Here’s the problem that’s been blocking me, serial-wise. I want to get three of them out (yes, three, it’s a bit optimistic, isn’t it). But I can’t do it because I can’t write well in a linear fashion.
Eta: cut.
When interacting with people on the internet these days, I do my best to remember these tenets:
1) Will what I’m about to say end up on Fandom Wank, and not in a good way? If so, what I’m about to express is RAEG!!1!! and not legitimate anger.
2) The only proper way to react to RAEG!!!11!! is to grab the popcorn and wait for the show to appear on Fandom Wank.
ETA: These rules also apply to stupid as well as RAEG.
Being able to discern what falls under RAEG!!!1!!!1! and “rage” means hanging out on Fandom Wank for a while and processing/analyzing what you see (make sure you don’t fall into RAAAEEEEG!!!11!1!! because wanking on wanks definitely falls under tenet #1).
Make sure you’re not drinking anything during this time.
For historical study, check out the Fandom Wank Wiki.
I have some advantages and disadvantages when it comes to the publishing game.
The biggest advantage is that I don’t write to live; it’s something I do on the side of a healthy and interesting job.
The biggest disadvantage is that my wonderful job results in a direct conflict of interest when it comes to entering a publishing contract with publishers.
This pushes me out of the traditional arena, effectively, where people are quite welcome to point and laugh, and they should do so. They’re quite justified.
But I have a plan. Although Phase A, Get Better at Writing, is still continuing.
For Phase B, is to get work out there of a suitably high enough quality into ebook formats that I generate myself (another big advantage; I don’t have to pay others exorbitant amounts to do this). I’m not going to try to get into circulation through the normal way, with physical books and book store distribution, because that’s not feasible for one author.
For Phase C, let the marketing fall where it may. Mostly it would occur via networking and word of mouth, and hopefully during my trip through phases A and B I will have been able to get advice and… mumblemumblemumble ssszzzzzz
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So a lot of people have heard by now of the RWA removing a member of Dear Author’s bloggers from their associates roster over the #romfail tag on Twitter.
I think quite a few authors in the RWA complained about #romfail because, not only was it a negative review tag, but it was also on Twitter—and that aspect, they feel, threatens their livelihood far more than just reviews on a website, even one with as high traffic as Dear Author.
Some people have come onto the Dear Author comment thread with remarks along the lines of, “You totally deserved this.” A lot more people view this as a stupid decision, an overreaction, even if RWA is entitled to execute such an action.
It’s not about whether RWA can do such a thing. It’s about whether such a reaction is so over-the-top about such a menial thing that it calls into question the reasoning skills of those who made the decision.
In my opinion, the RWA’s decision is entirely over the top. But I’m not surprised, and I think the board had to do it, even if they themselves would disagree.
The thing is, any group has vocal members who will take grievances as far as possible over incidents that threaten their ego, whether or not it would impact their business. If there are a lot of complaints, then majority rule has to take over, because the majority of the body believes it to be a grievance that needs to be remedied in such and such a manner.
A lot of people are saying that RWA is headed by idiots, and at least SFWA wouldn’t do that.
Don’t count on it. In a similar situation, they might have to.
For the past several months I’ve been waiting for the ax to fall from SFWA. I’m not a member of SFWA—I just write for Tor.com. I was critical of an SFWA member outside of a review, the result of which was enough to require a legal opinion. And the result of which caused me a lot of mental grief, because my PTSD likes to make fucking weird associations, and I had formerly admired to some degree this member.
It wasn’t big, it didn’t last long, but SFWA would probably have to come down on me with a statement if somehow enough complaints are ever registered. Despite the general awesomeness of the SFWA board, they would have to do it. They can never assure me that they wouldn’t do it. And unlike Jane, I might get fired if they did so.
This is an unlikely scenario. But it was enough to make me feel discouraged about writing for Tor.com. In a way, I’m writing my current PTSD in Fiction series on Tor.com because it’s a way to help me get over that mental block. And you know, I can’t help reviewing a Terry Pratchett book.
I guess what I’m saying is: it’s not fair, but sometimes things happen because of the way everyone is joined up together.
And in the end, one has to decide how much such things matter to one with respect to deciding how they’ll write in the future. For Jane at Dear Author, I know her answer: it won’t affect her at all. And that is awesome.
For me, I don’t know. I will keep writing for Tor.com, though perhaps I’ll never again be critical again outside of my reviews (which almost everyone seems to agree upon as fair ground, with the exception of Twitter reviews with a fail tag, apparently, in the case of some portion of RWA’s membership).
Or maybe I will be critical again. My brain hasn’t yet decided on whether it’ll keep bringing the random fuckery every time I think of doing so.
I don’t even know. And the cold medication is not helping.
… for gods’ sakes, don’t give other people $20,000 to do it. Or even $600.
And especially, if they say they’re helping you to self-publish, you definitely should not give them royalties. Especially if all they do is sell you expensive copies of your work to try to sell yourself.
Real self-publishing: the money made forwards is all yours. That’s part of the fucking point.
ETA: John Scalzi sez it better.
Very rarely anymore do I feel like giving writing critique or notes of technique outside of my reviews for Tor.com. I make an exception in this case, however, because this will otherwise show up repeatedly in my reviews of certain series books, should I ever get to them.
There are quite a few series out there using the first person or nearly exclusive single third-person limited, which is quite fine with me (it can annoy others, but I’m not one of them). Coupled with a desire to keep a series enterable at any point, however, and all too often the combination results in what I call The Self-Introduction of Doom.
In the Self-Introduction of Doom, the main viewpoint character starts reeling through a blaze of who they are, what they are, the quirks their unique career and lives have taken, their motivations, their sometimes supernatural neighbors, every important turning point and event in the last X books, and sometimes repeating a briefer version of same for their closest compadre(s). This can go on for pages.
It’s rather like an interview with the reader where the character presents his or her or its resume/C.V., and the reader is left to evaluate this.
Let me tell you honestly: it’s boring. We, the readers, are being informed of the character’s personality and past; it’s telling, not showing.
Here’s a comparison from real life.
There are times when I, a programmer deep in the bowels of a company whose interview routines are typically at the difficulty level of Seattle’s Big Three, must interview candidates. Despite the enormous potential for interesting conversations, I am horribly bored stiff through most of them.
This is because, no matter how many buzz words or team experiences or leadership experiences or even job experiences my interviewee tells me about, they all mean nothing if the candidate cannot demonstrate their experience. It’s not just simple coding questions about recreating word count programs: I will ask architecture, design, OO, debugging, systems integration, testing questions. I develop and elaborate based on how the candidate is doing. I am not a hardass, either; some of my colleagues are even tougher.
But someone who can walk away from the standard script, who can think outside the box, who can flexibly engage with the problems—indeed, who can take the criticism I levy at then when I challenge their answers and methodology—those people we hire.
Similarly for readers trying to drop into the middle of a series.
Do not be the candidate who keeps referring to his experience and never, ever shows me an iota of their ability away from their curriculum vitae.
Show me what this character can do, as if this were the first time I was meeting them (because it often is). Don’t even start the Self-Introduction of Doom because I will not care until your character has completed showing me some damn mettle.
This is difficult and demanding. I know. I am difficult and demanding. But I’m the one who needs to end up buying the book in order to even consider a review at all—I do get some subsidies, but publishers will rarely give out eArcs. And in a way I’m glad, because then I also have a customer point of view on my reading.
For those curious: I will almost never cut an interview short1 , and I will read the full chapter the Kindle store offers as a sampler, but despite my general leniency in this area, my rejection rate is still high.
So it goes.
Sorry for being evil. There are too many programmers, too many books, not that much money, and definitely not enough time.
Update: Corrected spelling. Someday may iPhone get a spellchecker….
I wrote a bit about narrative non-fiction previously.
I actually hadn’t known that I was doing narrative non-fiction until someone told me.
Examples of narrative non-fiction that, on minor success, encouraged me to spend more of my energy in this little space of storytelling.
I’ll tell you a secret, writer to writer:
It’s through narrative self-memoir that I’m learning to write fiction.
Anybody (including me in my more drunk-on-despair moments) can spill their guts on the page It’s another matter to fashion it into something immersive, identifiable for others. Essays can do it, recollective meandering can do it, but real narrative does it much, much better. It’s writing stories without the telling lies part, after all, and stories are like a drug to the human mind seeking entertainment.
Narrative memoir is like training wheels.
You have your memories to build off. This is easier than manufacturing histories for that purpose, whether set in the real world or a fantastic or far-future one.
Many of your memories will be vague; and probably for the better, because in a fiction parallel those are not what make for good scenes (cruel as that may be) though they can provide general theme.
And some of your memories will be vivid. They are your story points; your mind has automatically filtered them for you. A few are the most vivid; they are your climaxing and finishing scenes.
The main character, if you are honest with yourself, if you are even the smallest bit aware, will most certainly not be perfect. Your imperfections are what distinguish you.
In trying to understand your life scenes, you will also be motivated to try to understand the other people involved. After all, most of your vivid memories involve other people, for good or ill, and you learn nothing from making them shells. Not even the cruelest.
Also, it is somewhat less scary to write about others because their representations in your mind originate strongly from outside. Later, when you have time, you can come more to terms with the scarier revelation that even these are your own creations, are you. And then you understand better how a writer can hold all different kinds of people inside themselves.
As you link scenes to each other and try to establish connections and motivations and mood, you go through the same gyrations as any fiction writer, even if the source of the building blocks are different.
That’s just some of it.
And yes, you gain a measure of introspection into your own life. It can be perceived as egotistic to turn so inwards, but I think the best writers of any storytelling stripe know themselves better than most.
My life has generally been a nasty one. You may think this is an advantage, but I think it goes against itself as well. It takes a lot more preparation and soul-searching to find moments that aren’t simply drudgeries of emo and pain. To find the common shared ground with an audience and highlight the differences, and to show the changes—good fiction does that sort of thing too.
And yes, this breaks a cardinal rule in some people’s books: the conceit of writing for others. Pure art is done for yourself and only yourself.
However, I do not seek pure art.
I want to understand.
I think in the process of understanding I will lay some demons to rest.
The side product just happens to be better fiction skills. Much of the advice I read long ago and took on faith now ring more sharply.
I have to be able to move on, though. But I think, on finishing these little bittersweet stories, I’ll be able to.
And, the gods willing, begin sweeping my way through the evening of my life before the last and final hours of the dark nights.
I will get better.
I get this impression from people not in my industry that they think we get paid well automatically.
It’s… kind of not true.
So I decided to share my experiences (some of them fortunately vicarious, others less so) about the tech industry in relation to this whole “assuming you’re getting paid” business, in the hopes that if it’s apparent that in one of the most well-paying industries in the world, assumptions are unwise, that it’ll be easier to see how it applies to writing, which is nowhere near as well-paying.
That’s all. I think I’m done for the day.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been keeping tabs on pragmatic Writing for Money articles on le web, and these are the must-reads I’ve come up with.
Of course, I always go for the snark.
Three from Nick Mamatas:
Freelance Writing Money, Part I: How To Find Freelance Writing Work:
Look for it.
In 2005, for the Prattshaw project Flytrap, I wrote an essay about freelance writing and suggested that if you could not make a living as a freelancer it is because your standards were too high, both for what counted as writing and what counted as a living. A couple of years later, a new science fiction writer (he’d debuted in Baen’s Universe) wrote me a letter of thanks. He happened to be reading the little zine in a hospital hallway while on the other side of the wall his wife was giving birth. At that moment, he decided to get together a few pieces of writing he’d completed in the hope of getting out of the job he had in a warehouse. He wrote to say that he credited my article with his new gig writing computer software manuals, which meant more money for his family.
Freelance Writing Money, Part II: Writing For Non-Publication:
Be the writer in your social circle.
If you spend a lot of time hanging out with other writers, going to your little writer’s group, and not talking to anyone who isn’t fascinated with writing, writing, writing, you can stop reading now. Sucker.
Remember that our goal here is fast money for writing, not a living doing technical, business, or commercial writing, which is great and pays a lot (I have friends who bill $85-$125 an hour for pamphlets and such) because it just takes a long time to break in. And speaking of suckers, people have degrees in this dumb crap sometimes these days. Though, like a lot of computing gigs, business writing is one of the highly paid jobs that one can snag without a degree.
And, of course, Freelance Writing Money, Part III OR Shocklines Post of the Day!, which is probably one of the better examples of “ads” you should avoid.
Here’s a recent post from John Scalzi’s Whatever:
Dear Writers: For God’s Sake, Don’t Assume You’ll Get Paid:
An interesting and frankly alarming thing in the comment thread of the last post. I noted in the last post that a major issue I saw with the proposed F&SF online writing workshop, which offers the chance that work in the workshop could get published in the magazine, is that there was no indication that those chosen stories would then be paid for. To which several people in the comment thread said something along the lines of “oh, well, that wasn’t a problem for me, because I just assumed there would be payment.”
Jesus, people.
Never assume as a writer that you’re going to get paid.
And now for something not quite completely different: the Washington Post recent scandal about WaPo canceling their plan to get funding from, um, lobbyists.
Addendum:
From Mark Tisdale’s comment on the Whatever thread, here’s a YouTube clip from Dreams with Sharp Teeth, wherein Harlan Ellison talking about getting paid:
Addendum 2:
For people looking for much linked coverage of the WaPo scandal, Politics Daily has the scoop.
Amazon’s Kindle Blog
