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greygirlbeastYesterday, I did 1,024 words on "The Melusine (1898)" for Sirenia Digest #31, but did not find The End. Because this is one those pieces. I meant it to be a vignette I could write in two days. It has, become, instead, a full-fledged short story that has, so far, required twice that number of days. If I'm lucky, I'll finish it today. Truth be told, I did not have time to write a short story just now, as the deadline for The Red Tree looms so frightfully near, and I have written only the prologue and that one chapter. And we know about authors who miss their deadlines, don't we? Or did you skip yesterday's lesson?
Yesterday, two years ago, Sophie died. That damned old cat. How can it have been two years already? We moved her ashes with us from Atlanta. I wasn't about to leave her ghost lurking about that godsforsaken city alone. And who'd have thought this annoying Siamese bastard named Hubero Padfoot Wu ever would have stolen my callous heart? It's a world of damned unlikely twists and turns, I tell you.
And on this day four years ago I wrote the following:
Lately, I can't seem to get past the cold fact of "popularity contests." We tend to use that phrase in a strictly pejorative sense, as in, "I don't want anything to do with that. It's just a popularity contest." And yet, that's what publishing is. If you win, it's because you've cracked the secrets of the popularity contest, and if you fail, it's because you never figured it out, or never tried, or no one ever paid to put you at the top of the list, or whatever. And adding to the frustration is the importance of happenstance in this whole enterprise. How does someone achieve popularity? Well, I have to admit, at least in the short run, money helps. The more money is spent promoting your books, the more chance is weighted in your favour. But it's not at all unusual for books with huge advertising budgets to fail. In fact, that's what usually happens to books with huge advertising budgets, if only because that's what happens with most books (and forget the highly questionable and rarely questioned, even if often parroted, Sturgeon's Law; it's about as useful and relevant here as any adage). What really makes for success is that intangible, elusive ability to appeal to large numbers of people, for whatever reason. Authors tend to achieve success in the marketplace by one of two routes: a) an ability to speak the common tongue and tell stories that resonate with a large number of readers, or b) a knack for being in the right place at the right time. In either case, it's mostly luck. This is not an issue of art, or of quality, or of effort. No matter how hard one tries, or how well one writes, the odds of success are roughly the same. The work ethic fails here, along with all those American fantasies of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps and naive beliefs that quality will out.
Four years on, I still haven't gotten over being appalled at the whole high-schoolish "popularity contest" aspect of publishing. Likely, I never, ever shall.
Now that the heatwave has abated, I am being preyed upon, or falling victim to the seductions of, another of the Nine Seven Deadly Sins of Writing —— Distraction. How am I supposed to sit here, in this tiny office, writing about a fabulous clockwork Western America, an alternate reality with mechanical mastodons and zeppelins and mysterious carnival tents that reek of the ocean, when I could easily be at Beavertail, or the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, or the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, or visiting Lovecraft's grave at Swan Point, or talking with Panthalassa at Moonstone Beach, or meeting Bob Eggleton for coffee to discuss The Dinosaurs of Mars, or taking in a movie at the Avon on Thayer Street, or searching for trilobites at Lionshead on Conanicut Island, or reading old books in the Providence Athenaeum, or taking the train down to Manhattan? I mean, sheesh. There was nothing to do in Atlanta —— nothing worth doing —— but now i am here, and there are a hundred things to do on any given day. What odd gravity holds me in this chair, I'll never know.
Last night, more unpacking, mostly fossils for the big display case, and a few recent skulls. Three starfish from Jacksonville, FL. Then we watched the very first episode of Deadwood for the fourth or fifth time, because I needed a dose of Al Swearengen. Then there was more unpacking, and bed a little after 2 ayem.
The box-flap doodle art auctions have begun! Two of them, which is all there shall be. There's the "Cephaloflap" and the "Monster Doodle." Take your pick, or go for both. All proceeds go to, well, stuff. There's always stuff. Stuff is not free. Except for free stuff, of course. Frell, free stuff is cool, right? So, I'll even throw in a free moonstone from Moonstone Beach, collected by mine own hands, to each auction winner. So there. Go forth and bid, ye bloomin' scallywags.
Also, Spooky's birthday still has not been moved from June 24th, despite appeals to the Homeland Office of Birth Date Relocation, and you can find her Amazon wish list by following the button below. Me, I need more caffeine, obviously.
Shit, it's Friday the fucking 13th. Good thing I'm not triskaidekaphobic or paraskevidekatriaphobic.
Yesterday, two years ago, Sophie died. That damned old cat. How can it have been two years already? We moved her ashes with us from Atlanta. I wasn't about to leave her ghost lurking about that godsforsaken city alone. And who'd have thought this annoying Siamese bastard named Hubero Padfoot Wu ever would have stolen my callous heart? It's a world of damned unlikely twists and turns, I tell you.
And on this day four years ago I wrote the following:
Lately, I can't seem to get past the cold fact of "popularity contests." We tend to use that phrase in a strictly pejorative sense, as in, "I don't want anything to do with that. It's just a popularity contest." And yet, that's what publishing is. If you win, it's because you've cracked the secrets of the popularity contest, and if you fail, it's because you never figured it out, or never tried, or no one ever paid to put you at the top of the list, or whatever. And adding to the frustration is the importance of happenstance in this whole enterprise. How does someone achieve popularity? Well, I have to admit, at least in the short run, money helps. The more money is spent promoting your books, the more chance is weighted in your favour. But it's not at all unusual for books with huge advertising budgets to fail. In fact, that's what usually happens to books with huge advertising budgets, if only because that's what happens with most books (and forget the highly questionable and rarely questioned, even if often parroted, Sturgeon's Law; it's about as useful and relevant here as any adage). What really makes for success is that intangible, elusive ability to appeal to large numbers of people, for whatever reason. Authors tend to achieve success in the marketplace by one of two routes: a) an ability to speak the common tongue and tell stories that resonate with a large number of readers, or b) a knack for being in the right place at the right time. In either case, it's mostly luck. This is not an issue of art, or of quality, or of effort. No matter how hard one tries, or how well one writes, the odds of success are roughly the same. The work ethic fails here, along with all those American fantasies of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps and naive beliefs that quality will out.
Four years on, I still haven't gotten over being appalled at the whole high-schoolish "popularity contest" aspect of publishing. Likely, I never, ever shall.
Now that the heatwave has abated, I am being preyed upon, or falling victim to the seductions of, another of the Nine Seven Deadly Sins of Writing —— Distraction. How am I supposed to sit here, in this tiny office, writing about a fabulous clockwork Western America, an alternate reality with mechanical mastodons and zeppelins and mysterious carnival tents that reek of the ocean, when I could easily be at Beavertail, or the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, or the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, or visiting Lovecraft's grave at Swan Point, or talking with Panthalassa at Moonstone Beach, or meeting Bob Eggleton for coffee to discuss The Dinosaurs of Mars, or taking in a movie at the Avon on Thayer Street, or searching for trilobites at Lionshead on Conanicut Island, or reading old books in the Providence Athenaeum, or taking the train down to Manhattan? I mean, sheesh. There was nothing to do in Atlanta —— nothing worth doing —— but now i am here, and there are a hundred things to do on any given day. What odd gravity holds me in this chair, I'll never know.
Last night, more unpacking, mostly fossils for the big display case, and a few recent skulls. Three starfish from Jacksonville, FL. Then we watched the very first episode of Deadwood for the fourth or fifth time, because I needed a dose of Al Swearengen. Then there was more unpacking, and bed a little after 2 ayem.
The box-flap doodle art auctions have begun! Two of them, which is all there shall be. There's the "Cephaloflap" and the "Monster Doodle." Take your pick, or go for both. All proceeds go to, well, stuff. There's always stuff. Stuff is not free. Except for free stuff, of course. Frell, free stuff is cool, right? So, I'll even throw in a free moonstone from Moonstone Beach, collected by mine own hands, to each auction winner. So there. Go forth and bid, ye bloomin' scallywags.
Also, Spooky's birthday still has not been moved from June 24th, despite appeals to the Homeland Office of Birth Date Relocation, and you can find her Amazon wish list by following the button below. Me, I need more caffeine, obviously.
Shit, it's Friday the fucking 13th. Good thing I'm not triskaidekaphobic or paraskevidekatriaphobic.
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I joke about trash 'cause it takes class to be enlightened...
Date: 2008-06-13 04:12 pm (UTC)In the end, though, I don't think that matters, too much, if you're trying to eat food, and that eating depends on people liking you, for whatever their reasons.
We do what we can, though, and we tell people about those whose work we enjoy, and maybe that telling hits enough people, or the right people, and then there's more people, and they tell people.
At least, that's what I tell myself, and that's what I hope, because your work's a bit too good to go without a large, Large audience, and you can't really keep writing that work, if you don't have food to eat.
Re: I joke about trash 'cause it takes class to be enlightened...
Date: 2008-06-13 04:57 pm (UTC)At least, that's what I tell myself, and that's what I hope, because your work's a bit too good to go without a large, Large audience, and you can't really keep writing that work, if you don't have food to eat.
Food. And rent. And video games. And books. And boy whores. Yeah.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 04:50 pm (UTC)Gotta' wonder, too, as the Writing Workshop Industry takes wing, how much spending money to achieve popularity is tied up in THAT particular game ...
(a) Spend $1,500 bucks for a week with commercially successful author(s) ...
(b) ... who may (or may NOT) know how to teach ...
(b) ... network, get known in an intimate circle of wannabes ...
(c) ... one of whom MAY end up an editor at some house or 'zine that'll publish you.
Can't afford admission? Solace in something Rod Serling once said: "Sooner or later, good writing gets noticed." (Perhaps, like Hemingway's words, a lie ... but a pretty one.)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 04:56 pm (UTC)Gotta' wonder, too, as the Writing Workshop Industry takes wing, how much spending money to achieve popularity is tied up in THAT particular game ...
Okay. Here is my very unconventional advice. Avoid ALL writing workshops, unless you just like doing that sort of thing for fun. There is really no connection between being a successful working author and attending workshops. And the workshops are really more about teaching writers how to please editors than about teaching writers how to be better writers, which, I think, is all but unteachable.
Can't afford admission? Solace in something Rod Serling once said: "Sooner or later, good writing gets noticed." (Perhaps, like Hemingway's words, a lie ... but a pretty one.)
Yep. That's a lie. One I would not perpetuate. Or I would ar least add the proviso that getting noticed does not equal any sort of actual success. Look at the brilliant but obscure Mitch Cullin, for example.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 05:04 pm (UTC)It's rare to have someone you admire confirm something you already believe. Thank you.
" re: 'Good writing gets noticed ...' Yep. That's a lie."
Yours did. :-) (Gotcha'!)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 05:49 pm (UTC)It's rare to have someone you admire confirm something you already believe. Thank you.
You are welcome.
Yours did. :-) (Gotcha'!)
Luck...
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 08:08 pm (UTC)Talent. (
Tag, you're "it").
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 08:11 pm (UTC)Tag, you're "it").
I do not deny the talent, only that it necessarily played any role in my being noticed.
For at least a year, back about '96, there was a persistant rumour that my "success" was due to a relationship with Clive Barker.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 08:28 pm (UTC)Spooky's *way* cuter. :)
Gotta' fly. Thanks for the interchange.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 08:36 pm (UTC)Spooky's *way* cuter. :)
Well, I am inclined to agree.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 08:57 pm (UTC)wich happens to be almost to the word the advice that Stephen King says in (the unabridged audiobook version of) "On writing:..."
Compared to Atlanta you are now nearly his neighbour..roughly speaking....VERY
Can't help thinking that a cooperation for you would be worth reading.
Nah just you do your thing wich only you can do your way.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 09:05 pm (UTC)wich happens to be almost to the word the advice that Stephen King says in (the unabridged audiobook version of) "On writing:..."
I did know that, as I've not read On Writing...., as I can think of nothing duller than listening to another writer talk about writing. But I am glad to hear he said that.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-14 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 07:44 pm (UTC)I'm actually very fond of writing workshops: it's the one way to guarantee that the wannabes are too busy attending workshops to do anything else.
That's fucking brilliant.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 08:09 pm (UTC)*chortle* (Although a good many manage to find time to clutter up the IN boxes of long-suffering editors like Nick Mamatas ...)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 09:19 pm (UTC)Auctions
Date: 2008-06-13 05:25 pm (UTC)Re: Auctions
Date: 2008-06-13 05:50 pm (UTC)I can't help but think that this is a good idea. You may want to hold onto all the box flaps...
Well, truly, those are probably the only two I drew upon, and most are just box flaps. Also, at least half have now been disposed of. There might be one or two more of note. I shall look.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 05:51 pm (UTC)I still haven't gotten over being appalled at the whole high-schoolish "popularity contest" aspect of publishing.
Which, of course, just makes me wonder what exactly you encountered to make this old distaste arise to the fore (or more likely, the rear...of your mouth where one tends to accumilate bile from dyspepsic eruptions...).
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 06:14 pm (UTC)Nice Title. Where is it from?
A song from the new Dresden Doll's CD, ""Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner."
Which, of course, just makes me wonder what exactly you encountered to make this old distaste arise to the fore (or more likely, the rear...of your mouth where one tends to accumilate bile from dyspepsic eruptions...).
Oh, I was just reading over the old entry this morning. But that distaste is usually somewhere in my mouth.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 06:11 pm (UTC)I haven't seen much of the back end yet, but as a reader it seems like every so often you come across an author who's been publishing steadily all along... whom you liked just fine... but you hadn't heard was still alive, let alone still publishing. It's strange to see how much buzz certain authors or markets get -- writers with very few publication credits, or markets with very, very low visibility outside of the hundred or so people who read and publish there.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 06:15 pm (UTC)It's strange to see how much buzz certain authors or markets get -- writers with very few publication credits, or markets with very, very low visibility outside of the hundred or so people who read and publish there.
Such as?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 06:53 pm (UTC)KK is famous, important, etc., and I had no idea up until seeing her at a con recently that she was publishing more Deryni books. It's true I don't regularly read Locus or the digest mags, but I would have thought that I would have heard about her publishing. PJ, by contrast, is getting various online press and will presumably get serious press next year when he puts out his first books next year. Don't know if it's a young/new vs. old thing, or what, but in some measure one gets more attention than the other.
As to markets, hmmm... I'm talking completely off the cuff here, and the number is more like thousands than hundreds, but I've heard a low but constant buzz about Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet for a while. I've never yet submitted there, I know no one who has submitted there, and I know no one who has told me they've read a story there, and yet that magazine name shows up in "year's best" mentions, offhand references among certain SF taste-makers, etc. Is it "more popular" than F&SF? Probably not. What about the high-paying Jim Baen's Universe? Well... Maybe it's just a matter of me not knowing enough SF readers, but I've never met a single person who's talked about reading a story at JBU.
And that's probably a longer answer than you expected, but it helped me to think about popularity v. buzz v. readership. Hmm.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 07:46 pm (UTC)Yep. But, thanks, nonetheless.
Unrelated
Date: 2008-06-13 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 07:07 pm (UTC)I had another savannah, a baby, die on me about three months later of unrelated causes: I had already received a job offer to move back to Texas at that point, so I kept him in the freezer until the move and put him in a cooler for 24 hours. As soon as I crossed the state border into California, I stopped, found a spectacular spot on the side of a mountain on the Siskyou Pass, and buried him there, covering the grave site with quartz chunks that were eroding from further up the mountainside. As much as I detest my ex-wife, I wouldn't have left her in Portland unless I was physically unable to move her corpse, and were I to have been diagnosed with a terminal disease while I was there, I was determined to die anywhere but there just so any obituaries wouldn't associate me with the place.
Yeah, I feel about Portland the way you feel about Atlanta. How can you tell?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 07:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, I feel about Portland the way you feel about Atlanta. How can you tell?
And, I must admit, if baffles me a little. I've never been to Portland, but Spooky lived there and loves it. Besides its impending destruction by the forces of plate tectonics, what do you find so awful about Portland (and you might well find the impending destruction part not so awful...).
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 09:40 pm (UTC)Most of all, I got desperately sick and tired of the defensiveness of Portlanders when they'd ask "So what do you think of our city?" and you'd tell them the truth. For me, the sign of a great city is one where you bring up obvious flaws and the locals go "You know, you're right, and you forgot this and this and this, but we're working on it." You don't know how proud I am to live in Dallas these days, where now you can criticize aspects of the city that need to be criticized with nobody other than the SMU brats throwing tantrums about how "You're WRONG!" In Portland, though, far too many of the "Keep Portland Pretentious" crowd willingly wear colon-colored glasses the whole time: you bring up any of these issues online, and you're guaranteed to have at least one Portlander pitching a fit about how "I've lived here ALL MY LIFE, and I've NEVER heard any of these issues!" I guess it's that Portland drove off anyone who didn't hear the siren song, because I've run into more enough fellow escapees that not only commiscerated with me, but related horror stories that made me shudder.
To put it another way, Portland was so foul that even with the cloudy skies and the local non-human wildlife, I caught the film The Whole Wide World nine months after I moved there and found myself insanely homesick for wild sunflowers and the buzz of cicadas. That was understandable, but a viewing of the neo-Nazis and giant bugs in Starship Troopers made me homesick for Houston. Even Houston locals don't get homesick for Houston. If I'd found myself getting homesick for Lewisville, Texas after seeing Deliverance, I would have put a bullet in my hole right then and there.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 10:08 pm (UTC)Fair enough.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-13 09:47 pm (UTC)Anyway, one of the specialties of my department was organizing and archiving the satellite photos of Oregon and Washington for BLM business, and our conference room had a beautiful picture of Mount Hood from orbit as its wallpaper. What wasn't visible from the ground, but was eminently visible from space, was that Mount Hood produced two big pyroclastic flows at some time in its past, one running north of what's now Portland and one that runs well south. The flows left a big channel running right into downtown Portland, and I also noticed that Hood has a huge bulge facing right toward the city. I asked my BLM compatriots if Portland had any sort of evacuation plan if Hood suddenly went from being a dormant volcano to active (or worse, decided to imitate Mount Mazama and blow up with precious little warning), and was told that Portland didn't have a thing. I also noted that if Hood blew again, a la Mount St. Helens, it would blow toward Portland, and any pyroclastic flow would hit the Tualatin Mountains behind West Portland and cause it to slosh back like water hitting the back of a bathtub. The thought of Portland being buried under a half-mile of red-hot pumice is one that has helped me get to sleep many times in the decade since I escaped.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 02:35 am (UTC)