On Crusie's "The Double-Edged Blog"

(Yikes, two posts back-to-back! Is the world ending?)

I just read Jenny Crusie's latest entry on Argh Ink, "The Double-Edged Blog." Jenny's a best-selling author of women's fiction, known for her great sense of humor. She blogs about her works-in-progress, the businesses of writing and publishing, and life in general. She's found that while her blog gives her a chance to express herself freely on topics beyond her writing, it also results in the occasional flame-war from readers who don't like her opinions. She analogizes blogging to a double-edged sword:

I found out that blogs were a chance to say anything I wanted and I was hooked. For awhile, everything was lovely, and then I posted something a lot of people didn’t like. I can’t remember what it was now, but it was the first time somebody said to me, “You know, you should stop blogging, it’s going to hurt your career.” I said, “How is that possible?” and she said, “If they don’t like what you say on your blog, they’ll stop buying your books.” That was incomprehensible to me then, and it’s still puzzling to me now. ...

Then I tripped again, this time because I was thoughtless (this happens a lot). One of my friends got a ludicrous letter from a reader and I posted it with her first name on it. That was flat out wrong of me, and I did apologize and take the name off the blog but basically, I screwed up. First lesson: Never blog when you’re really angry but not admitting it to yourself. Practical application: Wait twenty-four hours before you post something you’ve written.

Then while I was being careful on Argh–well, careful for me–I lost my temper on somebody else’s blog and became The Author Who Is Pro-Plagiarism (because that was more fun for people to get upset about than The Author Who Thinks This Is Being Handled Badly and People Should Stop Author-Bashing Until They Know the Facts). This annoyed some people so much that they’re still mad at me; some of them cornered Bob [Mayer, Crusie's co-author on a couple of books] at Thrillerfest to tell him just how awful I am, as if he didn’t know the black depths of my heart already. And of course, they’re never going to read me again. (Actually my fave comment about the whole mess was on another blog: a reader said she was never going to read me again and then followed it up by saying she’d never read me before either. I kept thinking of the old “Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after my broken arm heals?”/”Of course”/”Funny, I couldn’t play it before” joke, but that’s probably just more evidence of how depraved I am.)

I always enjoy Jenny's blog entries, whether or not I share her point-of-view on certain issues. I'm baffled by the people who incite flame-wars because someone has an opinion that differs from theirs. Or, even worse, those who begin online campaigns against a particular writer because they don't like his/her point of view.

Jennie's blog entry is well worth reading, especially for anyone who's had a similar blog-experience. Several of the comments following it are thought-provoking, too.

As Jenny says:

I feel strongly that anybody who evaluates the rest of the people in the world by how closely their attitudes and statements agree with her worldview is in danger of structuring a life much like the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department. We don’t learn from the people who agree with us, we learn from the people who make us say, “Wait a minute,” and that learning goes both ways. I learn a lot from the critics who intelligently analyze my books and find them wanting; I’ve also learned a lot from the people who have thoughfully and calmly disagreed with me on this blog. Haven’t learned a thing from the shriekers and condemners, though.

The Awful Truth

Kassia Krozser of Booksquare and Dan Green of The Reading Experience are engaged in a provocative dispute about the need for authors to market their own books. See Kassia's "Not a Formula for Success," Dan's "Living on Earth," and Kassia's riposte, "Life on Venus: Authors Do Market."

I know dozens of writers, both published and unpublished. What surprises them most when their first books are published is learning they'll be responsible for most--or all--of the promotion and marketing.

As aspiring ("pre-published") writers, we all imagined we'd merely need to complete the manuscript. Once we signed that book contract, maybe we'd have to make a few changes here and there based on the editorial letter. After that, however, we would move on to our next manuscript. The publisher would take care of actually selling the book to retail outlets and readers.

T''ain't so. The Awful Truth is that publishers' promotional and marketing resources are allocated to the authors who bring in the most money...i.e., those who are already big sellers. You know, your Stephen Kings, your James Pattersons, your Mary Higgins Clarks.

The average writer is a peon--very low on the list for services from the publisher.

Thus it is that the typical novelist--probably an introvert, almost certainly someone who hates the idea of "selling" anything to anybody--has to get out and beat the streets (and Internet pathways) to promote and market his/her book.

Sigh. Yet another note of harsh reality intruding into our fantasy worlds.

A Few Interesting Links, and Some Greetings

A few interesting articles:

If you like Top Ten lists, Time Magazine has 50 Top 10 Lists of 2007 for you.

Over at The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers, Kevin Guilfoyle talks about how media coverage of books nowadays tends to focus more on the business of publishing rather than on the products of the publishing houses. As an example, Guilfoyle links to "Anatomy of a Thriller," the Wall Street Journal's recent article on the prepublication promotional machine kicking into high gear for a debut book by a new thriller writer who received a million-dollar advance (28-year-old screenwriter Tom Rob Smith). Cleverly, Guilfoyle titles his blog entry "Don't Know Much about Anatomy."

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it; Season's Greetings to those who don't. And for those who not only don't celebrate, but don't want anyone else to celebrate, Bah Humbug!

The Pantsers' P.O.V.

Publishers generally require an unpublished fiction author to have a completed manuscript before they will buy the book. After the first novel, however, most publishers will offer the writer a book contract based on a proposal, which is the first three chapters and a synopsis of the full book.

A couple of days ago C.S. Harris posted "A Question for Pantsers" on her blog. C.S. is a plotter, who plans her books fully before she starts writing the first line of prose. She wanted to know how pantsers--writers who write "by the seat of their pants," not plotting the story fully in advance--come up with synopses for their book proposals.

I am a pantser, but can't answer her question because I am unpublished--and also because I have never yet finished a manuscript.

(Aside: "Aha," say the plotters, "You can't finish because you don't plot!")

The Internet Writing Journal recently posted an interesting article by Timothy Hallinan. His seventh novel, A Nail through the Heart, was released this summer. In "To Outline or Not to Outline," Hallinan explains his writing process. He doesn't mention how he deals with writing a proposal, but he does give a good description of the way many pantsers probably work. Here's an excerpt:

I personally can't stand to outline. My main problem is that I don't know my characters well enough until I've written about them at some length, and it doesn't work for me to try to force them into a story they might outgrow. I want them to grow as I write them, and then I want the story to grow out of them. [Emphasis added.]

Someone once said, "We learn what we're writing about by writing about it." For me, and for most of the other novelists I know, writing a novel is (to use an inelegant simile) like circling a drain. We start out by working around the edges of our story, and then the spiral narrows as the story, and our characters, become clearer to us. We center in on the things that really matter.

I particularly like his "circling a drain" metaphor for closing in on his story by starting at its edges. I recommend you read the entire article for a fuller explanation. I do wonder, however, how he writes a book proposal. Surely he has done so, since he's had several novels published before this one. In addition, his new book is first in a series, so he'll have to present something to his publisher to get contracts for the later books.

Maybe I'll go to Hallinan's website and email him about it.

2007 Hugo Awards Announced

From the Hugo Awards website:

The results of the 2007 Hugo Awards, as announced at Nippon 2007, the 65th World Science Fiction Convention, in Yokohama, Japan, on September 1st 2007, are as follows:

Best Novel: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge [Tor, 2006]

Best Novella: “A Billion Eves” by Robert Reed [Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2006]

Best Novelette: “The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald [Asimov’s July 2006]

Best Short Story: “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt [Asimov’s July 2006]

Best Related Non-Fiction Book: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon by Julie Phillips [St. Martin’s Press, 2006]

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro. Directed by Guillermo del Toro [Picturehouse]

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who - “Girl in the Fireplace” (2006) Written by Steven Moffat. Directed by Euros Lyn [BBC Wales/BBC1]

Best Editor, Long Form: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Editor, Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder

Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola

Best Semiprozine: Locus ed. by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong and Liza Groen Trombi

Best Fanzine: Science-Fiction Five-Yearly ed. by Lee Hoffman, Geri Sullivan, and Randy Byers

Best Fan Writer: Dave Langford

Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu

The winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines and administered on their behalf by the World Science Fiction Society, is:

Naomi Novik

Full details of the nominees and voting figures can be found here.

The Continuing Battle: Literary vs. Genre Fiction

The tension within the publishing world over literary fiction versus genre fiction has long interested me. It's a recurring topic of discussion in my weekly writers' group. (All the fiction authors in my group write books classified as genre fiction.) We've noted that some books touted by the lit-crit crowd could easily fit within genre fiction categories, too--but if they were first called genre fiction, many of those lit-crit types would never touch them.

As you can tell from the preceding sentence, I am not among the lit-crit crowd. I love genre fiction, which has been my preferred reading matter for my entire life. As an English major, I put in the required four years of reading literary masterpieces. Some of them I loved--I've read and re-read Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and War and Peace several times each--but many of them I hated. (Get thee behind me, House of the Seven Gables, Moby Dick, and Portrait of a Lady!)

David Lubar's hilarious A Guide to Literary Fiction expresses my point of view on most literary fiction I've read. As he concludes,

One final hint. If you're ever in doubt about whether a story is literary, there's a simple test. Look in the mirror immediately after reading the last sentence. If your eyebrows are closer together than normal, the answer is yes.

(This is off-topic, but funny: According to Lubar's Little-Known Literary Facts, "Research into the archives reveals that Herman Melville was far ahead of his times. His working title for Moby Dick was actually Whaling for Dummies. His publisher changed it without informing him.")

I like books that have a happy ending, or at least an optimistic ending. I've experienced enough tragedy in my own life--I don't want to wallow in the miseries of others. Obviously, negative dramatic events are essential to a book's plot--how else do you put your main character in jeopardy? If I read about someone else's tragedy, however, I want the story to end on a positive note. I don't want to toss and turn through a sleepless night after reading a book whose ending can be paraphrased as, "Abandon hope: life is futile." That seemed to be the message in a lot of the literary fiction I've read.

Booksquare has had a couple of interesting posts recently on genre. Check out "A Rose By Any Other Name: Has Genre Become Irrelevant?", by Pam Jenoff, who "has experienced the ping pong nature of genre designation firsthand (and survived to tell the tale!)," and Why Did the Reader Cross the Aisle?, in which Booksquare (a.k.a. Kassia Krozser) wonders, "The question roiling in the scary place that is my mind is whether or not strict genre categorization serves a book well."

In an excellent post on Teleread, Isabelle Fetherston discusses "Why libraries should offer popular fiction--in both print and e-book formats." She points out that in the 19th century, most libraries didn't carry fiction at all, because librarians believed that reading novels weakened the mind. After libraries began admitting fiction to their collections, many librarians still limited their fiction purchases to classic or educational literature, disdaining books that had popular appeal. In the last 50 years, however, "reader choice has gained more acceptance among librarians—as an important aspect of intellectual freedom." Fetherston says,

The American Library Association even promotes a “Freedom to Read” statement, which includes the following quotes: “The freedom to read is essential to our democracy” and “There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression” (emphasis mine).

She notes, however, there is still a cadre of librarians who believe they should choose what their users read:

In an opinion piece in the December issue of American Libraries, David Isaacson does not object to all novels. But he does “question the argument that libraries should go out of their way to acquire romance novels, thrillers, and other kinds of literature whose primary purpose is escape and titillation.”

Now that makes me angry. If escape and titillation are what I want, it's not Isaacson's place to say I can't have it. I want libraries to include all kinds of fiction in their collections, whether classic, "improving," or "escape" novels.

Let's face it, popular fiction IS genre fiction. Although literary fiction does hit the bestseller lists, those lists are overwhelmingly populated by genre novels. These are the books that satisfy reader fantasies. Including mine.

See Booksquare for promotional ideas

Over at the Booksquare blog, Kassia Krozser is touting the virtues of BookTour.com. Sounds like something my published-author friends would find useful. See Book Tours: Finally, Someone Makes It Easy For Everyone. And doesn't she have the coolest logo graphic ever?

Have We Talked about Book Covers Recently?

I've blogged several times about book covers, or at least the unintentional humor to be found in bad ones (see Now for Something Completely Different, Can There Be Too Much of a Good Thing?, Romance Cover Contest 2006). Most authors have no control over, and very little input into, the cover designs for their books. The most they can do is make suggestions, hope the publisher considers them, and pray that the final result will appeal to book buyers. For the fiction authors in my writers' group, covers are a big concern. Last year we devoted a couple of meetings to analyzing and making suggestions for the cover of C.S. Harris' second St. Cyr mystery, When Gods Die--and, whaddyaknow, when she e-mailed her editor with our suggestions, the publisher actually revamped the cover with our list in mind. The final result was a marked improvement over the original.

New-York-Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie worries about covers, too. Over on Aargh Ink earlier this week, she blogged about the struggle to develop a good cover for the second collaborative novel she's done with thriller author Bob Mayer. Take a look and watch the evolution of a book cover. (Agnes and the Hitman will be released in August.)

For interesting info on the Crusie/Mayer writing collaboration, see their joint site. This is one way to solve the dilemma of portraying the opposite sex--have a co-writer who does the p.o.v. scenes of the characters of his/her gender. Since Crusie is known for her wit and humor, while Mayer presents a tough-guy/macho-man face to the world, reading the potshots they take at each other adds a lot of entertainment value.

Argh Ink -- The Author Photo..Just Show Us What You're Really Like

Jennifer Crusie (who's one of my favorite authors because of her terrific writing and great sense of humor) had a blog entry last week talking about authors' photos for books. She supplies a link to photos of several romance authors who were huge sellers in the golden era of the 70's and 80's. She points out that--apart from the intrinsic entertainment of seeing these writers 25+ years ago--their photos were staged to be dramatic. It was all part of the image of romance writers back then:

"What I like about these photos is the Diane Arbus feel to them which nicely captures the freakshow that is publishing-for-a-living. Almost every one of those photos was carefully staged and chosen by the author to show a side of herself that wasn't real, deliberately letting the reader in on the joke."

(Not least among the weirdities is Danielle Steel's hairdo...I wanted to include a photo Valerie Sherwood wearing a strange animal boa, but couldn't because it would violate the copyright. So click on the link above to see it and the others.)

Anyway, take a look and grin. Most of these authors are still writing, too, although not necessarily as lucratively as 25 years ago. Jennifer Wilde a/k/a Tom Huff died at least a decade ago. Although I never included any of them among my favorite romance writers, the only authors among them I've never read are Shirlee Busbee and Valerie Sherwood.

If you read the entire article that accompanies the photos, you'll note it originally appeared in LIFE magazine in November 1981 and mentions the first-ever national conference of RWA (Romance Writers of America), which had been founded only the year before.

Gollancz Romancz

Interesting news: British publisher Gollancz wants to get in on the surge of interest in romance-fantasy novels and, in January 2007 , will launch its own line of same (punnily named Gollancz Romancz).

Three of the first four titles are reprints of already-released work by American authors Charlaine Harris and Elizabeth Vaughan. The fourth is by Australian author Kim Wilkins. Sphinx Ink has read Harris and Vaughan and likes their work enormously--both are on her "must buy" list. I haven't read Wilkins, but apparently she's popular.

In addition--as you can see from the thumbnail--Gollancz Romancz has a really cool logo!