a nice rejection letter, and more on self-publishing
The last post, and the Bransford post it references, with all its talk of big publishers being wary of literary i.e. hard-to-market fiction, reminded me of a rejection I got from an agent a few weeks ago. I’ve gotten similar messages before, but this was the nicest:
Dear Dan,
I’m sorry it has taken me this long to get back to you on THE ARTIST’S GUIDE TO CRIME, the only excuse I can give you is that I didn’t want to let this go. You are clearly a talented writer, there’s much to be admired in these pages. You have a great ear for dialogue, and I found this caustically funny and keenly observed.
That said, after much deliberation I just can’t see a way to market this book successfully to a general trade publisher, nor can I see a way to revise it that won’t compromise some of the elements I liked here. My instincts tell me this is something that’s a better fit for a smaller/ independent publisher, and I’m afraid those circles are just lesser known to me.
Given my reservations, I’m going to step aside so you can go ahead and find an agent who will give this project the enthusiasm it deserves.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, and to pass on work by a writer who is clearly talented. Others will surely feel differently, and I certainly wish you every success in finding the right agent and publisher for your work (if you haven’t done so already.)
Best,
[super nice agent]
With all the hullabaloo over self-publishing these days, you’d think that I would want to cut out all the middlemen completely and go straight to the e-presses myself. But, like I said in the last post, it’s not really that easy. I have one published story (not online, but subscribe to Prairie Schooner anyway) and a couple of little pieces up somewhere or other. Doesn’t make for much of a platform.
I have made one promise to myself, though, with regards to self-publishing: if I get two more stories published, I’ll start experimenting, either putting them online for sale, or harassing artist friends into helping me make fancy illustrated editions, or something. Who knows what. But something.
self-publishing and literary fiction
Nathan Bransford has an interesting post today about self-publishing and literary fiction:
Major publishers have been a tad wary of literary fiction for some time, and while reputable small presses have picked up the slack, when I was an agent I saw too many great literary books languish for lack of a publisher.
The infrastructure [for self-published literary fiction] is developing - already you have thriving online blogs communities devoted to literary fiction, like The Millions, HTMLGIANT and Bookslut, and with review space declining in print anyway, who’s to say that you have to have the imprimatur of a publisher to find attention.
No doubt self-published literary fiction will get out there, and there’ll be successes that get press. But I think in general self-publication will only work for authors who already have some kind of audience or platform, even if it’s just a few short stories published in journals. They’ll need something to help them stand out and take the place of today’s gatekeepers.
Right now, as far as I can tell, all the big self-pubbed names are pulp writers: they write for a well-defined audience, and they release constantly. J.A. Konrath, self-publishing evangelist, talks often about how you have to keep releasing product. The best way to advertise, according to him, is to keep releasing, and hope you get lucky. Maybe the five paranormal teen-vampire urban-fantasy techno-thrillers you released in 2010 went unnoticed? That sucks, but here’s hoping your sixth will get attention, and then you’ll have a deep backlist for people to plunder.
This approach can’t be ported to literary fiction, where each novel may take years to write. And there’s a reason why print publishers are wary of literary fiction—however good an individual novel may be, it’s hard to pin down, to market, to sell. Self-pubbed writers won’t have an easier time with that just because they cut out the publishers.
But! If they do have some kind of audience (for example, Bransford mentions an Indian author publishing his own English translation), or something, anything, that can take the place of the gatekeepers, then maybe this could be an awesome new way to get their work out.
I Should Really Take This Hint
After the book collapsed, I sat down to write whatever came to mind. Let’s cleanse the ol’ palette, I thought. It took a few weeks to get something to click, but finally I started on something I reckoned would be a short story.
Three weeks later, this morning, I typed THE END on a 16,500-word-long first draft. This would be a hooray sort of moment except for the fact that 16,500 words is a ridiculous length for a short story. It’s not even a story anymore. I don’t know what it is, really, except maybe unpublishable. It is definitely that. The normal length of published short stories is something like 2,500 to 5,000 words. Even if I edit half of my first draft away, which is unlikely, I would still have something considered prohibitively long.
I’ll work on editing this new whatever-it-is for a few weeks, just to see what happens. But there’s a part of me that thinks it is really a screenplay in disguise. And since the stuff I write is almost never short enough to be considered a short story, maybe I should just take the hint, and not write stories anymore.
Max Barry is one of my all-time faves, and this is the book trailer for this new book, Machine Man, out now. My one-sentence review of the trailer:
It’s great, but it could have used some blood.
Since I’m here, my dear five readers, I may as well comment on the state of this blog. I know it seems moribund. For now, let’s just say it’s hibernating.
Q:This new novel of yours sounds pretty epic. Isn't biting off more than you can chew a classic newbie mistake? Hmm?
Thank you for the question, Mr. T the Third. You asked this a few weeks ago. How very darn prescient.
There is a theory, yes, no doubt taught in MFA classes and espoused by writing groups, that you should start out with a small, manageable project. If that succeeds, try something bigger next.
This makes much sense and is so very reasonable. And my opinion of it, in general, is that you should take it, poop on it, make a burger out of that, and then feed it to whoever (whomever?) mentioned it to you.
However.
Considering the fact that I am, at the moment, feeling rudderless and bereft, I have to concede that maybe there’s something to it.
In celebration of our country’s birthday, a not-very-related clip about age. Think of it this way: Louis C.K.’s ankle = Congress.
Louis C.K. - Chewed Up is available on Netflix Streaming. It’s hilarious. It’s also really vulgar. This is about the only clip without horrible words in it. And about a minute after this, he’s talking about how grandma’s face is full of tumors.
Source: youtube.com
I woke up at 5am today to write, sat around twiddling my thumbs for an hour, and then went back to bed with the knowledge that my book project has driven itself into the ground. My book is now officially on hiatus. This is a bummer.
I began writing on June 7 and wrote a third—about a hundred pages—of a first draft. At some point I started feeling it wasn’t working. The feeling grew stronger, but I determined to ignore it and to keep writing. But stubbornness alone cannot write you a book: today the feeling cemented, and shackled itself to my heart.
Woe = me.
For the next few weeks, I’m going to shift focus to two smaller writing projects. Then I’ll come back to the book, read over what I’ve written, see how I feel about it. I’ll have to make a decision, and here are the options I think I’ll have:
I could…
1. Start Over
Maybe there’s promise to the project, but I need to let it stew some more. Maybe I wrote too fast. Maybe I need a different approach. As Max Barry, one of my favorites, noted not so long ago, there are many approaches, and none of them is “right”.
2. Reduce Scope
This book idea, it is epic. And it has two protagonists and two converging plots. One of those plots is still very fuzzy to me. The other is a conventional hard-boiled detective story whose arcs I understand well. I could drop the fuzzy plot and focus on the hard-boiled one, which I think has a lot of promise. That would make for a more manageable project, but I would have to cut characters I really like, and I would feel like I shied away from a fight. Sometimes, shying away is wise—it means you’ve judged your talents and your limits and acted accordingly. Other times, it means you’re a piece of anatomy.
3. Kick this Can of Epicness Down the Road
Christopher Nolan first started writing Inception about ten years before he started shooting it. He got as far as shopping the idea around at the studios before deciding he wasn’t experienced enough to write and direct a movie of that scope. He wrote and directed the two Batman movies and The Prestige. Then he rewrote Inception and got it done. I mentioned that my book idea is epic—this Inception anecdote should give you a rough idea of the scope of its ambition. Maybe this is too much for me, for now. Maybe I should save it for later. If I do this, I’d risk losing the idea, and would feel like I rationalized my way out of a difficult situation. But if I try to write something I’m not equipped to write, I could end up wasting a lot of time.
4. Cut my Losses. Move On.
In another post, Max Barry noted that sometimes, you just have to accept that what you’re writing is a piece of hooey and move on. When you’re doing something hard and creative, perseverance is important. But perseverance can warp into a stubborn refusal to accept defeat. How can you judge when you’ve gone from one to the other?
So.
lord help me
Behold, three days in the life of a mint plant. Pretty boring stuff, isn’t it. But so much is happening, on the inside! Cells are split, water is pumped, sun is tracked. Things—important things—happen with sugars and starches, and chlorophyl. And that’s not even counting the work that needs to be done adjudicating between competing fronds: one frond wants to go this way, another that way—it’s a mess.
Now imagine you were a mint, and someone asked you what was going on. ”I’ve been keeping my eye on you,” this person might say, “and I think you’re a sham. You talk big, but you don’t seem to change, day to day. A little swaying this way, a little swaying that way. You just sit there. How can you live with yourself? Why don’t you go out in the world and do something? Bees are starving, and you’re not even growing flowers. Jerk.”
You will want to explain to this person, you will want to explain about the splitting of oxygen from hydrogen, and how you’ve spent the week assiduously practicing wicking techniques. You will want to explain to them about vacuoles, and cytoplasm, and chloroplasts and ribosomes—”I have millions of these inside me! You think they all just work, without effort?” But this persons’ eyes will no doubt glaze over when you mention your golgi apparatuses and your plasma membranes. All the details of your metabolism, of your furiously active life—all these things of which you are so intimately aware—will, to your interrogator, only ever translate into this video of minty nothingness.
Someday, if you grow big enough and green enough to get clipped and slipped into a cup of tea, this person may finally understand. Then—only then!—they will exclaim: “So this is what you were doing all along! Why didn’t you say so? This is delicious.”
My dear five readers, the life of a mint is not unlike the life of a writer—unknown or known, but especially unknown—when he is beginning to write a novel. It’s not easy explaining what actually is going on. From the outside, to others, all of your furious activity—activity that may leave you exhausted and unable to socialize because you’ve become too accustomed to controlling both sides of any conversation—will seem like so much minty nothingness.
But someday, maybe, there will be tea.
~~
This week, I start on a new book. I hope I can write the first draft—the vomit draft—in two or three months. This may be wildly ambitious. When I finish the draft, I will post a new (and better) video of a mint plant I just potted today, that will grow along with my book.
- vim: I found out that you can send all sorts of data to your Kindle, and it'll convert/format it automagically for you
- me: THE CODES! DID YOU SEND THE CODES!?!
- sorry that made no sense at all
- I just made a smash-cut into a conspiracy movie. I'm back now.
- vim: haha
- wait...
- you know about the codes?
