Friday, September 24, 2004
A couple of interesting wordblogs
Aspiring authors love to spend large amounts of time and money seeking advice on "getting published" or "breaking into print". It's funny and tragic that they so seldom ask for advice on how to improve their writing, which is why publishing houses relegate the slush pile to unpaid interns, if they deal with it at all.
Two weblogs recently came to my attention. The first, Fiction Bitch, is, on the face of it, an editor who takes a perverse glee in tearing apart stories submitted to her website by aspiring authors. She writes an essay on each submission that points out the (usually few) good bits, and discusses the bad bits. She also posts the original submission with her comments. One would expect that the comments within the actual stories would be cruel and belittling, given the title of the blog, but actually they are constructive and to the point. She's a damn good editor, and for those with the stomach to take these comments to heart, a perceptive and generous mentor.
The second, Making Light, has a great entry for September 20, 2004, titled A brief note on linguistic markers, containing as good a list of phrases as I've ever seen, that should alert authors to potential scams.
Will your average "aspiring author" put ego aside long enough to consider the advice offered by either of these sites? Or are the unpublished convinced that free advice is always worth what you pay for it, and continue paying for praise and publication under the assumption that this is their only option?
(3) comments
Two weblogs recently came to my attention. The first, Fiction Bitch, is, on the face of it, an editor who takes a perverse glee in tearing apart stories submitted to her website by aspiring authors. She writes an essay on each submission that points out the (usually few) good bits, and discusses the bad bits. She also posts the original submission with her comments. One would expect that the comments within the actual stories would be cruel and belittling, given the title of the blog, but actually they are constructive and to the point. She's a damn good editor, and for those with the stomach to take these comments to heart, a perceptive and generous mentor.
The second, Making Light, has a great entry for September 20, 2004, titled A brief note on linguistic markers, containing as good a list of phrases as I've ever seen, that should alert authors to potential scams.
Will your average "aspiring author" put ego aside long enough to consider the advice offered by either of these sites? Or are the unpublished convinced that free advice is always worth what you pay for it, and continue paying for praise and publication under the assumption that this is their only option?
Friday, September 10, 2004
Why write?
Flannery O'Connor once said "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
Having survived a university fiction writing program myself, I'm ambivalent about what such programs can do for aspiring writers. In a sense, the program was successful -- my aspirations as a fiction writer were thoroughly stifled (or perhaps redirected into technical writing, the nearest thing to fiction, science or otherwise, I've ever done).
I write for money. Obviously, being a technical writer, I'm not doing it for fame, glory, or critical acclaim. My only best sellers, in any sense, are software manuals that come with software that sells well in small niches. And it's virtually certain that people aren't buying the software just to read my books, or that my having written them leads to any sort of purchasing decision. Or that someone would have any way of knowing I wrote them.
Yes, there is a lot of crap in the bestseller lists. There will always be room in the nonfiction lists for more diet books, self help books, crackpot explanations of commonplace mysteries and celebrity biographies ("auto" or otherwise). And for every nonfiction blockbuster, there's an equivalent "name brand" novel making someone rich.
Which causes a lot of people to want to be writers.
Some of them just get on with it, writing and learning and tuning as they go. The good ones eventually sell a manuscript, and a small number of those go on to earn critical acclaim and even an even smaller number make some money. Some never learn a damn thing, but they keep writing and writing, and as their chances of success recede further and further into the horizon, invent conspiracy theories about publishers wanting to hold back the real writers in favor of the ones that, duh, make money for them.
I somehow got the idea that a university creative writing program would be a good way to learn the craft. It has its good points -- you get to study with writers who have made a name for themselves in literary circles, you are immersed in the latest theory and technology, you get to bounce ideas off equally idealistic fellow students, and so on. It has its bad points too -- if you don't somehow fit into the politically correct style of the week, you can expect anything from polite bafflement to outright chilliness from professors and fellow students.
I hesitate to make a point about political correctness, because it's perfectly easy for incompetent writers to blame PC rather than their own shortcomings for their lack of recognition and success. But being flavor of the week in literary circles is no guarantee of future performance either. The ranks of published writers are full of "where are they now" stories. Many genuinely good writers get shut out through no fault of their own -- lousy contracts, distribution snafus, publishers that get bought and sold, losing track of their authors in the process.
After earning my Creative Writing degree, I never again found the motivation to write fiction, although I'm proud of what I did write. The job market beckoned, and I discovered technical writing, for which my degree prepared me in no useful way apart from being able to put it on my C.V. and thus make it through the first ranks of HR screeners.
So. Why write? For money?
Sure. Where do I sign up?
(0) comments
Having survived a university fiction writing program myself, I'm ambivalent about what such programs can do for aspiring writers. In a sense, the program was successful -- my aspirations as a fiction writer were thoroughly stifled (or perhaps redirected into technical writing, the nearest thing to fiction, science or otherwise, I've ever done).
I write for money. Obviously, being a technical writer, I'm not doing it for fame, glory, or critical acclaim. My only best sellers, in any sense, are software manuals that come with software that sells well in small niches. And it's virtually certain that people aren't buying the software just to read my books, or that my having written them leads to any sort of purchasing decision. Or that someone would have any way of knowing I wrote them.
Yes, there is a lot of crap in the bestseller lists. There will always be room in the nonfiction lists for more diet books, self help books, crackpot explanations of commonplace mysteries and celebrity biographies ("auto" or otherwise). And for every nonfiction blockbuster, there's an equivalent "name brand" novel making someone rich.
Which causes a lot of people to want to be writers.
Some of them just get on with it, writing and learning and tuning as they go. The good ones eventually sell a manuscript, and a small number of those go on to earn critical acclaim and even an even smaller number make some money. Some never learn a damn thing, but they keep writing and writing, and as their chances of success recede further and further into the horizon, invent conspiracy theories about publishers wanting to hold back the real writers in favor of the ones that, duh, make money for them.
I somehow got the idea that a university creative writing program would be a good way to learn the craft. It has its good points -- you get to study with writers who have made a name for themselves in literary circles, you are immersed in the latest theory and technology, you get to bounce ideas off equally idealistic fellow students, and so on. It has its bad points too -- if you don't somehow fit into the politically correct style of the week, you can expect anything from polite bafflement to outright chilliness from professors and fellow students.
I hesitate to make a point about political correctness, because it's perfectly easy for incompetent writers to blame PC rather than their own shortcomings for their lack of recognition and success. But being flavor of the week in literary circles is no guarantee of future performance either. The ranks of published writers are full of "where are they now" stories. Many genuinely good writers get shut out through no fault of their own -- lousy contracts, distribution snafus, publishers that get bought and sold, losing track of their authors in the process.
After earning my Creative Writing degree, I never again found the motivation to write fiction, although I'm proud of what I did write. The job market beckoned, and I discovered technical writing, for which my degree prepared me in no useful way apart from being able to put it on my C.V. and thus make it through the first ranks of HR screeners.
So. Why write? For money?
Sure. Where do I sign up?
