John Scalzi puts it better than I can.
I’m going to stay off the Twitter, though. I really can’t stand two halves of my Twitter stream violently disagreeing with one another. It makes me want to shoot myself in the head.
P.S.: It’s Macmillan, not any other spelling or capitalization.
… 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.
I’m rolling really badly of late.
However, I will note that my favorite pundit, Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish)1 has finally linked to my favorite semi-pundit SF writer, John Scalzi (Whatever). In particular, to this post:
More at the link. It’s delightful and, as far as I can tell, true.
Another thing; Alex Massie comments on American conservatism:
I just have to say: THIS.
At the moment, I have the temper of an extremely angry badger who’s had its set invaded, so I would probably rip into anyone who decided to comment in an upset, “you’re not being faaaaiiiir” manner on this post, because I have about that much patience right now. Thus I am closing comments, because blood is hard to wash out of the upholstery.
If you feel extremely slighted, go email Andrew Sullivan or comment at Scalzi’s Whatever or The Daily Beast, because I’m sure that they’ll totally not stomp on you there, whereas I will just rip your throat out, because I have no sense of humor.
I hope it shows, because politics is perhaps one of the most prominent areas where I care only a little and don’t get all het up about. (Unless the world is ending OMG.)
ETA: my iPhone chopped off the rest of this post. Here we go again: for serious political commentary, go visit John Scalzi. He’s got a better sense of humor about it, too.
Politics: it gets talked about if I roll a 1 on the topic d20, and even then rerolls are totally allowed.
Fall is Frenzy Project Season where I work, so when I saw this cover randomly pop up in my RSS feed last week, I thought it was just a joke cover.
Apparently it’s not a joke.
John Scalzi and his readers make great fun of this cover, and they should, but somehow I’m not surprised that DAW eventually upended itself in the cover dustbin, for all that it’s an imprint of one of publishing’s big five houses, Penguin.
Scalzi puts it best:
So… who all is in this anthology? I have no idea, and there’s no ToC out there yet, though when I do find out, I’m so posting it here. The thing is a Greenberg, though, so it stands a 50/50 chance of not sucking carrot entirely.
Or something.
ETA: Also see comments on Jeff VanderMeer’s Ecstatic Days.
ETA: I see some people are upset that this cover is being poked at, so here is the awesome Pixelfish’s graphic design critique.
Thank you, Cheryl Morgan, for your grace and frankness under fire when responding to some of the, shall we say, tinfoil hat fans in the comments.
Thank you, John Scalzi, for your wisdom and humor and also your very succinct reprisal of Adam Roberts’ little note to fandom.
Thank you, John Picacio, for your wonderful rebuttal of Roberts’ rather feeble attempt at art critique.
Adam Roberts, I knew your name was familiar from somewhere. I actually don’t like your writing, but I always thought, maybe I’ll give wossname another try after a year or so.
Now I’ll remember your name a bit better so as to avoid it in the future.
Update:
Thank you, Nick Mamatas, for making me laugh about some of the ensuing wankery. I already ponied up for you to review G.I. Joe, though! So I’m not namin’ the perceived father of stream-of-consciousness writing here.
I actually do like the dead dude’s writings, as emo as they sometimes are, and would toss some of his classics into the YA section.
Update 2:
Contrary to perceptions of some folks, me and my card-carrying fan friends actually aren’t a group of Midwestern Conservative White Males.
Most of us are pretty liberal, one of us is an out and out libertarian, one of us is actually a Buddhist (it’s not me), half of us are atheists, and while over half of us do come from the Midwest, we left it for various reasons that tend not to, um, pool us into whatever the “Generic Middle America” taste is, which by the way, tends not to touch upon SF/F very much.
Half of us are women. And many apologies, but a quarter of us are non-white.
Most everyone has a college degree, and one guy is so wise he should’ve had one in philosophy long ago.
All of us hate Sarah Palin. None of us are interested in the elitist-versus-non-elitist game. If an “elitist” writes a book we like, we read it. My general sense of fandom is that it’s mostly like us, small sampling that we are.
So, sorry about nominating for the novels that we did, but you can’t blame it on us being Conservatives-with-a-capital-C.
I still count myself as new to the ways of Science Fiction. More experience with regards to Fantasy, though not by much. I strive a bit these days to expand my horizons with regard to the genres.
Still, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will never become a true SF/F fan in many eyes.
Mainly it’s because I’m too laid-back about my literature tastes. Oh, I can analyze, and I do enjoy the process of analysis to a worrying extent, but I read much more for raw enjoyment; I’m not that much into the genre-specific elements. I enjoy SF/F’s speculative features, and I enjoy, say, the low fantasy world of Song of Ice and Fire, the quirky suburban fantasy world of Harry Potter, the sensible far-future world of Old Man’s War and sequels, the asplody fiery don’t-look-at-the-science-too-hard world of New Trek….
But when I think about it, those elements are secondary. They’re stage and scenery and sometimes pretty CGI effects, which is not to say that they don’t matter, but to say that they are simply a cigar. Themes and ideas and so on… these are all good and well, and that sort of thing is a large slice of any genre—including “mainstream”—pie, but is a particularly huge slice for SF and F. But I don’t care about it.
That doesn’t mean I like everything that’s considered way too popular for its own good—I dislike Twilight, for instance. It just means I care more for character work, for nigh-complete immersion, and, it has to be said, for a plot that moves faster than I can turn the pages. I like traditional SF visionaries like Iain Banks on the strength of his character trickery and plotting sadism, and his speculative stuff—which is of extremely high quality—is, well, like a nice side dish. Or not so nice, at times.
I’m the kind of fan who is often regarded as a danger to higher literary tastes by more experienced fans.
I’m the kind of fan responsible for nominating the current Hugo Best Novel short list.
Indeed, I’d read almost all of them a couple months before the nomination process even started, and I don’t even wander very far in my grazing. And, if I can be considered a fan at all, my friends at work are also all like this. We are, I suppose, Card-Carrying Fans rather than the real deal.
We don’t vote in the Hugos, or at least we didn’t until recently. It’s one thing to joke and pal around over the Badass Star Trek, or start a betting pool on who’s gonna die in the next installment of Song of Ice and Fire. But perhaps it’s another thing to try to vote on quality when we don’t know what quality, technically, is, unless it’s “stuff we like.”
But we don’t all stick to the more mainstream taste. We just don’t know all the ins and outs of tracking down new stuff, and we aren’t dedicated enough to find the time to do so. Oh, we’ll pick up odd authors we like when we can find free copies of stuff. Recommendations are all, well, nice and well. But give us a free first volume of a series. Give us a free short story or novella or novelette. Let us watch stuff on Hulu. We’ll figure out what we like, and then ruthlessly spend hard-earned money on getting the rest of it, including the expensive commemorative copies and the sculpted collectible bookends.
Well, ever since folks like Cheryl Morgan said, “You don’t have to have read everything, that’s why getting more and more people to vote is important,” and ever since folks like John Scalzi started providing the voter packet of free books to registered voters….
Nowadays, we feel quite comfortable saying to those upset fans morally outraged about the selections for Best Novel: “Suck it.” If it’s a popular vote award, then damn straight we’re going to vote.
And if you want us to change our opinions, give us free stuff and make it easy to find. The best part, indeed, about free stuff is that we can mass-recommend it to our even more laid-back friends who mostly stop at Harry Potter and The DaVinci Code. When we really love authors, even really odd ones out of the pile who may never make it to the final tables at the Hugos, we want to share that love, like any true fan.
Even though if you don’t think we are.
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.
In a previous post I stated that the only writing book I pay attention to is John Scalzi’s You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop.
Which is not the whole truth. The truth is that before my reductionism came some books that laid the land for specific terrain relevant to writing. Like lots of other writers, I’ve read a number of books on the topic. I’ve found that my tastes, and the most useful books to me, were by very pragmatic writers. The kind of writers who are really serious about making money from writing—but not gimmicky books. If it was pragmatic craft, it made the list.
So this is a pragmatic list. Some books not listed here that you possibly should read, such as Donald Maas’ Writing the Breakout Novel, I would highly recommend.
But after you get the basics, as it were.
Buy: Kindle • Amazon • Feedbooks [free]
Every writer will tell you to buy this, except for a few academic linguists who want you to buy consider The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language instead (only $170 with Amazon’s discount!).
There’s a certain coolness associated with being so anti-Strunk, but dude, it’s all about minimizing the amount of words you bore your damn reader with. When you learn that, then you can play around with the decor without reading like someone who thinks that Victorian claustrophobia1 is all the rage of modern decorating.
Buy: Amazon
I think all writers should try writing non-fiction, including those who are committed to writing the Great American Novel (or the next 20-book successor to The Wheel of Time). And non-fiction can more easily get you money, and even encourage you to explore fields you might not have otherwise, or at least without pay. A point that’s made a few times in the Coffee Shop book.
Zinsser gives you tips and advice on non-fiction in general, as well as the different types of non-fiction (interviewing, business versus sports versus technical writing, memoir, critique/reviews) and common sense attitudes for writing (“The Tyranny of the Final Product”, for instance).
Also, Zinsser’s introdution is partly a nice way to de-romanticize writing. My experience of writing is, these days, very much like his: painful, but addictive, which is a little sick if you think about it properly.
I need to review this particular book again, in light of recent events.
Buy: Amazon
In many ways, Swain is the pragmatic double of Zinsser, except this time in the arena of fiction. His advice fits any type of fiction, as opposed to specific genres. This is the book I wish I’d had in my high school creative writing class. (And one that doesn’t cost over $100 at that.) Also, his advice assists with narrative non-fiction (think immersive memoirs, written like stories rather than like, well, memoirs).
I also think all writers should try to write at least some fiction. Fortunately, and possibly unfortunately, many already do or very much desire to.
Buy: Amazon
Because I know of so few fiction writers who want to self-select themselves out of the slush pile and into the permanent circular bin. This is short, easy to read, has interesting examples, little exercises of dubious but okay natures. A little cost to improve your readability and chances by quite a lot, and help you get over the first bar.2
Buy: Amazon • Webscriptions
And of course this. I consider this the king of the heap, and the others to be well-tried advisers.
But that’s just me.
Right now I’m writing what’s probably the most difficult review I’ve had to do yet. Last week’s review of Federations was quite difficult, and this week’s is actually harder, in that it’ll be quite easy for me to put my foot in my mouth.
And the consequences of that would be pretty bad, I’m guessing, so there’s a bit of pressure. If I can get through this, I suspect I’ll have reached some kind of landmark in reviewing, and can cover a certain manga bookended series… but never mind that.
Today’s linkage (some of which may be a bit old):
John Scalzi offers some thoughts on D-Day’s passage from memory into history, links to a touching CNN interview with one of the veterans from that day, and the comment thread is as usual starting to pick up.
Why is it that bloggers like Andrew Sullivan can come up with more interesting and informative titles than hard-core news journalists? Whose jobs used to depend on that kind of thing?
Actually, this is in the interest section, so probably less hard-core. Sullivan links to New York Times: Findngs – In That Tucked Tail, Real Pangs of Regret?
Unique title, informative as whut? However, the article is quite good.
The Republicans like to think of themselves as the party of Reagan, but this article posits that it’s more the party of Nixon. You poor bastards. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish.
Not one, but two: “The Mystery of the Dog’s Ball”, which isn’t as bad as you think—maybe—it became Dumb Witness later in life; and “The Capture of Cereberus”, which would have completed The Labours of Hercules, Poirot’s last 12 cases. (He’s one of mystery’s great detectives who died, so this is more a reference to “last in his life” rather than “last in Christie’s life” although that appears to have been true as well.)
I love the subtitle of this article: “Fan taught himself to read author’s ‘bloody awful handwriting’ to unlock mystery contained within 73 notebooks at Devon house”.
HarperCollins has the ball on this one.
Amazon’s Kindle Blog
