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The “I’m Sorry Your Book Was Rejected” Thing

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I meant to comment on this when it happened but I’ve been pushing like crazy on the book and it’s been the holidays and excuses excuses excuses. So I’m just going to do it now.

Last week John Scalzi hosted a debate on his blog about whether publishers think of customers as readers. Now, as I said in comments, I come down on Scalzi’s side in this as I’ve already said on my blog. I’m also highly amused by how quickly the comment thread there turned into All The Usual Comments About Ebooks, which means it was incredibly boring.

However I did want to comment on Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s comment, which Scalzi himself posted, specifically this:

I observed, not for the first time, that IMO the default answer to someone who’s ranting about the Big Six, the evilness in general of NYC publishers (who only promote bestsellers and anyway are only interested in books by celebrities), the coming selfpublipocalypse, et cetera et cetera yammer yammer yammer, is “I’m sorry your book was rejected.”

There’s a fair bit of outrage over this in comments, and I wanted to discuss it briefly because I think it’s interesting.

A few years ago, Ms. Nielsen Hayden’s comment was pretty much universally true. If, starting in about 1998, I received a dime for every time I had to read an online whine like the one described above, but I had to pay a dollar for every time that rant came from someone who was not a writer suffering the sting of rejection, I’d be typing this from the deck of my yacht right now.
It was incredibly common.

But an interesting thing happened in the years since self-publishing through ebooks took off: self-publishers who had been echoing these arguments for years began to get a larger audience, and they ate it up. People who had never tried to publish a story started talking about “gatekeepers” and “dinosaurs,” spreading some of the most pernicious myths about publishing you can find on the internet.

The non-writers spreading these memes come from all sorts of groups: Some are Kindlegarteners, who expect to pay next to nothing for a book. Some consider themselves iconoclasts, and hate anything that smacks of elitism (and for many of them, if you live or work in New York City, you’re an elitist). Some have transferred ideas about piracy, artists, and corporations directly from the music industry without alteration, acting as though publishers have their own RIAA (or will have one soon). And some just like to consider themselves ahead of the cultural curve, latching on to whatever meme sounds like it might come true.

So I’ll say that “I’m sorry your book was rejected” is an outdated response but an understandable one. I mean, “Publishers don’t consider readers their true customers” is a dumb idea, the sort of thing people tell each other because it seems like it ought to be true, but the people saying it aren’t all writers any more.

THE WOODEN MAN in the Worldbuilders Charity Drive

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I haven’t been posting much because I’m really pushing on this new book. I’m fighting my way through the middle. Also, I’m making #LesserDarths jokes on Twitter. But never mind that! I have some cool news.

A couple of weeks back I signed two copies of The Wooden Man, the SFBC omnibus edition of my three Twenty Palaces books and sent them to Pat Rothfuss’s Worldbuilders Charity Fund Drive. The first is now listed right here.

Now, I’ve made some Pat Rothfuss jokes here in the past, but the truth is a) I don’t know the guy at all and b) he seems really really cool. I could never get my shit together enough to run something like this.

So! These are the only two copies of The Wooden Man I intend to sign, ever. One you can win by entering the lottery (Donate a small amount and you get a chance to win one of the many books being offered, at random).

The second copy will be available for auction in the next couple of weeks. I’ll post about it when it goes live.

Guys, it’s a good cause. Help them out if you can.

Randomness for 12/29

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1) Massive 1,100+ year old Maya site discovered in Georgia’s mountains Or maybe not?

2) Do the FAA’s assertions about ebook reading during take off and landing stand up to scrutiny?

3) Images from one of the most remote and remarkable landscapes on Earth: Dallol Volcanic Crater.

4) Area 51 Alien Travel Center: a soon-to-be-built sci-fi themed brothel in Nevada. Finally, we know what will empty the last few regulars from rec.arts.sf. Anyway, I wonder if building codes will require the vats be installed on the first floor.

5) How to deal with slow walkers. Video.

6) Instead of helping you defeat an alien brood queen, this exoskeleton simulates the effects of old age for young people.

7) What if you were brought on to write a show that no one was watching and no one cared what you did? How weird could it get?

Publishers/Readers/Customers

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I don’t have John Scalzi’s experience in publishing, but what he says here jibes with my experience: It’s silly to say that publishers don’t see readers as their customers.

When I put my three books through the system at Del Rey, I had many, many conversations with my editor about the story/cover/whatever (especially Game of Cages), and never once did we talk about what the stores would like. Everything everything everything was about the reader.

Writing mentors and communities

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Check out this link: Box Office Mojo’s Highest Grossing Screenwriters. Number one really isn’t a surprise, but it’s the guys in the second and third spot I want to talk about.

When learning to write, everyone takes their own path. Some people do it all on their own, some learn from family, some have a small group of friends they stick close to.

For more and more of us, online communities have been where we go. My first online space was the WritersBBS. This was probably 1996, and things were pretty primitive. Still, I met other struggling writers, real pros, and picked up a wealth of information.

But this was also the time that everyone was going nuts for screenplays. Everyone was writing them, and I was no different. I loved movies and TV (the latter was finally shaking off the terrible rep it had earned through the sixties and seventies) and the idea of writing for THE X-FILES or BUFFY thrilled me.

Of course I was living in Seattle, then, just as I am now. I planned to move to L.A. at some point, but my work wasn’t ready yet. Not yet.

Then I read an article in Writers Digest (DON’T JUDGE ME!) listing the best online writing sites, and I started checking them out. The one I stuck with was Wordplay.

Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio wrote (and write) as a team, and they ran the site as a team, too, although Terry always seemed to be most active. At the time I signed on they were professional screenwriters just coming off the release of ALADDIN–successful, but not the top-dollar writers they’d become. The site had columns and guest articles (I recommend all writers read them, even the ones on the film business which have nothing to do with the novel you’re writing). And it had message boards.

I was a clueless dope on those boards for much longer than I should have been. But I found advice there, and camaraderie, and even more importantly, I found debate.

See, at the time, the fiction-writing advice I was finding on the internet was maddeningly vague. “Don’t bore people.” “Do what you want, but make it interesting.” Now, many years later, I have realized that this is the only truly useful advice, but at the time it was not what I wanted to hear at all. I wanted technique. I wanted story arcs and show-don’t-tell and all that.

Now, of course, you can find that sort of writing advice all over the web, but at the time it I was deeply frustrated. But on the forums of Wordplay? We argued about the best ways to introduce characters, to set up and pay off, to write a flashback, etc etc.

Man, did we argue and argue and argue. I grew to despise a small number of people I “met” there, but many more became good friends that I keep in touch with to this day. Does it matter that all the techniques we debated eventually brought me full circle to the “Being interesting. That’s all that matters.” lesson once again, but this time in a way I could appreciate? Not really, no.

Anyway, during the summer of 2004 I realized I was increasingly unlikely to move to L.A. What’s more, I’d lost my love (obsession) with film and TV. I stopped watching everything I could. I stopped reading every review. That year, on my birthday, my wife kindly arranged for me to slip away for a few hours to see a movie.

But there was nothing I wanted to see. It was the height of the summer movie season, and all I wanted was to stay home and read my book (the second Lymond novel, if you’re curious).

So I rededicated myself to novels and stepped away from the boards (amazing how much free time I recaptured!). I wrote Child of Fire and, when it was time for ask for blurbs, I turned to Terry Rossio and he kindly consented.

Honest confession: While I was thrilled to get a blurb from Jim Butcher, I was also sad that it bumped Terry’s quote to the back cover. I learned a lot from him and I would have been proud to see his name next to mine.

Anyway, I don’t know what use this list will be to him–one of the many lessons we learned was the essential powerlessness of the screenwriter in Hollywood–but I hope it’s a sign that he’s earned himself some creative control.

Randomness for 12/21

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1) How to make your own chocolate D&D dice.

2) The Invisible Mother in Victorian photographs.

3) Best Christmas Webcomic Ever: “Poop us some candy, poop man!”

4) I love light shows projected onto buildings, and this one is especially good. Video.

5) The Great Successor Is Right Over Here You Guys.

6) Worse than the bedmonster.

7) Scene from THERE WILL BE BLOOD with gaze locations: Video. Via Rod Ramsey.

Reviews, Part 32

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1) David Marshall at Thinking About Books didn’t much care for Circle of Enemies: “However, there are so many people who wander in and out of view during this novel that there’s little time to get to know any of them and no incentive to invest any empathy in caring what happens to them. There’s a lot of action, as I said, but although we are advancing steadily towards the end, this book feels less satisfying than the other two.”

2) Martin Sutherland at Legends of the Sun Pig gives positive reviews to the entire series: “I love finding new series, and this was a winner.”

3) Kate Shaw at Skunk Cat Book Reviews liked Twenty Palaces: “Like the other books in the series, this one’s a helluva ride. The action starts fast and doesn’t let up.”

4) Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings liked Twenty Palaces but was unhappy with the typos: “But Twenty Palaces stands right now as the most recent representation of Harry Connolly in the book market. It deserved more care in its presentation. Happily, the story is good enough to make it worth overlooking the vessel’s flaws.”

5) Thomas Galvin at Book Club liked Twenty Palaces: “If you like stories about the world behind the world, Lovecraftian monsters, and the nigh-unstoppable badasses fighting against them, the Twenty Palaces series is for you.”

6) Bethany Warner at Word Nerd has listed me as the 2011 Discovered Author. Thank you!

7) Screenwriter Bill Martell at Sex in a Sub liked Circle of Enemies very much: “Makes a great holiday gift for people who like twisted violent stuff!”

Empathy, Stock Art, Eye glasses, Homeschool and Booze

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Let’s start with Empathy. Everyone has been having a laugh at the Forbes writer who put together the “If I was a small black child” column. It was dumb, thoughtless, and actively harmful. Obvs.

But you can rely on Ta Nehisi Coates to talk about this stuff in the best possible way. One, Two. That second link contains links to a pair of Megan McArdle articles that are also invaluable. Excellent reading.

As for me, I was a total goof off in school–smart but continually bored and prone to do stupid stuff to impress my friends (like any teenage boy). There were whole years that went by when pretty much every day I did something that could have gotten me jail time.

And no, I didn’t want to work hard. I wanted to play rpgs, get high, smash stuff, throw a carpet over barbed wire so we could swim at the pool after it closed, etc, etc.

So it’s easy to say: “If I were a…” and then imagine the path you would take to success. It’s much harder to look back at your own self and realize what a lazy screw up you were, and admit that a more difficult environment would have defeated me.

Next is stock art, which is what I need right now. I have a sword and sorcery novelette almost completely ready to publish. All I need at this point is a decent(ish) stock image for the cover. Hard part? Finding something I think is decent.

Anyway, I plan to release this particular story only through my website. Why?

Let’s move on to “Eye glasses.” My son needs them. Not just one pair, either. He needs a reading pair and a non-reading pair. Add to that the sad fact that my landlord mailed me a little something–no, it wasn’t a Christmas card. It was a notice of rent increase.

Yay! Rent increase notice right before the holiday (but not so soon before that we could budget it into our spending.

It’s not a big increase and our rent is already very reasonable. It’s just hard timing and I hope enough people will want to buy this short story that we can cushion this blow. More about the story later.

Next: you know how public school teachers will sometimes show movies in class? Guess what! His homeschool family has found an excuse for the extended editions of LOTR! Starting tonight. More on that later, too.

Finally, booze. I just bought the smallest non-airplane-sized bottle of Jack Daniels I could get. Why? Well, I don’t drink like I used to (what with the kid-having and the belly-reducing and all) but I do love egg nog. LURRRVE egg nog. And it just doesn’t seem right without a little bourbon.

Plus, I couldn’t resist that cheap German spiced wine. I actually bought two bottles of it. You know the one I mean? You warm it on the stove and drink it until you’re loopy? I don’t care if it’s crap. I love it. And did I mention I only bought two bottles? That’s some self-control right there. (Tangentially related, the store only had two bottles left).

And that’s all for today. I was supposed to write 2500 words on A Blessing of Monsters today, but after all those revisions I only managed 1500. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow.

Randomness for 12/13

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1) Children’s drawings painted realistically.

2) Sketchy bunnies. To each and every screaming child in those pictures I say: Kid, I am on your side.

3) The Ten Most-Watched YouTube Videos Of All Time. I’ve seen exactly one of them (the one about Charlie).

4) Rules of 50 Magical Systems In Convenient Chart Form

5) Robot Monsters With Breasts! Screenwriter and low budget film aficionado Bill Martell on two of the weirdest movies he’s ever seen.

6) 13 Punctuation marks you didn’t know existed. Actually, you know some of these, but probably not all.

7) One does not simply walk into Mordor.

Melody in Elf Minor – Fantasy and Tone

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James Nicoll posted this: More Words, Deeper Hole – In which I disagree with a luminary of SF to address a blog post by John Scalzi here: The Flying Snowman – Whatever.

For folks who don’t want to click, Scalzi is pointing out that people who object to some unrealistic things in a movie (like the way the lava in Mt. Doom swallows up Gollum) will blithely accept giant spiders and monster warriors birthed from the mud, and he says: Really, people? Nicoll doesn’t like to see the blame for a willing suspension of disbelief placed on the reader.

This is a conversation I’ve seen going around and around. Someone objects that the airplanes in KILL BILL have special sheaths for passengers katanas, and someone else points out off those talking animal movies. Someone gripes about CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON that “If anything is possible, nothing is interesting,” and someone else points out that there are “rules” to the fantasy elements which the story has to keep to.

And… Sure. Those world-building rules are important. Establishing the differences between our world and the world of the narrative is vital to letting people follow the narrative. It also helps avoid the “Why don’t they just cast a spell?” response in which the audience, knowing magic can do more, assume it can do anything.

But this is a pretty mechanical way of looking at it, and it assumes that “unrealistic” elements in a story (ones not covered by the established world-building) are errors. I think that’s wrong, and that it’s part of the fetishization of sf/f world-building.

Let me be clear: I’m not against coherent world-building. Of course it’s important, and of course it’s a necessary part of making a narrative work. But I think that tone is even more important.

Take that ending scene in RETURN OF THE KING: Should the lava have been more realistic? Should the ending have shown Gollum hitting the molten rock, breaking bones and bursting into flame?

Oh hell no. Considering everything that happened to that character, the tragedies, torture, misunderstandings, and burning junkie obsession he suffered, the sight of him screaming as he burned, limbs trembling as he tried to move his broken body, would have been completely tone deaf. It would have been too much.

Part of the problem is that the filmmakers were adapting a book. With as many liberties as they took with the narrative (cue bitter laughter from Tolkien purists) I’m sure they knew they couldn’t change that ending. Gollum had to take that fall.

But the filmmakers couldn’t rely on careful text to control the tone. They need to used sound and image to tell the story, and the effect there is very different.

Take Dany’s wedding in GAME OF THRONES. In the book you can describe an orgy in a few sentences or two in the narrative. On video, you have to hire actors, light them, put them in wardrobe, then point the camera at them while they hump away.

The effect is very different, and those issues of tone have to be managed. The movie MISERY (which I read about but haven’t seen) changed the scene where the fan cripples the writer because the filmmakers knew that chopping off his feet with an axe would be too much. That scene would be too intense and they would lose the audience.

For myself, one of the first revisions I made to Game of Cages was to change the sapphire dog so that it could not “eat veal.” In the first draft, the children of the town were fair game for the monster, and the crowd in the food bank scene included some very young characters.

My agent (a former editor herself) told me it was too much. I tried to explain that predators in nature didn’t have any qualms about feeding on very young prey, so it would be cheating to impose that rule on the predators in my book. She explained (paraphrased) that it was better to cheat the rules than to lose your audience.

And I knew she was right, so I revised the book so that pre-pubescent brains were ripe enough for it to feed on.

In a perfect world, tone and world-building would be reconciled. If anyone can find a way to get to a perfect world let me know so I can save up for a set of one-way tickets. In our world, issues with deadlines, adaptations, collaboration, and sometimes a lack of imagination/skill can lead to scenes that don’t work in some way.

The question becomes: when they seem irreconcilable, do you stay faithful to the world building? Or do you choose the right tone?

That’s something each creator has to choose on their own, but it’s telling that the most popular entertainments go for tone almost all the time.

As for that snowman, I haven’t read the book in question, but I wonder how much of the reader’s dissatisfaction with the flying scene was tonal. Not that the talking, heat-resistant snowman shouldn’t have the power of flight, but that snowmen are tragic; when their time with the child is over, they don’t fly away like angels soaring up to heaven. They die like earthly beings. They’re tragic. That’s my guess, anyway.

That’s why Gollum’s final scene is the correct one, even if the physics are wrong.