Master novelist Tim Powers answers questions from beginning writers.
"The only thing you can do, I think, is write stuff you _are_ passionate about, and hope that you can get an editor, and then a lot of readers, passionate about it too. Of course you make it as accessible and clear and entertaining as you're capable of making it -- you always remember that you work for the reader, not vice-versa -- but you're only going to get real voltage across the gap if it's a story that grew up out of your own perspective and tastes."
"Keep in mnd that the hinge of the story, the thing you lead up to and then away from, is the desperately hard choice the character (or several characters) will be forced to make."
3 comments:
There's an awful lot of interesting stuff on that thread, but mostly (to me, at least) it's people pontificating without any real experience. Talking about how writing is a personal journey, an idiosyncratic experience, so on so forth. Sure sure, but that doesn't get the millions and fame and the Frank Frazetta cover they all want.
I have a rather practical suggestion to anyone who romanticizes the act of being a writer. Get a job in a publishing house and work as an Editorial Assistant or in the Marketing department as an entry-level employee for a year or two. What will happen as you experience the job will be a set of multiple realizations.
The first thing you'll really "get," more so than if you just hear it from me or from an internet post, is JUST HOW MUCH WRITING is going on out there, how much of it is rejected, how many different people think they too can write the Great (fill-in-the-blank) Novel. AT the house where I worked, we rejected literally 20 times as many manuscripts as we even READ. Out of the ones we had time to READ, we accepted about 25%. If you didn't have a hook, an "in," a REASON why we should TAKE OUR TIME, then we regretfully sent you packing immediately. Come to the publisher with "What's in it for HIM," not "what's in it for me."
The second realization is, just how FINISHED your manuscript has to be. There just isn't room for "I was thinking of rearranging some paragraphs in the middle chapter" or "Well, of course, it's not really DONE yet, but you can get the general idea from this." That's child's play. You label yourself immediately as a poetaster if you can't do your own writing in a writerly way. And I can't TELL you how much bad writing is going on out there. If you haven't mastered the basics of grammar, and know the tonal and subtle distinctions between "standard formal prose" (which you should use for business correspondence) and a given deliberately chosen verbal style of narration (which you might or might not choose for certain portions of your book) then go back to school. And stop annoying the publishers.
Another realization probably is, that it's a business. Very few publishers choose to print a book on the basis of its literary merit. (And especially not in the sci-fi-pulp field, where all stories lead to Rome in the first place.) Again, if you can't inform the publisher of what's in it for him, then why would he go into a business relationship with you. There's a constant hue and cry about how books have recently been "dumbed down" by the influence of the marketing department -- how many of the past's "great writers" wouldn't ever have gotten a fair shake in today's publishing market. That isn't really the case -- nearly all publishing markets of the past have been MORE money-driven and materialistic than today. Shakespeare wrote the "cheap popular entertainment" of his time. Gore Vidal does it "for the money." The people who do the selling are more "up front" about it now than they used to be, but the money-for-sales ratios were the same, or worse, for the preceding history which you read about in your Norton's Anthology in College Lit class.
Attendant to that, is, be your own publicist. Most books getting published nowadays come out of the crucible of an "expert opinion." If you have a well-attended blog, or get interviewed weekly by a local radio station on some subject, or are a DJ who has a specialty in a certain field of music, or you did a trans-continental hike upside-down playing the ukelele, then you have enough notoriety that YOU are a sell-able commodity. Therefore your book is interesting to a publisher. It isn't that he needs some circus side-show to make sure the book sells. It's that he needs to know that YOU know how to cooperate with him once he's decided to use your work as part of his catalog.
And when he does sign you up, the job isn't over. Writing a book is analogous to the birthing process. Once it's finally, painfully, been jettisoned out into the world in its final form, as aided by a few well-meaning though likely inexperienced midwives, you don't just abandon it. THEN the real work begins. You coddle it, coo over it, tell all your friends about it, keep the buzz going about it, NURTURE it during its whole young life. A thousand books a year get published but then fail because the arrogant, self-centered author thinks, "I don't DO publicity; that's my PUBLICIST's job, who the HECK is he to think that gloriously unsullied *I* should do such muck-raking and money-grubbing work? After all, isn't he PAID to do it?" If you want to be famous for having written a novel which nobody sold, go ahead and tell the Publicist, "Isn't that your job, not mine?" He'll be happy to write you right off of his to-do list and move on to a cooperative author, he's got too many to deal with anyway.
The economics in a publishing house are difficult. At a big New York firm, a few titles a year are reserved for "literary masterpieces" that might not make any money; most of the others had better turn a profit or they're dead. Staff members subdivide their duties by task rather than book -- a Publicist publicizes several books, as many as 100 a year; but he knows very little about layout and design. A Designer likewise lays out and designs maybe 100 books a year, then in concert shuttles it on to the Publicist. Only one person sticks with it through the whole process, and therefore only one person can guarantee intelligent cooperation between Publicist and Designer: the author.
If you dislike any of the preceding, or think publishing "ought not" be so craven and money-oriented, or believe that writing isn't about business, I have some advice. Go ahead, write your book. Spend nine months, a year, two years, six, agonizing over the perfect phrase, delicately selecting a plot line or a character trait that rings with beauty and grace. Make reference to the masters, cite your favorite poems, include felicitous metaphors from your childhood and the current political situation. Make it a really well-written book. Then throw it in the trash.
Or better yet, publish it yourself as an ebook and via Lulu.com or Trafford or such.
Yes, Lulu.com and the like are becoming more and more plausible as "real" venues for publication and distribution. As an author, anyone who takes on the project of managing his or her own distribution via such a service is indeed following my advice, by admitting that the work is only half done once the manuscript is finished. I'm all for it! Traditional publishing has generally failed to accommodate the new media developments, and has ALSO failed to recognize the change toward financial inviability of most of its business models.
A potential weakness to the Lulu.com type of solution would be, that any ol' bad crappy book -- poorly written, or conceived, or organized, or designed, or marketed -- could easily be published and so forth. The advantage to traditional "house" publishing would be the expertise of a variety of different people, each of whom brings superior knowledge to the project. Supposedly.
In practice, it often works out that the house has too much work to do, and all employees are spread too thin, such that any weight of expertise any one person might have brought to the project is outweighed by his lack of opportunity to apply significant amounts of that expertise to any book.
Post a Comment