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May 15th, 2008
09:51 pm - Slush Gripe of the Day
Slick, evil businessman villains.
I don't know how many high-level executives most people have met. I've had the pleasure of meeting a few. My husband has had the opportunity to meet quite a few more. Overall I've found them to be impressive, intelligent, considerate people, and while none of them is perfect, I have a hard time imagining any of them spending undue time greasing their hair and adjusting their tie in the bathroom mirror, plotting to take down rival execs, or callously looking down their noses at the human damage incurred by their business decisions.
In my experience, that's not the kind of thing the guys in charge do. It's the kind of thing clueless, ambitious punks who are going to get fired next month do.
I don't know... maybe I've just never met the wrong kind of exec. But I think it's more likely that writers are venting their frustrations with Big Business by making the guys running it visible personifications of evil... and that just rubs me the wrong way.
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May 12th, 2008
07:23 am - Security Items
Most kids pick something fuzzy as their security item: a snuggly blanket, a plush teddy bear, or whatever. My daughter appears to have selected a multicolored kiddie backpack in which she keeps her swimsuit.
She wears it approximately 10 hours per day, and at night she lays it carefully beside her bed so she can find it in the morning. If we forget to lay it by her bed, she wakes me up in the night to go look for it.
Over the last few weeks, her swimsuit--the symbol of all happiness and of her favorite leisure activity--has been joined in the backpack by random knick-knacks, a DVD, and a few favorite books. The backpack has become concerningly heavy. She has also added the accessories of a pink baseball cap and two bead necklaces which, while not quite as beloved as the backpack, nevertheless accessorize most of her daily outfits.
The backpack may not be a true security item. She does not immediately reach for it when sad, and so far we've never had a tantrum when it had to stay in the car during an outing. But it has indisputably acquired the status of Esteemed Favorite Toy.
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May 8th, 2008
09:26 pm - The Distinction Between Story and Manuscript
Someone wise (and probably famous) once pointed out that there is a difference between the story being told and the actual manuscript of words used to present it. As a novice writer, that came as a revelation to me. Up until that moment, story and manuscript were inseparable in my mind. The manuscript was the story, wasn't it?
Well, no. I'm not going to explain this as well as Famous-Author-Whose-Name-I-Can't-Remember, but basically, the story is all of the information about the characters, their backstory, what happens to them, and how events play out. The manuscript is the actual sequence of words used to present that story to the reader.
Most people--especially at the outset of their careers--tend to focus heavily on either story or manuscript. (Kate Wilhelm calls these people storytellers and wordsmiths, respectively.) But the truth is, both the story and the manuscript must be effective to sell a piece of fiction.
This is at the top of my mind right now because BU re-opened to slush submissions last week. I see so very many stories that are bursting with potential in one aspect but heavily lacking in the other. And believe me, there's nothing more irritating to a slush reader than to stumble through a story with a knock-em-dead premise because the information was delivered in the wrong order, with klunky sentences. Conversely, there are some manuscripts that would be a pure joy to read... except that nothing's actually happening during all that flawless prose, and boredom quickly sets in.
Now, I'll grant that there are probably exceptions to this distinction. Although I can't recall one to mind, I'm quite certain I've read a piece or two in which the manuscript was the story; in which everything that happened was only interesting because of the context in which the manuscript placed it. But by and large, the two are separable, and I think all aspiring authors would be wise to work on both of them.
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May 5th, 2008
03:55 pm - Weird Story-Sparking Moment
Just now my daughter asked for a blanket to snuggle in while she was watching tv. When I went into her bedroom to get it, I found that she had somehow managed to crawl out of bed this morning while leaving the blanket undisturbed. The result was a little two-year-old shaped blanky wrapped cozily around the hollow space where she had been sleeping, a silent reminder of the Aubrey-that-had-been.
My immediate reaction was: Awww, cute....
But then my writer-brain provided a different context. What if a mother returned home from a traumatic several-day stint at the hospital which had ended in her daughter's death, and stumbled upon this same sight during her first few minutes in the house? Oh, the pathos!
(My third thought, of course, was: INVISIBLE BABY! I have got to talk my muse off of chocolate.)
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May 3rd, 2008
10:32 am - The next time an airline loses your luggage...
Go out and buy emergency clothing and toiletries right away. Keep the receipts. The airlines are required by law to compensate you for necessary expenditures, and there's no telling whether they'll actually deliver the suitcase as quickly as they claimed they would. (If it sounds like I'm speaking from experience, I am.)
In other news:
1) My parents sent me butterscotch chips and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from the States. Happy happy happy!
2) The Villa Diodati Workshop was a blast. I really ought to write up a blog post on it. Or several.
3) My son's kindergarten is closed for renovations this week. I am slowly going insane.
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April 21st, 2008
04:19 pm - Do Agents Have Clout?
Fascinating little discussion by Richard Curtis.
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April 20th, 2008
09:06 pm - Living with Little People
You know, mundane family life is far more bizarre than any of the fairy stories I wrote when I was a teenager.
In the Fulda household, Teddy Bears wear diapers, canned food is God's own construction material, and breakfast cereal is a projectile weapon. Window-washing is a coveted privilege, and little chocolate eggs are far more valuable than flatscreen entertainment systems.
Oh, yes, and failure to come running the first time the four-your-old yells "Mommy!" is a capital crime.
I'd complain about the working conditions but, you know: there's something wondrous about living in a place where happiness comes packaged in the form of edible necklaces and shoes with little lights that blink when you walk.
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April 18th, 2008
12:38 pm - New Fiction
New stories by Sheryl Nantus, Joy V. Smith, Matt Spencer, Samantha Henderson and Carmelo Rafala, Sarah Wagner and Sue Burke.
I particularly enjoyed Samantha Henderson's The Black Hole in Auntie Sutra's Handbag, which is an intriguing combination of unexplained weirdness and rich family politics.
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April 17th, 2008
11:37 am - Self-Promotion Turned Inward
I'm not going to talk about self-promotion in the typical sense. (Robert J. Sawyer and JA Konrath have pretty much got that covered.)
It seems to be fairly common knowledge among writers these days that sitting on your haunches waiting for your publisher to promote your book is unwise. Not all books get a major publicity push from the publisher.
This is not a criticism toward publishers. They've got limited resources. I think it's reasonable and acceptable for them to pick a couple of titles to push heavily while others languish in the pile of "available for purchase, but not heavily advertised". Yeah, it sucks to be the author of one of those latter books, especially when it's your heart and soul on those pages, but I don't think the publishing company is ethically wrong to make those distinctions.
I do think that, in the rush to pick up slack and promote their novels, authors may be tempted to overlook one of the most important promotional opportunities they will ever get: the opportunity to promote themselves within their publishing company, to become one of those lead titles that gets the heavy publicity push.
Please understand that I'm speaking theoretically here. I have very little experience with the way internal publishing company dynamics actually work. But I know how human dynamics work, and I know if you can make yourself a living, breathing person in the eyes of decision-makers, rather than just a name on a piece of paper, your book is likely to get more attention.
Until yesterday, I basically assumed that once I've convinced an editor to buy my book, my job interacting with the publishing company is done. Oh, sure, maybe there'd be some line edits, a press release package or two, or some other minimal communication, but nothing that actually required my full attention. They bought the book, didn't they? Isn't that enough?
A recent conversation with a friend changed my mind. I don't know how I'm going to do it yet, but you can rest assured that once I've sold my novel, I'm going to give interactions with the publishing company top priority. I will not make a pest of myself. But I will seek out and foster human connections with people beyond my editor. And I will do my dangdest to convince them that my book is the next, best, greatest thing on the planet.
Will it work? Hard to say. But I'm sure as heck going to try.
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April 12th, 2008
11:27 am - Is AnthologyBuilder an Appropriate Market for Single-Author Collections?
AnthologyBuilder is such a new technology, we're all still figuring out what it can be used for and which of those uses are wise.
Right now, I'd guess that about 5% of AnthologyBuilder sales are for single-author collections. (I could calculate the exact number, but I don't feel like digging through the records.)
AnthologyBuilder is certainly a handy tool for putting a collection together. If your stories are already on the site, it's just a matter of a few clicks to select cover art and add the book to the library. As far as convenience goes, I don't think that can be beat.
There are other factors authors should consider, though. If you want prestige and publishing credits, you really ought to go through a small-press publisher. And if your goal is to make money, you're better off compiling the stories by hand and publishing through Lulu. You'll get at least twice as much revenue per book.
Don't get me wrong, I love it when people use AnthologyBuilder as a vehicle for single-author collections. I earn money and I get extra publicity. But I do think it's wise for authors to consider all the ramifications of that decision. I don't want people doing anything they might regret later.
I invite -- nay, encourage -- discussion in the comments section. Everybody, please be polite. Lay out all the pros and cons you can think of. Give your fellow authors the gift of information and the right to make their own decisions.
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April 10th, 2008
10:19 am - Horses, Monkeys and the Free Content Model
The idea of earning money by giving stuff away for free is not new. But in this age of internet and high-speed communication, the practice is becoming increasingly common. It's almost standard procedure to provide free chapter downloads, as Tobias Buckell has done with Ragamuffin and David Walton has done with his science fiction thriller, Terminal Mind.
Of course, providing a free sample is different than providing the entire content online for free, as many web cartoonists do. You might think that if loyal fans have already read the entire storyline, there's no reason for them to buy the book. Not so. Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary is supporting a family entirely off of book and merchandise sales. Similarly, Eric Flint reports that sales of his novel 1632 jumped drastically after it was included in the Baen Free Library.
Why does this work? Well, mostly because people like to buy stuff they can hold. I don't know how to explain it, but most of us have some kind of primal urge to possess things. Simply reading work by an author we love isn't enough. We want to own it. We want to see it sitting on our bookshelves reminding us how nice and solid and tangible it is.
Reading physical books is also currently a more enjoyable experience than reading on a screen. We've got a lively debate going on at Codex as to how long that will last, but for the present, the e-reader hasn't been made that can compare to the full technicolor beauty of a two-page image spread. As an example, take Sandra Tayler's children's book, Hold on to Your Horses. This is an adorable story about a little girl who's always in trouble because she has such big, energetic ideas. It's available online as a free PDF, but you know what? I don't want to sit with my kids snuggled on my lap while I read off the computer screen. You can bet I'll be buying a nice, tangible, snuggle-cuddly reading experience once the book goes into print.
So far, the Free Content model makes sense to me. But it can be taken even farther. Check out Darwin's Evolutions, a new web zine funded by a combination of reader donations and business sponsors. Here we have free content taken to its natural extreme. People will be paying for the experience after the fact, without obtaining anything new or tangible in return for their money. In fact, a small group of people are likely to end up paying for everyone else's reading enjoyment.
I do not understand the dynamics of this end of the Free Content scale. If I hadn't already seen Strange Horizons do something similar, I wouldn't have thought it could be done. I'm going to be watching Darwin's Evolutions with great curiousity because I want to understand what keeps this business model afloat. Well, and also because I like the green antennaed monkey.
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April 6th, 2008
11:13 pm - Social Networking
My husband calls it Vitamin C, where "C" stands for "Connections". Anyone who's been in the writing biz for longer than a year knows that, yes, it DOES matter who you know.
Connections aren't the only determinant of success, of course. Writing ability plays a mercifully large role. Vagaries of chance figure into the equation, too. We talk about writing all the time, and while we can talk all we want about rotten luck, we can't do much to change any of it, so for today I'd like to talk about connections.
Connections make me nervous, and the more of them I accrue, the more uncomfortable I get, for this simple reason: I DESPISE the idea of being nice to someone only because they might do you a favor someday.
Handled properly, business relationships function on the same basis as friendships and social relationships--we help out people we care about, for no real reason other than that we like them and we want to see them succeed. That's the way it ought to be.
(I hasten to add that by "help out", I'm referring to things like providing blurbs for novels, referring someone to an agent or editor, and other non-nepotistic activities.)
The problem is that as time pressure and deadlines start to close in, the natural human tendency becomes to weigh potential benefits for any expenditure of effort. "If I help this person, is it likely to come back to help me?" Now we're already in the gray area. To a certain extent, evaluation of potential returns is fair play in all social relationships. (No one likes to keep dumping favors on a leech, for example, nor should they.) But the potential benefit to the other person has now been completely left out of the equation. We're treading on dangerous ground here.
Let's take it a step farther. Time pressure gets tighter, desire to succeed increases... suddenly you're not just deliberating over which kind acts to spend time on: you're actively scanning the forums for opportunities to be nice to People in Power because you don't actually have time to be involved in anybody else's life. You've become a vulture, scrounging around for the chance to do a Good Deed because the Good Deed recipient's power to help YOU is far greater than your power to help THEM. You have entered the bog of eternal stench.
Have I seen this? Yes. Have I felt these same pressures myself? Yes. And I'm telling you, the only way to feel good about yourself and your relationships again is to yank the whole thing back to square one. Do nice things for people you care about. Period.
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April 3rd, 2008
12:34 pm - Surrounded by Greatness
Seems like my friends are sprouting wings left and right.
Tobias Buckell has a book on the final Nebula ballot.
Mary Robinette Kowal is a Campbell Award finalist and just signed a sweet deal with a highly respected agent.
And I'm not even going to try to list all the Codexians who've suddenly landed multibook deals at large publishing houses. I'd be sure to forget somebody, and then they'd think I left them out on purpose, and then my life would get complicated.
All I'm going to say is, I hope Greatness is contagious.
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March 26th, 2008
09:52 pm - Writer's Block
Jenny Rappaport recently posted about writer's block. While reading through her comments section--which is chock full of great advice, by the way--it occurred to me that one reason we struggle so hard with writer's block may be that we don't really understand what it is.
For years, I assumed that writer's block happened because my subconscious didn't know where to take the story next. These days, I'm convinced that it's the opposite. My subconscious knows darn well what should be happening, but can't manage to find a way to express it to the conscious brain.
So I start writing and subconscious screams, "NO! NOT THAT WAY!"
So I stop writing and ask, "All right, which way do you think I should go?"
Dead Silence.
So I try a different tack and subby starts yelling at me again.
When I look at techniques that have been effective in helping me overcome writer's block, they all center on opening the communication channels between the conscious and the subconscious mind. It's not about figuring out where the story ought to go. It's about explaining that fact to the part of your brain that controls the keyboard.
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March 25th, 2008
05:50 pm - Alex Finally Gets His Snow
My four-year-old has been waiting for snow all winter, and it hasn't come. There has not been a single snowy at our house since last february. Not even a quarter inch. For a four-year-old, this is traumatic.
Well, yesterday he finally got his wish. Eight inches. Big clumpy flakes. Snowmen. Snow castles.
I have not seen so much excitement--nor so many grins of gleeful abandon--before breakfast in many months.
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March 24th, 2008
08:14 am - Overcoming the Inner Critic
When I first started to take writing seriously--by which I mean, when I stopped thinking of it as a hobby and instead committed myself to working dang hard towards publication--I spent a lot of time in online critique groups. I learned a lot. I critiqued a lot. I gained a far better sense of what I consider effective in fiction, and what I don't.
But there was one unpleasant side effect.
I didn't enjoy reading for pleasure anymore. Whenever I picked up one of my favorite novels, or read short stories online or... or... anything, really, that involved consuming words on a page, my inner critic wouldn't shut up. It kept telling me that the premise was cliche, or the plot was weak, or that this or that sentence was poorly worded. Reading wasn't any fun anymore.
I decided that one of the inevitable costs of becoming a professional writer was that I would have to become increasingly picky about my reading material.
To my joy and amazement, this has turned out not to be the case. About six months ago my inner critic started to shut up. I can still summon her at need, but she no longer babbles on my shoulder every time I curl up with a new book. I still don't like every book I read. But I no longer hate every book I read, either.
I've noticed that overactive inner editors seem to be a common ailment of aspiring writers. I thought I'd share what I consider to be the three factors most instrumental in making them sit down and shut up.
(1) Join more than one critique group.
I believe it's Tim Powers who recommends switching to a new critique group every year or so. I'm not an advocate of abandoning old friends, but I do think it's worthwhile to supplement your favorite crit group with a couple of others. Why? Because every critique group has its own style, its own stock of favorite pet peeves, and its own target markets. Interacting with more than one set of critiquers can be a very eye-opening experience.
(2) Lay off critiquing for a while.
There are times to actively absorb new knowledge and times to buckle down and grow by applying what you've already learned. I've noticed that the more confident I become in my own writing, the less I feel compelled to criticize the writing of strangers.
(3) Read slush. Really.
If you hear that a magazine you're familiar with is looking for slush readers, volunteer. There is no better way to learn the distinction between "This is really lousy" and "This is nice writing, but not what I'm looking for".
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March 22nd, 2008
08:05 pm - Yes!
Eric Flint has given me permission to put two more of his stories up on AnthologyBuilder. I've got the first uploaded already. The second will have to wait until I get home from vacation and can scan it in from hard copy.
::happy dances::
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March 21st, 2008
09:55 pm - Removing the Blinders
There's a funny thing that happens when you read with a particular goal in mind--be it editing, critiquing, or slushing. Your brain puts on little mental blinders. You only see the things that are relevant to the particular task.
When I read slush for Baen's Universe (Oh, by the way heads up: we re-open to submissions on May 1), I'm looking for a specific type of story. My brain immediately disregards all stories that do not fit the desired pattern, no matter how well-written or insightful or humorous they are. If it's not a grabby, mostly-upbeat, Baen's Universe kind of story, it gets labeled "junk".
Is this unfair? Not really. From the perspective of the Baen's Universe Magazine, those stories are junk: material that is of no tangible use. But of course one man's junk is another man's treasure, so the same story I tossed aside for progressing too slowly might well find a happy home and critical acclaim in a literary magazine.
People wear blinders when they're critiquing, too. (If you try to tell me that you don't, I'll claim you're lying.) Critiquing is a structured process. Each critiquer is trying to mold the story towards a particular style and format--which may or may not be the same style and format the author was shooting for. No story can be all things to all readers, so blinders are necessary: some story options must be overlooked or eliminated to make room for the ones that are favored.
I think it's good for all of us, now and then, to take off the blinders and read a story for what it is instead of for what we expect it to be. This is why it's so important to continue reading for pleasure despite the huge workload sitting on our desks. There's something beautifully liberating about picking up a book and reading it without feeling like you have to pass judgment or provide a critique or do anything at all except enjoy (or detest) the story.
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March 14th, 2008
03:41 pm - Anthologies, Collections and Sales Rates
Ok, so after my last post on comparative sales of anthologies/collections vs. novels I was able to scrounge some actual numbers together. I'm not going to share the numbers themselves because I don't have written permission from any of the people who gave them to me, but the unequivocal and unavoidable conclusion has been:
Yup. Anthologies and collections have significantly reduced sales rates. 50%-90% lower than comparable novels, on average.
Collections--and this astounded me--do worst of all. There are exceptions, but overall they sell even fewer copies than anthologies. I compared several cases of collections vs. novels written by the same author and released by the same publisher. In all but one of them, the collection sold significantly less than the novel. "Significantly less" was sometimes as much as a full order of magnitude.
This experience sheds some light on the question of why it is so dang hard to find a publisher for single-author collections, even if you're a solid author with a track record. I also discovered that some authors have had trouble with novel sales after releasing a collection: The poor sell-through rate of the collection makes big bookstore chains hesitant to buy large numbers of the next book, even though the next book is a novel and not a collection.
So. No big surprises there, but it's been an edifying experience. It's one thing to hear everybody say, "Oh, anthologies never sell well", but it's another matter entirely to sift through the data and actually see how all the numbers connect.
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March 11th, 2008
09:34 am - "Wow" Moments
Watched a documentary on Blue Whales with my toddler this morning.
That beast weighs two hundred tons. Its tongue weighs as much as an elephant, its heart is the size of a car, and some of its blood vessels are large enough for a human to swim in.
Um. Yeah. Wow.
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