Nick Mamatas (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nihilistic_kid) wrote,@ 2003-10-03 06:45:00 |
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Letters To (And From) A Young Dipshit
Tim "Money" Pratt recently offered up some advice for new writers. Jay "Jay Lake" Lake coughed up his personal rules for writing too..
So I figured I'd toss a few notes in too. I'll give away the secret right up front if you don't want to read the whole thing. Here is the secret: perspective. Always keep a sense of perspective.
1. Perhaps you are one of those writers who tweaks a spreadsheet program so that you can keep track of all your submissions, response times, and any of the comments you might get on rejection slips. Maybe you've found yourself debating what sort of paper to buy: the cheap stuff may not look as good, but the high-quality paper may send a subconscious message to the editor that you're well off and don't need the sale. If you see a big name editor or agent online somewhere, perhaps you write up a cute little comment with plenty of smilies, just to say hi and how much you appreciate the work. You may not even know why you do all these things, so I'll tell you. It's because you are a fucking twerp.
Things like paper stock and sycophantic online repartee give you a feeling of mastery, but the effect these things have on getting published are in the 0.000001% range. "But doesn't any edge count?" you may ask, and yes, any edge does, but the energy spent sweating meaningless crap can be much better spent in-story.
2. Same goes for the reverse. Maybe you've run afoul some Big Name Author online, and his dashed-off notes are full of minor copy errors. Why that's outrageous! How unprofessional! You sit there proofreading every USENET post and lj comment and nobody is buying your stuff, and this wank gets to a) disagree with you and b) doesn't bother watching his commas! One typo on a manuscript means rejection, or so you've been told, but the Big Names are getting away with murder! Why do you feel this way? Because you're an idiot. Just relax. What you're stewing over, the Big Name has probably already forgotten thanks to his hip flask and another evening sitting alone in his kitchen singing along with German beerhall songs on the shortwave radio.
3. We should also keep our perspective when looking at magazines. You know the big magazines in the genre: Asimov's, Analog, F&SF. You know they don't pay very much. You may also know that lots of "mainstream" magazines pay more. What you may not know is why. Here is why:
Nobody reads science fiction magazines.
There ya go. Nobody reads 'em. Really. Locus publishes the circulation numbers annually. It's pretty damn sad. Trade magazines for the formica sales industry have better numbers. Go to a newsstand sometime and pick up any other magazine you like. Bronze Confessions. Cleveland Monthly. Foreclosure News. Pro Wrestling USA Presents: Fighting Females. You know what all these magazines have in common? More people read them than read science fiction magazines. LOTS more. So don't sweat it. The pressure in your rectum may collapse when you get into F&SF for the first time (I've never been) but the world certainly won't. Just look at the magazines, enjoy the stories, write stuff they might like, and send it in on any reasonable paper stock. There's no conspiracy or secret handshake involved, and do you know why? Because it wouldn't be worth the effort to set one up. The big-time digests are a few years away from being scrapped so that the paper can be used to create another Bible Astrology Crossword magazine.
4. Cons. People say that cons are a great place to go to to network, make connections, and to put your best professional foot forward. You should dress nicely, act appropriately, and leave the manuscripts at home. The last is true, nobody wants to drag your lame book home with them. The rest, not so much. Cons are good for one thing and one thing only: to meet 700lb women who think wearing chainmail bikini tops, hippie skirts, and fanny packs together makes for an acceptable evening outfit. You should go to cons to have fun. The best way to have fun is to ignore the pros entirely and just oggle at the oddities of human nature who congregate to these things. Dress nicely? As long as cheese doodle dust isn't all over your ridiculous mountain man beard, you'll be in the top quartile of fashion. Did you shower that week? Excellent, you're ahead of the game.
If you are a writer you may be asked to attend a con as a panel participant. This is meaningless. Do it if you'd like, but being a con guest or panel participant is in no way an accolade. If you're on a panel, it's probably only because the guy who was going to run a demo on how to remove semen stains from a human-sized otter outfit got sick after eating at Arby's every day for a week. Just go to your panel, don't hype whatever crap you're selling too much, stay on topic, and if you're seated next to some giant blowhard panelist, don't argue with him, just fuck around by making little jokes.
5. The book trade. You may have heard that there used to be whole bunches of SF book publishers in New York, and now there are only a few. This is true. It doesn't matter. Remember, keep the perspective. One, selling a book isn't a lottery, they don't choose from a random selection of manuscripts. Read what you want to write and write what you want to read. And look beyond.
In horror, people regularly wet themselves over the thought of being published by Leisure Books. Leisure Books' base advance for a first-time novelist is $2000, money that can be made by selling two short stories to slicks, or by writing a few short stories and flogging reprints, or hell, by writing a single article and selling it pretty much anywhere. Why do horror people wet themselves? Because they are insane. Even SF magazines laugh at horror magazines. Ain't nobody reading horror. That's changing slowly, but that's the way it is right now.
SF is generally a middling concern of major publishers. However, there are other ways to get a book published. I don't mean ebooks or vanity POD publishers or any of that crap, I mean indie presses like Night Shade, Ministry of Whimsy, Prime, Carrol & Graf, Four Walls Eight Windows, etc. Not all SF has an exploding planet on the cover. If your stuff is literary enough to annoy Dave Trusdale, try marketing it as a mainstream novel. You can have a perfectly acceptable career as a writer without the rocketship spine.
6. Lots of writers have an associated hobby. They like to discuss their writing style and writing process with other writers. They like to read books on writing and advice by other writers on how to write. They like to go to writing workshops and look at one another's stories. These are all fine things as long as one keeps one's sense of perspective. In much the same way being an accomplished masturbator will not make one a legendary lover, spending a lot of time on this stuff won't make you a better writer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if it is fun and relaxing, just like wankin' it is. Just avoid people who see metawriting conversations as the key to success in the same way you would avoid someone who jerks off constantly as a means of practice for that great day when they finally have sexual relations.
7. Putting out a little chapbook or something can be fun. That is all it can be. Have fun with it. Don't complain that it cost you a lot of money or that nobody bought it or that everything is so unfair. Doing a little zine or a chapbook is a hobby, even if a Big Name Author ends up sending you material for hip flask-related reasons. People who skydive as their hobby know better than to complain about the high cost of parachutes. You must also know better.
8. Who is a Big Name? Well, for the most part, there aren't any. The people you spontaneously orgasm over are probably unknown to the vast majority of humanity. When I was a kid, I'd occasionally see Isaac Asimov on tv, talking about outer space or something as part of a news show. You don't see that anymore. Why not? Because Asimov is dead. So when something happens, like the space shuttle blowing up, tv segment producers think about calling an SF writer, check their Rolodex, see the black line through Asimov's name, and then say "Eh, fuck it. We won't have a science fiction guy."
The person who is the "science fiction guy" gets to be the real Big Name. Everyone else isn't one outside of the genre bantustan. Inside the genre bantustan, you know who the Big Names are. What you now need to know is that they don't matter. You should have a perspective that looks beyond the razorwire fences of the field. That way you'll be able to measure both your successes and failures properly: by knowing that both generally mean nothing.
Tim "Money" Pratt recently offered up some advice for new writers. Jay "Jay Lake" Lake coughed up his personal rules for writing too..
So I figured I'd toss a few notes in too. I'll give away the secret right up front if you don't want to read the whole thing. Here is the secret: perspective. Always keep a sense of perspective.
1. Perhaps you are one of those writers who tweaks a spreadsheet program so that you can keep track of all your submissions, response times, and any of the comments you might get on rejection slips. Maybe you've found yourself debating what sort of paper to buy: the cheap stuff may not look as good, but the high-quality paper may send a subconscious message to the editor that you're well off and don't need the sale. If you see a big name editor or agent online somewhere, perhaps you write up a cute little comment with plenty of smilies, just to say hi and how much you appreciate the work. You may not even know why you do all these things, so I'll tell you. It's because you are a fucking twerp.
Things like paper stock and sycophantic online repartee give you a feeling of mastery, but the effect these things have on getting published are in the 0.000001% range. "But doesn't any edge count?" you may ask, and yes, any edge does, but the energy spent sweating meaningless crap can be much better spent in-story.
2. Same goes for the reverse. Maybe you've run afoul some Big Name Author online, and his dashed-off notes are full of minor copy errors. Why that's outrageous! How unprofessional! You sit there proofreading every USENET post and lj comment and nobody is buying your stuff, and this wank gets to a) disagree with you and b) doesn't bother watching his commas! One typo on a manuscript means rejection, or so you've been told, but the Big Names are getting away with murder! Why do you feel this way? Because you're an idiot. Just relax. What you're stewing over, the Big Name has probably already forgotten thanks to his hip flask and another evening sitting alone in his kitchen singing along with German beerhall songs on the shortwave radio.
3. We should also keep our perspective when looking at magazines. You know the big magazines in the genre: Asimov's, Analog, F&SF. You know they don't pay very much. You may also know that lots of "mainstream" magazines pay more. What you may not know is why. Here is why:
Nobody reads science fiction magazines.
There ya go. Nobody reads 'em. Really. Locus publishes the circulation numbers annually. It's pretty damn sad. Trade magazines for the formica sales industry have better numbers. Go to a newsstand sometime and pick up any other magazine you like. Bronze Confessions. Cleveland Monthly. Foreclosure News. Pro Wrestling USA Presents: Fighting Females. You know what all these magazines have in common? More people read them than read science fiction magazines. LOTS more. So don't sweat it. The pressure in your rectum may collapse when you get into F&SF for the first time (I've never been) but the world certainly won't. Just look at the magazines, enjoy the stories, write stuff they might like, and send it in on any reasonable paper stock. There's no conspiracy or secret handshake involved, and do you know why? Because it wouldn't be worth the effort to set one up. The big-time digests are a few years away from being scrapped so that the paper can be used to create another Bible Astrology Crossword magazine.
4. Cons. People say that cons are a great place to go to to network, make connections, and to put your best professional foot forward. You should dress nicely, act appropriately, and leave the manuscripts at home. The last is true, nobody wants to drag your lame book home with them. The rest, not so much. Cons are good for one thing and one thing only: to meet 700lb women who think wearing chainmail bikini tops, hippie skirts, and fanny packs together makes for an acceptable evening outfit. You should go to cons to have fun. The best way to have fun is to ignore the pros entirely and just oggle at the oddities of human nature who congregate to these things. Dress nicely? As long as cheese doodle dust isn't all over your ridiculous mountain man beard, you'll be in the top quartile of fashion. Did you shower that week? Excellent, you're ahead of the game.
If you are a writer you may be asked to attend a con as a panel participant. This is meaningless. Do it if you'd like, but being a con guest or panel participant is in no way an accolade. If you're on a panel, it's probably only because the guy who was going to run a demo on how to remove semen stains from a human-sized otter outfit got sick after eating at Arby's every day for a week. Just go to your panel, don't hype whatever crap you're selling too much, stay on topic, and if you're seated next to some giant blowhard panelist, don't argue with him, just fuck around by making little jokes.
5. The book trade. You may have heard that there used to be whole bunches of SF book publishers in New York, and now there are only a few. This is true. It doesn't matter. Remember, keep the perspective. One, selling a book isn't a lottery, they don't choose from a random selection of manuscripts. Read what you want to write and write what you want to read. And look beyond.
In horror, people regularly wet themselves over the thought of being published by Leisure Books. Leisure Books' base advance for a first-time novelist is $2000, money that can be made by selling two short stories to slicks, or by writing a few short stories and flogging reprints, or hell, by writing a single article and selling it pretty much anywhere. Why do horror people wet themselves? Because they are insane. Even SF magazines laugh at horror magazines. Ain't nobody reading horror. That's changing slowly, but that's the way it is right now.
SF is generally a middling concern of major publishers. However, there are other ways to get a book published. I don't mean ebooks or vanity POD publishers or any of that crap, I mean indie presses like Night Shade, Ministry of Whimsy, Prime, Carrol & Graf, Four Walls Eight Windows, etc. Not all SF has an exploding planet on the cover. If your stuff is literary enough to annoy Dave Trusdale, try marketing it as a mainstream novel. You can have a perfectly acceptable career as a writer without the rocketship spine.
6. Lots of writers have an associated hobby. They like to discuss their writing style and writing process with other writers. They like to read books on writing and advice by other writers on how to write. They like to go to writing workshops and look at one another's stories. These are all fine things as long as one keeps one's sense of perspective. In much the same way being an accomplished masturbator will not make one a legendary lover, spending a lot of time on this stuff won't make you a better writer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if it is fun and relaxing, just like wankin' it is. Just avoid people who see metawriting conversations as the key to success in the same way you would avoid someone who jerks off constantly as a means of practice for that great day when they finally have sexual relations.
7. Putting out a little chapbook or something can be fun. That is all it can be. Have fun with it. Don't complain that it cost you a lot of money or that nobody bought it or that everything is so unfair. Doing a little zine or a chapbook is a hobby, even if a Big Name Author ends up sending you material for hip flask-related reasons. People who skydive as their hobby know better than to complain about the high cost of parachutes. You must also know better.
8. Who is a Big Name? Well, for the most part, there aren't any. The people you spontaneously orgasm over are probably unknown to the vast majority of humanity. When I was a kid, I'd occasionally see Isaac Asimov on tv, talking about outer space or something as part of a news show. You don't see that anymore. Why not? Because Asimov is dead. So when something happens, like the space shuttle blowing up, tv segment producers think about calling an SF writer, check their Rolodex, see the black line through Asimov's name, and then say "Eh, fuck it. We won't have a science fiction guy."
The person who is the "science fiction guy" gets to be the real Big Name. Everyone else isn't one outside of the genre bantustan. Inside the genre bantustan, you know who the Big Names are. What you now need to know is that they don't matter. You should have a perspective that looks beyond the razorwire fences of the field. That way you'll be able to measure both your successes and failures properly: by knowing that both generally mean nothing.
