, for instance – not unless tech really moves fast and comes up with an automated way to do this. And I suspect farmers will always have to have contact with dirt and animals. But most of our jobs will come to work like this, perhaps even manufacturing.

This has always happened. It will always happen. It’s just it’s coming REALLY fast, and it’s affecting people in all age ranges, from beginners to long-established. It’s a great leveller, in a way.

And it’s not that most people are losing their status symbols. Most people are losing their security: pensions, retirement, salary. And most people don’t like that.

If I had a dime for everytime I’ve heard this week “I don’t know how I’ll make money in the future” or “I don’t know how I’ll survive the next year” in the last week, I’d have close on two dollars, and only one of these people was side-related to publishing (journalism.)

If I’m hearing this other people are. And I’m not making light of those fears. I have some of them myself.

So, I’m going to share with you what I feel will be the right way to survive, no matter how tech is tossing your field (and mind you, this is a gut feel. I’ve found my gut is usually ahead of my brain. Probably relating to relative size.) Also, I’m practicing futurism without a crystal ball, so beware.

I’d recommend the following:

1 – try to get ahead of the change. Antecipate where it will move next, and try to be there before it hits. (I.e. anticipate that traditional publishing might become a legal/financial liability in the next year, and have some work that doesn’t depend on them, so all your books don’t vanish when a house or two collapse.) But keep a foot in the old ways of doing business, as long as viable, to ease the transition financially and to edge bets if you’re wrong.

2 – brainstorm. This works best in a group, of course, but try to figure out ways your business is going and what the way to make money will be near and long term. It helps to read blogs of people in your business, and to read between the lines.

3 – Diversify. If you think there’s a chance in heck that the field you trained in can still feed you, diversify within it. I don’t need to tell anyone I write in three different fields, (at least) and am not afraid to write in more, right? If you’re not sure, see if one of your hobbies will clean up as a part-time job alongside the first.

4 – Work harder than ever before. Well, you’ll have to, to start the new way of doing things while keeping a foot in the old. But this is also a good thing. Busy people rarely have the time to panic. And you’ll feel like you’re taking charge and controlling your fate to some extent.

5 – If you’re a student, think about how your training will translate to a future of telecommuting and contracting. Some can’t be and this might be a good thing at least short term. (More on that later.) For instance, the kid who wants to be a surgeon is probably somewhat safe.

6 – If you’re just starting out, try to come up with better ways of breaking in. So no one will give you a job because the industry you were aiming for is dying or convulsing. Think in terms of creating a job.

7- Think about moving. We can’t yet. Tied by my husband’s job. But if telecommuting becomes standard, you’re going to be competing across the world. Talk about the ultimate outsourcing. A lot of us are already doing that to an extent. BUT more importantly, you’re going to be competing across the nation. Dare I point out that prices in NYC are not the same as in Hays, Kansas. Yes, NYC offers other things too, in living close to “the center of everything” as a cousin of mine put it. BUT beyond that, and besides that, a lot of other cities, medium to small to all sizes in between that are not NYC don’t offer that kind of advantage. What they offer – offered – till relatively recently was being near possible jobs. As that changes, their real estate will suffer more than the real estate nearby, in cheaper locations.

I’m not saying you CAN move yet, but start considering it. Start considering your move. Start browsing realtor.com in your spare time.

I’m telling you right now there will be vast movements of people, and being ahead will mean you’ll lose less money, and perhaps even make some. I don’t know your requirements. And I’m not saying you should go to the countryside. Myself, I’m a city girl and view “telecommuting job. Must move to neighborhood where I can walk to everything” as heaven. And there are cities which got whacked enough with the price drop stick they might be very reasonable – depending on where you are and what your equity is. But… start thinking about it, so you’re ready to jump.

8 – Create a network of people in your field and related fields. As a writer, I’m starting to make contacts with artists, proof readers and such.

9 – if you’re thinking of doing a jump, and your future endeavor will be contractor (say, from employed editor to copyeditor/free lance editor) give your future company a name. Get a DBA. (Or incorporate.) Give it a web page. Some people will find you that way. It will also make it easier for people to link and recommend. (Hint, though, if you’re a free lancer working with writers, put some prices for basic services up on the page. I have this way of going “if it’s not there I can’t afford it.” And heaven knows I’m often wrong, but there it is. If I’m considering a job as “up in the air” I don’t want to enquire. You’ll email me forever. So just put prices up there. Better chance of getting work. For artists and such I’d put something like “rights to my stock” and “For commissioning prices start at x, contact for more details.”)

10 – Don’t panic. (Get a towel if needed.)

And feel free to share any advice/ideas you have, that I didn’t cover. This is by no means an exhaustive list.  I’m as scared as everyone else and trying to get hold of the situation.

No, I’m not about to announce I have burnout. On the contrary. I’m about to analyze why I don’t have it.

Burnout is the reason I don’t have anything coming out in 2011. But the burnout occurred in 08/09.

For those of you who are not acquainted with the inner mechanics of a writers life (at least as it was, even as it’s passing from this world) for me at least things worked like this: send out proposals. Hear about them over the next six months (year. Two.)

Proposals are normally an outline and the first three chapters. The problem with this for me is that once I hear the character in my head – once I’ve done the preliminary work to have him/her be that real to me – then getting the rest of the book written is just a matter of time.

But let’s take me in 03, when the Shakespeare series had tanked spectacularly and I didn’t have anything else sold. We were paying on two mortgages, I had kids in elementary and I needed to sell. (Yes, I could have found a job, but the only job I’m qualified to do – free lance translator – takes as much time establishing yourself as writing. Sometimes more. Then there’s secretarial, and technology hit THEIR job before it hit writing. When every executive keyboards, secretaries are few and not particularly well paid. In fact, they’re barely above retail, which was my other option. Both of those would require me to leave the kids with someone and neither job pays enough to cover that.)

Particularly because my name was burned, I couldn’t count on selling everything I sent out. There was no point just writing a new book and sending it out. Chances were very high it wouldn’t sell.

So in the space of six months, I wrote seventeen proposals. And it almost killed me. Because I’d just got INTERESTED in writing a book, when I had to drop it and write the next proposal. And the next. And the next. And all the while I was perfectly conscious that I might never sell any of these – that these characters might die being born; that it was quite possible no one would ever see my clever world building.

Then the books sold. They sold as series, and they sold in such a manner that I was “locked” doing four to six books a year. And of course, I still had to do the occasional outline. It was around this time – I think 07 – that an older friend in the field took me gently to task for writing too many books a year, which was seen as a sign I didn’t care enough about any. But I really didn’t have much choice. By 07 the field was crazy enough that if I didn’t stay on the treadmill, if I said “No” to any given contract, it could very easily be my last.

I’ve said before I can write six books a year. I can. It’s different though when I have to, and when I have to regardless of what else – illness, kids issues, etc – is going on in my life at the time. It’s also different when the book is not necessarily the book I’m burning to write, but simply the one that’s due next.

I could recognize the symptoms, including the frequent illnesses. When you don’t give yourself any way to escape the unbearable, your body gives them to you. What I didn’t know was what to do about it.

It got so bad while writing book five of the musketeer mysteries (at a time I suspected they were going to cancel the series anyway) that I had trouble keeping in mind where I’d left the characters two chapters back. I’d flip back to see what I’d done, and by the time I came back to the current page I didn’t remember it, again. Super betas had to step in to help with that edit.

Being able to recognize burnout, I bought a book called something like “overcoming burnout.” It identified three main causes to burnout. Any of them could induce that “smoky” feeling, but if you put the three together, it because a perfect storm.

They were:

Poor pay – this entire time, I was working weekends and holidays, trying to keep up with obligations, writing 4 to 6 books a year for… around thirty thousand dollars in the good years, twenty thousand in the bad ones. For those outside the US, twenty thousand is a “retail salary”, not beginner but not spectacular. How is that possible at four to six books a year? Well, to begin with the mysteries never paid more than 6.5k (And the last one paid less.) Also, books get paid in three “bits” – one for contract, one for delivery and one for publication. Contract is usually the biggest chunk, so the next two payments will not give you a great annual income. And of course you don’t sell new series every year.

Overwork – again, while I might choose to write four to six books a year, and while I CAN technically write a book in three days, there is a world of difference between writing it because I’m burning to do it, and writing it because its number is up. Particularly when the proposal was written years ago and the world has gone “dead.”

Lack of Control Over Career – once the books left my hands, that was it. I had no more control. My contribution was only one and perhaps in many ways the least important of the factors determining whether that book would sell and the series would go on. Arguably more important was the cover – over which I had no say – the “position” of the book in the “scale of push” the house determined to make. I really couldn’t tell them “you will push my book, so that there are at least three in every store.” And don’t tell me that’s related to the quality of what I turned in. It’s not. How much push/how much they’ll work on the cover/etc is determined when they give you the advance. I.e. on proposal, which as any writer knows is but a pallid image of the real book. (At least for me it is.) You could turn in spun gold, and no one would know. I know of at least one friend’s book whom no one in the house read (though the copyeditor did, of course) after turn in. I had to watch in mute horror as the third musketeer was given a cover that spine-out was indistinguishable from the first, and cover-out, because of the cover design, made you look really close to make sure, for instance. As a mystery reader I knew this would kill the series. There was nothing I could do.

So I realized I was headed for the perfect burnout, if I wasn’t there already. The problem is the solutions the book advocated “get another job” or “work for someone else” or… Were all impractical… or all required me to walk away from writing. And I couldn’t do that.

But all the same, I let my contracts taper out in 09, without sending any proposals out. I couldn’t bring myself to write coherent proposals. (I tried for Toni, who’d asked, but they didn’t make much sense. In fact, Darkship Renegades is as different from the proposal it sold under as any book I’ve ever written.)

And if the above is taken as a whine – it’s not. I was lucky to have a job and to keep writing. Most of my midlist friends weren’t so lucky. BUT the job I was lucky to have was grinding me to bits.

In 10 I wrote one book on spec and that because I wanted to. Weirdly that helped, even though that book has sold unspectacularly and heaven knows how it will do in marketing. And now I’m under contract again, and under contract for a lot of books. But it feels different.

First because I can take breaks between those to write indie short stories (and soon a novel) to put up. This means I can do something where I do have control over my career. Second, I can see next year from here, and next year will probably be half and half indie and not. Which means I get a lot more control back.

The burnout book was right. Changing one of the factors helps. Now, mind you, it’s entirely possible I can’t figure out how to make money in the new model. But I think I’ll figure it out. Yes, I could have done without this upheaval at this time in my life, otoh without the upheaval how long could I have kept it up?

So it’s all for the best, in the best of all possible worlds. And lest we feel like the lone ranger, secretaries got their field upended before we did. For most of them it has meant lower pay, but for some it’s meant much higher pay as they’ve learned new specialties: accounting programs; research; marketing. Secretaries should have been run out of jobs in the hundreds, but they weren’t. They stayed. They changed. They found a way to continue making a living out of things that if you squint still look “secretaryish” but are a lot more complicated – and possibly rewarding – than just sitting at a machine, clean-typing copy after copy of documents. (And when I said there were few openings above, I meant for someone like me, who doesn’t know specialized software or have another side-specialty.)

Am I rah rah about indie? About half and half. The other half is terrified that I’ll never find my footing in this new world. But others have gone ahead of me, and I intend to learn from them.

However, the commenter who told me on my blog that indie I’d have no excuses for any failure got it upside down. Will I fail? Oh, once or twice, at least (probably more) my books will be duds (and probably not the ones I expect.) BUT at least I’ll know I failed at my own hands. I can’t explain why but this feels much, much more bearable than watching a series be killed by a decision I didn’t make and to which no one seemed to pay much attention.

Beyond that, indie allows me to do stuff to keep some control of my other series. For instance, because of that lag above, Darkship Renegade will come out almost two and a half years after Darkship Thieves. In the old market place that was a killing lag. So I’m going to try to do a couple of novellas not with Athena, but in the same universe, and get them out there between now and the summer of twelve. That I can is an enormous innovation. (Before, I might have tried to, but the lag time in getting things published in magazines, even if accepted right away ranged from a year to two.)

The refinishing mysteries will be at least as late, and then I’ll have to figure out if I can continue the series on my own. But until then, and before the fans kill me, I will do a series of self published mysteries set in the same town, with the characters of Daring Finds as secondary characters.

And so, I’m no longer crispy on the outside. I might still be flakey on the inside. Am I sure this will all work out wonderfully? Well… no. But let’s put it this way – I couldn’t go on much longer the way I was. My health – physical and mental – wouldn’t allow it. So, I have one more chance. I intend to take it. I intend to grab it with both hands, and hang little bells to its feet.

Wish me luck.

　*Crossposted at Mad Genius Club*

It never ceases to amaze me how sure people are that they know what other people should do.

A certain class of people you expect this from, because they have a vested interest in thinking everyone else is an idiot and incapable of tying his own shoes or wiping the snot from her own nose. After all, the more incompetent the individual is, the more power to those who crave power and who constitute themselves authorities over others. It’s the nature of the beast.

But I wish it started and stopped there. It doesn’t. And the only reason I’m surprised by this is because I’m stupid. After all I grew up in a village (Yes, yes, like Miss Marple, right…) and therefore I should know that even when there’s no payoff in power and money and pensions for life, some people SIMPLY know how things are or should be done and believe they’re the natural police of how everyone should live.

So I shouldn’t even have been shocked when I stumbled upon the blog that was doing the usual lament about how the problem is that indie published books will be mostly cr*p and that the gems will get lost in the muck. Frankly, THAT part of it is a valid argument, something rational people can discuss. I think it’s wrong – miles and miles of wrongitude – but then I’ve been at the vanguard of the ebook thing starting with fanfic, and my perspective is slightly different.

THAT part of the blog is completely understandable.

The other part isn’t. That is the part where this writer – as far as I can tell a beginner – starts laying about against what she calls Nanos and, incidentally, Amanda Hocking who has sold (roughly) three metric boatloads of books give or take a ton.

You can think whatever you want of Amanda Hocking – or any other wildly successful author – G-d knows I do. I haven’t read her yet. I love Harry Potter against my own best judgement (well, I can see the mistakes in craft. BUT that’s not what counts, is it? What counts is does the story carry you?) I loved the three first Anita Blake’s (despite the fact characters changed hair color and height without notice throughout the book. Which, incidentally was a grievous copy editing error.) I haven’t been able to make it into Twilight, possibly because it reminds me of the sickish sexual fantasies I had as a teen and pre-teen (which probably is at the root of its success.) I think Dan Brown … No. Not going there.

Still, they are all mega bestsellers. I’m not. They did something right that I’m not doing right. I don’t care what I personally, as a reader, think of their books, the LAST thing I’d do is give any of these people advice on how to write. Or how fast.

And here we come up against it – how fast.

Of all the ways to judge a book, the LAST one I’d advise is how fast that book was written. In traditional publishing (and among bestsellers too) you find both people who take ten years to write a novel and people who write a novel in a week. And you can’t tell the difference from the product.

Look every writer who has a modicum of experience in the business has got over the idea that the way he writes is “the only true way.” Yeah, we were all there at one time. But all you do when you tell someone “first you start with the plot” or “a character is the only way to start” is stand on a soap box and scream at the top of your lungs: I’m a raw beginner.

To be honest, few writers do this. Instead we gather in little worried knots at parties and say “so, are you a plotter or a pantser” – trying to get confirmation that we’re doing it right, or one of the ways that is right.

But heaven help me, every writer – with a half dozen exceptions, yours truly, Kris Rusch and Dean Smith among those – THINKS they know the one true speed to write a book. More importantly, every writer knows that if you do it any other speed it will be terrible, terrible, I say. Cats and dogs living together. The end of the world.

And every writer – with the few and exceptional excepted of course – is wrong.

Not only isn’t there one-true-speed to bind them all, there isn’t even a right speed for any given writer. I’ve written novels over three years, and I’ve written a novel in three days. Incidentally, the one I wrote in three years is unpublished (and unpublishable) and the one I wrote in three days is my highest grossing work. BUT that’s probably just coincidence.

Some novels come to me fully formed and limited only by my speed in typing them in. As Agatha Christie apparently said, the novel is finished, it just needs to be put on paper. BUT some other novels come out drip and drip, a page at a time, each one hard fought for. Both of those extremes are unpleasant. The first means that my husband has to get forceful on the subjects of food and at least cat naps. The second means I clean the house, kick the cats, pick fights with friends, anything to distract from what feels like an extremely slow and painful birth.

The final quality has nothing to do with how fast I wrote it. Nor does it success or failure.

I confess there have been years of one book and years of six. That usually had more to do with my state of health and the press of contracts than with the books or their quality.

I’ll also confess I Nano. Or I try to. Since November for us involves two family birthdays, a major holiday and USUALLY a trip out of state, many years I don’t make it, but I always mean to.

I will also mention that the author of the blog post that prompted this seemed to think the philosophy of Nanowrimo involves not editing at all. Unless it’s changed out of recognition, it doesn’t. When I’ve done it, they tell you that you’ll have to edit. Also, 50k isn’t really the size of a commercial novel these days, so you usually have to write at least another 30k.

Of course I think people should edit, no matter how fast they write. Weirdly my 3 day novel took less editing than the others, but that too I’m fairly sure is just a coincidence. Each book I do takes at LEAST three passes (and no more than five, because otherwise I kitchen sink it – i.e. throw in everything but) – one for story (depending. Actually the slow books are the worst at this point, since my idea of the story changes while writing it, which means I might have a beginning, a middle and an end, all different books.) Then one for mechanics (foreshadowing, emotional shading, length of segments) and cursory language. At this point it goes to betas. When it comes back, unless the betas found MASSIVE structure issues (hasn’t happened yet, but G-d knows it could – knock on wood they don’t find these in DSR) I correct minor mechanics and do a serious language pass. Then, depending, it either goes to secondary betas (the unsullied ones, who get to see the thing in its finished glory) or it goes to publisher. (It’s a judgement call.)

The NORMAL time for all this is three months, which is why I don’t like doing more than four books a year. (This might change, when, say, the kids are out of the house and I have fewer distractions.)

This is the normal for me. Doesn’t mean it’s normal for anyone else. It certainly doesn’t mean it’s superior. I have a colleague who rushes at a book in two weeks, and finishes it in that time, and for the record he sells WAY better than I do. And I don’t need to bring up George RR Martin, do I? Because if I had to write a book in six years, it wouldn’t even be readable. I’d completely lose the plot. BUT clearly it works for him.

Of course, part of what makes that normal for me is that I’ve done it so often. I used to have a cleaning lady come in and in two hours she did what it took me a whole day (dust, vacuum, clean bathrooms, scrub kitchen, clean fridge) and did it WAY better than I did. OTOH some people are just naturally fast. My older son’s first book was written in something like three weeks when he was thirteen. It’s profoundly odd (everything he writes is) which might make it less commercial. BUT it’s a perfectly functional novel, with beginning middle and end and better than many a novel I’ve read. He’s now been fighting the second for five years. Does that mean it will be bad? Well, no. It’s just that the novel itself is coming out differently and also that he’s learning and that takes time and… who knows? It just means it’s different.

So… as a reader, judge other writers any way you want to, including “I don’t like his font.” As a writer too, for all I care. But don’t hang up your belief you’re better than “them” on how fast (or how slow) they write. DO NOT sling insults around based on how fast people write. And, oh, btw, do not try to spit on mega bestsellers. The spit always falls back on you. You can have your private opinions about them, but this is a small field. Perhaps your interest is in awards or literary recognition and not money. Fine and dandy. But these people are successful in the way they set out to be successful. Leave them alone. Who died and made you arbiter of taste, Petronius? (And it would help you to remember how Petronius the Arbiter died.)

I’ve had people who write much slower – or differently – than I help me along the way. Some significantly. I have friends up and down the field, at all levels. At this time and place, the goodwill of your colleagues is more important than ever.

You do your work and you leave them to do theirs. In any way they wish to. And however fast or slow they wish to do it.

You don’t have to like it. You just have to let them do it.

Stick with that and you’ll find it’s the beginning of wisdom.

A propos nothing, except the fact that today feels like a day for comfort food, since apparently while I was setting the yard in order and trying to clean my office, the market has been crumbling, here is…

You thought you couldn’t afford comfort food, but auntie Sarah’s comforting meatloaf dinner is (relatively) cheap and low in carbs (since that’s what my family is doing diet wise — it works for us.)

Get two pounds ground turkey (you often find it on sale and I stock up when it’s on sale at around 99 a pound) and two pounds ground beef.  Throw in the mixer if it’s equipped with a bread hook.  Toss in two cloves of garlic, mashed, salt and pepper to taste, dash of worcestershire sauce, italian spices if you feel whimsical and that last glass of wine that’s sitting at the bottom of the bottle from last night’s dinner.  Add two eggs.  Mix well.  Shape like meatloaf, toss in the oven for 15 minutes at 425, then lower to 325.  (Takes me about an hour to finish cooking, but we’re at high altitude, so your time may vary.  Juices will run clear when it’s pricked.)

Meanwhile grab some green beans which are usually pretty cheap, (about 99c a pound at our neighborhood grocery store) wash them and cut their ends off.  Spray an oven-going glass dish with non-stick.  Rub beans all over with olive oil and a little soupcon of garlic.  Dust with salt and pepper to taste, then dust with parmesan cheese (lightly) and pop in oven after oven has cooled to 325.  (If you put it in oven above 400 glass will pop.)

While that stuff is cooking, cut up a romain lettuce and coddle an egg (tell it it’s a good egg and keep it from disappointments.  No.  Just put it in boiling water for a minute!)  In a bowl mix thoroughly five tablespoons of olive oil, three table spoons of vinegar, a quarter teaspoon of mustard powder, a dash of worcestershire, clove of garlic, egg (sans shell) and one mashed anchovie.  Toss in about a quarter cup of parmesan cheese.  If you have a hand blender, hit the mixture for about a minute.  If not, do the best you can.  Put the cleaned, cut up romaine in a bowl, dust with parmesan and toss in a few caesar-flavored almonds (or croutons, if you’re not on low-carb.)  If you’re feeling fancy, rub the bowl with garlic before putting the lettuce in.

Voila (or if you prefer Shakespeare heroines, Viola!) I don’t know how expensive the meal is in your area, but in ours the whole thing rounds out to about $12 and feeds two adults and two teen males, with meatloaf leftover for lunch the next day.  Which, as my dad would say, is better than a kick in the fundament.

Good beta readers are more precious than rubies and their worth is above gold.

They’re also about as rare. And every writer needs them. And most writers don’t have them. And more writers than ever are going to need them as the publishing process opens up and as there are fewer editors to go around.

So, in no particular order, here are some facts about beta readers:

1- your beta readers are not a support network. Oh, they can be that, too. My beta group includes several people who are the ones to tell me it’s a bad idea when I start having loving thoughts of putting my head through a cultivator because it would hurt less than some of the phases of the so called career.

Yes, your mommy or your boyfriend or your cat can be beta readers for you. However, when they’re your beta readers, they need to take off the comfort hat, the hat that gives you cookies and tells you you’re the best writer in the universe (what, your hat doesn’t do that? Strange.) Instead, they need to put on their reading hat and be brutally honest about your book.

Of course, if your book is the best thing since Ogg the caveman carved his initials (he’d just invented the alphabet) on his cave wall, they should tell you that too (yep, happens to me all the time, why) which brings us to the next point.

2- your beta reader is not your torturer. Yes, sure, they can be that too. What you do in your private time is entirely your private business and please – please, please – don’t share. (Or for the love of heaven, if you do put it up on Amazon and see if someone pays you for it.)

Of course, if your book has issues your beta reader should tell you. Watch out though for the emotionally laden designed-to-hurt sentences, like “I hate this book” or “this is the worst thing ever written.” Or “How could you write something like this?” or “You revealed your moral turpitude in this book.” (Yes, I got that once, but not from a beta reader, just a writers’ group member. Shortly thereafter he stopped being a writers’ group member – I wasn’t the only one he slammed this way – I think he’s still unpublished.)

If you do get this type of critique, and if it is from someone who’s given good critique before, assume their cat just bit them, their boyfriend is sleeping with their lawyer and maybe they’re a little jealous. Ignore it. If this person has never given you good critique, then it might not be worth your time training them to become good beta readers.

3 – your beta reader is not your copyeditor. Again, yeah, sure, they can be that too. My beta readers include (now! Yes, I’m bragging) a professional editor (actually two, though one of them doesn’t get all the books because he doesn’t have that much time. I save him for specific ones.) So, of course, I shall be informed about my crimes of commission and omission about the English language.

But while the beta reader can mark things that really bothered him or threw him out, and can even – if it relieves his feelings – do a second pass and quickly mark typos, this shouldn’t be his main focus as he reads your book.

This is important because almost always the first time I ask a person to beta-read, that’s all I get. A long list of typos. It’s what most people have in their heads as “helping the writer” I think. But here’s the thing, unless I specifically tell you this is going indie, someone else is going to do that. Heck, even as indie, someone else is going to do that most of the time. Also if you’re betaing, you’re doing this before my last pass which is almost always a “language pass.” Phrasing will change.

More importantly, your job is far more important than typos. It’s to tell me “Why are they doing this on chapter three?” Or perhaps “Um… you know humans can’t jump that far, right?” Or “You haven’t mentioned this device before.”

Your job is other things too, which will be in the next point.

4) Your beta readers are your reality check. By which I don’t mean just the above “you know humans can’t….” I mean far more than that.

By the time this book is done, you’ve been living with it for months, sometimes years, or occasionally in my case all of Wednesday afternoon (ow, I’m joking, I’m joking, stop hurting me) and you are so into its bowels that you have no idea what the outside world looks like anymore, much less what your super duper novel will look like to the outside world.

Engineers eventually turn on their engine or put weight on their model bridge; fashion designers have someone put the clothes on; you send stuff to beta readers.

It’s important that the beta reader can give you a general impression “this is at least as good as your last” or “what were you thinking?” and also more specific things like “that thing he did with his tongue when they kissed? EW!” Or “why on earth did she get turned on by the smell of hydrogen peroxide? People don’t do THAT.” Or “Uh… why does your character go from crying to happy with no explanation?”

5 – Beta readers are not born, they’re trained. Of course, you have to be careful never to put them in the same aquarium because otherwise… Oh, wait. That’s fish. Beta readers, yeah (the writer is not even slightly punchy today. Not at all. Carry on.)

So how do you train a beta reader? By having them read, of course. And getting their opinions. And asking them questions.

The first time, it will take a lot of questions because if they’re like every other beta reader I’ve ever had, they will try to give you a list of typos and be convinced they did their job. It’s best to tell them up front “mark that in the manuscript.” The second level is for the beta to try to put his helpful little nose in things he’s not qualified to comment on. So you’ll get a secretary telling you that your physics are wrong or your aunt who’s never seen a gun in her life telling you “that Glock should have the safety on.” Treat them kindly in this phase. They really don’t know what else to do and ARE trying to help.

So, what kind of questions should you ask? I don’t know. Depends on what you, personally, need feedback on. Knowing that is almost an art in itself. I always start with “Is this a book or a cabbage?” Because it’s important to be told “well, it’s words and all, but it just sort of meanders. Were you going somewhere? Or is this just a way to dirty pages?” (I’ve never yet been told that, but I don’t put it past me to manage to write a cabbage or a fish one of these days. It could happen. I’ve been told that with short stories.) Then I usually take care to let the experts who helped me research read the book. You see, I have trouble holding some info in my head, and curious things happen to science when plot hits it. So it’s good to have a note that says “Sarah, dear, gravitational forces don’t work like that. Try this!” (These are the advanced betas, the ones who are also writers and can suggest plot to wrap around the science.)

And then, because I have issues putting the emotion on the page – I do, I always feel like it’s TMI – I ask things like “Does X make sense? Do you understand where Y is coming from? How do you feel about Z?”

And, for people who have betaed for me a long time, things like “Is the emotional denouement too slow?” “Do you think the book is depressing” etc.

The point is that I can’t train your betas. In fact, inheriting betas from another pro can sometimes be disconcerting. You’ll get a bunch of notes on things that you’re not even vaguely unsure about and the apologetic “well, he always asks me about this.”

Betaing is like marriage – only in this case polygamy good! – you accustom yourself to a reader, the reader accustoms him/herself to you.

There is a noted side effect though. After a couple of years, even betas who had never done fiction seem to come to you and go “I have this story…” And then it might be time for you to train as a beta reader.

For those of you wondering why I’ve been so silent, no, I’m not dead.  Darkship Renegades is now in the hands (well, the electrons) of beta readers.  Shortly, they should let me know if it’s a novel or a fish.  It was a long job of proofing, because I seem to have been exceptionally typo-ey while writing.

And now I’m going to see if there’s still a floor underneath all the cat hair.

If you need something to amuse you, check out older son’s Ninja Nun Comics.  (No, this is not my fault!)