Insecure Writers... May Edition

Can’t believe the whole A-Z challenge thing is over. I’ll be reflecting on that next week. But for now I’m here to talk about my insecurities. I think every post I do is about my insecurities, but I suppose this in the one-time per month I have a permission from a support group to post about it.

Yes, it's the brainchild of Alex J Cavanaugh - a monthly look at all the things that writers stress over. Click to learn more.

For me, possibly my biggest insecurity, or at least the one I try my best to actively avoid, is rejection. During the heat of the A-Z challenge I got dinged with a couple of rejections from stories I’d submitted. One was my sci fi novel that I’ve been shopping around so long that I’m afraid it’s no longer relevant. Well, relevant might not be the right word, but already  rendered all but impossible as a contemporary tale. I did go through the thing last year and give everyone iPhones to make it feel more modern. But that sort of thing is a Band-Aid, not a fix. So after another year or so I’ll either have to really rewrite it – which I might have to do anyway – or give it a firm date and call it a historical science fiction piece.

I’m going to give it one more go with the traditional track before I give up and throw the thing up as a self-published work and move on. Regardless, I think I’ll need a new query letter. My previous ones were targeting editors, and my new ones will be targeted at (sigh) super agents.

So, I can say goodbye to this gem:

“Dear Editor,

My novel, The Blutonian Death Egg, has been compared to such made up works as, The Man Who Forgot That He Couldn’t Remember, and the classic, White Elephants and Pink Whales: One Man’s Descent into Nicorette Addiction.

James Coastsman is a know-nothing, lazy, unmotivated, borderline sociopathic loner that gets forced into becoming an astronaut because he’s also me! And I’m awesome and should totally get to be an astronaut. So, while I’m he’s astronauting, he saves the world, kinda, gets the girl, and fights the establishment that is jealous of him.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to call this POS at least as good as some of the crappier SF being published currently, I mean, did you read <title redacted>? What a crapfest that was. So it isn’t like you’re throwing out winners right and left. I mean, c’mon.”

I know, who could reject that? My new query will probably be something along the lines of:

“Dear Agent,

My previous attempts at submitting directly to publishing houses have met with some crushing rejections, despite a terrific query letter.

I’m coming to you because I’ve been led to believe that you can actually get me a book deal, please do so now. I’ll be honest with you, I read a book published at a major house by one of your clients and I found that book incredibly mediocre. He was a first time novelist, so I’m pretty sure that you can get some otherwise unremarkable stuff noticed. I can’t imagine how bad it was before it had several rounds of rewrites and professional editing. I may not be capable of producing award winning fiction, but I can at least whip up something as good as <name redacted> has.

My book? Well, my completed manuscript is something about a slacker that goes into space because I needed him to for the story. Think Dumb and Dumber meets Apollo 13… Also, there may be government conspiracies… I’m not sure because I’ve got so many plot holes that I can’t recall what is on purpose and what is the result of sloppy planning. I’m not big on plotting anyway. I doubt any readers will get past the first couple of chapters so I’ve not put a lot of effort into a satisfying ending. Just slap a good looking cover on it and we’re gold!

Cheers,”

Wow. No matter how many times I read it I start to think I’ve got a sure fired best seller on my hands. Surely no one would reject that.

The Thing About Agents

I've realized of late that I’ve been reading a lot about agents, and about the hunt for them, about submissions, about their all-round necessity in the publishing process. I don’t know when the thought occurred to me, but I had decided a while ago that I’d do without, thank you very much.

How successful has it been for me? Well, not so much, but I’m going with that half-assed approach to seeking publication and hoping that will work well for me. Part of my issue is that I’ve got a manuscript that I’m not entirely sure I believe in that I’ve been sorta shopping around. I won’t get into what I perceive are the story’s flaws here, but I’ll just say that I’ve got other stuff I've written that I like better. The reason I’ve been shopping that story instead of trunking it is that I still really like it (and it's finished, more or less). The execution might be lacking, but then again, I don’t know, maybe it’s genius and the folks who control the publishing world will fawn all over it.

Regardless, I’m not here to talk about that, my subject is Agents, and why I don’t want one. Here is the story of agents, as it has been relayed to me via a few sources, which I’ll try to link to at the end of this short tale.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to be a writer you lived in New York City, so you could walk down the block and have lunch with your editor, hash out issues with your story, discuss your contract, pitch a new book, whatever. But as the business grew, and City living didn’t always agree with every writer, an intermediary was needed. After all, if I wanted to live out of town, did I really need to go talk to my Editor in person about every little detail?

Those early agents really served as contract negotiators, they weren’t yet in the game as pitchmen and slush readers for the publishing houses, they were employed by the writers to represent them to the publisher.

A few enterprising individuals started offering more services for their clients, since they were already there, hanging out with editors anyway, why not pitch that next book – heck, they could help manage your money, right? It worked out for everyone. Well, as publisher’s got bigger (i.e., corporate), and real estate more expensive. Publishers were trying to cut costs as agents were finding their own rent too expensive to continue like they were, all those assistant publishers that were reading slush were out of jobs and individual agents were teaming up to form agencies, since they had the ear of the editor anyway, why not pitch the story of an unknown author too?

Publishers found their new slush readers, which they no longer had to pay for, and agents found it helped them out because they were attracting more authors, everyone wins again.

Of course, at some point in all that, agents quit working for the authors and began working for the agency – and in a backhanded sort of way, the publishers. I’ve heard several stories of wonderful, ethical, and caring agents that were forced to do things that were not in the author’s best interest because it might damage their relationship with the editor, or publisher, which of course wouldn't have mattered at one time because the agent worked for the author, but since they were going to be pitching the same publisher or editor some new novel ideas in the future it didn’t make sense to burn bridges over one measly little book contract.

Anyway, I can’t swear to the accuracy of the narrative I wove above, but I didn’t make it up out of whole cloth either. Read the Business Rusch, Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, Laura Resnick… or better yet…

Please, someone tell me you’ve been listening to Adventures in Sci fi publishing. It is a podcast started several years ago about a guy who was desperately trying to break into the industry as a writer, over the years the podcast has changed some, but the original vision, figuring out how to get published, is still at its heart. You must listen to the latest episode (linked here) where Kathryn Rusch advised new authors not to seek representation – and about how publishers are much friendlier now to non-represented authors than they have been in a very long time.

For now at least, I’m sold. I’m not querying agents. Those insider stories I hear are chilling. Publishing is big business, and one that’s changing so rapidly that following a model to publication that’s only a couple of years old might not be right way to do it now. 

Cheers