Attached please find one (1) very long .mp3 of me reading "The Horrid Glory of its Wings" to my cat.
I think I edited out most of the neighborhood dog noises.
Hope this works.
You know, I kind of like my job.
- Mood:
amused - Music:silence
*which uses the number of main characters who would have to be replaced by ninjas in order to improve the story as a measure of literary merit, and I believe is original to Some Guy (
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lnhammer).For example, Romeo and Juliet would be a pretty good play if you just replaced the title characters with ninjas, so the ninja quotient is two... oh, wait. That's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, isn't it?
Also,
scott_lynch has a very, very funny post on weird emails from random entitled people on the internet who think for some reason they own you. Or maybe it's only funny if you are the sort of person who gets weird emails from random entitled people, but it had me on the floor.(see above, George R. R. Martin is Not Your Bitch.)
Also, apparently Scott (like
tim_pratt and yuki_onna) is doing a Donation Model Book On The Internets. As somebody who is doing a donation-model hyperfiction collaboration on the internets, I support this endeavor.See, the whole thing about this donation-model stuff is that we're trying to figure out new ways to exploit the internet that will get you wonderful stories, and allow us to feed our cats. Writers, as Scott points out, are usually actually Starving Artists, and sometimes we go a long time between paychecks. And the distribution models and so forth are changing--
So basically, right now we're all experimenting, trying to find ways to use our professional skill, acquired through years of practice, to continue making a living. In an era where everything is instantly copyable and DRM pisses people off, it's looking less and less likely that selling paper books for a marginal royalty is going to keep us in pretzels and beer twenty years down the line.
Musicians can go out and gig for a living. But writing in the modern world isn't a performance art, though once upon a time, storytelling was. Maybe the internet is a way to revisit the bardic tradition.
Basically, we're busking. We're trying to give you something awesome, and in the process Not Starve.
Seems like a reasonable trade to me.
Mile and 6/10 in 20:18 this morning, including a big hill and a stop to poop in a garden (The dog, not me. Yes, I picked up after him.).
Now, to shower, eat some banana bread, and invent a serial killer. Yeah, it's a pretty good job some days.
- Mood:
wet - Music: (WNPR - Live Stream)
In unrelated news, apparently it has come around again on the guitar, and it's time to talk about How One Gets Published. Which, honestly, is maybe not the best way to put it, because the object, after all, is not so much Getting Published as Building A Career As A Writer.
However, one step along that path is breaking into print, which is a major milestone in any writer's life, whether we're talking first nationally published short story or first novel, or both. For the purposes of this essay, we're going to talk about novels, with short stories being recognized as a category under that.
And the problem is that I can't give you an easy set of steps to follow to break into print as a novelist, because everybody's path is different. There is still no magic get-published button. But I can give you a series of strategies which either worked for me, or for friends.
1) Write better.
ccfinlay once said to me, "There is always room for excellence," and I think it's one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten. Whatever level you're at as a writer, don't assume it's good enough. I've adopted, as my personal artist's motto, two phrases. One of them is There is no such thing as good enough.2) Develop a voice and a vision.
Art is not about following the rules. (The second part of my motto is, There are no rules. There are only techniques which work or do not work. ) Have something to say, and say it in a manner that is clearly and uniquely your own.
This takes time and practice. Garage bands all sound the same, but I can pick out an unfamiliar Pete Townshend lick in about half a bar.
The infamous million words of shit, and the equally infamous ten-year writer's apprenticeship (mine was closer to twenty, but I've always been slow), are the process by which we develop this voice. Visual artists call it confidence of line; we call it narrative authority. Only practice earns it.
Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.--Ursula K. Le Guin
3) Write, edit, submit.
We all know this part, right? Write stories. Revise them. Submit them to paying short fiction markets or to non-shyster agents (or to those few legitemate novel publishers who still take slush) in a manner consistent with the guidelines of those markets and the generally accepted practices of publishing. (Most markets will have their guidelines online. SFWA also has a page where they discuss the business of writing and proper manuscript format.)
It is not necessary to build a career as a short story writer to sell novels, but a few nice short story sales never hurt. On the other hand, my novel sales really drove my short story career into the major markets: before my first novel sale, almost all my short fiction sales were to teeny tiny indie magazines. (I love teeny tiny indy magazines. I still read slush for one.)
4) Build a peer group.
Find some like-minded writers who are on their way up and stick with them. Learn the ins and outs of the business from them. Share what you learn with them. Compare notes, share experiences, talk about editors and markets.
You need each other: trust me on this. Good places to look are serious online writer's forums (Absolute Write, Baen, Forward Motion) and online workshops (Critters, the OWW). Be aware, however, that there's a lot of misinformation out there. Check what people tell you.
Also, this is the most effective form of networking. No, really. As you become a more accomplished writer, you will find your peer group expanding kind of naturalistically. Knowing people as people is far more effective than trying to insinuate yourself into their circle for business purposes. (They can generally tell if that's what you are after.)
5) Get stubborn.
I first submitted a story to Asimov's when I was a sophomore in high school. I finally sold them one when I was 35. My first published novel was my fourth finished novel--and not the first version of that foruth novel either--and there had been many, many false starts before.
Persistence is vital.
- Mood:
helpful - Music:ZZ Top / Dwight Yoakam - I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide
Alas, it's over already, and I'm trying to get up the energy to shower, dress, and take the dog out. Also trying to decide if I am going to make it to t'ai chi today, and climbing outside, which was the plan. (Actually, it was the plan for Friday, and then Saturday, and now today, and it seems like more and more people keep accreting to the party, which makes me feel less like going. Because I'm self-conscious about sucking in front of even more people, yeah, and also because I'm an introvert and large groups are tiring and I am seriously overpeopled these days.
I should go, to both. I need the exercise and it's good for me.)
There's a great post on Making Light today relating Britain's Got Talent to slushpile reading. If you're one of the would-be writers around, I suggest it might make good reading: it reveals something about the editorial process that Algis Budrys (accidentally) taught me when I was a baby writer. It was an epiphany to learn that the editor was really, despite appearances, on my side.
Still no writing brain available, but that's mostly okay, as any deadlines are also far in the future. Finished the Greg Bear books last night; should probably try to finish the Pterry sometime soon. Reading fiction is pretty much work, these days, but at least it's mostly pleasant work.
This is more or less recharge time, and I need recharge time. I'm forgiven: I just need to convince the guilt monkey that I'm forgiven, and that normal people aren't really expected to operate at 150% 24/7/52. Tomorrow, I should get some admin stuff done, like sending in my passport to be renewed, since I got the photos done, and signing some signature sheets I really need to sign.
For those of you following Shadow Unit on your mobile electronic reading devices, the mighty Arachne Jericho has updated her fan-produced e-reader bootleg. And, of course, there will be a new episode on May 3, Emma Bull's "The Sin Eater." And, of course, rolling content until then, including another vignette in the "Tales of the Monster Zoo" series sometime today or tonight.
Blah blah blah donation-supported internet content licensed by creative commons, blah blah blah. Also, a seriously cool fan community, involving an awful lot of talk about food.
- Mood:
crabby - Music:Alabama 3 - Bullet Proof
Oh, my author's copies of the MMPB of Whiskey & Water finally showed up. So the one of those I owe to a contest winner will be going out with the Piles of Other Books over the next day or two.
V.sorry about the delay.
- Mood:
cheerful - Music:Ricky Nelson - Garden Party
Apparently there's a vast internet kerfuffle about writers turning in books late. Since I just turned one in a year overdue (Chill) for the first and I hope last time in my career, I am moved to say:
Y'all do know we don't get paid until we turn those in, right? It's not like we have a vested interest in being late. We're generally doing our best out here.
What, nobody who reads SFF has ever blown a deadline at work?
I do sympathize with the annoyance of anybody waiting for a book by a favorite author, but it is kind of a first world problem, and probably not worth writing scathing letters over.
- Mood:
irritated - Music:Blitzen Trapper - Black River Killer
jaylake on the fanatical persistence of the successful writer.Seriously. I sold my first novel when I was 33. I wrote my first novel when I was umnine. This stuff ain't easy. It is in fact so hard you can't ever do it all right.
The odds against success as a professional writer are about the same as the odds of success in acting, sports, or any other entertainment industry. You either have to be crazy gifted, crazy lucky, or a crazy hard worker to get anywhere at all, and it helps to be all three. At any given time, maybe a couple of hundred people world wide will be at the top of the profession.
The good news is, we don't have to be perfect. Like artists everywhere, we exist by successive approximations of fail better.
And there's a bit more room to make a living, even if it's sometimes kind of a marginal one, in the farm teams.
- Mood:
truthy - Music:Gram Rabbit - Land Of Jail
Realms of Fantasy is closing.
Chalk another one up for the publishpocalypse. :-(
- Mood:
worried - Music:Andrew Bird - Souverian
tanaise, benpayne offers "Some useful answers to questions about gender inequality: a handy guide for editors."So it's happened again. Once a year or so some chick gets a bee in her bonnet about the whole "more men than women are published" thing.
I know! AGAIN!!!
Wasn't it enough that we pretended to listen last time??
Every year we men try our best to placate them. Following is a useful rejoinder that I recommend.
"Hey, relax. Don't worry. Look at the monkey."
Sometimes, though, that's not enough. So here are a couple of other useful arguments you might like to utilise. I've found they silence even the most ardent whinging...
I'd roll on the floor clutching myself, but it hasn't been swept.
- Mood: amused
- Music:mrph, says the cat. mrph. mrph! merow!
The autopope/rolanni/suricattus pro-writer career path meme
Current Status as of this morning:
Chill: cooking away on the back burner and waiting for revisions
One-Eyed Jack And The Suicide King: cooking away on the back burner and waiting for revisions
The Sea thy Mistress: cooking away on the back burner and waiting for revisions
"Smile": stuck
"The Horrid Glory of its Wings": stuck
"Snow Dragons": stuck
Blind Cave Mermaid story: percolating ;-)
Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 6
Age when I wrote my first story: 6
Age when I got my hands on a typewriter: 9ish? It was an old Royal Portable
Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 16?
Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: Oh, a few hundred.
Age when I sold my first short story: 25
Age when I killed my first market: 25 (Remember that first sale?)
Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for cash money: 67
Age when I first sold a poem: 11
Poems sold: 4
Age when I wrote my first novel: 9 or 10, longhand in cloth-bound notebooks
Age when I sold a first novel: 32
Novels written between age 6 and age 32: 9
Age when I wrote the first novel I sold: 30
Age when that novel was published: 33
Total number of novels written (discounting juvenilia, counting collaborations, counting fixups): 19
Books sold: 19 (17 novels, one fixup, one collection)
Books published or delivered and in the pipeline (including novellas published as independent books): 18
Number of titles in print: 15
Number of titles fallen out of print: 1
Age when a work was first shortlisted for a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy or Stoker award: 36
Age when I first won a Hugo award: 36
Age when I became a full-time novelist: 35
Age when I returned to the day-job because of economic implosion: not yet, but you never know. I contemplate health insurance.
Age now: 37
*Consider this an LJ-meme: if you write professionally, feel free to post your own equivalent of this list. (Obviously you'll need to customize it to track your career path -- but you get the idea.)*
- Mood:
lethargic - Music:A Prairie Home Companion
I quibble a little with one of them, though--Lessa's too much of a bitch to be a technical Mary Sue, and I am personally opposed to the ongoing overuse of the term to mean "any female protagonist."
- Mood: amused
I got done what I needed to get done, which makes me a Happy Bear. Various items returned to Subterranean Press, much work done on the Evil Novel, and a case of sleep soon to be succumbed to. I've made the last two hours of proofreading on sheer willpower. Kept finding stupid word rep and continuity errors, and not a few typos. How many times has this book been gone over now? Anyway, der Druckfehlerteufel obviously visited in the night, bringing with him an assortment of problems.
I fixed all I found, but no doubt more will arise in the night.
(People who have never worked in publishing or film complain about the omnipresence of continuity and editing errors. People who have done it marvel at how few there are. Seriously; try it some time. Until you have, you have no idea.)
In any case, having accomplished what I set out to do
- Mood:
exanimate
BIDEN: He has a point. Cindy turned out to be a vampire.
Andrew Wheeler with more on why some bookstore chains do not carry some books. This is excellent. if you care about the publishing industry at all, go read it.
- Mood:
accomplished
tnh (Teresa Nielsen Hayden) has suffered an apparent heart attack and as of last report is hospitalized but in good spirits, if bored to tears.Universe, just stoppit please?
- Location:for those of you who have not already heard....
- Mood: worried
Here's a nonexhaustive list of authors of speculative fiction writing in or translated into English who are not of European descent.
Nationality is not considered. Many of the writers in question have non-speculative work as well, and in some cases the majority of their work may be non-spec. Magic Realism is considered as a genre unto itself, currently.
The original post where this list was compiled is over a year and a half old. It's here (http://matociquala.livejournal.com/118
(For all your Carl Brandon Society Awards-nominating needs. And also for the recommended reading of anybody who thinks the work of SFF writers of color began and ended with Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany.)
( Behind the cut, out of pity for your scroll bar.... )
Boy, it's kind of nice to see how many screens that fills up.
Now go buy some books.
- Mood:
pleased
Well, Michael Cisco is talking openly now about some problems he's been having with Prime Books. And I'm here to publicly back him up: I have now heard from four or five friends and at least three acquaintances that Prime doesn't pay, doesn't pay on time, or doesn't pay without regular dunning letters.
Ben Peek shares his own stories of deals with Prime here.
Leah Bobet comments on the issue.
Now, what I'm saying here is not "Don't buy Prime Books." They publish any number of amazing authors--Ben Peek, and Michael Cisco, obviously. Sarah Monette. Ekaterina Sedia. The list goes on.
What I'm saying is, it might behoove Prime Books to conduct their business in a professional manner. And until they do--it's damned courageous of Cisco to publicly identify the problem, for the benefit of other authors who may be entertaining an offer from this company.
- Mood:
bouncy - Music:Taj Mahal - She Caught The Katy (and left me a mule to ride)
Various conversations around the con, with booksellers and others, and a little online detective work have led me to believe that the reason that Ink & Steel isn't (a) appearing on bookstore shelves and (b) selling in reasonable quantities, despite fabulous reviews, is that it's not in the order system at a certain major industry distributor under my name or the title, though it can be located by ISBN.
So, I guess Monday we get to see if this can be sorted out, or if we're going to lose the series over what amounts to a data entry error.
Yes, the life of a writer really is this perilous. (No, I'm not terribly frantic about this. Yet. There are a lot of ways this can break, and many of them might wind up proving beneficial to my career in the long run.)
In the mean time, what you can do--you know, if you are so moved--is if you want a copy of Ink & Steel, and you cannot find it at your local bookstore, write down the ISBN (978-0451462091), go in with it, and ask them to order that book. You might also point out that it's third in a series and there's a computer glitch at work, and thus the book is not being auto-ordered. If you felt like it, I mean.
I have the best job on Earth, baby.
- Mood:
indescribable
Authors feel pressure to produce a book a year may affect the quality of their work. (Catty comment about the quality of Patricia Cornwell's recent work heroically redacted.)
My current goal is to find a way to live off a a mere two books a year, because that seems like a pace I could sustain without killing myself.
Maybe I should start writing thrillers.
- Mood:
rushed
And speaking of which:
I will write this five hundred times on the internets:
The scene does not have to be perfect. The scene has to be written.
I can fix it on the second draft. I can fix it on the second draft. I can fix it on the second draft.
Right. Beginner mind. Just because you aren't good enough to do this, and never will be, doesn't mean you can't do it.
Trust the story. It's always worked before.
1782 words on Bone & Jewel Creatures this morning, to a total of 18,146. And it's looking like the novella will come in very tidily around where it needs to, because there's just the zombie apocalypse and the climactic space battle to go, now. And some angst and pathos. I'm hoping for around 25,000 words, which would be just perfect, I think. And still might get itself written by the end of the year. Tomorrow and Sunday are scheduled as Word Days, and I plan to get as much done as I can.
I have figured out some things about the villain, and some other things will have to wait until the second draft.
- Mood:
optimistic - Music:a working silence.
I am, in fact, a bottom-level slush reader, which means I get my share of what comes in over the transom, unfiltered and uncensored.
When I reject something, I try to explain why. Even if it is rejected in the first couple of paragraphs, it's generally because I know what the problem is, and I know why we won't be buying the story. The urge behind this, believe it or not, is charitable. One does not learn in the absence of feedback.
The professional thing to do when one is confronted with a rejection is to read it, shrug, internalize any useful comments, ignore any crazy talk, and go write another story.
The unprofessional thing to do is this:
>Dear [Author Name Redacted];
Thank you for sending us "[Redacted]," but I'm afraid this
isn't quite right for Ideomancer. I needed something more to draw me
into the story than exposition, no matter how clever the world you
created was, and I found this story lacked conflict and a stake for
the narrator.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Bear
Dear Ms. Bear:
You know, I have to take exception to your comment. It just shows that you didn't bother to read all of my story. It is not all exposition, though it is heavy in the first person format and I was going for an O. Henry feel, which you obviously don't care for. But don't say it's "all" exposition unless you read the entire story and actually felt that way about it. Considering the feedback I received from Critique Partners before I sent this story out, if you had read the entire story, you wouldn't have made that remark. People bawled over this story because it touched them. And you're telling me it's all exposition. This tells me you never finished it.
I know you're busy. I'm not saying you should read all of everything that comes across your computer screen, but in my opinion, you shouldn't bother offering personal comments on other writer's work unless you have taken the time to read all of what they have written. Otherwise just send a nice form letter saying it's not what Ideomancer needs right now, thanking them for their submission, please try again in the future. Form letters aren't bad unless they're badly written (such as the ones by SF&F that say casually, "I'll give it a pass").
You're an intelligent writer. You should understand these things by now. Please do better next time.
Sincerely,
[Redacted]
First of all, if you're going to argue with a rejection, don't.
Second, if you are going to argue with a rejection, don't.
Third? If you are going to argue with a rejection, make sure you are arguing with what the rejection actually said, and not your projections thereunto. Also, don't put scare quotes around words that don't exist in the note you are ostensibly quoting.
Fourth, editors talk to each other.
Fifth, yes, I will tell John who can't remember the name of the magazine he works for, and who doesn't approve of his grammar.
Sixth, Ideomancer has a database in which we enter the name and author of every story, its disposition, etc. It has a comments field.
What do you all suppose the comment field of this author's story now says?*
(The UnSub's letter reproduced above for teaching/demonstration and educational purposes.)
*Hint: It's not "[redacted] is a real joy to work with, and should be encouraged to resubmit."[Redacted]
First of all, if you're going to argue with a rejection, don't.
Second, if you are going to argue with a rejection, don't.
Third? If you are going to argue with a rejection, make sure you are arguing with what the rejection actually said, and not your projections thereunto. Also, don't put scare quotes around words that don't exist in the note you are ostensibly quoting.
Fourth, editors talk to each other.
Fifth, yes, I will tell John who can't remember the name of the magazine he works for, and who doesn't approve of his grammar.
Sixth, Ideomancer has a database in which we enter the name and author of every story, its disposition, etc. It has a comments field.
What do you all suppose the comment field of this author's story now says?*
(The UnSub's letter reproduced above for teaching/demonstration and educational purposes.)
.
- Mood: amused
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