BookLife http://dev.booklifenow.com Booklife gave you the platform. Booklife Now is your expansion kit. Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:06:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 On Community http://dev.booklifenow.com/2012/04/on-community/ Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:06:17 +0000 http://dev.booklifenow.com/?p=2165 The image of a writer clad in unkempt clothing, hunched over a keyboard for hours on end is as familiar a cliché as it is truthful. The art of creation is a solitary one. Whether you call your source the muse or the word machine, the stories are created by your time and effort while the world rushes by outside.

Yet humans have a need to belong. A need for community. Writers are no different. In fact, I’d argue the fact that writers have an even greater need for community because of the isolation of the profession. Certainly, many of us are introverts, but, contrary to popular belief, introverts are not antisocial. At least, not always.

Having just returned from my first convention I can say unequivocally that if you can attend one, you should. Being in a room of like-minded individuals provides a sense of belonging and camaraderie, but you can also sit in on panels and learn from industry professionals. Hearing their experiences and advice is invaluable, and never underestimate the power of making connections, no matter if you have one book published, none, or dozens.

I will be honest. Introducing myself to strangers and making small talk are not among my strengths. I fight self-doubt and fear the entire time. (What if I sound like an idiot? What if I can’t remember their name later?) But I found myself doing both more than once at the convention. I can’t say it got any easier, but no one laughed in my face and called me a hack, so that’s something.

Which brings me to my next point: We are all on the same side. Writing is not a competition. Writers are not pitted against each other for a single coveted spot on a bookstore shelf, and one writer’s success does not mean another writer’s failure. Meeting other industry pros helps drive this home. We all have strengths and weakness, we all have doubts, but at the end of the day, we are all part of something larger than just our desk and chair.

If you can’t attend something in person, social media’s greatest gift is the ability to step outside your locale and connect with others all over the world. Don’t be afraid to reach out and say hello on forums, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and so on. If you are an established author, it will give your fans a way of connecting with you. If you are a new writer, it will help other industry folks put a face to your name.

Writing may indeed be a solitary profession, but gone are the days of isolation. With that being said, you can remain a silent figure behind a curtain if you wish, but if you choose to take a step outside, the community you’ll find is one of genuine support and friendship.

]]>
BookLifeNow Relaunch and What to Look Forward To http://dev.booklifenow.com/2012/04/booklifenow-relaunch-and-what-to-look-forward-to/ Mon, 09 Apr 2012 05:00:15 +0000 http://dev.booklifenow.com/?p=2021

I’m thrilled that Morgan and her crew are taking over Booklifenow.com and giving it a breath of fresh air. I think it’ll be an essential resource now for years to come. — Jeff VanderMeer

When Jeff VanderMeer first asked me about taking over BookLifeNow, my first response was, “Wow, really?” Once I finally got over that feeling of “I can’t believe he thought to ask me,” I wondered what that would look like, and why I should be the one to take on something like this. I already blog over at Inkpunks about writing process and survival tips and general cheerleading for creative types. What more could I, a newly-published author, have to say about surviving publishing in the 21st century?

Obviously I said yes. But along the way I had to really consider what this site would be, and what it would be to me. I spoke with quite a few friends about it (many of whom you will see listed on the Staff page) and we settled on a vision for BookLifeNow and its future content: the business and technical ins and outs of publishing, and how to get through it. Writing, publishing, editing, cover design, book packaging, translating royalty statements, contract terms, rights, everything that goes into the business, we’re going to discuss.

But why us? And why on earth am I a part of this? When I first began writing for Inkpunks, I thought, who am I to say anything about writing? And as we’re launching BookLifeNow, I’m asking myself the same exact thing.

For me, writing on sites like this has been a learning experience. Being a part of Inkpunks has taught me a lot. I learned so much about writing, about process and craft, and about myself as a writer. When Sandra Wickham pinged me in an email to join Inkpunks, to help her start this great resource, I had that same starry-eyed reaction of “Wow, really?” Now, after over a year of posting and thinking about craft, I feel like I’ve grown, and like I can speak somewhat intelligently on the matter of writing. And now I see that same opportunity for growth with BookLifeNow.

Over this past year, I’ve discovered I have a lot of questions about publishing. Technical questions. Hard questions, especially for someone who struggles with finance and occasionally gets lost in legalese. Questions about book tours. Questions about signings. And it’s not always easy to find the answers. Sometimes even asking can feel awkward or uncomfortable, depending on the question.

And if I’m asking these questions, I’m sure there are others are asking them too. So now, when we get answers, and when we learn things, we’re going to share them with you.

If you look at the Staff page, you’ll see there’s a lot of knowledge sitting over there. Award-winning authors, editors of magazines and anthologies, publicists, people with marketing experience, seriously tech-savvy folks, artists, a great group of people with talent and knowledge all across the board. We’ll be speaking from our personal experiences, what we’ve learned in our own careers, and what we’ve learned from speaking to others. We’ll also have plenty of guest posts, to fill in the gaps where we are still learning and growing.

Jeff said that he believes this site will be “an essential resource now for years to come.” And we’re certainly going to work very hard to live up to that expectation.

]]>
An End and New Beginnings http://dev.booklifenow.com/2012/01/an-end-and-new-beginnings/ Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:00:22 +0000 http://dev.booklifenow.com/?p=2079

I’m thrilled that Morgan and her crew are taking over Booklifenow.com and giving it a breath of fresh air. I think it’ll be an essential resource now for years to come.

—Jeff VanderMeer

]]>
BLN Classics Resources http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/10/bln-classics-resources/ Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:00:20 +0000 http://dev.booklifenow.com/?p=2096 I love writing books, but I also find that with so many available you can easily spend a lifetime wading through the dross to get to the good stuff. Here’s a list of my favorite books on writing. Early next year, I’ll add to this list. In the meantime, enjoy! – Jeff

The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter – This book discusses hidden subtextual overtones and undertones. While that might sound dry, it’s actually a marvelous and exciting exploration of how writers create visible and invisible detail in their work, using examples from modern and classic writers.

Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form by Madison Smartt Bell – Bell examines twelve stories written by his students and by well-known writers, analyzing their use of time, plot, character, and other elements of fiction. In this workshop-in-print-form, Bell deconstructs elements of the stories to show what works and what doesn’t. It’s a masterful performance, but you may want to buy two copies, since the relevance of each chapter’s end notes to the overall effect means you’ll otherwise constantly be flipping between pages.

The Passionate, Accurate Story: Making Your Heart’s Truth into Literature by Carol Bly – Bly discusses the role of the imagination, ethics, and your characters, and many other topics not dealt with by most writing books. Her observations pertain in the best possible way not just to technique but to very human aspects of the writing life.

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French – This book is the closest thing to a semester-long creative writing course you’ll find, probably because Burroway uses it as the foundation of her creative writing classes. Invaluable for beginners and intermediate writers alike.

About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews by Samuel R. Delany – This thoughtful perspective from an underrated giant of literature features a few reprints from books like The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, but mostly collects previously uncollected nonfiction about writing. The letters, which I thought would be slight, turn out to be insightful, focused, and consistently fascinating. The interviews are sometimes a little long, a little too detail oriented, but still wonderful to read. The essays are, of course, magnificent.

The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner – An eccentric genius as a fiction writer, Gardner created this writing book aimed at beginning writers to discuss theory as well as the craft of writing. It contains a mixture of practical, specific advice, along with graceful observations about the writer’s life.

Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction by Damon Knight – Knight was known for his science fiction writing, but this guide is much more universal than that and steeped in the wisdom of fifty years of writing fiction. Perhaps more importantly, Knight includes diagrams of various plot structures. Early on, this helped me visualize my plots as diagrams and sometimes enabled me to spot structural problems as a result. His thoughts on “form” are also useful to beginning and intermediate writers.

Revising Fiction: A Handbook for Writers by David Madden – Madden breaks fiction down into its components (like character, theme, setting, etc.) and then creates subcategories of possible problems you may be having in your work. He uses examples of these problems from the drafts of books and stories by famous writers, and then shows you how the writer fixed the problem in the final draft. Just being able to see an early paragraph from The Great Gatsby and compare it to the published version is invaluable, but Madden’s advice and commentary make this my favorite writing book of all time.

Word Work: Surviving and Thriving As a Writer by Bruce Holland Rogers – Much of Rogers’ advice is for published writers, and in some cases published writers with books out. However, certain sections are relevant in terms of the psychology of dealing with rejection and the difficulties of the writing life. I much prefer Rogers’ approach to these topics than some of the more New-Agey writing books that seem to value mysticism over commonsense.

How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ – A sharp jab at the ways in which women’s writing has been marginalized by men and by society. Chapters include “The Double Standard of Content,” “False Categorization,” “Isolation”” and “Lack of Models.” Fiercely autonomous and darkly humorous at times.

Writing the Other (Conversation Pieces Volume 8) by Nisi Shaw and Cynthia Ward – A guide to writing about people who are not of your ethnicity, gender, economic class, etc. The book discusses basic aspects of characterization and offers elementary techniques, practical exercises, and examples for helping writers create richer and more accurate characters.

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi – This brilliant exploration of creative writing through the metaphor of the map makes you see craft and form from a different perspective. Chapters like “Projections and Conventions” and “A Rigorous Geometry” provide insightful analysis of various short stories and novels in the context of topography.

How to Write Killer Fiction: The Funhouse of Mystery & the Roller Coaster of Suspense by Carolyn Wheat – This unassuming book provides a great breakdown of the tropes and expectations of thriller and mystery fiction. While acknowledging commercial requirements for the two genres, it also provides ample space for individuality and the art of fiction. Even if you don’t write mysteries or thrillers, Wheat’s advice applies more generally to pacing, story, and plot.

]]>
BLN Classics Praise http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/10/bln-classics-praise/ Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:00:37 +0000 http://dev.booklifenow.com/?p=2101 “One of the things that sets VanderMeer apart is his embrace of technology and media. His online presence is considerable and includes a number of web sites, frequent blogging, a short film adaptation of his novel Shriek (including collaboration with pop rock band The Church), his Alien Baby photo project and even a project involving animation via Sony PlayStation.” —Wired.com

“Jeff VanderMeer has written a fascinating book on managing a writing career, including promotion, use of new media, career paths, resources, networking, conventions, and — not incidentally! — balancing all of this with actual writing. Recommended for anyone who writes, wants to write, or has written and now wonders what to do next.” —Nancy Kress, bestselling author of Write Great Fiction

“Many books tell us how to write, but Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife tells us how to be an author…VanderMeer made me think, question my own path, and make plans for a more focused move forward.” —Mur Lafferty, host and creator of the podcasts Geek Fu Action Grip and I Should Be Writing

“Who better than VanderMeer, master of the blogosphere and online innovator, to guide us through the burgeoning, oft breathtaking realm of new media…Jeff helps you hunt down the vast advantages provided by social networks, blogs, podcasts, and the like. And the best part is the silly pith helmet is optional. If you’re a writer who knows how to use a computer, then this book is for you.” —Joseph Mallozzi, Executive Producer, Stargate SG-1

“Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife is a frank, revealing, riveting manual by a writer for writers, not simply on how to be a better wordsmith, but on how to be a better human being. I’ll be recommending it to all my writing students. I don’t know how to praise a book more sincerely than that.” —Minister Faust, the BRO-Log

“VanderMeer has struck a new sort of balance with the Internet: charming his dedicated fan base on the web, creating multimedia promotional tools for his books, and actively seeking out new readers like me in the digital crowds. One of my favorite writers.” —The Publishing Spot

“VanderMeer may be creating the dominant literature of the 21st century.” —The Guardian

“Jeff VanderMeer’s book will rock your writer’s socks off! I’ve long marveled at Jeff’s mad alchemist-like techniques of creation, promotion, and artistic survival through his artful navigation of brambly networks of writers, artists, musicians, historians, hatmakers,
bloggers, booksellers, reviewers, and fans. To steal a line from an Eddie Izzard stand-up act, ‘No one can live at that speed…’ VanderMeer lives at that speed and makes it look effortless — and fun!” —Leslie Ann Henkel, publicist, Abrams Books

“Jeff VanderMeer has written a smart practical jungle-guidebook for the wilds of 21st century publishing — its incredible pressures, joys, poisons, and, most importantly, the dangers of a false sense of control…Floaty creative types — prepare to be taken to task.” —Julianna Baggott, author of Girl Talk

“One of the most literary fantasy writers or fantastic literary writers we’ve got working these days, take your pick.” —Ron Hogan, Mediabistro’s GalleyCat

Booklife is to authors in today’s publishing climate what Writer’s Market was fifteen years ago: essential. A well-organized, lucid guide to social networking, blogging, and the art of being an author in the age of Twitter. Jeff VanderMeer’s advice on maintaining one’s focus in an era of unfettered public access to the artist’s private life comes from his own hard-won experience; he’s been a writer at-home-on-the-web since before most of us had websites. With excellent additions by Matt Staggs and others, Booklife is a worthwhile addition to any writer’s bookshelf.” —Michelle Richmond, NYT Bestselling author of The Year of Fog

“Jeff VanderMeer is everywhere. He’s in your house, frightening your cat. He’s on your lawn, and even John McCain can’t get him to leave. He’s applying the poisonous glands of his tongue to the paint of your vintage Chevy. He’s scaling the side of the New York Times building (they’ll arrest them when he comes down, but he’ll never come down!). He’s engorged in the Grand Canyon, entombed in Grant’s Tomb, and impaled on the Space Needle. He’s in the middle of the world’s largest ball of twine. He’s a roving mercenary who kills to earn his living (and to help out the Congolese). He put the bang in Bangkok and the joy in New Joysey. John Waters wanted to make a film about him, but was too disgusted. Harriet Klausner has never had anything good to say about him. Osama bin Laden considered endorsing him, but said even he didn’t hate Western culture that much. And now you’re taking him home with you.” —Matthew Cheney, the Mumpsimus

]]>
Just One Sentence at a Time: Brandvold, Monahan, & Piccirilli on Writing Full-time http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/06/just-one-sentence-at-a-time-brandvold-monahan-piccirilli-on-writing-full-time/ http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/06/just-one-sentence-at-a-time-brandvold-monahan-piccirilli-on-writing-full-time/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:06:32 +0000 http://booklifenow.com/?p=1664 Today’s round-up includes three very different writers: Peter Brandvold, Sherry Monahan, and Tom Piccirilli.  Each of them writes full-time, whether fiction or non-fiction.  Each lives life contract to contract, deadline to deadline, sentence to sentence. 

Peter Brandvold writes under his own name and his pen name, Frank Leslie.  His recent books include The Devil’s Winchester (as Peter Brandvold), Bullet for a Halfbreed (as Frank Leslie) and Longarm and the Crossfire Girl (as Tabor Evans).  Under any name or in any series, Brandvold is known for writing violent action particularly well.  His secret seems to be his great care in developing life-like characters.

Sherry Monahan is a freelance writer, editor, and genealogist who specializes in the Victorian Western migration.  She is a contributing editor at True West magazine, as well as the author of the recent Cary, NC and the forthcoming E.M.H.: The Aristocratic Ranch Wife.  In addition to freelance writing and editing, Monahan hires out as a professional researcher who helps people not only trace their ancestry but to also flesh out the details.

Tom Piccirilli writes short fiction and novels across the genres.  His most recent crime novel, Every Shallow Cut, which many reviewers are saying is his best novel yet, is about a down and out writer.:  “It’s something of a meta-fiction,” said Piccirilli, “even though very little in the story has actually ever happened. But there’s a sense about it that it could happen at any moment.”  Piccirilli also offers a manuscript critique service.

Below, each of them talks about working in what Brandvold calls “an insecure occupation.”

How long have you been working as a full-time writer and what sort of work do you do?

Peter Brandvold:  I’ve been work full-time as a Western novelist since 1998–so, about thirteen years now.  Long enough that I’d have a really rough time working a “real” job.

Sherry Monahan:  I’ve been freelancing since 1998, but I’ve been doing it full-time since I was laid off in 2008. I write about current and historical food, travel, alcohol, and research—pretty much anything that I’m passionate about and can get paid for!

Tom Piccirilli:  I’ve been a full-time novelist/fiction writer since I started in the biz, back when I sold my first novel Dark Father in 1990. 

As to what sort of work I do, I write.  For years I wrote horror novels and short fiction with occasional jumps into Westerns, mysteries, dark fantasy, and erotica. Now I mainly focus on crime fiction.

What is a typical day like for you?

Tom Piccirilli:  I keep my own hours.  I write for a bit, then I’ll watch a movie, then go back to writing, then read for a while, then write some more.  Across the length of the day I try to get a clean thousand words or more finished.

Peter Brandvold:  A typical day starts fairly early in the morning–around 6 AM.  I get up, make coffee, and start in writing hard for about 45 minutes.  I try to hammer out 500 words before I take the dogs and myself out for a brisk morning hike in the mountains around where I live or am currently bouncing around–either Colorado or Arizona, though I also spend some time in my home state of North Dakota, as well. 

I come back, have breakfast, try to write another 500 words before noon, have lunch, then maybe read for a while or go see a movie–if I’m around a theater–come back, and hammer out another thousand words before five or six. 

I try to get a minimum of 2000 words written every day–seven days a week.  I don’t take days off.  My schedule is too packed for that, and I’m also so addicted to writing that I really have to write every day.  There’s also an irrational feeling that if I don’t write every day, I’ll lose momentum.  I guess it’s an OCD thing.  But I really love it, too, and just don’t need to take time off.

Sherry Monahan:  There is no typical day when you freelance because you never know what’s coming your way. I do, however, go to my home office every morning about 8:30 and work on something until about 5:30. It’s different from a traditional day job because I can work from home and don’t have to commute. If I don’t have any deadlines looming, I can work on what I feel like working on, which is great when you’re creative juices are flowing.

Is there anything you wish you’d known before you took the plunge into freelancing?

Peter Brandvold:  No.  I’m glad I didn’t know about any of it, because I might have chickened out.  I’m talking the lack of the usual safety nets you get in more traditional lines of work.  Freelancing is an insecure occupation.  You’re only as solvent as the contracts you already have lined up.  After you’ve fulfilled those, you always have to hustle for more.  But this has been good for me, taught me self-reliance and given me a more Zen way of looking at life–it’s one day of work at a time.  One book at a time.  When I’m really good, I’m seeing just one sentence at a time, and that’s really the best state to be in. 

What are some of the frustrations of freelancing and how do you handle them?

Peter Brandvold:  Honestly, there are very few.  I wish I had better health insurance, but I’d rather be my own man than be someone else’s hammer in return for a steady paycheck and an insurance plan.  Now, if I had kids to support and provide health care for, that might be a different story.

Sherry Monahan:  The biggest frustration is not knowing how much work you’re going to get. That makes it hard to pay the bills. I know I have one consistent monthly job, so I use that as my constant.

Tom Piccirilli:  The frustrations of being a full-time writer of fiction (“freelancing” is a term used to describe writers who do non-fiction articles for pay, which isn’t what I do) are many and varied. No real stability, no health-insurance, no 401k plans, no retirement benefits.

What’s the best part?

Peter Brandvold:  Freedom, freedom, freedom.  As long as I get my 2000 words in each day, I can pretty much do what I want.  Sometimes I get those words in really early, and can take a long, long hike in the mountains, head off on some exploration in my pickup, or I can just sit out on the deck and watch the clouds go by.  Or watch a good movie on the Westerns channel! 

Sherry Monahan: The best part is being able to work from home, balance my projects as I like (as deadlines permit), and work on my book writing and genealogy research business. I love having the freedom to choose and be creative.

Tom Piccirilli:  Nobody tells me what to do.

Is there a project that you simply couldn’t have pulled off if you’d been working at a full-time day job?

Peter Brandvold:  I wrote my first three books while I was teaching.  I wrote during office hours, just before and just after class, when I probably should have been preparing for class.  So I was pretty distracted.  But it worked, though I’m sure my teaching suffered.  I wouldn’t want to do that for every book. 

I’d have to say I couldn’t have written a third of the books I’ve written if I’d had a full-time job.  I’d probably have had to write them on weekends or over the summer, and that would have been frustrating.  Writing is something you need a quiet mind for, and working another job isn’t conducive to a quite mind.

Sherry Monahan:  A few of them. I had a full-time job until 2008 and it was difficult trying to balance my life and my writing.

A salary… is it friend or foe?

Peter Brandvold:  Foe.  You become a slave to it.  It’s wonderful and deadly to the freelance writer.  It makes you too dependent.  You’re a dog howling at a nasty old farm-woman’s kitchen door.  I like the challenge and excitement of having to scramble for new assignments.

Sherry Monahan: Salary is always a friend. I have to pay my bills, travel to promote my books and do research, so without it, I would have to give up my dream.

Any parting words? Words of encouragement or caution?

Peter Brandvold:  Someone told me early on, when I’d had only a couple books published, not to quit my day job.  I didn’t listen to them though they easily could have turned out right.  But I made it work and thank the Four Winds I continue to make that work.  But it could stop at any time.  If you can handle that hard bit of reality, and have enough confidence in yourself in your abilities, then I say cut the safety net and freefall and try to make your living as a writer.  I can fairly confidently say, though, that it probably would not work for about 98% of the people out there–because they either lack the writing ability, the genuine obsessive-compulsive love for writing and reading, self-confidence, and lifelong focus and determination–I wanted to write since I was 12 years old, and that idea, that love for reading and writing, was in my head every day right up to now–or they won’t be able to make enough money to support themselves and their families.  That said, if you know it can work, then it will work.

Sherry Monahan:  Trying to earn a living as a freelance writer can be both fun and frustrating. You may want to keep your day job if you want to keep a roof over your head. It’s a very competitive market, so pick a subject that’s interesting and one you’re passionate about.

Tom Piccirilli:  Writing is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.  It will give you a satisfaction you’ve never known before, and quite possibly break your heart along the way.

*

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

]]>
http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/06/just-one-sentence-at-a-time-brandvold-monahan-piccirilli-on-writing-full-time/feed/ 1
Against Story http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-story/ http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-story/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 20:40:40 +0000 http://booklifenow.com/?p=1660 What do people want? “A good story.” How do we know? People can barely say anything else. When editors describe the sort of material they’re looking to acquire, they want “a good story.” Readers are always on the hunt for “a good story.” Good stories are also useful for shutting down a variety of discussions. Are there not enough women being published, or people of color? Who cares who the author is, so long as he or she writes a good story? Can writers do different things with their stories—create new points of view, structure words on the page differently, work to achieve certain effects not easily accessible with more common presentations? Why bother—a good story is the only important thing.

Now, when some people talk about a good story they mean a good reading experience. A good reading experience doesn’t necessarily involve a story at all. But many people, when they say a good story, mean a good plot, and want all the other elements of fiction subsumed to the plot. And not just any old plot, but the plot as detailed in the famous triangle of that old anti-Semite Gustav Freytag. (The anti-Semitism is why he’s pretty much known for his geometry rather than his creative writing, these days.) Rising action caused by a sequence of attempts and failures, while concurrently a set of revelations slowly illuminate the original cause of the dramatic action. Then there’s a climax, and a brief unwinding of the emotional tension caused by the conflict’s resolution.

It’s a great little structure. I use it, I teach it. We’ve been so thoroughly exposed to it in what we’ve read and watched for all our lives we almost confuse it for what comes naturally. But nothing comes naturally. Freytag’s triangle is an invention, not a discovery.  (And Aristotle didn’t discover anything either; he issued a prescription.) However it is an invention that has become hegemony and hegemony always contains the potential for tyranny. There are plenty of writers avoiding “good story” and plenty of editors who publish these stories. And they receive plenty of hate mail. Every Donald Barthelme story in The New Yorker led to a flood of angry letters and threats to cancel subscriptions. Good thing there was no Internet for the magazine to be published on at the time; the bigwigs would have taken a look at page hits and visit lengths and cut ol’ Don loose right away. We can’t sell acai berry juice with this shit!

Hegemony is the normalization of the particular. There are many other ways to tell stories and many other ways to structure a plot. An avant-garde almost by definition predates a rearguard. The tricks of what we call “postmodern” literature can be found in seminal works of literature such as Don Quixote. Hell, you can find most of them in the Old Testament, if you know where to look and read it as a work of fiction—a task ably accomplished by Stephen Moore in his survey of ancient literature, The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600. (You can tell he’s into postmodernism because he has two post-colons in his title!)

The normalization of “good story” allows for a particular sort of obnoxious criticism. The stuff that isn’t a “good story” is inevitably a “bad story.” Forget the obscurity of, say, second person point of view—there are people, would-be writers even, who are deeply suspicious of first person point of view. They see it as some kind of latter-day fancydancing, and that despite the fact that all of us, all the time, speak in the first person when we tell the stories of our lives to one another. Well, I suppose The Rock and other professional wrestlers might comprise a significant exception…

Any writer actually interested in squirming out from under the boot of the “good story” has few first-person narratives. I was called a Nazi—literally—for defending first person. I was just reading a review the other day in which the critic detailed a conversation she had with a graduate of the Clarion writers’ workshop. He denounced Flannery O’Connor as a “terrible writer” because in her stories she was “telling, not showing, the reader.” I gave a reading once along with another writer, and during the Q/A session this Hugo winner declared that fiction about the act of fiction was a new thing. (It’s actually a couple thousand years old.) One of my favorite rejection letters—this was for a collection of short fiction I was trying to place with an independent publisher—explained to me, sadly, that the book wouldn’t do because of the seventeen pieces only three of them were stories. The rest were “other things” that were confusing and weird.

There is a faux populism that goes along with this suspicion—hegemony leads to normalization, but it also leads to tyranny. People writing things other than “good stories” are fakes, frauds, interlopers into genre, poseurs and “artistes.”  A single successful strange book, such as House of Leaves leads people to demand, “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned storytelling!” The answer, that it’s in most of the other twenty thousand novels and stories in the bookstore, is unsatisfying because the existence of anything other than “good stories” are an affront. If people like stories that aren’t the “good stories” then…maybe not all good stories are good!

And indeed they ain’t. But good stories are plentiful enough, so there are sufficient excellent ones to satisfy any reader for a lifetime of any natural length. There’s no need to war against the stories that flout Freytag and his march through jeopardy and toward orgasm…uh, I mean climax. There is a need to war against “good story” though. “Good story” pushes the issue of who gets published off the table. “I don’t care if you’re white, black, yellow or green,” people say, “I just want a ‘good story.’” You should always be wary when the green people are marched out in defense of “good story”—also, purple polka-dots. “Good story” keeps writers chained to their desks, extruding consistent product for lesser sums each time around. That’s the thing about “good story”—it’s easy to learn and do. Supply increases faster than demand, so price sinks. And “good story” limits readers. Even the dumbest, most obscure, and worst writers will occasionally proclaim themselves champions of the ordinary working stiff who just wants to escape into a “good story.” Who would declare, “Well, I don’t want ‘good stories’ then! Give me something else!” It’s nearly impossible to conceive of saying, or thinking. That’s the ultimate power of “good story.”

And yet…as writing loses its audience to television and the Web, Freytag’s triangle is in retreat. Reality TV doesn’t offer rising action and climaxes, and the revelations last only so long as the contestants do. Learning how we live now, or how the other half lives, through Twitter and blogging, doesn’t involve a march up one side of the triangle and a quick slide down the other. More of a forced march through a desert. And then there’s fiction itself—try mapping the many seasons of Lost onto the dictates of “good story.” Were Lost a novel, it would be 2000 pages long, with dozens of dropped plot threads, the introduction of a major and heretofore unknown character 1200 pages in (with new minor ones showing up on page 1945!), a couple more 1700 pages in, and then a bunch of alternative histories littering the interstices between chapters. Which wouldn’t be labeled chapters. Or interstices. Readers do want strange and new narratives—trapezoids and single rays stretching off into the horizon, and denouements that never finish their unwinding, a three dimensional snowflake with dozens of dendrites that are only beautiful from a distance—it’s just that “good story” is all they’re ever offered.  So they watch TV, and play video games, and read endless fanfiction where the same characters change radically with every writer and circumstance, and blog their own lives one sandwich and missed bus at a time, and they do what writers refuse to. So kill story now, before it’s too late. Before it kills you.

]]>
http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-story/feed/ 12
Against Craft http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-craft/ http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-craft/#comments Thu, 12 May 2011 17:07:17 +0000 http://booklifenow.com/?p=1655 Writing is often described as a craft, and usually in counterposition to art. In the Romantic Era, art was seen as the precinct of special, sensitive people, who were inspired by a Muse. Craft, on the other hand, involved practice, tradition, and the perfection of skills. Today, professional writers are almost a single mind—writing is a craft, not an art.

There are a few good reasons to ally with craft. Writing is hard work, and revision thankless. Yet, plenty of non-writers just imagine writers “being creative” and generating stories. Then the money flows on in. Writing skills can be learned, though mostly just by reading widely, and so it has a lot in common with other crafts. Practice makes…improvement. (Not perfect.) Then there’s the publishing aspect. Writers take assignments, write to certain themes or lengths, and many pride themselves on their ability to write anything.

However, writers often protest too much. I used to collect the sillier comments, but it got boring after the first few thousand. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

Writing in Starbucks is not writing. It is “trying to hook up with attractive members of the opposite (or same) sex by appearing to be a sensitive, tortured Artist.”

Oh, yes, I can hear the snickering from the fellows in the back row dressed in black turtlenecks, obscured by their haze of cigarette smoke, and trading witty barbs that are just regurgitations of something Nietzsche said much better.

The garret is a myth. Ignore it.

 

“Craft” today is not a counter to the Romantic vision of an artistic elite chosen by the Divine, it is a quasi-proletarian flinch often designed to protect one’s work from being compared to art, thus protecting it (and one’s ego) from its near-inevitable failure to stack up to the idea of art as a superlative. The craft metaphor also serves the production-driven processes of conglomerate publishing: books are published to fill slots and develop and extend categories on a mass scale, which militates against the individual nature of a piece of art. And yet, writers, as small businesspeople, also hope to avoid complete proletarianization (even when they write work-for-hire material to specifics as stringent as anything one might find in a fast food joint) and thus don’t dare embrace the industrial metaphor their masters long ago did. So they declare themselves to be craftspeople, a head higher than the cloth hats that used to read their stuff before everyone got television sets.

Writing is a balance between art and craft, but there is enough suspicion of art—it suggests snobbery, laziness, and even homosexuality in some of the more idiotically conservative quarters—that the stick must be bent in the other direction. Craft is a matter of artisanship, and artisanship is a matter of mastering a relatively small tool kit in order to solve a number of practical problems. These practical problems also allow for aesthetic flourishes to be added. You can thus have a basket with an interesting weave, for example, but you can’t have the weave by itself, without the basket.

Writing, by way of contrast, is a matter of deploying a relatively small number of tools from a toolkit of infinite size in order to solve problems that don’t exist until they are solved through the use of the tool. That’s art. This is what people are trying to say when they trot out that all canard about learning all the rules, and then forgetting them. They mean, “Some tools are far more commonly used than others. It’s generally helpful to start using some set of tools first, then you can search The Infinite Toolbox for others, once you’ve figured out what a handle is and what part of a widget to plug into the wookedtyclicket.”

There are an infinite number of potential sentences (and paragraphs, and chapters) and thus a toolbox of infinite size. Even very simple communicative tasks can be accomplished in an infinite number of ways. When I visited London in 2000, I came across a broken escalator somewhere, and it was cordoned off. On the cordon there was a sign that read something like “Please Do Not Attempt To Use This Escalator Whilst Repairs Are Underway.” When I got home to Jersey City, one of the escalators eading up out of the Journal Square PATH station was also broken, and also had a sign. This one read something like “ELIVATOR NOT ORDER NO!!” (sic) Yes, the escalator was labeled an “elivator.”

Both communications—both tools—worked just fine. At least I didn’t see any wayward legs twisted into the teeth of the receding steps in either country. Both were pretty memorable too. As matters of art, they both have a lot to say about their creators as well.

Why think of writing as an art? For better or for worse, there is a connotation of seriousness about “art” that “craft” doesn’t have. Indeed, that’s why many writers claim to be craftspeople rather than artists—it’s a punt and a dodge. Writing is like any other result of practice; the more seriously you take it, the better you’ll be at it. The deeper you consider its structures and possibilities, the better you’ll be at it. Sticking with the common tools of “the craft” and viewing art with suspicion is self-limiting. Patricia Highsmith had a wonderful bit of advice for writers: “Suspense writers, present and future: Remember you are in good company. Dostoyevsky, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe…there are hacks in every kind of literary field…Aim at being a genius.”

Perhaps the term “genius” is even more fraught than “art”, so I’ll stick with the latter. Fight against the tyranny of craft. Aim to be an artist. Take each blank page as a formal challenge, not just a narrative or commercial challenge. Will many writers fail at being artists? Yes, most people fail at most things on most attempts. But a failed artist can end up being a fairly competent craftsperson, just from the attempt, and and the extended conceptions of the work. If one aims to be a craftsperson and fails at that, as most people do, then what sort of writer does one turn out to be?

]]>
http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-craft/feed/ 8
Against Professionalism http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-professionalism/ http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-professionalism/#comments Wed, 11 May 2011 18:21:32 +0000 http://booklifenow.com/?p=1649 Behaving in a professional manner, for writers, is really quite easy. Professional behavior basically means writing publishable work, meeting deadlines, not plagiarizing, and not libeling anyone with one’s work. The problem with discussions of professional behavior is that this brief list really is pretty much it, and if one is not yet writing publishable work then none of the rest matters. Well, that’s no way to become a publishing guru, or to sell aspiring writers all sorts of goods and services! And so was born “professionalism” which is running especially rampant in the field of science fiction and fantasy.

Professionalism is a complex of supposedly mandatory and proscribed behaviors that makes a writer “professional” regardless of their ability to write interesting material. Recently, at a science fiction convention I met a former student of mine, and he was very concerned about…his blog. Which he does not have. He was told, however, that today professional writers must all blog, but that these blogs must not offer up controversial political opinions, or negative reviews of popular books, or “ruffle feathers.” Everything must be “politically correct” he believed—to use that famously meaningless term I try so hard to get my students to stop using. I’d told the class Ronald Sukenick’s famous dictum, Use your imagination, or someone else will use it for you over and over.  Maybe one day it’ll stick. So, what to blog about? he wondered. What does a professional blog look like, and how does it lead to publishing deals? I recommended that he concentrate on finishing his book first, and making sure it was as good as it could be.

A few weeks later, at a different convention, the mildest of acquaintances fell into my arms, chagrined that she was drunk at a party, and that some editor or agent might also be at the same party. She’d already ruined herself professionally, and it was only Friday! Ah yes, a writer who enjoys a drink at a party. Very unprofessional; unheard of, really. Editors would surely be scandalized by the sight, had any actually been in a room and not themselves inebriated.

My two poor friends were much more concerned with “professionalism” than with professional behavior.

Why would someone want to be a professional writer? Rejection is constant, cash flow unpredictable, audiences fickle, and the publishing industry is falling apart. It’s easy enough to write for one’s own edification, or for some non-commercial community, if personal expression is one’s goal. There’s only one real reason to write professionally—no boss! All you need is professional behavior. Professionalism, by way of contrast, makes everyone a writer’s boss. Every Facebook friend, Twitter follower, newspaper reader, and book buyer is one’s employer, and what do they pay? Royalties on a hardcover are what, ten percent of cover price? Two dollars and fifty cents, payable somewhere between eighteen months and three years after the purchase of a book, and that’s if one’s publisher doesn’t go bankrupt. At least my real boss could rook me out of tens of thousands of dollars a year, and he doesn’t read my blog or check to see if I’m wearing dress shoes to work.

Few writers would care about the demands and declarations of these new bosses—tweet this, don’t talk about that, how dare you not like Dr. Who!—except that so many beginning writers themselves have joined the cult of professionalism and have begun to police one another. Not only do they believe in the supposed rules of professionalism themselves, they propagate the nonsense through their own social networking. It’s all rather nightmarish: don’t complain about rejection letters or reviews, don’t talk about editors and agents on Twitter or your blog, wear khakis and not blue jeans to conferences and bring plenty of business cards, keep away from politics except for the fannishly correct (and legitimate) concerns about diversity in publications in your public utterances. This advice is the new currency in the community of aspiring writers because it’s easy to give and easy to follow. What’s hard is writing.

And those are the at least reasonable demands of professionalism. I’ve heard people earnestly report that they never use American flag stamps when mailing submissions because liberal editors may take such stamps as a conservative political statement. I’ve eavesdropped on serious discussions about the userids of one’s “professional” email address; don’t use hyphens or underscores between first name and last! There are writers who hate writing short stories, but write and try to publish them anyway because it’s “expected” (by whom?) and  to “build their brand.” (Brand of what? Crappy writer?) I’ve lost track of the number of blog posts I’ve read that warn in a little preface of ranting and possibly losing friends and letting it all hang out…that turn into a jeremiad against, say, littering. Nothing controversial, remember! (On the other hand, blogging requests for people to act as personal unpaid valets during a convention appearance is not only “professional”, it’s in vogue.) My favorite is the person who somehow decided that it would be “unprofessional” to strike up a conversation with a certain editor at a writer’s conference—instead he just followed her around all weekend, hoping that she’d eventually turn around at some point and say hello.

It’s also worth noting that these rules regarding professionalism often only go one way—feel free to mock, insult, sneer at, or slander someone not in a position to help your career. Say, someone who is just as poorly published as you are, or someone who currently only edits work in translation and thus isn’t in a position to buy a short story or acquire a book.

Now some elements of professionalism have merit. Whining about negative reviews and rejection letters is unattractive, though nobody has ever been harmed by doing so, not even when every fan in the blogosphere swore to never buy a book by Anne Rice or Alice Hoffman or whomever ever again. You certainly shouldn’t send anyone threatening letters, but that’s true whether you want to be a writer or not. But here’s the dirty little secret about all the rest of it, speaking as an editor and the friend and colleague of many other editors. If your Twitter account is named JoeBlowWriter or we see a Facebook friend request from someone named JaneDoe_Author, we cringe. We laugh at “official” websites—get enough fans that someone makes an unofficial one and then we might care. We’re not concerned if you pumped your fist when Osama bin Laden was assassinated, or if you like to dress in short skirts. Your bookmarks and business cards generally tend toward the amateurish, and are rather secondary anyway. When the conventions are over, 95 percent of them go right into the trash. If we want to contact you, it’s generally pretty easy to figure out how to do so…even if you put an underscore between your first and last names in your email address. Here is what we care about:

Can you write well? I mean, really write well. Note, not write well enough—we have plenty of folks who can do that, and they’ll change their names every five years on command and write whatever we like, to order. Can you write well?

Are you ready to say “Yes” to a solicitation? Not “Maybe.” Not “But I don’t know if I’m any good at that”, but “Yes”?

Can you meet a deadline?

You know, not professionalism. Professional behavior.

 

]]>
http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/against-professionalism/feed/ 24
Raising the Freak Flag with Guest Nick Mamatas http://dev.booklifenow.com/2011/05/raising-the-freak-flag-with-guest-nick-mamatas/ Tue, 10 May 2011 17:38:13 +0000 http://booklifenow.com/?p=1645 Welcome to Nick Mamatas, who will be guest posting this week here at Booklife.

Mamatas has been freelance writing and editing for little over a decade now.  His experiences have been, to say the least, varied.  In fact, his CV reads like a cut-and-paste from 12 different writer’s bibliographies.  His list of credits is all over the map.

On his blog, in his essays, and especially in his new book, Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life, Mamatas writes with wit, honesty, and openness.  Even when he’s getting himself into to trouble, he’s wide open and funny about it.  (Or maybe that’s part of the reason why he’s getting in trouble?)

Sometimes I don’t agree with Mamatas, but I keep reading–whether to see what he’ll say next, to be convinced by what he has to say, or to find out how he’s going to get himself out of this one!

Indeed, his openness sometimes makes him a target.

“I write, and publish, for the abuse as much as anything else,” says Mamatas in a guest post over at the Apex Book Company blog. “Which is lucky for me, since I get so much of it.”

Starve Better is as much about craft as it is about career.  And the message from the start is clear: Freelancing is not just working the tightrope without a net; it’s working the tightrope without a rope… yet the writer keeps writing.

“The only thing I can guarantee for readers of Starve Better is this: your checks will not arrive on time,” says Mamatas in the introduction to Starve Better.

If you’ve had at least one invoice go unpaid, one publication go under before your story ran, or one typo printed under your byline… you’ll be doing the “so true” shudder from page one of Starve Better.

If you haven’t had any of these things happen to you…  heads up.

Here’s a paragraph, again from Mamatas’ Apex guest post, that ought to keep you coming back this week to see what Mamatas has to say: “I keep writing because I want to raise a freak flag and see who salutes, and see who prepares counter-protests. If I can keep my material out there despite the nasty emails and the occasional invitation to a parking lot punch-up, then there’s hope. If editors or publishers will still take a chance, and accept my work though it doesn’t ‘quite fit’ or exists ‘outside the box’ or ‘pushes the boundary of profanity for what I am most comfortable printing’—to quote from some acceptance letters—then the inevitable nastiness that follows is worth it. Anyone can write what the market or the public wants, after all. The trick is to write what nobody should want…but which gets published anyway because quality still matters more than propriety or profit. That’s how one starves better.”

 

]]>