According To Hoyt

Is branding your writing still the best way to go?

By this I don’t mean having a specific name for a specific type of book, which particularly if a book is a little more risque than the others is just sense. (It’s best if the wrong person doesn’t pick up your book, even if a few right persons miss it. This might seem illogical, but one wrong person picking up the book and hating it, and telling all his/her friends what a disappointment you were can miss you readers for the next book.)

However, in general, for years now, publishers wanted you to “brand” – i.e. write only one type of thing, in a series and usually for their house only (Thank heavens Baen doesn’t feel that way) – and I wonder if it’s still an advantage.

Oh, not for the one house, only. That, I was told (by Laurell Hamilton!) right after I broke in “Publishers are like men. If you have only one, they don’t treat you right.” Now, I’m not sure what that says about her love life – nor do I want to know! – but I found out within months of her telling me this that she was right. The only way to ensure even semi-decent treatment was to have two publishers.

But I wonder if branding matters. You see, I wonder because I could never do it. While I understood the purpose of it – ie you got more shelf space with more books and had more chance of being noticed and also people who liked one book would like the others – I could never confine myself to one genre, or one set of characters because I am a Popcorn Kitten. Ideas rain on me from above and I have to take the ones that interest me, even if they’re a genre I’ve never written.

Oh, there are series I wrote SOLELY because the publisher made me. (One series, no, I’m not telling which. No, not DST which was written in at least one form thirteen years before it was ever published.) BUT there are several other series publishers “suppressed” – usually because I knew that as the market was they’d never be bought. Sometimes because I submitted and nothing happened. Right now, I have in the hopper an Orphan Kittens Mystery Series. (Naked Reader Press has told me they’re interested, so it will be written.) A hardboiled mystery with vampires. Two almost finished science fiction series – besides the one overdue – only one of which is in the DST sequence (though not with Thena.) Another space opera started in a different part of Thena verse, about five hundred years in the future (hard to tell, actually, if it’s future or past with this book.) The Leonardo DaVinci mysteries, started. The War Of The Roses from the women’s perspective (come on, giving birth, kidnaped children. It’s not striking a blow for equality, it’s how in hell did these women cope?) started. And, who knows, either through NRP or on my own, if I eventually find time, there WILL be the last two books of the Shakespeare sequence. And new ideas hit every time. Poor Captain Charming, in the last post.

So, I can’t do branding, unless I start a career for each name – doable now. But given the collapse of bookstores – see Larry Correia’s post, which reminds me of Kris Rusch’s post – is branding still all that important?

I honestly don’t know. I don’t read only one genre, and the fans I’ve heard from who do have let my siren song seduce them into reading other genres. From Science Fiction to cozy mystery, they’ll go there if I take them.

What is the most normal reading behavior? I don’t doubt that some people will read only my mysteries, or only my fantasy, or only my science fiction. I know some of you will not touch vampires, no matter how good. (Yeah, I know. They’re dead, they’re cold and – thank you Laura Anne Gillman – how can they get it up if blood isn’t circulating? Completely understand not touching that.)

I don’t read hard core erotica or splatter horror, for instance, but I still read every genre. If I’m writing your equivalent “do not touch” I can see you not reading those, but reading all the others, and then I still come out ahead. And every read I “capture” through one of these genres has a 50/50 chance of reading the rest, right? So…

To brand or not to brand, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to confine one’s imagination to one channel and by mastering it sell extremely well (?), or to be a popcorn kitten, mastering several subgenres and letting them crosspolinate to the delight of readers?  (Sorry, this happens when I haven’t had enough caffeine.  I’ll now go in search of it.)

*to understand the title, you must read Kris Rusch’s post.  This is why I’m so careful what I read before I go to bed when I’m deep in a book.  But you see, I’m an idiot.  I thought “Old French Fairytales” by the Countess of Segur, which I read as a young girl would be safe.  And then I woke up this morning with the bit below.  The world and characters will eventually, I think, become a series of short stories.  For now it’s back to Darkship Renegades for me though.*

“Captain,” the man said, and waited.

Captain Charming looked up from the paperwork on his desk. He didn’t blame his men for never using his last name.

In a world such as theirs, his name was a cruel joke, and not just because most of the kids in his elementary school called him Charmin.  And don’t even get him started on all the squeezing he endured. 

“Yes,” he said.

His subordinate, never a sight for sore eyes, being of peasant stock and having been raised by enchanted cows in a farm, after being abandoned by his parents, now looked even more bedraggled than usual. His coarse brown hair stood all on end, there were burs sticking to it. Eggs stained his blue uniform of coarse sackcloth, and his shoes looked like they’d been run over by a whole herd.

“It’s a dress, sir. Down on main avenue.”

“A dress? You got yourself looking like that fighting with a dress?”

“Well, no. It was the fact that the egg vendor ran and some of the eggs fell off his cart and onto me. Then a cart of hay overturned. And then…” He sighed. “A flock of sheep stampeded.”

Captain Charming picked up the magical pen which he had instructed to sign his dispatches this morning and, with a little effort – it kept wriggling – put it in his inkwell, which would keep it safe till he picked it up again. He chewed his bottom lip contemplatively. “What’s up with the dress, then?”

“Nothing sir. It’s a very nice dress, cloth of gold with diamond buckles. But it’s walking down main avennue.”

“What? On its own?”

“No, sir. Accompanied by a very nice headdress and a pair of silk slippers.”

Captain Charming stood up and sighed. “I bet you it’s the work of some fairy underworld or other.” He added with feeling, “I hate Mondays.”

What is going on with airlines? I clearly don’t have all the facts, don’t even know where to start investigating, but something IS wrong with airlines in the US.

Years ago, when reading PJ O’Rourke’s Eat The Rich, I came across his description of train travel in Siberia, where the train seemed to have been built to maximize discomfort and lack of hygiene. He compared this to travel in the US and I realized suddenly that Portugal, while not as bad as Siberian trains in the USSR was about halfway there: i.e. Portuguese trains had a restroom, but you’d not think to use it unless the alternative were death. And the way the employees treated you was with the kind of unconcern reserved for serfs. (Portuguese airlines still treat you that way. The emphasis is on the PASSENGER proving he/she is worthy by having all the paperwork and kowtowing to the “functionary” which is the Portuguese term for employee and which might tell you all you need to know.)

Yesterday, on the leg back from a hellish journey, I realized that US airlines are now halfway through Portuguese railways of old and the old USSR. And it makes me wonder: what is going on here?

Look, let’s start by establishing that EVERY company like every individual working for it, works in what it/he/she perceives as the company’s or individual’s best interests.

As we’ve seen in the case of publishing, in a large corporation it is possible for the best interests of the individual to be objectively at odds with the interests of the corporation, or at least to work to undermine it, without anyone being aware.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with airlines, but I don’t think so, since even the decisions from the top down seem inspired by the type of – to draw from PJ O’Rourke again – Oxacan ditch weed that is simply not that easy or cheap to come by.

I can tell you the date travel became a nightmare: about a year and a half after 9/11. We tried to make it from CO to NYC and the trip alone took close to twenty four hours. I thought it was because the airline industry was recovering from a severe blow and restructuring, and it would get better.

I was wrong. I was actually seeing the airline industry at the best it would be in the next ten years. And every year after it gets worse.

Now, I know that the airlines got a massive bailout after 9/11. Are they still getting them? Are they too big to fail?

The evidence on the ground seems to indicate so, since I now find the total lack of unconcern with passenger wants or needs that I used to see in Portuguese public transport. Or is it the de facto rape of morale undergone by everyone passing through security? Does it soften people to put up with the otherwise indefensible?

One of the things I noticed while in Portugal was that my family puts up with ridiculous behavior form everyone in “official” position, even if the position is in a company selling to the public. They cringed every time I demanded what I’d paid for or made a fuss over shoddy products or services. They told me “we here in Portugal are more patient.” I’m telling you, my dears, if being patient leads to Portuguese level service, please don’t be patient. Not unless you have a hankering to be peasants.

Besides, even the “what can we get away with” doesn’t explain, say, my last trip. (And btw, in the last four trips booked, no matter how short or seemingly trouble free, I have YET to make it there in the allotted time. I rarely get all my luggage. And I will encounter one of more instances of sheer zany power-seeking by employees. Like… trying to force us to check a bag to “your destination” which fits perfectly within the frame they put up.)

The latest flights were from Denver to Atlanta, with a further car rental to Chattanooga. ONE flight. Not even that long. We chose Frontier because their Denver hub makes it cheap and convenient. Or so we thought. And because they were the one airline we hadn’t had an hellish experience with.

Suffice it to say I will never fly Frontier again, even if the alternative is walking.

No, it wasn’t the fact that their planes got hit by hail. Such disasters happen. It’s why they have insurance. It’s what came AFTER that.

Since they cancelled over a dozen planes – and btw, what WERE they doing cancelling at 10:30 am for damage incurred at 2 am? They could have cancelled it any time, and they have our phone/email to notify us, with perhaps a little more time to react.

BUT not only did they not cancel it till the last minute. Oh, no. They ALSO accepted checked luggage. Normally for five days or less, I travel with only carry on. However, I was taking Port Wine with me to give to people at the con. This required a checked bag because some nut jobs in England tried – and failed – to blow up a plane with their baby bottle. So henceforth and till the end of time, in the Tartarus we find ourselves in, we SHALL be punished by not being able to carry liquids. Unless, of course, they fit into the magic ziploc. (In a wonderful example of bureaucratic mentality, even if all you have is a bottle of hand sanitizer and you lay it on the tray so they can see it, pick it up and examine it, they’ll make you put it in a ziploc. They’ve forgotten the point of the ziploc is “to control quantity” and “so you can see what is there.” It is now a magical ziploc which stops explosions.)

So, we came in with no intimation of disaster and checked a bag. We sat at the gate, read our morning blogs, and waited. First the plane was delayed, then finally cancelled. We left at top speed for a customer service station, knowing, of course, that the nearest one would be swamped. We could have saved ourselves the trouble. ALL were swamped, with hours of wait to get to the front, by the time our plane was cancelled.

My husband left me and my son (we were traveling with only one, since the other was in NC already, and would drive in) in line, and went out of the secure area, to try to rebook at the counter, when the scuttlebutt around us was “you’ll be lucky to get there on Sunday.” Since the con ended on Sunday, you see where I had a SMALL problem.

So, Dan went out to rebook and secured it fairly soon – while Atlanta was booked solid, he got us on a flight to Nashville. He then tried to come back to us and found that his new tickets wouldn’t get him past security. Why not? They were not boarding passes. Why not? Because we had to first redirect and re-check our luggage.

By then it was about two hours since cancellation and two other frontier flights to Atlanta had left. Yes, you read that right.

I’m going nuts standing in line, and Frontier employees are circling the line with water, cookies and granola bars (none of which I can have but water, and oh, btw, because of security lines which can be hell in Denver, we left home at six, to get to the airport at eight, for a ten thirty flight. Yeah. I’m hungry and sleepy and just all around cranky.)

As it turns out Frontier employees SHOULD have been doing something else. What else? Why, asking people who had decided not to go or who were taking another route if they wanted their checked luggage back, for instance. JUST a thought. Also, btw, there were two people at the head of the line processing passengers and about five circulating with goodies. Does this make sense in any sane universe?

After a while I called my husband (we were trying to save cell phone batteries, which were needed as he was trying to solve a problem at work via cell phone.) He was standing in an “at least three hours” (per Frontier Employee. ONE working the line, mind you.) line to reclaim our checked bag. My son and I elected to go out of security and wait with my husband. BTW, this entire bit of theater (you’ll see why it’s just theater later) cost us the chance to maybe go home and nap or at least go to a restaurant and get a meal or even go to our favorite hotel and get a day room before our new flight at 8pm to Nashville.

When we got to the head of the line, the rumors that had been filtering back through the line became clear. The complete idiots at Frontier (sorry to insult idiots) instead of immediately cancelling all luggage from cancelled flights (surely, guys, if it was waiting to be loaded, it could be cancelled, no?) had sent it ahead by ‘first available’ flight, making a mockery of the idea that you need to pay for checked luggage because of fuel costs. Why burden your planes with extra luggage. Or does luggage only weigh when it’s WANTED? If it’s luggage no one wants flown, it’s weightless? (My dears, I write SF and that’s a quantum effect I never heard of.)

By the time we confirmed this, we barely had the time to catch our flight to Nashville. Meanwhile, we’d been making frantic rearrangements. You see, we had a car waiting in Atlanta. Had to cancel that (one way rental was $500 more) and book a shuttle from Nashville to Chattanooga. One small issue. Our plane arrived at one thirty am. Shuttle left at six. Even if we could get a hotel we’d be paying $150 to sleep three hours if that. So, we spent the night in the airport. Yes, I did this a lot at around 20, but I’m too old for this crap.

Meanwhile, Dan is on the phone with the luggage people in Atlanta, who tell him they’ll send our bag via a Delta flight to Chattanooga and it will be there when we pick up our new car rental there. Right… Only, of course, by morning the story had changed. They were instead going to fedex it to our hotel.

This seemed okay, and we checked in to our hotel, where I have to say – in that case – the fault was entirely ours. We booked that hotel, which used to be a Day’s Inn on the strength of two reasons – we’d stayed there three years ago and found it spartan but clean; and it was next door to the con hotel, which meant I could drift back to write. Only… well… no. Because the place, now a Knights Inn was the FILTHIEST place I’ve ever stayed in – and that, my dears, includes youth hostels in the early eighties in France – and without the barest creature comforts. Like… oh, a trash can.

But we went ahead and checked in because, duh, our luggage had already been sent there… right?

So we suffer through two days – I’ll try to discover what skin diseases I caught, later – without btw my clothes (I had taken three spare shirts in Dan’s luggage, but my jeans were definitely getting ripe) makeup OR my eczema medicine (well, it is liquid and a large bottle.) My eczema, btw, is haywire due to stress, lack of sleep, etc.

And then because the luggage hasn’t arrived and Dan continues calling, they tell him no, the luggage is in fact still in Atlanta. It seems the master plan was for us to pick it up on the way back.

I think dan exploded over the phone. The thing is that within an hour and a half our bag was landing at Chattanooga on a Delta plane. End of story? Oh, I WISH.

I was glad to have clothes, we changed hotels, happy happy joy joy.

On Monday we take the shuttle at noon to Atlanta for our flight. Again, note that Frontier has our cell phone numbers and that my husband connected to the net at least once. NO WARNING was sent.

We’re joking about the flights being cancelled, but even we didn’t EXPECT it, until… we got in line to check in and heard rumors.

We get to the front of the line and start by being lied to. They tell us that there was ANOTHER hail storm on the night before at two am. They couldn’t have known! It was just bad luck! They have rebooked us for Wednesday. They’re shocked it’s unacceptable.

Passenger in line next to us needs to get back to Denver, because his wife had a stroke. He’s not buying what they’re selling and calls friends in Denver to verify… there was no hail storm. (Which, duh, we knew.)

So they backpedal. No, no. The flights are still cancelled because of the hail storm on Wednesday before. And, oh, it’s weather, so they’re giving us no lodging or food.
(What transpires, btw, from putting together rumors while in line, is that Frontier chose to lease planes to keep SOME of their contracts… but not all. And yes, they are using the weather to justify doing nothing for stranded passengers, whom they’re not warning of upcoming cancellations. Meanwhile an article online says they won’t lose any good will because they’re using money from insurance to rent top of line planes and give excellent customer care. I’d like the reporter to have gone through what we went through.)

At this point guy next to us demands to talk to a supervisor and gets what my husband calls “designated crier” “It’s not my fault. I didn’t decide this. Why are you yelling at me?” Right. Because you are the face of the company, chickie. DEAL.

As she was about to leave she made ONE mistake. “Does anyone else here want to unload on me? I don’t mind… I mean, I can’t do anything, but if you want to yell at me, go ahead.”

At which point I said “Yes, I DO want to unload on you.” And I started by pointing out that no, this was no longer weather. This was choosing to violate contracts and that I worked for a nationally syndicated website (yeah, I know) and this WOULD be blogged (Promise kept, btw) and that I had had JUST about enough. Also that I was sure they were violating FTC regulations, among other things.

She then, CASUALLY – note that I’m sure she’s not really a manager, unless she’s the manager of that counter – awarded us a night in a (nice it turned out) hotel but NO meals. AT HER DISCRETION. So, the “powerless” crap was just that.

So, we paid $70 for dinner – Ruby Tuesdays. No car. All restaurants in the vicinity of airport are expensive – in addition to the extra $250 for the shuttle and the inconvenience of lacking my luggage for almost two days. I’ve found our last three trips, no matter how short, cost us about $500 extra apiece to get around airline insanity.

By the time we got back to the airport the next morning to fly Continental to Houston then Houston to Denver, I was so tired I seem to have arrived home without my cell phone. And while it might have been security, I confess that I was feeling so dazed that I wouldn’t put it past me to hand it off to a passing stranger. Since no meals, we didn’t have breakfast, thinking we’d grab something in Houston, so I was tired, upset and uncafeinated. ALSO itching all over my body from the worst eczema eruption in two years. (Which will necessitate doctor’s visit asap.)

So… what’s up with the airlines? Because given that the planes got hit with hail and everything thrown off, in the end this nightmare was brought to us by a lack of even casual interest in customer service. Frontier could EASILY have made our life better by

a) not sending the luggage on without us. If you’re booking passengers to the end of a weekend, from what’s clearly the beginning of it, is it so difficult to realize that many if not most of them are going off for an extended weekend? And that if they can’t get there till Sunday they simply won’t go? Or as in our case, book alternate routes to get to a conference or meeting? WHAT do you gain by sending luggage on ahead of passengers?

B) if you absolutely needed to send our luggage on a joy ride, how about just doing what you finally did, and put it on a delta plane, so it was there when we got to Chattanooga? Why the lies and the decoy with Fedex?

C) if you know you’re going to cancel the plane returning (and don’t even get me started on IT WAS A CONTRACT. You don’t get to pick and choose which contracts to honor. What are you? NYC publishers?) Email or phone the customers. First, it might be more convenient (it would have been for us) for them to stay put and extend their hotel (that one was clean) another night than to find out at the airport that they’re supposed to be homeless (and mealless) for two days. HINT there’s less chance they’ll revolt.

D) you effed up and you have an irate about-to-go-ballistic customer (or ten). The weather emergency was five days ago. Legally, you don’t have a leg to stand on. Yes, you can be a jerk and deny them hotels and meals. BUT even if you can get away with it – do you expect them to EVER fly with you again? EVER? In this lifetime? Do you expect them to tell their friends and neighbors you’re a great airline to fly with?

No? WHY DON’T YOU CARE?

How is it possible that EVERY step along the way Frontier chose the WRONG option to maintain customer satisfaction? And who will support them when they collapse? Uncle Sugar?

Honeys – Uncle Sugar is broke, and if I have anything to say to it, when you go to him with your little hand out, he’ll tell you it wasn’t his decision, and why are you yelling at him…

*crossposted at Classical Values*

I was completely isolated from the net for the whole time I was there — our planes were cancelled there and back — rant on that later.

Loved seeing my friends and colleagues and friends who are almost family, but the traveling was sheer hell and we got there one day late and home one day late. (If I EVER book frontier again, you have permission to beat me over the head with a day old mackarel.)

My kindle wireless/3G started acting up as it had in Portugal — I need to call customer service. So I could check NOTHING. And I oculd not post.

We just got home and I can’t find my cell phone. I remember putting it in the briefcase, but it’s not there. Head>desk. Repeat. No, I didn’t check it once I had it in. It’s a pretty tight fit in the briefcase pocket. Perhaps I did something gifted with it on the plane or the club at Atlanta Airport. I don’t think I did, but who knows? Last I saw it for absolute sure was while recharging it in Atlanta in the hotel. Since I just came home, got my necklace from the briefcase (removed for traveling) and did something with it so I can’t find it on my own desk, who knows what I did with the phone while even more jelagged. It’s just that it’s a pay as you go and it’s fully charged, as well as being practically brand new. Worse yet, I LIKED it. :/ Honestly, I think the only way it could have left my briefcase is if someone in security reached in and SPECIFICALLY took it. As I said, the pocket is pretty tight around it. Could someone have done that? Well, I was the last one in the family to go through and when I did I couldn’t see my bags, because they were backed up. Also, there was someone pushing the bags in. It would be the work of a minute to feel it, decide it was one of those expensive iphones (it’s not) and take it out. Then later look at it, realize it’s cheap knock off and throw it away.

Paranoid? Probably, but honestly, I can’t see any other way for it to be missing — save, always “I was half asleep and got gifted” which is… possible. Not probable, though since I rarely think to get gifted with phones. It’s usually more… expensive stuff, like jewelry.

And yeah, security annoys the living day crap out of me, so I’m going to blame them if I can…

Well, it’s that time of year again, and tomorrow the Hoyt Clan is Liberty con bound, leaving a friend in charge of Not-our-cats (Although right now only one not our cat comes by) and sundries. (Please don’t forget the sundries!)

I expect to be having dinner at the Acropolis tomorrow around this time (or a little earlier) with Number 1 son.

Looking forward to seeing everyone. The bad news is that I haven’t — grrrrr — finished Darkship Renegades. The good news is that it’s not because it’s stalled, but because I need to tweak a bit, because of a whole new subplot which makes it much more fun. (Look guys, Thena. Kidnapping. Burners. Explosions. Nough Said? Oh, yeah, and for the rest of you, impossible love, and a situation that will result in at least one tragedy… We just need to make sure the less likeable person dies.) I will read from it if I have a reading (haven’t seen schedule yet!) or you can accost me and make me read at some point, if you’re desperate. Meanwhile, I might be escaping to the hotel (we didn’t get rooms in the main one! :( ) now and then, to make sure the iron doesn’t get cold. I want it to go to betas on Tuesday at the latest.

Meanwhile, you know the drill, posting will be spoty till Tuesday, that is two days after the con, when sleep has happened. Be good.

Some people cut themselves. If you ask the more articulate of them they’ll tell you that they do it for the ability to concentrate the mind – that the pain is a cleanser.

Some people fast or wear hairshirts (yes, people still do that.) If you ask them you find that the feeling of vulnerability brings them closer to G-d.

Me? I’m hardcore. I write books. If you ask me, I’ll tell you I wonder why.

I sort of hope in a vague and wistful way that it can both provide a mental escape and bring me – and those who read me, maybe – closer to G-d. (This is a thoroughly non-denominational G-d, so rest easy. All that can be found in writing or reading unless they’re religious books, is an awareness of something bigger than the simple human spirit.)

Is that why I write? Nah. I wish it were. It would make sense.

I tell people I write for money. This too is a lie. Do I make as much money from it as if I were a secretary at some big and reasonably well-paying company? In the off years, just about. In the good years a little more.

But children, for this I work seven days a week, twelve hours a day and I’m never really “off.” The fact that I’m a writer has made my favorite downtime activity – reading – part of itself. And if you think that’s just talk, think again. It means there no longer is just pure enjoyment, but a thinking mind. “Uh… I see what she did there. Now, if I could…” On the bad days, I find myself reading some bestsellers in the fields I work in and going “And this is selling ten times what I do? Am I that bad?” Which not only kills all the enjoyment but makes me hate myself for petty and envious thoughts.

I’m fairly sure secretaries at least get to relax with a cheap mystery or romance, now and then. For the same money.

So why do I do it? I don’t know. I like to hurt myself, I guess?

It’s not something I would have thought about me, and it’s definitely not sexual. Something I found when I was young and dating was that if pain came in I went out. Even an accidental pinch that hurt was enough to pop me entirely out of the mood.

But I feel compelled to write and worse, after years of successfully avoiding writing the undignified scenes, after years of telling myself I’d torture my characters by the book and not getting involved with their suffering, I find myself writing this novel in an experience not unakin to swallowing shards of glass, and yet riveted by it, so that writing is happening at the oddest hours and as much as I can around the clock.

Both my characters are in deep emotional pain. No, all three of my characters, though one shouldn’t matter – but does. And my normal way to deal with this, up to two years ago, would be to tell the whole situation in two chapters, then move on with the plot and not dwell on it.

Now I’m wallowing in it, and in the character’s feelings. Not that it’s a belly button gazing novel. It’s not. There’s plenty of physical danger and action.

BUT the character’s feelings outline the character growth, and I need that for the big “transformation” scene deep in the belly of the beast. If there is insufficient suffering the transformation will not happen. It’s too early and I’ve only had about the quarter cup of coffee left over from yesterday’s writing jag. (Ew, cold coffee, ew. I hear you, but I want to get this post up, then eat breakfast, then work.) Insert in your own images about caterpillars and butterflies. Thank you.

What’s surprising me is both that I’m feeling the pain as if I were enduring it and that it’s utterly riveting and consuming. As you know from previous posts I’m always deeply suspicious of writing emotion this way. If I’m feeling it because I’m in their heads am I putting in enough for the reader? The answer used to be no. Now I’m not so sure, and it’s not like I’m being given a choice. I’m with the characters, in this roller coaster, twisting and winding along. No choice.

Also I’m the type of reader who, if the character is being kicked around too much, skips to the end to make sure it ends all right, then comes around to the scene again.

So, why would my own writing be different? Why is the character’s suffering oddly compelling? Will this make for a better book? Well, I hope so, though I can’t tell you for sure. And why do I do this? Can anyone tell me?

Crossposted at Mad Genius Club

I did not pull that sword out of the stone.

Okay, I do realize that Arthur is a regional pronunciation for Author. I didn’t know this, when I first started writing, or even when I had my first signing. Remember, I didn’t grow up in this country.

So, there I was, brand spanking author, brand spanking book (and man, were the numbers about to deliver a spanking, but never mind) sitting at a little table at Barnes and Noble waiting for my mobs of adoring fans.

Actually it wasn’t too bad, despite the fact that in a desperate bid to look like a fantasy author (guys, you’ve met me! Well, some of you…) I had put sparklies in my hair. I had no crowd but a continuous stream of local fans.

Then there came a lull and this portly lady comes up, dragging a reluctant five year old by the hand, with the sort of grim determination reserved to making a child eat broccoli or some other dreary but salutary task. She let go of him right in front of me, and while he stared at me with a puzzled expression (probably wondering why my hair sparkled pink and blue. Look, it’s not my fault they make those hair sparkles for little girls) she announced in the tone of a herald, “This lady is an Arthur!”

I eventually figured out, as she went on about the benefits of reading and the wonders of literature, that she meant “author” but for just a split second I was in panic fear I might be required to pull a sword out of a stone. Or worse yet, to put a sword – or a pen, or a keyboard – INTO a stone.

As I was mulling today’s post it came to me that encounter pretty much encapsulated what’s going on with reading and literature today, and also my attitude to it, which was to say, “Oh, no. I’m not an author. Authors are terribly important people with awards. I’m just a lady who writes stories to amuse people.” And then I told the kid about my book, but pointed out it wasn’t quite for his age level. (Well, it’s true. There’s also no better catnip to get a kid to read.)

I suppose I’ll have to explain why I said that incident encapsulates what’s wrong with reading. (My favorite editor, Toni Weisskopf, publisher of Baen books has told me I have a bad tendency to skip steps both in my non-fiction and my fiction and assume everyone’s brain has the exact same wiring as mine. So, I will scatter the bread crumbs, and hopefully you will follow, though I’ve come to believe my path is often weird.)

Before I had children, and while I was a young adult, I thought of programs to encourage kids to read in the way pretty much everyone does. “Oh, it’s a good thing.” And I threw in a dime or two their way when they asked for it. Then I had children.

Children in the abstract – someone else’s children. No, not our friends’ children, horrid brats that they are. If only our friends followed our (childless) advice in raising their own kids, then their kids would be – mythical children, pure and sweet and always smiling, would of course be encouraged to read by t-shirts that say “I read” or by posters saying “yay books” or even by candy and burgers for meeting a reading quota.

Real children, or at least my children (there were days if they got any real-er they’d be made entirely of dirt and cross-grainedness) look at all that stuff and the flags of danger go up. “This is something the adults want me to do. That means it’s either good for me or boring. Or both.” And for the rest of their lives, they’ll regard reading as a chore. A worthy chore, sure, but something to be done when you want to feel virtuous, not something you sneak an hour or two away for when you really, really, really should be working.

Having my kids and remembering all my own misdeeds in childhood, I realized that I had in fact never been encouraged to read. And that the stuff I wasn’t supposed to read was always the most fun. Not only did I never read those insipid picture books about good girls that my poor aged aunts wished on me, but I read books of philosophy that would have gagged a horse, simply because my dad said I couldn’t understand them and they’d be bad for me. I read science fiction because my brother tried to hide his science fiction books from me, since they often had graphic sex scenes (this being the seventies). And while I won’t say I learned English to read Masters and Johnson which my brother had locked away in his bedside drawer, I did study with a will until I could read it and understand it while standing by the bedside table, ready to shove it back in and relock the drawer. (Lock picking I don’t remember learning. But people were keeping things from me, so, obviously, it was my sacred duty to open those doors and drawers and read them.)

I got told that reading was a time-wasting, no-good folly. I got told books would rot my brain. I got told I thought too much and lived in cloud cuckoo land. And I read every chance I got and in the most unlikely places to do it.

I did the same with the kids. (Though I did lock that explicit biography of Julius Caesar where Robert wouldn’t find it till he was a little older, but that was only because no mother should be required to explain “incest” to her toddler.) The older is a reader and the younger… well, he is too, even if he prefers non-fiction to fiction. (Remember, children, even “arthurs” can give birth to little engineers. They have their way, and where would we science fiction monkeys be without them?)

But I had to fight against the schools. The schools wanted to give them candy and burgers for reading x books. They wanted to make them participate in “readathons.” They wanted to make them feel that reading was worthy and difficult and important, and writing was performed by magic creatures with messages or something…

This still relates to the Kris Rusch take on the Wall Street Journal article about the demise of the gatekepers and (according to the WSJ writer) how terrible a blow that will be.

When reading is important, and something that’s good for you, (“brush your teeth, eat your greens, read a book”) then people figure it should also be monitored. I mean, you don’t want to read something that’s not as worthy as you thought it should be, right? You look at the ingredients when you buy those multivitamins, don’t you? You make sure they’re organic or approved or what have you, right? And you look at the stamp of approval on the books you read too.

But I come from a different time, when reading was a guilty pleasure, when I should have been doing something more “normal” like watching cartoons, or something more “fun” like going to a party, or something more “serious” like learning to sew and embroider. I don’t know how many of us there are left, but I hope there are enough. Because we need a synergy of writers who are just trying to tell a story and hopefully make it interesting, and of readers who still think reading is fun, and who want to curl up by the fire and escape elsewhere. (And right now, children, who doesn’t need an escape.)

And we need to get the word out, somehow: reading is fun. You have to be careful, or you end up doing too much of it, and you don’t sleep enough, and you neglect your work. You learn too much and you think too much, and then you don’t fit in right, and you start finding sitcoms boring and predictable. And then you won’t get your friends’ reference jokes. Oh, sure, you’ll have other reference jokes, but who will share them with? – gasp! – not those WEIRDOS who read, right? Reading could ruin your life. You know that guy with the disheveled hair and the reddened eyes in your class? Yeah. He looks like he just tumbled out of bed because he didn’t sleep last night. He was up all night reading a book. He’s a bad influence. Stay away from him.

Meanwhile, I am not an author. I’m a story teller who makes up stuff. If I do my job right, then I’ll keep you up all night and make you forget to feed the cat and change the baby. If I REALLY do my job right, you’ll finish reading my work and have the worst craving for the next book of mine, and stumble over to your computer and order it, and if you don’t read electronic, pay extra for overnight delivery. (And you read electronic, mainline Sarah A. Hoyt under all her pen names for days at a time and emerge dazed, still hungry for more, and start pestering me for more via email [Yes, I know who you are. No, darlings, I really don’t mind. This is why I write.])

Are there books that transcend their entertainment value, that touch something divine within the mere human stories, that capture the eternal human and that help other humans in very different time and places make sense of their circumstances? Sure. How would I deny it? I snuck Shakespeare under the bedcovers with a flash light by the time I was eight. I was raised in Heinlein books, and I love Terry Pratchett. All of them in different ways do that, as do some other writers with less reliability.

But in my poor and limited experience – and I’ll admit I’m a hack – you can’t aim for that. At best, you can do the most competent job of telling a story you know how to, and hope the other stuff will shine through.

And you definitely can’t mandate that someone else do that job. All rules of “good writing” or “good living” for that matter, imposed from above become distorted in the very act of imposing them. Even innocuous things like “eat your greens” are odious and bizarre when they come from above by fiat, even if that fiat is paternal injunction and preaching, and not mandatory.

After all, if you’re choking down that boiled broccoli because it’s good for you, you’ll never imagine how much you could love it, if it were stir fried with garlic and just a soupcon of red wine. Then it tastes good and not like something that’s good for you.

Let’s stop trying to turn genre books into “worthy” exercises in preaching and reading that’s “good for you.” Let’s make them as fun, as much a guilty pleasure as in the pulp days.

Look, the gatekeepers are still there, but we can get around them. Let’s curl up in the big easy chair with a trashy book and kick off our shoes. I have chocolate with marshmallows, and not a hint of broccoli in sight.

 

I’ve said before that writing ebooks directly to the public would make it a very different game from the way most of us have been playing it for years. I don’t think I ever explained why except to give some vague nod towards “we had to get past the editor first.”

But Kris Rusch’s article reminded me of this.

So I’m going to spell it out. For years I was reading how-to-write books not because I thought my writing needed help, but because I was trying to figure out what the editors were looking for, which was the unspoken promise behind anything telling you how to write a bestseller.

I’ve read bestsellers SIMPLY to see what they were doing – what trick they used. (Yeah, I am a fan of a half dozen bestsellers, if you don’t count romances where it seems like anyone halfway decent is a bestseller. BUT I rarely read “mainstream” bestsellers. Only I did, because publishers/editors I worked with considered them upmarket from sf/f and I was seeing if there were tricks I could steal. I still don’t like “mainstream.” Agatha Christie’s definition of its being unpleasant people living lives more boring than anyone should applies.)

Look, years ago I took this workshop and the people teaching it (may I reveal names? I won’t otherwise) told us that we shouldn’t count on getting any royalties. Whatever we got on our advance would come out to about as much as the book would sell.

Do any of you have any experience in business? Because I don’t, exactly, beyond having worked retail a few times, having had garage sales, having been a multilingual secretary and having done this writing thing for pay for a little over ten years.

However I know logic. More important, I know probability. The people teaching this workshop didn’t tell me “the system is crooked and there’s ways to game it.” They didn’t need to. As I’ve said before, I can read print, at least man-sized.

Think. When a book first hooks the editor they have to take it to meeting and present it. When they do so, they have to tell the finance people how much they expect this book to sell. I don’t know what figures they show in those cases. When it’s a writer with a track record, I imagine those are presented. Probably. Almost certainly. This is stupid, because, say, a writer who writes primarily fantasy and is now writing romance or vice-versa will have a completely different probability of sales. Particularly under a different name. Never mind. You could still sort of squint and believe there was something straight forward going on there. Say you close your eyes a little and go “Oh, well, maybe sales are deterministic. Maybe there’s only x thousand people in any subgenre who like this person’s arrangement of words.” Right… improbable but perhaps not impossible in a “found in a Chinese fortune cookie” sort of way.

But imagine this is a brand new writer. No track record, nothing. The editor sits there and… what? Looks at similar books? What makes a similar book? Genre? Subgenre? The character is the same age? Color? Paints toe nails the same way?

Look, there’s no way to put this but bluntly: books are not cans of beans. Yes, there are some similarities between subgenre. Yes there are some guaranteed sales and non sales in each subgenre. Take me for instance – I never liked quest fantasy. Not sure why. Never took to it. So I’m a non-reader for quest. Just as I’m sure there are guaranteed readers for it.

Sure, sure, at the top of a trend, you can more or less predict what a book will sell even with no push (something I’ll explain down the page.) Take Urban Fantasy. About five years ago a typical urban fantasy would sell pretty well, regardless of what was inside the covers. (Provided the signage were right on the cover, and well… mine is not a typical urban fantasy – sigh.)

But even at the top of a trend, given different writing styles, views of the world and ability to hook readers, predicting an advance so your sales come precisely to that would require… mathematical genius. Also, rattling some bones, turning some cards and throwing some yarrow stalks.

And yet publishing houses did it, year after year, day after day. That gentleman in the wall street journal shouldn’t have been so upset at the prospect of losing publishing houses, because think of the benefits to the world if all those geniuses of predictive statistics flooded other businesses. Think of people on Wall Street going “this stock FEELS like that stock, so I can predict its trajectory over the next year or two to the penny.” Can’t you see it’s for the good of mankind?

Yes, I’m being sarcastic. Does this mean I’m mad at it? Do I think individual editors/editorial houses are crooked?

No. What happened to publishing would happen to any industry presented with the same type and amount of temptation. We humans like to control our world, particularly that part that affects our livelihood. In fact, some of it I’ve seen happen to other industries.

Atop my desk (okay, to the side, since my desk is floated in mid-room, facing the door so the kids and the cats can’t come at me from behind and give me coronary) is a framed Heinlein quote. “Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you. If you don’t bet, you can’t win.” For years I’ve accepted that and tried to game the system.

What was the system. Well… I’m sure it started as just projections of what the book would sell. Can you do general ballpark, based on what a book like that has sold in the past? Sure. You can look at it and go “Um… Urban fantasy is selling like crazy. This will sell no less than 20k worth.” Can you swear it won’t sell more? Look… even if you are a fan of the genre and can “feel” how it appeals to other fans, you won’t be able to tell.

I’ve been reading science fiction since I knew it existed and there are bestsellers – real ones, swamped by fans at cons – that I read and go “pleasant enough, but… eh. If I stumble on another book by him/her, I’ll read it.”

Unless you have a DIRECT line to the minds of fans or conduct exhaustive test surveys with potential consumers before you make that address offer, the sort of “to the penny accuracy” that houses were achieving is not only improbable, it’s impossible. And none of them conducted surveys. Instead they told us it was more art than science (to be honest it would have to be art – the dark arts.)

Take Harry Potter, which bypassed the whole process – as did a few other Britts – by selling insanely in Great Britain before being picked up here. Suppose one of the American houses who rejected it had accepted it, and the second under editor (Ms. Thistlewhile) had tried to project how it would sell. “Fantasy juvenile, um… they don’t sell great. And the whole boarding school thing… well… Americans just won’t get it. And she does have issues with setting on opening. Well, let’s give her five thousand advance.”

And let me tell you, chums, if they had done that, she would have earned that advance, the book would have gone out of print. There would be books two and three, maybe, and then she’d have been told she either couldn’t work in this town no more, or she’d have to change her name and write something different. Perhaps those hot urban fantasies that are selling so well.

How would this be achieved? The same way they made sure their numbers were always right.

There are several prongs in selling a book, and there’s reasons for each of them to be controllable, when they didn’t use to be, say… twenty five or thirty years ago. I started explaining what happened to bookstores, but that’s an article on its own, one I can’t write without crying, I think.

So instead, lets stipulate that with a few, rare, wonderful exceptions, most bookstore personnel nowadays does no read. They view what they’re selling as editors do: by cover, genre, subgenre, and what did this person do before. Oh, one more thing “How much ‘push’ does the book have?” And the rare, wonderful managers are circumvented by the fact that stocking is decided at regional – usually tri-state – level. Who do these managers talk to? The distributors. How do they decide what to stock? Well… by how much “push” the book has. These are busy people, controlling a lot of bookstores. They can’t read every book. Blurb and cover might come into it, but MOSTLY it’s “push.” So, what’s push? Push is how many books the house chooses to print, and how desperate the house-reps are to place them.

What determines how much push you get? Well, at the rawest level, your advance.

Does “push” work? Not any longer I’m told. (Which might explain some of the interesting statement ballet we’re seeing, because the numbers STILL have to conform. You see, those poor creatures, editors, are paid on how close they’ll sell to their projections. And there’s no way to make those projections. There simply isn’t. Books are too individual.) Did it work back then? Oh, hell, yeah. There are ways to cap the distro a book has at x. And it’s possible to calculate mathematically – if book is on x shelves for x time, it will sell in this range. Why? Because THAT’s law of averages. You should by rights still have the occasional surprise and I can attest to some, like my first Musketeer’s book, but never mind, you can bring it back in line with the next book. Those surprises are rare enough, anyway.

Look, at that same workshop, I was told that if I wrote a really good book it would sell. I appreciated the intent, it was well meant. Sometimes you have to lie to the young. The truth is that even Harry Potter would never have taken off if it had been distributed at one, maybe two books in half of the bookstores in the land, with a “do not restock” order attached and taken out of print at the year anniversary. Word of mouth might still have worked – would. People might still be looking for it – would. But when there are only 3k books printed and they climb to $45 used in the Amazon marketplace, distribution is going to be slow to non existent. And there are a lot of books in that exact situation just now. The fact that the houses aren’t hastening to reissue books that sell for crazy amounts used means… I don’t know what, but it means the model is broken, I think.

So… the best way to have a bestseller was to have the editor read your book or proposal and go “Oooh, this is bestseller material.” Which is why the how-to books worked – when they did – because they were written by industry insiders, who might know cold nothing about how to write a selling book, but by gum, they knew what made an editor’s mouth water.

And then there’s the fact these books “expired.” Because different generations of editors went “oooh” at different things.

Okay, so we used to write for the editor. We used to polish the apple for teach. Some of us with stunning lack of success (listen, bub, I can outline according to these books, but then I fall under my own influence, which is always a terrible thing, and then, next thing you know, there’s so many subversive digs hidden in my book, that the editor would have to be deaf dumb and paralyzed not to twig to at least one of those. Ruining the effect.) We still do, kind of, in this accelerating transitional phase, because we still need to sell to editors part of the time, and while “push” might not work, they don’t seem to have noticed that. But now we’re faced with the wonderful and terrifying possibility of writing directly for the public. How will things change?

Well, I can tell you what’s changed – here, inside my head. I have yet to self publish or even e-press publish something major, but I know I can and just knowing I can feels wonderful. I am no longer controlling every thought and idea that goes on the page. I’m no longer following a model. I no longer read bestsellers unless I like them. (How many people were reading them to steal their secrets? Was it enough to cause preference falsification?) It feels like sanity.

I can make some predictions and they’ve at least as much chance of being right as the next guy. I think we’ll see the long-tail effect. Part of the reason – I think – the industry moved from fad to fad was that editors bought into the fad first, and all of a sudden that’s ALL that was on the shelves, prompting people to go “oh, maybe I should read it.” Sometimes fads took, which meant they hit something people wanted to read, and to some extent there will always, I think, upswells of a certain type of book. But I suspect they’ll be less pronounced and – strangely – perhaps more long lived.

I think we’ll see trends that were as dead as the dodo – say, whatever happened to quest fantasy – come back in enough numbers to support people.

I think there will be a splintering of the field into more sub-sub genres. Because of the way ebooks pay, a writer can make what he would have made from a big house if he/she’s not a bestseller by just having say 5k steady readers, and writing three or four books a year. (Easier, without bothering with proposals.) That means if you find five thousand people who want to read about wizards who conjure using wood spirits, more power to you. And those readers, conversely, will find people to feed their habit directly, so they can read nothing but…

At the same time I’m hoping, as a reader, there will be an upswell of the strange and wonderful. You see, I’ve always liked the “doesn’t fit anywhere” books – say Barry Hughart’s Chinese Fantasies. There haven’t been many of those in recent years.

I hope – and I actually do have hope – we’re about to enter an era where they’re far more common.

This is a continuing take on Kris Rusch’s article this week, which, as I said, contained four or five (possibly more) ideas that could be spun out into articles of their own.

The thrust of the article, as a whole, was an article in the Wall Street Journal, claiming we’ll lament the big publishers when they leave because it will leave us having to wade through a mire of muck to find the single diamond hidden there.

In this just so story, the New York houses, selflessly and gallantly throw themselves before the river of muck flowing from so many illiterate and unaware writers to deluge the innocent. Shield of “good taste” in hand they plunge in, and holding the One Book Of True Worth hold back the invasion, and present the public with the jewel they discovered.

This is, undoubtedly, how most publishers see themselves. (Most, because having talked to my publisher at Baen, including at dead dog parties when she’s tired and out of it, I’ve never heard her say that her job is to educate the public or to mold the public taste or any such rot. The only thing she’s said about choosing books is that she tries to choose books the fans will like. For which, might I add, the fans are vocally grateful.) Look, I can’t even fault the editors. First of all most of them are humanities graduates. As one such, I know what we got about “good literature” and “bad literature” and how the popular taste is almost always wrong. (I won’t say that they don’t tell us that Shakespeare was popular in his day, I’ll just say they usually search for mitigating circumstances, such as “Well, the plays were put on with buckets of blood” or in some sad cases, they try to down-rate Shakespeare because he was popular. They place a lot more emphasis in the fact that Walt Whitman self-published or Emily Dickenson [whose every poem can be sung to the tune of yellow rose of Texas. Somehow they never tell you that] kept her writing a secret. Their preferred narrative is the lone genius writer, recognized only by the literatti.) So all the editors have to brandish as “expertise” is their ability to tell good from “popular.” Second, these editors start out as assistant editors with no power and even less money. (My son Robert, who is a wicked person, has long since created the imaginary Ms. Thistlewhile, second assistant under editor from the right in the leftward sub-basement of a generic publishing house. When we speak of editors, she always comes up in conversation. He keeps threatening to write Slush, the Musical! If you ask him nicely, maybe he will.) Third, even the most powerless of these under editors if they manage to make it to a con are fawned upon and courted by writers, particularly unpublished writers dying to break into a system designed to keep them at bay (more on that in a later article.)

That singular combination of powerlessness and fawning would go to anyone’s head, and editors are human. Couple it with their training in “taste” and suddenly you have someone who thinks he/she is in charge of determining not what will sell or what the fans will like, but what the fans SHOULD like. Again, this is a whole other topic, upon which I will have a whole article.

For now I’ll concede that yes, sure, if the goal were to make sure the books that make it to the top are the ones that appeal to the self-appointed oligoi, then yes, indeed, we’d need editors with masters in literature to sift through it all.

Fortunately – for us – the name of the game is not that. The name of the game for us, as readers, is to pick books we will enjoy.

I’ll take a short detour here and say that, yes, indeed, there is such thing as an embarrassment of choices, sometimes. I have found myself completely puzzled in front of the Crest toothpaste/gel isle for instance. I will say, though, that this is not because I don’t know what I like – something that will serve to clean my teeth – but because nine times out of ten the one flavor/texture the kids like has stopped being made to be replaced by NEW, DAZZLING flavors, and I have no idea which one they’ll like. This is in other words, more akin to what the editors should be doing (but mostly aren’t) than to what I, as a reader, would be doing.

If I were shopping for myself alone, instead of for teenagers, my winnowing process would go something like this: Toothpaste. Need some. Oh, look. Ten brands. Let’s see, I usually like Crest. Okay, maybe another is just as good, but my husband used Crest when I first came to the States, I’ve used it since, I’m used to it. I don’t feel adventurous. Good Lord. Ten thousand flavors/textures of Crest. Oh, let me see, I like gel. It’s easier to rinse off your teeth after brushing. Flavor … um… cinnamon, vanilla, citrus…. I’m in a cinnamon mood today. Plaque, what? Eh. Considering the tons of coffee I drink, I should probably get that.

The whole process takes less than a few seconds.

Can the same be done with books, when I’m faced with no brand, no specific shelving but a bewildering mess of books suggested on Amazon.

The same is done with books. Look, at this point in time, when shopping electronically (not the same thing when shopping on paper, as POD books tend to either be more expensive or look shoddy, which does influence choice.) I don’t even look at who the publisher is. I don’t see if it has a stamp of approval.

So, how do I shop? As I do for toothpaste. “Oh, look… books. I need books. Finished the last batch. What do I feel like reading today?” Here I’ll point out that though I read Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and – lately – Romance and then various (but not all) subgenres of those, I don’t read them all interspersed. No. I go through phases. I’ll spend six months reading nothing but science fiction, then three months in Mystery. Then two months in Romance. Then I’ll feel like non-fiction. So, depending on how I feel at the moment – which often has to do with how hard I’m willing to work on my entertainment. For instance cozy mysteries and Regency Romances I call bubblegum books because you can read them with only a part of your mind while doing something else, like laying on the beach. This doesn’t mean they’re less “worthy” it means they fulfill what I need when I’m relaxing – I know what genre I’m looking for. Say, I’m looking for Romance, where, mostly, I read regencies so far. I’ll first do a search for the half dozen names I remember in Romance. (There are a lot more for other genres.) Let’s suppose none of them have a new book out. (They’re fast, romance writers. I am finding three and four books a year from each, but even they can’t write as fast as I read.) Time to try a new author.

Do I then at that moment go “Oh, let me look for x imprint?” No. I suppose, in romance particularly certain readers do. But I haven’t formed that sort of taste. So, what I do – have done – is look for a word that appears in Regency Romance titles, like, say, Rake. (Yes, it also appears in gardening manuals, but I can usually tell the two apart.) A few books will come up. At which point, strangely, I don’t clutch at my hair and go “Save me, editor, save me.” No, what I do is read the descriptions and the reader opinions (And btw, not always just to see if they’re good. Sometimes the bad reviews say something is bad for a reason that seems bizarre to me and piques my interest in the book.) Or at least skim them. I also look at the “readers who viewed this book also bought” which leads me usually to other regency romances. If none of the ones that came up interest me, sometimes one of the “alsos” will.

More usually – I did this a lot while in Portugal – I come away with six or seven “possibles.” Then I download the samples. You know, it’s amazing how neither the description, the publisher status NOR the author’s name tells me I’m going to like the book.

Long ago, when I was a YOUNG writer, I told Kris Rusch that my “unevenness” bothered me. Some of my stories/books were so much better than others. She looked at me like I was nuts and told me that everyone was uneven. What she didn’t tell me, and I’ve come to realize over time, is that it’s not necessarily an unevenness of quality, but an unevenness of focus. Something someone else – Alma Alexander? – said at World Fantasy last year (in the con suite, where all good talk happens) made me realize what that unevenness actually is. She said that any book you write will be someone’s favorite and someone’s least favorite of your work. I’ve seen this happen with my own work (usually because of the reader’s own preferences and nothing I could have done, but write the same book again and again) and I KNOW it happens with my favorite authors. Even Pratchett whom I love, wrote the Rincewind books which fail to excite me and the Death books which I read only reluctantly. At the same time, my husband and son love the Death books, which goes to show you.

So, if you can’t depend on the creator of the work to ALWAYS turn out something you like, how can you depend on a gatekeeper.

So, do I hate wading through six samples, to get maybe one book I want to buy? No. You see, I’m not judging the “worthiness” of the book. I’m ONLY judging if I want to read it. And that’s easy. Usually I know two paragraphs in. If it doesn’t grab my attention by then, I’m not buying the book. I might revisit it at some later date – probably not knowing I looked at it before – and find it okay, but at that moment it’s not the flavor of toothpaste I want.

The whole selection process takes me maybe half an hour, which is less than browsing books in a single section of a single bookstore used to take me. And I’ve found a lot more authors – in all genres – to know and love this way than I have in the ten years since.

Because, you see, what the publishers have been doing lately is FAR MORE akin to what Crest does (are they being managed by the same people?) You go to the store wanting more of that toothpaste you just finished, and it’s gone, or at least the label is different. Instead of Tingly Cinnamon, it will be new and improved Ultra Cinamonny and the packaging will be different. Because of their obsession with selling books by computer numbers without context like laydown, covers, etc, publishers have been either stopping publishing authors after two books, or making the author take a pen name. So even if you loved Mary Jones’ cat mysteries, and even if Mary is still writing mysteries –now dog mysteries – you won’t find her because she’s now Mary Smith and shelved in a completely different area, with no reference to her former name.

(Yes, I intend to still use pen names for my different “brands” but I also think I’ll put somewhere in the description “this is Sarah Hoyt writing as” and a list of all my other books in the back. That way the fans will know “uh. vampire sex. Not spacemen” but will still be able to find my other stuff.)

Anyway, none of this should be or is a surprise to me, because about twelve years ago, while my husband was traveling, and having hit a point in my then non-career where I was afraid I’d never be published, I succumbed to the allure of reading – and writing – fan fiction. It was Jane Austen (mostly Pride and Prejudice) fan fiction over at Derbyshire Writers Guild. (Yes, I still have some of my stuff up there for free, most of it unfinished.)

DWG – we call ourselves Dwiggies, and yes, I’m still one of them, even though for the last few years I’ve had very little time to visit – is an “unedited” site. No one decides if you deserve to be up there, unlike other fan sites I could name. I don’t know how busy it is now – see the thing about not much time – but around 2000 when I spent almost every afternoon there, there often were ten new stories or episodes of series posted a day.

So, did I read all ten? Didn’t it overwhelm me to read all those unedited stories? Well, no. To begin with, I will only read contemporaries if they’re by an author I’ve liked in the “historical” fan fiction before. So, yeah, my first scan was for “author I know and like” and second for “Story I’ve been following.” What did I do failing those? I read the one paragraph description. Anything set in present day – say half of them, usually more – was out the window.

Then I looked more closely, for stuff that triggered my “like” button. I’m very fond for instance of situation reversal stories (where Darcy is poorer than Lizzy, say.) And then for “dislike” button (I hate overly preachy stories, for instance.) This usually narrowed the selection down to one or two stories I read, and again, took seconds.

An interesting thing to note is that in the sub-genre I read (historical) the stories I liked were usually the most popular. Of course, so were the stories I hated with a burning passion because (sorry, I did say I’m a reluctant snob – and btw The Reluctant Snob is a great title for a romance) they were too melodramatic, too purple, too illogical. Which proves… nothing. That I set certain minimum levels of quality with which other people seem to agree, I guess. But that beyond that I’m prey to my prejudices as is any other reader and/or editor. And that my prejudices often do not accord with other people’s tastes.

The Wall Street Journal article reminded me of when my mom visited and, faced with the same toothpaste isle, said “Too many choices. They shouldn’t allow these many brands on the market. How do I know which one is good.”

And I say what I told her then, “You don’t. You can’t. You can only know which one you’ll like, based on what you’re looking for.”

As for me, I like it. I like to choose my own toothpaste. And my own reading material.

You don’t have to read Kris’ piece this week. You should, at least if you’re trying to make a living in this incredibly screwed up field, but you don’t have to.

If you’re writing for kicks, to amuse yourself or simply because you have vast reams of paper crying out to be dirtied on one side (or is that vast reams of electrons, nowadays) never mind. Carry on as you were.

What interests me about the piece above (I have only minor quibbles with some of the things she says, on the order of “oh, and you didn’t mention” and “Besides, did you ever think that” not disagreements) is that, like an A. E. Van Vogt novel, it “throws out” at least five concepts that could be articles in their own right. (In A.E. Van Vogt, I always felt like he threw out at least two ideas by page, that he disposed of as casual mentions/speculations, which could have made novels in their own right.)

One of them was her saying in the article above that most pieces that land in slush pile are “recital pieces” – comparable only to the piece of music most kids learning music learn by heart, until they play it perfectly. Or, as she put it, the piece that these people can still play years later, even though they’ve given up the instrument.

I knew this, of course. Look, I’ve done my time in the trenches. Years ago, when we were green in judgement, we started a micro press magazine. Slush, we had it – back in the days when it was still in paper form. We also had a cat who peed on the unreadable manuscripts. No, I don’t know how he knew. But the envelopes he peed on were ALWAYS the worst of the worst. Fortunately by that time most people didn’t want the manuscript returned anymore. Because I’d have hated to send a rejection that said “It’s so bad, the cat pissed on it.”

Since then I’ve read for friends and business associates, when they get themselves rained in under a pile of slush. So I knew it. In a way.

It’s just that lacking the experience of learning an instrument (and though my husband is a superb musician, he used to be too shy to play in public, so I don’t think he ever did a recital) the entire concept was unknown to me. I didn’t know how to describe it. If you’d cornered me and forced me to tell you what was wrong with most slush pieces I’d tell you they read like “boiled oatmeal” without the flavor.

So, why am I writing about it, if what Kris says above encapsulates it so well?

Because publishing a small press magazine – as terrible an experience as it was, because the minute we decided to do it our finances went topsy turvy (G-d hates editors) and then I got near lethal pneumonia, which together killed our magazine aborning – was perhaps the last step into making me into a RELIABLY pro-level writer. Before that I oscillated between pro and not. But having dug through the slush, I got a back-brain impression of “this is what not to do.”

Part of this was the gauntlet you ran in order to get published: hell in order to get on the editor’s (I almost said teacher’s) desk.

Kris also mentions in the piece above that there were entire workshops designed to teaching you how to game the system, in order to get published. She is correct. And btw, the “system” by which manuscripts were picked in a process that was designed to – basically – keep off newcomers, is interesting in itself and deserves an article of its own. Or two. Because if you think self-publishing allows for flawed selection, let me tell you bub, you ain’t seen nothing.

What she doesn’t mention is how many of these workshops – and how to books, and… – were designed to justify the system.

I’m not saying that any workshop, or any how to for that matter, ever said, “this is the best system, in the best of all possible worlds.” No. That never happened. No one was that crazy who knew the system from semi-inside even.

But the how tos and sometimes workshops all said “your manuscript has to be perfect.” And then proceeded to give you rules on how to make you so.

First, I’m dyslexic. I misspell in seven languages. I almost flunked my German final in college by misspelling every single word of more than one syllable. (Sometimes those too.) I know it’s hard to believe reading my posts, but not only do I spell check them, but I also read them over three or four times, and correct typos. The queen of typos, that’s me. Worse, I’m the queen of the Freudian type-o. Only it’s not Freudian, unless Freud’s theories were much weirder than I learned in my brush with psych courses (on first pass spelled spych courses.) Because one has to twist logic into a pretzel (on first pass written passel) to get why I would substitute words like “happiness” by words like “number.” And, of course, most of the time I read these as the word I intended.

Second, when writing works – for me – it’s done in what I call “flying.” That’s the state when, after slogging for several hours, days, weeks or months (depending on length) at a story, it all magically comes together, you can see the shape of the whole thing, and you’re flying on a natural high, assembling it all. It’s euphoria better than can be produced by any drug. (And incidentally, it’s where I am right now on Darkship Renegades, which explains my post yesterday.)

The prose this produces is by no means perfect (as anyone ahem “lucky” enough to read my first drafts knows.) The state induces run on sentences and a sort of happy go lucky casualness about wording. I know this, you know this, I’ve grown resigned to it. But what that means is that, at a rational level, I’m ALWAYS very suspicious of prose written while flying. It’s not… blood sweat and tears, and therefore there must be something wrong with it.

Third, I’m an English As A Second Language speaker. I think at this point, to be honest, English is my primary language. I’ve spoken it as a primary language for longer than I spoke Portuguese. Never mind that. There is always that pit-of-the-stomach insecurity about it, like “if I were native, would I use this word this way?”

At the time I was trying to break in, this insecurity was well nigh pathological. I KNEW, somehow just knew that everyone reading my manuscripts could tell something was askew.

Now throw onto that type of mind the injunctions from how-tos on being perfect on paper. No typos. Description, setting, character, and oh, yeah, a perfect hook line coming in on cue. NO MISTAKES. What do you get? Perfection? Ah. you only wish.

My first publishable short story, Thirst was written while LITERALLY flying on morphine, after giving birth to Robert.  If you wish to check it out, it is free — part of the collection Crawling Between Heaven And Earth at the Baen free library.

I wrote it and of course, I couldn’t send it out as was. No. Instead, I started rewriting it. Over the next two years, I rewrote it. Carefully and minutely, till every word, every punctuation mark had been labored over for hours. And then I sent out. And started getting rejections.

As I was prepping it to send out the twentieth time or so, it occurred to me to read it. This was while we were doing the small press magazine. And I was suddenly appalled. I’d been sending THIS out?

Because, you see, it read like… a recital piece. It was boring. Boiled oatmeal with less flavor.

I unearthed my original version, to see if I’d only imagined the specialness. (Children, never throw away your first versions.) And… no. Oh, I cringed at the misplaced punctuation, and the misspellings, but there was a life in that story that hit you in the face and begged to be paid attention to.

I’m not smart, but I can read print, when it’s written in letters of fire ten feet high and right in front of me. I took the original version, fixed typos and grammar, forced myself to do NO more than that, and sent it out. It sold. (Over the next five years it sold eight times. It didn’t get published for another six years or so, because it killed editors and magazines. No, I don’t know why. No one does. But one of the magazines survived long enough to PRINT it – it just got confiscated immediately after – and to send ONE copy out to the year’s best editors, which is why my very first publishable short, first draft with typos cleaned, was a honorable mention in the year’s best 1994 [I think] Check it out if you don’t believe it.)

Lesson learned. Which is why my short stories get two passes – at most – and my novels no more than five. (Novels are messier, you need to make sure your foreshadowing is in place and all your pointers point right. Some need fewer passes than five, but I don’t allow myself more than five, period.)

There is nothing wrong with that recital piece version of Thirst. Even now, reading over it, I can’t find anything wrong, as such. It’s just that the whole, taken together, has about as much life and appeal as boiled lettuce on a bed of blah. And no, the story didn’t change, just the wording and the punctuation.

I think Kris nailed it. It’s a recital piece and like those, it is played minding all of one’s ps and qs. Which means it has no feeling, no artistic expression.

(There is ONE workshop that shall remain unnamed, which acted as a pass to “get on editors’ desk free” and I often thought that it must be the only reason its graduates do well, because heaven help me, I could tell the graduates without looking at the cover letter [I usually didn’t, till I read the story.] I was never wrong. They produced perfect recital pieces, as exciting as a diet of cream of wheat. (Mind you some of these people kicked over the traces later and are d-mn good writers, but when they were freshly graduated, you could tell.)]

So, now that you’re not writing to please the publishers (or not only) since there’s always the alternate ability of going directly to readers, is this going to stop?

Of course not. Like kiddies getting prepped for a concert in front of all those important people, your own nervousness will work against you. And I bet as we speak there is someone writing an how-to book that starts with “To make a million dollars on Amazon you have to eschew the word “the”” or some other nonsense.

I’m not even going to say you shouldn’t read how-to books. I’ve learned a lot from how-tos, sometimes by going against what they say, of course. (You should keep in mind, though, that most of these how tos are actually “how to get on the editor’s desk” or “how to get in good with the publisher.” Not necessarily how to write in a way that readers enjoy. Look, for the last twenty years, sf/f at least – I don’t think romance? – has been in the grip of a minimalist current. It’s just a current, and the editors swore by it. By and large, I’ve found readers don’t like it though.)

All I’m saying is, when you’re done polishing to the Nth degree, get an original version of your story and read it side by side with the last version, and feel for it. REALLY feel. Is the recital piece really better? Or did it just take all the passion out of it? Did you remove anything that might offend anyone, and thereby make it as exciting as last week’s newspapers?

Consider. Perhaps your first version, with typos corrected, would work better. Or your first version with typos and logic flaws (if you have them. I, of course, never do [Grin]) fixed. Or some combination of both pieces.

But don’t assume your recital piece, because it’s “flawless” is what readers want. You’re not polishing the apple for teach. You’re not trying to get on the editor’s desk. It’s going to take learning a different dance.