Writers and Non-Writers

You've set the bar very high, SRH.

Hmmm... If When I write a book, I guess I'd like to be compared to Richard Russo. He writes about quirky people and human interaction up in Maine. I'd like to do the same for Vermont.

[Trying to lower the bar a tad.]

I'll raise the bar again; Bruce Chatwin. But less gay.

I'm aiming for the best of the kind of writing I do: Burton for translation, Nabokov for work in a foreign language, Boswell for biography, and Balzac for realism.

I'd like to write the kind of plays Shakespeare writes, particularly the history ones.

What a touchy subject. We're writers by dint of our contributions here. But can anyone write a book? I'm on the fence. I've tried it, and it turned into a runaway train wreck well before the ending. The act of writing was more fun than the idea of being published, so what came out of me was part Looney Tunes, part Dostoyevsky, but mostly Henry Darger. I just might not be practical enough, or have enough common sense, or *shuddering to consider it* talent. If I do someday manage to get it together, I wouldn't mind being considered part Roger Zelazny, part George Eliot, but mostly Clark Ashton Smith.

I have a question for any published writers out there. I'm under the impression that getting a story published operates similarly to hitting on the opposite sex. The wouldbe publishee must seduce the publisher not only with the story, but like with savvy cover letters and things. And just like it's easier to--pardon me--score by getting set up with someone, it's better to know someone who can get you in the door with a publisher. I guess there's no question in that. But thoughts anyways?

My advice is don't even bother contacting publishers directly. Most do not read their slushpile, and if they do, very rarely publish anything from it. Once you've finished and are happy with your MS, get an agent. That's the only way to do it. There are lists of agents in various writers' guides. Pitch your agent with a one-page cover letter, a one to two page synopsis, the first two chapters, your resumé and a stamped and addressed envelope for reply. Send all this to at least a dozen agents, more if you can afford to. Be confident in your cover letter. Make sure your MS hits the ground running. As an unpublished author, you need to hook your potential agent within the first couple of pages, or they won't bother reading any further. If your MS is a slowburner that takes dozens of pages to get going, save it for novel number 2. If you've tried over 20 agents and no one's interested, you need to think seriously about the commercial viability of your MS. Agents aren't stupid.

Wow, thanks for all that, Jonathan.

I was wondering when something like this would come up. It seems to have been--if you'll pardon the expression--something of a subtext of a good deal of what's been happening here.
I surprised myself last year by writing a first (& terribly ugly) first draft of a novel after spending years wistfully longing to do so. Now I've got a more-or-less complete first draft, it's hard to know what to do with it: we kind of regard each other warily whenever we're in the same room. But I just got retrenched from my job last month, so haven't even looked at the poor little thing since then. The book started off with Nicholson Baker as a guide (but with a greater narrative "commitment" (or something)), but ended up more like a creepy version of J G Ballard. I had one story accepted for publication in a(n Aus) journal last year. The story reads to me like a kitsch version of Sebald. Given that it takes me about the same time to write a short story as a novel, I've opted to focus on the latter.
Otto: sounds like you're being too hard on yourself (don't underestimate the charms of the train wreck).

My advice: join a lamer clique of talentless whores whose popularity with herd-minded reviewers can only help your own ascent.

Publishers (or rather, editors who work for them) read their slushpiles all the time; you can't even trip over an editor without accidentally squeezing a dozen slushpile anecdotes out of them. Whether they publish from them or not is another matter, but there are lots and lots of bad writers and bad manuscripts around.

I would only try for an agent if you're determined to start out at a large press instead of a small one, since so many large publishers don't accept unagented manuscripts or queries. But really, it depends on what you're writing -- if you want to be serious about it, look into the matter more, listen to what writers of your ilk say in interviews about the process, pick up the trades at least occasionally (and maybe Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Book). It's like any other job: there's a lot of shitwork to do until your coat-tails are accomodating enough to attract other people to do it for you.

But agents work on commission, remember, and will sit on, even if they don't reject, works which aren't going to bring in much money for them.

The cover letter seduction stuff, etc., is mostly a myth to sell how-to books; of the last five or six places I've sent things to, all of them wanted a minimal cover letter ("tell us who you are and where you live and if you have any special background pertinent to the story"), and some don't want one at all. It's often not even read until after the manuscript anyway. But every market is different, every editor is different; there aren't many generalizations that can be safely made, and that includes the generalizations made by many of the editors themselves (preferences are confused for universals just as often by editors as by high school teachers).

Get to know the people you want to pay you, both directly (the editors and publishers) and indirectly (the readers). It's just like everything else, if you build houses, you need to know how the locals feel about split-levels and porticos.

Tep writes: "Publishers (or rather, editors who work for them) read their slushpiles all the time; you can't even trip over an editor without accidentally squeezing a dozen slushpile anecdotes out of them."

My publisher gets someone to sift through the slushpile, but he says he has never published anything from it, and has only ever published one unagented MS (a recommendation from a friend). I'm not saying this is good practice, but I think it's standard at large publishers. Small publishers may be different.

And yes, agents take a cut, but it's almost always worth it, since they tend to be far better at negotiating advances, rights, etc. than authors. I know that I'm personally crap at that business side of things.

It's no easier to get an agent than a publisher, since the slush piles are just as big at the agencies and they often have fewer people working there than a publishing house would have, so they get through them even slower. One agent I know (and this is in Dublin, not London or New York) gets 700 manuscripts a month. Luckily for her, most of them can be discarded in the first ten seconds because they are totally unreadable.

But to get back to the thread topic, I've always seen myself as a sort of Anne Tyler or Deborah Moggach type, but secretly I wish I was Beryl Bainbridge.

Try actually getting a shit job in an editorial department that works you like a mule, practically starves/sleep deprives you to death, and pays almost nothing -- except for the amazing free education and contacts. That's how I got in. I can't complain... but oh yes, I can. Most editors at least have hopes of being writers themselves -- this is most people's day job, not every writer can have a trust fund -- so going at them like they're an enemy species is a very bad approach. Try assuming that they aren't philistines, that they're writers too, and that they know at least as much as you do -- nothing sets one against an unsolicited submission like a high-handed, defensive, or presumptuous cover letter from a genius with a sketchy grasp of syntax.

Of course, the drawback to my current situation is: I spend 30 hours/week copyediting other people's work and 30ish-average writing nonfiction for the paper; while it's interesting and gets me a decent audience I feel sadder and sadder as I watch my "real" work, fiction, sulk on the back burner, rotting a hole in my skull. My novel has been depressing me for months -- it stopped when my music journalism sort of took off, I just have too much to do and learn in that arena, it eats all my time. I'm hoping it's all going in the hopper, that it'll all be worth it, that it'll make my fiction better in the end... but it's hard to have faith when I see people younger and younger than me getting first volumes on the shelves. Thank Christ I finally got a short story into a book -- Nick Mamatas' antho The Urban Bizarre, go to Amazon and buy it!!! -- otherwise I'd be juuuuuuuust a little bit more psycho at this point. And I'm pretty psycho right now. (TMI? Yes, you get that from the unhinged.)

I have an idea: maybe musicians' day jobs should be writing jingles promoting unknown writers!

Oyeah: thread topic: I guess the really big bold soul says "I want to only be compared to... ME!!!" but if I got called a cross between the Brontes and Wodehouse I'd shit my pants with joy. If you called me a cross between Wilde and Wodehouse, maybe? Ooooh. You'd have my pants OFF. And half an hour later I'd feel like the world's biggest sucker.

I don't want to be a writer, I know I wouldn't be able to hold all that stuff in my head. If I did, through some miracle I would want to write detective stories but not like someone else.

Oyeah: thread topic:

Oops; I forgot to answer the thread too. Ditto to Ann's 2nd response. But if (a) my novel/s ever get published and (b) reviewed, then I guess I'd be happier than Gott in Himmel if I get compared to: Ballard, Nicholson Baker, Flanner O'Connor, WG Sebald (but I know that's never going to happen), Donald Antrim (except that he's never mentioned in Aus).

All the stuff about "how to get noticed by an agent/publisher" drives me crazy. I know I'm going to sound like an old fuddy-duddy but really, do people think that writing a certain kind of cover letter will make the difference between getting published or not? I'm happy to admit that there may be minimum requirements, but apart from that??? It just sounds to me that this issue is just one of the many satellite issues that constantly threaten to distract people's attention/efforts away from their manuscript. But some distractions are luvly: cf ILB.

Yeah, Joyner, the older I get and the more I write the more I think "If I can just write something really good then it'll all come out in the wash." Am I growing more naive somehow -- or just less paranoid?

While it is true that my boyfriend often has to hide the newspaper from me on a Sunday so that I don't spend the afternoon scribbling "die, bitch, die" all over pictures of some glamorous nineteen year old who just got her first novel published, in my saner moments I realise that I don't care if my first novel doesn't get published till I'm forty. And I don't care if the first one published is the fifth one written, at least it means I have an early back catalogue for them to plunder.

No, really, I do feel this way. It's okay to spend my life saying 'no, I still haven't had anything published, no, I don't have an agent yet.' Really, I don't mind.

I have to lie down now.

Bill Bryson

Yeah, Joyner, the older I get and the more I write the more I think "If I can just write something really good then it'll all come out in the wash." Am I growing more naive somehow -- or just less paranoid?

Well I for one have come to realise that paranoia (and narcissism, self doubt et al) are better channeled into the work itself, rather than in that horrible space between the writing and whatever you would like/wish to happen as a result of it.

I am so very slowly learning that lesson...

My agent said I write like Iris Murdoch. I have never read Iris Murdoch. I want to write like Annie Dillard, like Barbara Kingsolver, like Amy Tan. I have not written much for a while. Maybe when I retire I'll get back some energy and motivation. Will reading I. M. inspire me?

Annie Dillard? Amy Tan? Those are goals? Uh... well, if you want to sell a lot of books to people who really don't need to be on the Zoloft they're scarfing, knock yourself out, but ... er... shit, if I were you I'd read SOMETHING new...

Asterzinger, have you read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? How could you possibly have read it and not been changed by it? An American Childhood? Holy the Firm? For the Time Being? She is an awesome writer! Yes, that would be my goal. ...what you have missed. Amy Tan is really good (probably not Pulitzer Prize good) but then, that's probably a personal choice. (Hey, I haven't read Danielle Steel, but I do enjoy Sue Grafton for a lot of fun!) I would like to write like Nancy Willard, too. There are a lot of great poets whose influence I appreciate: Galway Kinnell, Carolyn Forche, Maxine Kumin, the list could grow, but I won't bore you.

Asterzinger: "And I'm pretty psycho right now" -- Try some Zoloft.

Thanks, but I'd rather have appropriate emotional responses to life, unpleasant as most of them may be. Well... my point being, whatever your taste at the moment, there's never any harm in widening your reading habits.

My point exactly. I was interested to find that you are involved in theater in Chicago. Theater used to be my greatest passion, but that's all so much blood under the bridge, as they say. I traveled for a while with a road repertory company (there's a book somewhere in THAT!) And I love Chicago. My son worked as a bouncer in a bar there before getting his Master's degree from Loyola. Writing, (if I ever find time to write again) might be my greatest passion at the moment, along with reading...

Y B compared?

'She writes like Stephen King meets Amy Tan....' does no one any favours, neither SK, nor AT, least of all you and your readers who are set up with an expectation that can almost only fail, and if you have something new to offer this will have misled me into thinking you're just a lukewarm makeover of two writers I don't really enjoy.

It's unlikely you will ever be as good as [insert name of literary/anti literary hero], and if you were you most likely will want people to see you on your own terms. Admire those who are good (by whatever standard) learn what you can from their work and their statements, bios, blogs etc, then go write your own work in your own voice!

[/SERMON]

If I were inclined to write for publication it'd be toward the non-fiction/memoirish end of things and/or Nature/Science writing. Wouldn't mind being compared to Sedaris (memoirish) or Bernd Heinrich (Nature/Science).

But I'm more of a reader than a writer, much as I'm a listener than a musician.

Back to the slushpile for a moment....

Is this you must have an agent advice also true for short stories??

Not that I comprehend the modern short story. Just wondering....

A challenge to all you writers. I'm a reader not a writer and have a difficult challenge in front of me. I need urgent help! How about writing a short eulogy for my cousin.

She was fun, out-spoken, self deprecating, caring, thought of others. Only 47, died of bowel cancer last week after struggling with a lot of pain. Still unexpected.

Any tips? Any suitable poems or passages?

W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues -
Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the
public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever:
I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Try a G00gle search for "funeral poem".

perfect ... many thanks

sp@m