Category: Writing

Or: Do NOT come to me for advice on publishing.

I get email, facebook comments, and tweets from time to time where I am asked questions about marketing, publicity, and the publishing business in general.  I hate these questions a lot more than I ought–enough, in fact, that I’ve been forced to ask myself why.

I’ve spoken before of how important it is for a writer to figure out what sort of lies are required to produce his or her best work.  Do you have to tell yourself that you’re “just writing for yourself” to keep from freezing up?  Do you need to convince yourself that you’re writing to change the world in order to focus properly?  I have a bunch of lies I tell myself, and they’ve been very good to me.  It’s the worst sort of pragmatism, and I hate pragmatism; this contradiction, I’m sure, has an effect on my work.  I hope generally a positive one.

But one of the related things is my belief that the business of publishing–the way I need to produce work that will sell to a market in order to keep a roof over my head, food in my mouth, and nicotine in my bloodstream–has no effect on the words that end up on the page.  On the face of it, this is absurd.  Publishers sell a commodity–books–and will continue to pay me only as long as I provide something that they can use to secure a profit; and to say that this process has no effect on the work is to deny that I am a part of the same world as the publisher, the readers, and all the vagaries of an anarchic social system.  To believe that, I’d have to be very good at denial.  I am very good at denial.  Significantly, it is only the fact that I have been very, very lucky, extraordinarily lucky, in that I have been able to live as a writer for so many years, that has permitted me to continue this denial.

Thirty years ago, this fiction was much easier to maintain.  Things like publicity and market awareness were much more the responsibility of the publisher, not the writer; it was easy to be contemptuous of “hacks” who wrote to a market–one could pretend, in other words, to be above all the “base material considerations.”  I still mostly believe this about my own work, because I am convinced that, if I don’t believe it, my work will suffer.  Deliberately writing to please the reader will, I am convinced, result in work I’m unhappy with, and, almost certainly, be disappointing to those who have stayed with me over the years as I’ve pushed and explored and challenged myself as much as I can in order to keep myself entertained.  How much am I really, in a part of my backbrain I’m not comfortable acknowledging, “playing for the crowd” in order to keep myself afloat?  I don’t know, and I don’t want to.

The trouble with this self-deception mostly comes up when people ask me for advice about publishing, self-promotion, and what sort of stuff will sell.  Not only do I not know the answer, but, because of how my own process works, I have to tell them that they ought not to be even thinking about that.  It’s a very strange and contradictory position to be in, because I believe what I’m telling them all the way down to my toes, and I simultaneously know it’s wrong.  I mean, John Scalzi, if no one else, provides proof that consciously writing to a market is no hindrance to producing high-quality, entertaining work.  Neil Gaiman has no trouble promoting his work, and it has clearly not diminished his ability to produce wonderful and amazing stories.  A good illustration of how things have changed is provided by Cecelia Tan’s career: she started her own publishing company in order to get her work out there–and this in spite of having had a solid fan base for many years (of course, erotica publishing has its own problems and peculiarities, but I think the point is still valid).

Honesty is important to me.  I believe that honesty–in fiction and non-fiction–is a process and a struggle, not a yes-or-no thing.  It begins with the decision not to lie, and then becomes difficult.  To tell the truth, you must know the truth, and if the truth you’re looking for is easily plucked from the ground, it’s not worth the bother of bending over.  But in order to concentrate on that little piece of whatever part of reality has taken my interest, I have to wrap myself in deceit.  And when someone puts a question to me that involves those areas where I’m lying to myself, I have the choice of lying to that person, or admitting the truth to myself, and I’m certainly not going to do the latter, because I love doing my work too much to do anything that will threaten my ability to continue.

So if you have questions about marketing, promotion, or making a living as a writer, do us both a favor and ask someone else.

I just tweeted the following: “Good news: Vlad just figured out what’s going on in this book. Bad news: Now I have to.”

That is, in fact, quite literally the truth. When I’m working without an outline, which I do fairly often, one of the joys is the trip into the morass of plot hoping for (and counting on) the answers to appear. They usually do, though it can be more or less painful to pull them out depending on how big they are and what part of my anatomy they’re stuck in. But what I just became aware of, and find kind of interesting, is how I get into this position of suddenly needing Answers.

The thing is, dialogue drives things for me, because I just love it. By “drive” in this case, I mean that the creation of tension, and its release, are both usually marked, if not determined, by who says what how. I know that sounds pretty abstract, but in practice it’s quite simple. Today I was merrily plugging along, with Vlad in conversation with someone who may or may not have some of the answers he needs in order to figure out What’s Going On, when I suddenly wrote the following:

“Oh,” I said. “That’s it.”

Yes, Vlad suddenly got it. I, of course, had, and still have, no idea what he just got. So, why did that happen? Because the moment was right. Because of all of my instincts told me that, in order for the story to have the right feel, that was exactly the point when he needed to have a revelation about Stuff. I wasn’t consciously aware of that until I’d written it, but as soon it showed on the screen, I knew.

I want to make several points here: The most important is, that once I figure it out, that might all change. That is, there is no guarantee that that moment will still want to be in the final version. It is also very possible that, when I do figure it out, and keep moving forward, it’ll change entirely. Working without an outline means extensive revisions; sometimes wiping out pretty much everything you’ve done. But the point is, it keeps me moving, it keeps the story moving, it keeps the emotional tension at the pitch I want it, and it keeps me fascinated and delighted with it as I work.

I do not think this is inherently a good way to work; nor is it inherently bad. But letting dialogue control the emotional feel, and letting the emotional feel, in turn, control the plot, is one way to get there. From here, I have many approaches to how to get me caught up with him. I might keep writing and see if the next line, or paragraph, or page gives it to me. I might go back and read everything I’ve done so far hoping for a clue. I might stand up, pace, scowl at the dog, and mutter until I figure it out. Or I might write another blog post on writing process in hopes the idea will get frustrated at being ignored and come popping out to find me. We’ll see. For now, back to work.

About a month ago, I was asked to co-write the Shadow Unit series finale with Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull.  My mouth said yes before my brain had finished explaining that, in fact, I couldn’t possibly do that on account of I’m not good enough.  Stupid mouth.

Anyway, I went ahead and did it, and it’s done except for post-production, and I’m caught up in an amazing tangle of emotions, or, as the SU fans say, an Emotionally Complex Response (I believe the emoticon is ::D:: or something like that).

First of all, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Shadow Unit, here is a link.  In brief, the project is fanfiction for a TV show that doesn’t exist.  It can be enjoyed on several levels and in several different ways: you can interact with some of the characters on Livejournal, you can do fanfic or fanart, or in other ways.  I sometimes like to tweet about who the guest star was this week, or with some detail of dialog, because it amuses me.  But the guts of it involve fiction by some of my favorite writers.

My own feelings about SU were ambiguous from the beginning of the project.  I started out with a sort of instinctive loyalty to the idea because it was created by friends, combined with a burning hatred of the premise simply because the protagonists were FBI agents, and I hate the FBI with ever fiber of my being.  Eventually, over the course of about two years, the writing won me over, and I began to follow it seriously, if not faithfully,  just sort of telling myself that “FBI” stood for Fine Batch of Individuals or something and had nothing to do with US law enforcement.  Denial is alive and well in my head, thank you very much.

So then I got asked to contribute. To the series finale, fer chrissakes.  It took me, quite literally, two weeks to build up the courage to even try to think about doing anything.  I studied what was there*, making sure I was caught up until getting caught up became an excuse, then dived in.  Emma and Bear had the the solid bones of a story already; once I realized that, I relaxed just a little bit.  But I was still living in the, “What if I suck?” world that we writers know so well.

And then there was this one scene that needed to be written that sort of said, “Yo, Steve.  This is your kinda thing.”  See, it was a part where [blackout]REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED[/blackout] and hits [blackout]REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED  REDACTED  REDACTED[/blackout], which is obviously perfect for me.  So I wrote it, and immediately got the kind of reinforcement I desperately needed but couldn’t bring myself to ask for.  And then I wrote another, and then I introduced a bit of business into another scene, and then–

–Before I knew it, I was caught up fully in the story, and in the fun of bouncing off the other writers, and in the world, and I just sort of didn’t have time to be intimidated any more.  I mean, I’ve said before, “It isn’t about YOU, it’s about the work.”  But this was one of the clearest, sharpest examples of it.  The more I dived into the process, the less it was about my feelings, and, therefore, the more fun it was.

It is, as I said, more or less done now, and I’m having an ECR.  I’m proud of what we’ve done with this story, I’m sorry it’s done, I’m delighted to have been part of it, and, above all, I simply cannot imagine what it is like for the creators who are seeing five solid years of this coming to an end.

Some final thoughts:  Collaboration is magic.  Working with those you admire is just absurd amounts of fun.  Finishing something you’re proud of is deliciously bittersweet.  I am feeling proud, humble, and above all, grateful.

The story is called “Something’s Gotta Eat T. Rexes,” and will be released at the beginning of July.  I hope those of you who read it like it.

 

*In the process, I accidentally discovered a new and very cool connection between the SU ‘verse and the Incrementalists ‘verse; SU fans should figure on Chaz making a cameo sooner or later.