Categories
anthology writing

No Shit, There I Was, thinking about successful stories

I made a little list yesterday, about some basic problems I noticed repeatedly in my slush pile. Things worth fixing that’ll help a story survive the savaging of the slush jackalopes, at least.

But what about the stories we liked and loved? And I’m not talking here about just the ones I sent acceptances for. I had 15 or so additional stories beyond those I could accept that I desperately wanted to keep and didn’t have room for. These were decisions that made me cry tears of blood because I didn’t want to make them.

The thing is, it’s way easier to tell you what doesn’t work about a story than quantify what does.

After the initial Rejectopocalypse, I had 58 stories left. How did I get that down to the stories I ended up picking?

There was a sort of two-tiered process to how I filled out the ToC . There was an initial set of stories that I read that just clicked with me so well, I put them in a file labeled “You can have these stories when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.” Each one of these stories was a hill I would have been willing to die on, so to speak. And there weren’t that many of them. They didn’t even take up half of my available space, when all was said in done.

A few of the stories that ended up on that list didn’t even make it there on first reading; I thought they were good and liked them a great deal, but wasn’t immediately ready to fight a great white shark armed with an assault rifle for them. But those stories lingered, and niggled, and refused to let me go, and a week later I was still thinking about how utterly fucked up they had made me feel. I realized I couldn’t let them go either.

But the bulk of those 58 stories in the second round were simply “stuff wot the jackalopes and I liked,”  and there were way too many of them. So I went over those with a much less forgiving eye. A lot of stories, I enjoyed, but had to tack on a mental caveat of “but X needs to be tweaked.” Unless X amounted to copyediting issues, I made myself let those go. Other quite good stories were too similar to stories that I considered non-negotiable, either in plot or tone or topic, so those I let go as well. That took us down to around 35, when things got really brutal.

I ended up dragging my excellent slush jackalopes onto a Skype call so we could sit down in real time and look at what we had. Fights were had. Alcohol was imbibed to deal with the pain. Stories were sorted into keep or go piles. But the reason I wanted the slush jackalopes on the call was that each of them had a few stories that were hills they were willing to die on, and I thought that was important. A story that I thought was very good and merely (“merely“) liked might be a gut punch to one of them. I needed perspectives from outside myself, from people who knew the shape of the slush, because otherwise I was at a stalemate of, gosh I like all this stuff equally and 35,000 words of it has to go, what do I do?

So what made for the stories we universally liked and someone was willing to fight for? There’s not a single answer, partially because I tried to choose a wide array of stories that cross the genres from hard scifi to high fantasy, the tones from utter bleakness to screwy hilarity. (You’ll see what I mean when I finally show you the ToC.) The best I can come up with is:

  • Stories with a strong narrative voice and tone. This isn’t just about first person narration; there’s a tone that goes with third person as well, that’s evident in word choice and sentence structure. Every story we loved had a consistent tone and a strong voice that made us want to keep reading.
  • Good pacing. Pacing is what knocked a lot of the stories out at the second round; pacing hiccups are one of the most frustrating things in the world to try to fix as a writer, and I didn’t even want to deal with it as an editor. I won’t say that all of the stories we kept were fast-paced; there are a couple I’d consider to have a very deliberate feel to them. But they don’t stop. They don’t bog down. They’re exactly as long as they need to be.
  • Fascinating characters. Most of them, we liked. Some of them, we just wanted to follow and see what kind of train wreck they’d be getting into.
  • The stories that were funny made us laugh out loud. Heartily. Inappropriately.
  • We have a profound weakness for ridiculous, long titles, but only if the story that follows supports it.

But those things? Aren’t that helpful if you’re looking for a blueprint, except perhaps for the point about pacing. You can get into some useful wonkery with pacing and arranging your beats and making sure none of them are lasting too long, and that might help. But I don’t think anyone sets out to write characters who aren’t fascinating, or stories that don’t have a strong tone. I’m sure everyone who sent us a funny story thought we’d find it funny.

And that’s perhaps the point. While there are objective measures (many of them grammar-based) that can tell us if a story isn’t going to work, there’s not a rubric I could give to say what does. This is your reminder, then, that getting published is ultimately a crapshoot. You could be at the top of your prose game, you could have a tight story with great characters and an interesting plot, and unless it hit one of us in just the right way to make her say I would wrestle a bear for this story, it wasn’t going to make it. And I think it’s worth remembering that the stories I was willing to go to bat for were not all the same stories the jackalopes defended with their antlers filed to razor sharpness.

I know we’ve all had the experience of reading a story and thinking who the hell paid actual money for this, my story is way better. Sometimes you might be right, but sometimes it’s that your story didn’t deliver the plot payload the way you’d hoped, because no two editors are the same. Maybe you got the wrong editor, the wrong time of day, the wrong phase of the moon. There’s no knowing. If being able to write a story that punches someone in the gut and steals their emotional lunch money is the best part of being a writer, it’s also the most frustrating. Because you’ll never know if that punch landed until you open your email and see yes instead of no.

Categories
publishing someone is wrong on the internet stoopid

If JK Rowling stopped writing, people would totally buy my books, right?

If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It

Okay, it’s 7 in the morning and I haven’t even had a cup of tea yet, but someone said a dumb thing on the internet so I can’t even look away. Really, I’d normally just bitch about this on Twitter, but my thoughts are a bit more than 140 characters long so here you go.

Basic  summary of the above blog post: JK Rowling should stop writing because everyone is buying her books instead of mine.

When I told a friend the title of this piece she looked at me in horror and said, “You can’t say that, everyone will just put it down to sour grapes!”

Should have listened to your friend, dude.

I didn’t much mind Rowling when she was Pottering about. I’ve never read a word (or seen a minute) so I can’t comment on whether the books were good, bad or indifferent. I did think it a shame that adults were reading them (rather than just reading them to their children, which is another thing altogether), mainly because there’s so many other books out there that are surely more stimulating for grown-up minds.

I can basically point to the above two sentences as the real problem with Ms. Shepherd’s piece. It basically boils down to, “well it’s okay if she sticks to her stinky genre, but she should get out of mine” crossed with barely concealed disdain that actual grown-ups are reading said stinky genre. Double special bonus fuck you asshole points for never having actually read Harry Potter while still being a patronizing douche about it.

This sort of attitude, I will note, is why plebes like myself often have the general impression that “literary” fiction is a place for pompous assholes. And why genre writers still get to nurse our treasured persecuted artist complex despite the fact that by all measures but for gatekeeper approval, we seem to be winning.

Look, I know it sucks when you’re struggling to make sales. I would sacrifice any number of goats to the Great Old Ones if I thought it’d give me a chance at your numbers on my novellas, Ms. Shepherd. I haven’t even managed to sell a full novel yet, and in my more crapulent moments of despair I can and have gone on ego-comforting rants about how the world is full of philistines that totally don’t get my genius, and what the fuck is wrong with the industry that they’re publishing shit like Twilight when my obviously superior talent is languishing unappreciated.

But this is the thing. I keep the wailing and ineffectual fist-waving limited to whatever audience is in my living room at the time (usually the cats, sometimes Mike, who keeps his headphones firmly on and just sort of nods along and makes vague noises of agreement until I’ve run out of steam) instead of recording it for posterity on a well-trafficked site. Apparently because I have the requisite self-awareness to know, in hindsight, just how pathetic it all sounds.

Four simple points:

  1. The major assumption here, that if people weren’t reading JK Rowling’s books, they would be reading yours or any you personally deem worthy is bullshit.
  2. Frankly, considering the wide range of other leisure activities that people have competing for their time, I maintain forevermore that we should be happy they’re reading at all. And they are reading, you realize. Don’t give me that “kids these days” shit.
  3. As a corollary to #2, if you hook someone in to reading with a piece of really popular fiction (eg: Harry Potter or Twilight) there is a good chance they will give the whole reading thing a go because it was so much fun this time around and try more books. (Whoops, maybe that’s why my stinky genre is doing so well!) For all that I love bitching about Twilight as much as the next feminist with delusions of being a writer, I am still actually glad for its existence because I personally know of people who started reading again because of those books. There are writers out there now who have sales because Stephenie Meyer and JK Rowling turned someone back on to reading. So back the fuck off.
  4. I, too, have had my moments of lamentation about how the masses only want to feast on shit and isn’t it a shame we can’t get real art made these days. (Normally in connection with movies; you try figuring out how to get a film funded when it lacks the requisite explosions and tits.) Well, them’s the breaks because we went with that whole capitalism thing. But it’s also, frankly, the huge commercial successes that even make the game possible for the little guys who might not ever earn out their advances. So many of these big sellers like Harry Potter just come whipping out of left field. No one has a formula for what’s going to catch on, and publishing moves slowly enough that writers are commonly advised to not try to chase what is “hot” because by the time you get it written and in the pipe, the next wave will have hit. Makes me wonder just how many writers have gotten their debut sales because someone was willing to take a chance on them thanks to the massive successes of others.

As someone who wasted money and valuable hours of my life I’ll never get back on The Casual Vacancy, it wouldn’t break my heart at all if JK Rowling went back to writing YA, because I really liked those books. But this is the thing. I know JK Rowling isn’t my bitch. I know you don’t get to tell other writers what to write. Ever.

By all means keep writing for kids, or for your personal pleasure – I would never deny anyone that – but when it comes to the adult market you’ve had your turn.

Christ, what an asshole.

Categories
publishing writing

The Kobo UK splashzone (dude, where’s my ebook?)

Okay, so a thing happened: WH Smith has taken their site offline after discovering that there’s some grody self-published erotica in its catalog. As of this time, they’re still offline. WH Smith apparently partners with Kobo. Oh and, from the WH Smith holding page:

Our website will become live again once all self published eBooks have been removed and we are totally sure that there are no offending titles available. When our website goes back online it will not display any self published material until we are completely confident that inappropriate books can never be shown again.

Now, obviously the UK and US have very different laws in regards to porn, and I honestly have no idea what those differences are. (Though apparently, this isn’t an issue of things being legal or not even? Great.) Nor am I at all interested in writing a bombastic American defense of porn that makes people vomit into their mouths because first amendment and stuff. Not really the topic up for debate here.

What has my attention is that apparently, Kobo has pulled all of their self-published books for now. Not just the erotica ones. No regard for genre. See this post on the Digital Reader. And in the splash zone has been titles by my the small publisher I’m with–so possibly others as well.

I’m currently in the UK, so I get the UK kobo site by default even when I click through on my American Kobo links. Time for fun with screenshots! So here’s The Ugly Tin Orrery;

And I don’t currently exist in general as a searchable author. (Full disclosure: I have never had a reason to look for myself on the Kobo UK site before, so I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that I was searchable before… but the existence of the above “currently unavailable” book is a thing that makes me go hmmmm.)

And while I’m posting screenshots, just for the record I did once exist on the WH Smith site. (Google cache is a magical thing.)

So we’ll see if I’m still around after they bring their website back up.

Anyone in the US want to check and see if I still exist on Kobo there? I’m curious due to some comments on the Digital Reader post. ETA: A couple people have let me know that I’m still available on Kobo in the US, so that’s a relief. Thank you!

I don’t write rapey incest bestiality erotica. I don’t write erotica at all. I write Steampunk, and the steamiest that’s ever gotten is two women kissing. (Shock! Scandal!) No, really. I’m also not self-published. All of my ebooks are published through Musa Publishing. (Always time for a little self-promotion, eh?)

Now, if I’ve ever gotten any sales from Kobo UK or WH Smith isn’t something I can tell you, since I think those go under the Smashwords umbrella on my statements. But frankly, it’s in the interest of any writer to want their titles available in as many places as humanly possible, just in case some reader will stumble across them and fall in love. Will the “non-objectionable” books get brought back eventually? I hope so. But there’s been no word from Kobo thus far. And why is “self-published” in general being equated with incestuous dog-raping erotica?

(And of course this doesn’t even touch on the idea of books that are “objectionable” being blanket removed from catalogs and how deeply it disturbs my little American soul.)

One of the reasons I find this all really disturbing is that it’s a reminder of one of the creepier major drawbacks of ebooks: It’s laughably easy to make them vanish. And to do so in a massive blanket that drags up a ton of people who are unrelated to whatever “problem” this supposedly will fix. Particularly for ebooks (we can’t even get dead tree copies of our own work to hump around in a suitcase and sell if it comes to that) we are incredibly dependent on these websites, and have no defense at all when it comes to our titles being removed.

And apparently being with a publisher isn’t an automatic defense either. So that’s fun.

I wanted to get this out there because I think it’s important, and I hadn’t even heard of the issue until someone mentioned it on a mailing list of which I’m a member. I think this is a thing that really deserves more attention, because there are so many issues to be unpacked in it and I’m just not capable right now because it’s three in the morning and seriously I only got up to pee and that was like an hour again and fuck my life, hahaha, etc. But anyway. I swear I’m going back to bed for real now. BELIEVE ME.