Category Archives: Publishing

Discussions about the business of publishing.

Waiting

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Waiting again. This time for the furnace technician. The same boiler that serves our radiators also feeds the hot water heater, of which at the moment we have none (hot water, that is). So. Waiting. I should be better at it by now. In this avocation you certainly get a lot of practice.

The advice everyone hears, once a piece of writing has been submitted, is: Don’t Wait! Write! It’s good advice so far as it goes. For one thing, it keeps you doing what you should be doing anyway. For another, there’s a good chance you’ll have a finished piece ready to submit elsewhere before the first one sells or comes flying back (Figuratively, as almost no one does that now. It was a paper thing.) Never having to pin all your hopes on just one possibility, which may (likely will) disappoint you. Doing your work, also a coping mechanism for waiting.

But you wait anyway, despite all the defenses and deflections and denials. There’s that one market you really, really want to crack before you die. There’s a special piece that you just know is the best thing you’ve ever done and you want it Out There! Rather than sitting in some editor’s queue. And if it gets bought, then you’re waiting again, until it’s actually out there, which means there are lead times and what’s bought in March doesn’t get published until October, if you’re lucky. For books it’s even longer as a rule. Before you even get to that point there are edits to get through, and then you’re waiting (again) for editorial approval of the changes, or more corrections and the process starts again…. Then there’s the gap between buying and the check arriving, and don’t get me started on that.

Waiting.

I seem to be living in reverse. When I was younger, I had more patience. I find it’s a scarcer commodity as time marches on. Too conscious of the passage of time, too aware that the time to get things done and find whatever it is you’re trying to find in your work, in yourself, is very finite. Any time spent waiting feels like wasted time, even when you’re not just waiting, you’re also waiting. There’s no real escape from it. Just make it share the time it wants to take from you with whatever doesn’t involve waiting. You can’t get rid of it, but at least you can make it earn its keep.

Walking the Tightrope

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You know all those “author bios” you see when you read a story or book and have something like this pop up at the end?

“Johnny Authorboy is the author of many novels, of which he is the author. He likes cats and chocolate, but not together. He lives somewhere in Wyoming, but he’s not sure where because the road isn’t marked.”

Or maybe: “Elizabeth Page-Turner is the author of the bestselling “Empirical Empress” series for Goshwow Books. In her spare time she collects celebrity belly-button lint.”

Yeah, those things? We have to write them ourselves. Continue reading →

Spring Ritual

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This morning I spent a couple hours at a nearby auto shop doing the spring ritual—swapping out the winter tires for the summer tires. So now my wheels are studless and the winter tires are bedding down in the garage until next November. I look around at all the snow remaining and wonder if this was a good idea, but the rules are “no studded snow tires after March,” so we do what we have to. Come winter, though, you can bet I’ll have the snow tires back on. I’m a southern boy. I KNOW I do not yet grasp how to drive on ice, so I need all the help I can get.

Last night I finished the rewrite of the second story in the new series and sent it out. No idea yet what the third will be, but it’s out there. I’ll find it. It would be good for the series if I can place them all with the same publisher, but time will tell. There’s a limit to how many stories by the same author any given market can absorb in a year, and if I get on a tear I could easily overwhelm it. I remind myself there are other projects that need attention. None of which will mean a darn if these are the stories that want to be written now; I’ve learned to just go with it when that happens, even if, professionally, it may not be the wisest course.

Regardless, now that the first is written and sold and the second is complete, I feel confident enough in its reality to say this much about it: Set in China (or rather, what will one day be China) during the early Warring States period, about 500 BCE. I’d been thinking about these characters for a while, but never got a good handle on how to tell their story until now. I’m a little excited. Once the first has been scheduled I’ll say more, and more to the point, where to find it.

I’m Late…Again

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I’m late again. Yesterday was filled with getting taxes finished and dealing with a long-overdue ophthalmology appointment. (Odd fact—I have better close-up vision in my left eye than even bifocals could give me. The right…not so much). But apparently I’m not going blind anytime soon, which is a good thing.

I need my eyes to do things, like look over old blog posts to remind myself of subjects I’ve already covered…and covered…and probably covered again. That’s the problem with interests and pet peeves and such. You tend to repeat yourself. Boring, for you and everyone else. Plus it’s easy to see how badly certain subjects will age. I just spent a few minutes on a report of my hunt for a new agent several years ago. Back then I was convinced I needed one, even though I’d been through three very reputable agents who hadn’t been able to do a thing for me. I only started selling novels when I forgot about the agents and just did it myself. So that was a lesson hard learned, but all water under the bridge.

One subject that apparently has not aged is the subject of a writer’s “odds.” It came up again just a few days ago when a well-respected editor blogged about it and I read that and thought “Wow. Déjà vu.” Does it still need to be said? Apparently, so once more from the writer’s side which, oddly enough, is pretty much the same as the editor’s side. This applies to novels as well as short fiction, but my more immediate examples are from the short story side. It goes something like this: new writers trying to break into one of the major short story markets (and the specific ones vary, depending on the time and the writer’s interests) look at the submission/acceptance ratios and get all discouraged. A publication might get anywhere from 500-1000 submissions a month, from which they accept maybe three. So your odds of being one of the three are either 1 in 167 or 1 in 333, depending on how many subs the market got that month, right?

Wrong.

Those odds would only be accurate if everyone submitting a story had an equal shot at one of those three slots, and the fact is they don’t. Most stories are rejected out of hand for a multitude of reasons: wrong length, wrong genre, general incompetence, misspellings—or worse, being autocorrected to the wrong word. Sloppy work. Their odds are never higher than zero.  Maybe about fifty stories a month get serious consideration, and those are the real odds you have to beat, about 1 in 17.Even those odds don’t matter if your story is just what the editor is looking for, in which case the odds are 1 in 1.  Provided, of course, you can get your story past the first hurdle. Right length, right market, at least competent writing professionally prepared according to manuscript guidelines. Do your homework, polish and hone your craft, and the odds get a lot better.

There now. I trust there will be no reason to repeat this ever again? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Speaking of things that shouldn’t need to be said, I just glanced at my bookshelves and realized I’ve never read either Planet of Exile or City of Illusion, both by Ursula Le Guin, one of my all-time favorite writers. I have to correct this soonest.

I’m rambling and there’s a rough draft to rewrite and painting to do. Time to stop.

Unhinged Usage

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For those interested, I’ve probably started a new series. Short stories so far, but then that’s how both The Laws of Power and the Yamada series started. I’ve already sold the first one and finished the first draft of the second. Otherwise there’s not a lot to say about it right now. I’ll give more details when we’re closer to publication day. Of course things can get derailed; that’s always a possibility, but so far it looks promising.

I’ve never been a member of the grammar police (no segue for you); which is probably a good thing, as my punctuation usually doesn’t meet ALA standards, and I’m okay with that. My bugaboo, my pet peeve and constant irritant is usage. This started early. Back in the stone age there was such a thing as Saturday Morning Cartoons, and one of my earlier memories was fussing at the intro to one of my favorite cartoons which always used “transferred” when they meant “transformed.” I knew they couldn’t hear me, but I fussed anyway. Which, looking back with 20-20 hindsight, was probably my first hint that I was going to write. Mark Twain talked about usage in the context of writing effectively: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

Twain was right on this, just as he was right about a lot of things. But to this quote I’d add another: “The difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between a well-oiled machine and a machine with sand in its gears.” Not “almost right” word. WRONG word. Not only does the machine not work, the sand gets into everything and is extremely irritating. Continue reading →