Gary Stu Transcendent and the Question of Fiction Categories

Based on anecdotal evidence¹, the vast majority of Americans, when they do manage to pick up a book, read for the pleasures of escapism, to live vicariously another life. But they are looking for a specific set of qualities in that other life: power, success, confidence, vast intelligence, admired by all, attractive to the opposite sex², and single-handedly saving the day (or playing the most substantial role in a set of people saving the day). There is a character that serves this purpose in spades: Mary Sue, assuming she's written "well." When written poorly, the Mary Sue experience is best described by Teresa Nielsen Hayden as follows:

A Mary Sue story is the literary equivalent of opening a package that you thought would be the new jacket you ordered on eBay, only it turns out to contain a poorly-constructed fairy princess costume made of some lurid and sleazy material. It’s tailored to fit a human-size Barbie doll, not you; and when you hold it up to the light, you can see the picked-out stitchmarks where someone else’s name used to be embroidered across the bodice. The dress has been used but not cleaned, and appears to have last been worn during a rather sloppy romantic interlude.

In order to write Mary Sue well, the serial numbers must be filed off just enough to serve a large chunk of the American book-buying population. The physical description of the character, while sufficient to make members of the opposite sex swoon, must be generic enough to be Everyman. The character's job or hobbies must be whatever popular culture considers vogue. The homelife must be supportive or, if there are problems, they must not be the character's fault, and the character must be doing everything humanly possible to resolve the problems. The conflict must always be external: Big Bads mucking things up for the hero. It is essential that the character not really be a character at all, but a flexible outfit that the reader can easily don and move around in without any chafing from rough seams or itchy tags.

In essence, to write a Mary Sue story well, one must transcend the entire purpose of the phenomenon and write not self-insertion stories, but reader-insertion: a choose-your-own-adventure story without the use of the 2nd person voice and conventions of choosing options. This is not exactly easy because human creatures are inherently selfish. We go right to the most cliched of Mary Sue stories when we first start writing: we are seeking that escapism, that world in which, by golly, we are the most important being. Our minds make us the heroes of our own life stories, so naturally we create stories that indulge that. And every slushpile and fanfiction archive groans under the weight of those smelly, used fairy princess costumes.

But we mock and deride Mary Sue. We laugh at her, at the obvious and often grotesque display of someone else's particular ego indulgences. For those of us who don't read for escapism (or at least, not solely for that), and for those of us who write for a story that doesn't serve only to launch ourselves out of our own daily grind and disappointing experiences, we find her in popular culture and roll our eyes. I'm beginning to think we shouldn't. We may be lumping the successful character suit with those soiled fairy princess outfits. The former serves a purpose that millions of Americans pay good money to experience. The latter is the amatuer conflating the experience with the purpose. It's important to sift through those lurid, well-worn costumes. Teresa gets at this herself:

(Someday, not today, I’ll tell the story of how, years ago, Joanna Russ and I used Star Trek fanfic as a sort of Rosetta Stone to decipher recurrent themes and motifs in fantasy and SF written by women. It’s often easier to see underlying patterns and mechanisms in amateur fiction than in slicker commercial work. This started when Joanna identified and described some recurrent narrative motifs she’d spotted in the Trek slash of the day, of which the inverse relationship between incidence of explicit sex and liebestod denouements was the most obvious and least important. There was much more to it. She laid out her entire description; and I, considering it, said “Which is not to say that The Left Hand of Darkness is a specimen of Star Trek slash fiction.” Joanna’s jaw dropped, and we stared at each other in wild surmise. The patterns not only fitted; they explained some otherwise inexplicable plot twists in that novel. We were on to something. And—hey! What about thus-and-such story by Zenna Henderson? And that one by Leigh Brackett? And so forth and so on, ever onward. For the next few weeks we were stoned on literary theory and the codebreaker’s buzz of seeing a seemingly knotty puzzle resolve into plaintext.)

There's a lot of festering humanity in Mary Sue stories. A treasure trove of psychological profiles and cultural trends. This is why they fail as written works, though. They are not stories with characters and conflict and arcs and resolution (genre fiction). They are not clever essays on language and human nature (literature). They are not plot routines for a character suit (popular fiction). They are little more than journals, generally of use only to the author for purposes of entertainment.

At this point, I almost feel compelled to apologize for every snide remark I ever made about Jack Ryan, popular fiction's most successful character suit, Gary Stu Transcendant. I held him in contempt because I decided to hold my reading needs as superior to those of others, while also discounting the purpose behind him. People need that safe haven to shed their existence and don someone else's and experience the euphoric rush of winning big against impossible odds. Some people prefer to fold that need in with other things. Some people don't want that need at all because they'd rather take all the lumps of their own life head-on.

So that is how I shall endeavor to look at book categories and Mary Sue stories. Popular fiction is not trying to tell a story, it's trying to provide the reader with a vicarious experience of another life. This is something that can happen in genre fiction, but is more often than not not the primary purpose. And literature attempts to examine language and humanity, often without the use of a story. Neither method of fiction is better than the other, they only serve different functions. However, within each function, you have a broad range of authorial ability to serve those functions, and some categories are more predisposed to publish the lesser examples than others. For example, a chafing Gary Stu suit is still likely to make a lot more money than a poorly realized genre story or a failed language experiment.

What brought on all of this philosophical musing? The experience of picking up what I expected to be a good space opera (genre fiction) and instead discovering I was being presented with a character suit and asked to dance around in it as the plot moved along. Yet this author is very popular and even escapes from the genre ghetto every now and then to the "validity" of the bestseller lists. This was a thing that made me go, "Hmmm." And, thus, a blog post was born.

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1. What, you were expecting something more empirical? From a blog?
2. This is a reflection of the fact that the majority of Americans if not are then at least choose to identify as heterosexual.

Post-a-Rejection Friday

There was an internet skirmish involving someone posting a rejection to the 'net that got picked up for widespread outcry because it contained some objectionable language. This led to the author of said rejection letter complaining about the posting of said letter as poor nettiquette. Most of the SFnal writerly internet quarter took objection to this as the core of the substantive response to the outcry and made an effort to start a theme a la International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch Day.

So, for purposes of solidarity, I post the sole rejection with feedback I have garnered. From Nick Mamatas of Clarkesworld:

Thanks for the story, but not for me. There was a lot of "top of mind" stuff in the early going: what would a politician watching tv drink except for Scotch? What would an engagement entail except for a huge diamond ring that had been passed down for generations? How could we not make out in an ol' Mustang? Where might one buy a bra but Victoria's Secret? As such, these characters don't live as anything other than cardboard cut-outs. Characters need to be individuated by their consumption patterns, their interests, their personalities. These figures are far too generic, and all the signifiers are generic as well.

Yeah, ouch, but not horribly so, not gratuitously so, and no evidence of a ethnic slur in sight. Plus, it got me thinking about the story and why I had used those signifiers. It's taken me about a year, but I finally figured out why I had that story set up the way I did. I hope I have the chops to pull off the revision (next month, after I finish THUMB) because it's a pretty fun thing I'm trying to do.

Another Item I Should've Linked a While Ago

SF publisher Tor (perhaps the biggest name in SF publishing) is gearing up for a spiffy new, interactive website and, to whet your appetite and keep you riveted for more details, they are giving away a free e-book a week. No purchase (or DRM) involved. They are also giving away free wallpaper by their various cover artists. I've got a gorgeous Stephan Martiniere print on my computer at the moment. Makes me giddy every time I log in and fall into that work of art.

How do you join in the giveaway madness (there's also a sweepstakes for a an e-book reader, IIRC)? I'll cut and paste from the email to give you more info and the link:

SOMETHING NEW IS COMING.
A science fiction and fantasy site not quite like any you’ve seen before, mixing news, commentary, original stories and art, your own comments and conversations, and more. A place on the net you may find yourself wanting to visit—and participate in—every day. Stay tuned to www.Tor.com.

If you like SF and/or enjoy freebies, check it out. If you're interested in the quirks of a mover and shaker in the publishing industry, then I doubly recommend checking this out.

Another Reason January Can't End Fast Enough

Just heard back about PPR. Rejected. In standard from letter fashion.

Sigh.

Now to figure out where to send it next and get back on track with THUMB.

Actually, I'm going to get to that tomorrow or Sunday. Tonight, I think I might just let myself wallow a bit by acting like a slug in front of the TV with my Friday night shows and the bag of Hershey's Chocolate Truffle Kisses Mark got for me yesterday after frustrations with health insurance (a bit of fun from this month that I have not mentioned at all on the blog, actually; more later). Oh, and a glass or two of Bailey's might be involved.

Then I'll start figuring out where to ship PPR next and start progress on THUMB again.

In Lieu of Actual Content

Because I am deep in IT Hell trying to replace the laptop I oh-so-stupidly spilled water on (no data was lost; gotta love external hard drives and file servers), and the only working computer in the hosue now is the Frankenputer that my mom's boyfriend resurrected from three non-functional computers, blogging is going to be light. Great timing on the writing front: a story out on submission and the next project in the throes of "hmm, maybe it'll work better if I switch it to first person POV" analysis. Not so great timing with the DDJ, but what can you do.

So, here are some neat takes on the whole Cassie Edwards plaigarism scandal because I certainly don't want to spend any time rehashing it in a clever fashion.

One of the plaigarized authors in question responds. (Warning: Tolme is understandably miffed and suffering form a case of cognitive dissonance as to the context of appropriated words. He dumps on the entire romance genre in addition to his warranted snark at Ms. Edwards. I can't really fault him for it. If that sort of attitude toward romance in general ruffles your feathers, you might want to read with caution.)

Another romance writer got tired of having to explain the hoopla to others and resorted to putting everything in context of a Greek tragedy (complete with wailing chorus!).

It's a bit more serious, but a really neat essay on admiring someone else's work and using it to improve your own writing rather than just taking the words and grafting them.

On an interesting related note, I once read a book in which the author plaigarized one of her pseudonyms. The author was a friend of a friend, so I looked up her books at the used book store so I could tell my friend that I had read the author. I found two books: one a regency and one a western and each under a different pseudonym. I read the regency first, thought it good enough to warrant reading the western, and started on the second book. The plot was lifted pretty much wholesale. Entire scenes were copied between one book and the other with just a search and destroy for details like character & place names and hair color, etc. This was over five years ago, just as I was getting started in my own writing endeavors. I was disgusted but didn't really think about anything beyond getting rid of the books and never reading anything by that author again. I've since forgotten the author's names and the titles of the books. If I had encountered this today, knowing what I know now about publishing, I would've certainly written to the publisher. I might've written to the author and/or agent, too. I can't imagine putting it on the internet, but then it's not like I'm a poster for a very popular romance review site. Maybe one day I'll do some research into the books and author and see if I can get the particulars again, but it's a bit of an odd situation: she recycled her own words, not someone else's.

Cut, Paste, Print & Save

Agent Kristin Nelson is doing an excellent series of posts on how to pitch your novel either live to an agent/editor or in a query letter by examining the cover copy of already published novels. The concept is to distill the inciting conflict and unique world elements in as few sentences as possible. Tricky stuff, but her analyses are very enlightening. Check it out.

The Consumerization of the Reader

I've never been interested in reading or writing media tie-in novels or the Harlequin contemporary romances, but I never understood why. I just shied away from the displays in the stores and shrugged away calls for submissions to those lines. But as I burrow deeper and deeper into various writing communities, I'm coming across a lot of people who read and write tie-in novels and category romances. And I've read a couple of the romances, trying to see if I could spot the "difference" I gave those books in my attitude. I really couldn't.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I figured out why the entire concept of tie-in novels and Harlequin's categories rubbed me the wrong way. Those books don't make me feel like a reader, they make me feel like a consumer. Coming from someone who easily spends $500 a year on books (one year I'm going to terrify myself and track the number; there's a very good reason why Mark handles the vast bulk of our finances), this might seem like spliting a microhair.

As a reader, I pick up a book because I'm interested in the story. (Well, OK, so I also pick up books to research the market and the industry; but always the bottom line of that research is to compare the story I read vs the data point that brought the book to my attention.) While publishing is a business out to make its profit just like all the others, whenever they push a product, they don't appeal to me as a consumer, they appeal to me as a reader: blurbs, cover copy, artwork, newsletters with excerpts or anecdotes from authors. Hell, even the Borders Rewards newsletters don't just stop short of giving me a coupon and laundry-listing the titles to be released. They often have interviews and excerpts and company exclusives (songs or "deleted scenes", etc).

How (according to my perception) are tie-in novels and category romances different? The tie-in novels feature cover art that has the medium it's based upon front and center. It makes sense to do this in order to get the established fan base of that product in another medium to buy the book. Hence I feel like a consumer: you like this TV show then buy this book and continue with the characters. The focus is not about informing me of the story, it's about moving product through brand recognition. "Buy me! Yes, there will be more of the tangled Starbuck and Apollo angst that you enjoyed in last season's episodes within these pages!"

With Harlequin's books, it's the way they are packaged and sold that kills the illusion of the barrier between reader and consumer. They are on a rack, in categories, sometimes with remarkably similar titles. And they cycle through to a new title every month (or less). I see that display, and I don't hear the siren call of books calling to me with entertaining stories. Instead, I hear: "Buy me! You are a middle class woman with time and money to spend and you are always jonesing for stories about men and women navigating their way to Happily Ever After! And come back in a few weeks and BUY MORE! We know you read approximately 9 books a year! Wait, don't pass us by! Come over here and bow down to the statistics of your demographic! We can show you our research! In pie-chart form!"

Now, I don't harbor any illusions that the other books on the shelves are any different. The team that got that book from manuscript pages to the product in front of me are trying to maximize the chances that I will buy that book instead of the one next to it. But, unless the author is a Big Name, they have only the story to recommend, so all of the decisions they made regarding that book are focused on bringing out the interesting elements of that story to give me a package that says: "Buy me! I will entertain you with a great story!"

Here's the thing, though. The folks behind tie-in novels and Harlequin's category romances know full well that consumers will ditch a product that doesn't deliver. And success in one medium is not going to translate into another without delivering the goods that is expected from that other medium (as well as the added tangle of not detracting from the enjoyment of the original show or movie). And even the most voracious of readers won't buy books if they've been consistently disappointed. So the stories have to deliver in those cases just as much as they do for any other book. You might argue that they have to deliver more because of their differences from the sea of single titles around them.

However, in a world where not a day goes buy that someone doesn't make me feel like a stat to move from "THEM" to "US", I appreciate a product that doesn't do anything overtly to make me feel like anything other than a reader wanting to be entertained by a good story. As I learn more about the publishing industry (hopefully from the perspective of a published author one day soon), I may come to see all books as treating me like a consumer over a reader. It would be nice, though, if instead I got over my "I'm a purty snowflake with unique reading tastes" knee-jerk reaction to tie-ins and category romances.

Flip the Switch

I've been pulling words for THUMB out of my fingers for a while now, feeling like everything was terrible, that I was somehow approaching things from every wrong angle possible, that I was going to have one helluva time rewriting this book (assuming I could onsey-twosey my way through to the end of it).

I started to feel a little better when I got the idea for the medical device, but then I still struggled with the ship's mechanic chapter. I kept thinking of different directions to go with the scene and kept telling myself it felt like a housekeeping scene the way I was going at it. I just couldn't get a read on it that would let the words flow.

So I sat down with my notebook today, put the day's date, and then wrote the following: "Problems w/Chapter 6." On the second item, the solution to my problem with the scene hit. The rest of the page in that notebook starts with "OK, this is good." Then it goes on for a half page of how to revise the first two chapters to mesh up with the solution for the problems with Chapter 6. Then I've got a page of draft for the New New Chapter 1. And then I wandered into a query letter draft that ended up reading more a like synopsis for a page. I stopped that effort and sketched out the bullet points of what needs to be my query letter.

Let me explain.

My RWA chapter is having a special "members only" sit down chat and critique session with Mary-Theresa Hussey (senior editor of Luna, among other things). She's willing to look at the first two pages or query letter from any of our members. I thought about this opportunity, how I'd hate to pass it by. But I don't really want to have the first two pages critiqued. I've actually already been through that experience with HD and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I've also had my query letter and first 30 critiqued by a multi-pubbed author, so at first I wasn't too eager to try to whip anything up for MTH and was content to listen to her pick apart the work of others.

But then I remembered how much I hate not knowing why an agent or editor passes on a query letter when that's all they've got. This is a perfect opp for that. So I'm trying to put together that query letter for a novel that's not even a fifth of the way finished.

Mark's been having all sorts of great success with finding a new job (hasn't landed one yet, but there are three possibilities that seem to be moving very fast from resume forwarding to interview to calling the references). I'm happy for him, but part of me is both relieved and irked that he's using up our good luck. Relieved, because it's a lot less likely with all this stuff falling into place for Mark that MTH is going to read my query and say "Send me more now". And irked, because of the same.

Sigh.

Rejected Rejection Letter Response #1

In lieu of my Rejected Novel Dedications feature, I give you a lovely depiction of author insanity at its finest. (May not be work safe unless your volume is low.)

Oh Noes! Intarnets Killed the SF Star!

I've heard a lot of references to the "science fiction is dying" debate. I've never really spotted evidence of it in the wild, on my own, devoid of anyone linking to some blowhard's blog. But folks talked about it so much within the genre itself, I felt sure that it had to exist. And lo, five years after my self-indoctrination into the field of science fiction, I have spotted my first specimen. In the August issue of Discover Magazine, no less.

Excuse me while I commence with the present tense, to make this read more as if I'm hosting some wild safari show.

I'm caught by the "title" of the article, which reads more like a quote from the piece itself:

At a gathering of potential Jules Vernes and H.G. Welses, one wonders if science fiction is losing its predictive power as reality becomes increasingly fantastic.

Blimey! It's presenting! It's doing the mating dance of "Science Fiction is Dead" right before my eyes, telling me science fiction can't function because reality is too much like science fiction. Where's my camera? It's like spotting Big Foot!

I catch a whiff that something may not be quite as remarkable as it seems, though, as the article continues its multicolored "do me now" extravaganza.

...this gathering of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is palpably low on excitement.

I turn away from the specimen so as to snort laugh into my sleeve. Never did I think that, upon my first sighting of SFID, I would also see the equally remarked upon from within but rarely seen from without phenomenon of "SFWA Represents Genre Writers to the World." Forget the camera, I want a chair, a beer, and some popcorn. This dance could take a while, and there's not a chance of the specimen seeing anything beyond itself.

The lack of couch potato comforts is doubly-felt as the ritual continues.

Fiction is a job for people with Big Ideas, not a flair for small talk...they're generally too concerned with topics like the human condition and the fate of the world to worry about their appearance.

Great Tropes of Eternity! He's invoked the sacred act of "Writers are Unsocial, Unkempt, and Smell Bad" before even finishing the first third of the first segment of the dance. Ladies and Gentleman, I am truly witnessing something amazing here. I only regret that I had to experience this alone. No one will believe what I've seen.

OK, I have to stop there, or else this is going to take too long, and I'm going to open myself up to copyright violation problems from quoting too damn much of the article. As I said above, it's in the August 2007 issue of Discover. It's the "Blinded by Science" departmental piece by Bruno Maddox on pages 28-30, and it's truly a wonder of journalistic accomplishment.

All my "Crikey" kidding aside, this article does sum up just about all the things I've heard folks within SF as a genre bemoaning. Plus it ups the ante by saying that it's not just SF that's in trouble, it's all fiction in general. It's those pesky Intartubey thingies that's ruining it for everyone while simultaneously letting anyone be a person of Big Ideas, if only for the moment it takes to push "Publish" in their blogging software. (Crikey! That's a steaming pile of irony, folks! Let's just step carefully around it.)

The one very interesting thing about the piece that gives me food for future research is that Maddox attributes the demarcation between "hard" SF and "soft" SF to various spats between Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. I hadn't heard that before. In fact, I had heard (from a female professor, I believe) that "soft" SF was a term coined when all those silly wimmin began writing SF that focused on silly things like biology and the like. (By the way, Maddox's discussion of SF is completely male-centric, right down to the "shirtless bodybuilders with Thor hairstyles" featured on the "brightly colored works" glutting the SF section. What bookstore is he frequenting, and can he give me directions from Phoenix?) However, this one interesting morsel that distinguished "hard" and "soft" as dealing primarily with the gee-whiz science vs dealing primarily with the social impact of the science was not enough to salvage the entire piece.

I loves me some drama, as my mother will tell you, but even I couldn't help but snicker at the realization that Maddox was at the friggin Nebula Awards (not the actual ceremony, but lounging at what sounds like the SFWA version of a Con Suite), generalizing for the genre because a bunch of old men are picking at fresh from the can bean dip and acting as if they're avoiding the big elephant in the room (which is, of course, the death of SF). Maddox is upset because he hasn't stumbled into anyone doing that costume thang or the other tried author-in-public trope of putting on a jacket and using a pipe to punctuate statements in some frenzied debate. But that's not really what he's missing. He's missing that sense of energy that he thinks should be suffused in any gathering of potential future SF greats. Maybe the Good Ol' Boys were tired after all that Election Debate Frenzy. Or perhaps they were still recovering from their Internationl-Pixel-stained-Technopeasant-Wretch-Day-induced heart attacks.

Yes, not a paragraph after zinging the room for being naturally taciturn and unsocial, he berates the congregation further by grading their effervescence. All while saying that SFWA = the past, present, and future of SF (won't SFWA be proud), and that SF is dead and we all know it. This is before the first section break.

Then it's the bit about Wells and Verne and hard and soft, and past SF influences. And it's all pretty good reading until it goes right back to SFWA Nebula Con Suite cruisers = SF Golden Days heirs. And from there, on to the whining about those lurid fantasy covers taking up all the damn shelfspace.

As if I couldn't be amused enough, though, Maddox goes on to toll the virtues of Michael Crichton's pre-Timeline work, citing Andromeda Strain as the pop culture reference du jour of the media whenever, get this, "some mysterious virus escapes from a lab." (Dude, if I had a nickel for everytime those pesky labs are releasing their Frankensteinian concoctions into the world and the media gets all Andromeda Strain about it. (Actually, wouldn't the more relevant pop culture reference be Hot Zone? Or perhaps Outbreak?)) Then Maddox regains some of my interest by lambasting Crichton for both Timeline and Prey, and that warms my heart, it does.

But wait! Crichton's nose dive into the realm of badfic--even though Maddox himself in this article admits that the man writes techno-thrillers, not SF (though he labels that as a petty distinction suited for purists, mostly for the purposes of his argument, which I realized as I read on)--must be indicative of a trend for all "serious science fictionists." No supporting evidence there. Must be, again, that bookstore with the choice manflesh on the covers.

The reasons for the crappy SF are two-fold. First one up to the plate: The Evil Internets as Destroyer of All Fiction as a relevant "delivery system for big ideas." (So why was he in that bookstore, and why are they so dreadfully jam-packed with male nipples?) Afterall, why slave away at a book for several years (Jiminy Crickets! We're beyond a stereotype trifecta here, folks! He's going for the world record!) when you can just crank out a quickie post that says the same thing and not even worry about those silly typos?

Second reason SF is crap/dying (yes, did you catch when he equated the two phenomenon): The iPhone! Apparently Maddox is so gobsmacked by Steve Jobs that he can't possibly imagine how much further science and technology can go. I'm reminded of a conversation I had as a grad school applicant with an entrenched professor at CU. I had barely shook the man's hand and turned to settle into my chair in his office when he loudly proclaimed that there wasn't anything left to discover in science. I think I actually laughed to his face rather than turning to snort laugh into my sleeve (so naive I was, then). It's this sort of thinking that ultimately got me out of grad school and into writing SF. In SF I can take the foundation of scientific knowledge I spent six years gathering, build on it, dream it out bigger than it can be right now, and go nuts. I mean, the implications of mapping the human genome alone are astounding (both in the hard, gee-whiz sense and in the soft, social implications sense; and, no, it hasn't all been done any more than any idea in fiction as already been done).

As I finish up the article, I'm already laughing at Maddox for not unterstanding his research subject beyond the surface and tropes. But I'm somewhat perplexed how his little piece actually adds up to a discussion of why SF is dying or how the Internet and iPhone-like technological advances are kicking the ailing corpse into the grave. Then I read that SF writers should take heart! (And he tells me to do so in tongue-in-cheek fashion, admonishing himself for snarking on the SFWA Smelly Ol' Geeky Geezers Club. Surely I should be listening to him now!) Rather than let SF die, society should go into the bookstores and:

Let everything but the truth be "Fantasy," I say, and let the truth--the searing, unmanageable, discombobulating truth of the lives we have invented for ourselves in a world it took artists to imagine--be Science Fiction.

"Fantasy is for escapist losers" for the win! So the entire article is revealed to be nothing more than sour grapes over all those shiny topless hunks wielding swords against dragons. He has completely convinced me of his argument.

Science Fiction is Dead! Long live Science Fiction!

Musings on Writerly Identity

Nick Mamatas, the Clarkesworld editor that gave me my first rejection with feedback, often has a blunt, brusque way of putting things that catches my attention and gets me thinking. (Yes, yes, good for him, good for me; shiny gold stars for everyone!) More often than not, my immediate response is an incoherent jumble of thoughts that usually start with, "Yes, but...." The posts of his that garner an extensive mental babble of vaguely defined agreeing protestations I tend to set aside and come back to frequently to see if I can shake anything cogent out of all the rumblings.

A while back, he posted a long bit about how writers who prefer to call themselves "craftspeople" rather than "artists" had it wrong all wrong and were bad stupid monkeys. This generated all sorts of "I see what you're saying, and I don't fully disagree, but I don't fully agree" trainwrecks in my head. So I kept going back to it, trying to figure out just what the hey my brain really was trying to tell itself on this matter. Luckily, he posted on recent caterwaulings within the SF community about getting no respect. His point on the last post was something along the lines of "Please, it's a Pulitzer for a non-journalistic medium; it means nothing." Fair enough, but I found the linked discussions about how SF is viewed from the outside and how the insiders feel about that insteresting and finally gave me the catalyst for understanding my "Yes, but" to the "NO CRAFTSPEOPLE NO!!" post.

So here are my thoughts, still not as coherently expressed as they likely could be, and in no particular order.

1. My desire to believe I'm special, capable of changing the world, became less important than just wanting to do my thing without Life mucking things up too much, sometime in the past two years. Probably having a kid had something to do with it. Yet even when I thought I was the shisnit, I always wanted people to believe that they could do whatever great thing it was I wanted to do if they just tried hard enough (perhaps to justify my own existence as being earned, not a series of lucky breaks along with work, some of it hard). Calling myself an "artist" immediately puts me in that "special through my own uniqueness that you can never achieve" category that I never wanted to be a part of. Bit of an off-shoot of the "we make our own destiny" way of thinking, just even more steeped in a desperate sense to find validation in the world.

2. I know going in that commercial fiction of any genre stripe gets shat upon by folks with soap boxes who are trying to establish what will be remembered 100 years from now today to cement their own importance in the world. Part of me cares (it's small; the same part that dreamed in a "I really don't believe this would ever happen, but it's warm and fuzzy" way that I would win the Nobel prize for some amazing AIDS or cancer research breakthrough by the age of 35). Most of me just has that same "let me get on with what I want to do here" attitude. And another part of me laughs maniacally, dreaming of the day when I am a multi-million dollar genre hack so I can really gloat.

3. I'm really starting to bristle at labels lately.

4. Art is a product of plying one's craft. That's why someone can look at an overall shitty piece of art and say, "Look at the craftsmanship." Because it is something to admire the putting together of a story, but if the story itself sucks, then it's a shitty piece of art with excellent craftsmanship. Weaving a basket is craft much the same way that writing a standard five-paragraph essay is craft. Thus I would never call myself an artist or a craftsperson. I am a writer. I ply a craft to create a work of art. Thus I can be identified as either a craftsperson or as an artist by others as they see fit. For myself, I don't see a separation between the two, really.

Random Thoughts Check-in

I just finished the revisions to Pinewood Fog (I always love it when I can write over a thousand words in an hour; wish that would happen more often). I'll do the type-in tomorrow (or start it, as I think I've re-written about 75% of the story and most of it is still in hand-written form). I'll probably have to do another revision as a few thoughts hit me during this last revision. My goal is to have this thing done and submitted to WotF by the end of next week.

Ever had an encounter with someone that makes you wonder if you've completely missed part of a conversation or lost the thread of subtext or run into this person in a previous life that she remembers and you don't? I went out for sushi with a friend on Wednesday night and we had a server that called to mind that sort of feeling. She was so disconnected with us and strange with our orders. We did the all-you-can-eat sushi special, and you have to fill out these little sheets with the food you want for that round of the special. (For each one of four rounds of dinner, you could have so many appetizers, so many sushi rolls, etc.) My friend and I marked what we wanted and got something close to that over the course of the next fifteen minutes or so, but it wasn't quite right. So we looked at the sheet, and scratched our heads when we saw that the sheet had markings reflecting what she brought. Meanwhile, she practically rips my friend's water glass right out of his hand to refill it (she came up behind the two of us, so neither of us saw her and she didn't announce herself; nor did she fill my glass first, which I wasn't touching at the time). When we fill in the sheet for the second round of food, we both made a point to remember our orders. Sure enough, we start getting food we didn't order, but our sheet miraculously has everything marked the way she brings it--even to the point of one request being scratched out. Very strange.

Casa Grande is pretty darn far away from a lot of stuff. On my way up to Scottsdale for John Scalzi's reading and signing, I somewhat perversely looked at the odometer. By the time I got back home, I had driven 100 miles. 100 miles for an author signing, people. But here's the real kicker: I'm so used to driving at least a half hour on the interstate to do anything that I didn't even think much about it.

Speaking of the signing, I'm happy to have two signed books in the Old Man's War trilogy. The first one and the third one. I had hoped to support the Poisoned Pen bookstore by buying both the second and third books there and then having Scalzi sign them. I assumed the store would have stocked up on all the books of the trilogy. I neglected to revise my assumption by remembering that the bookstore specializes in mysteries (though they are wanting to expand into spec fic). So I have a spiffy signed copy of The Last Colony that I can't read until I swing into Borders and pick up The Ghost Brigades. Live and learn, Kellie. Live and learn.

Honing my skills as a writer has opened my eyes to a world of subtext and social commentary (both intentional and frighteningly unintentional). I was reading a book lately where I saw a dreadful undercurrent of misogyny and sexism. I'm pretty sure it was unintentional and not subtle social commentary due to the reliance of telling character motivations through internal thoughts (even when that character's actions and dialog with others made the thougths quite clear enough).

Back to fanfiction, again. Did I miss out on a kink? In the discussions of fanfiction I've read lately, someone inevitably asks why is that the bulk of fanfic focuses on male/male sexual relationships. And someone else inevitably responds, "Well, duh! The majority of fanfic is written by straight women!" Everyone knows that straight men find female homosexual acts erotic, but I haven't heard before about the opposite situation. Is it commonly accepted that straight women find male homosexual acts and relationships a turn-on? How could I have missed this assumption?

Feminism and Writing

I read this first thing this morning and have been letting it percolate, trying to come up with coherent thoughts. Actually, I had coherent thoughts immediately upon reading it. I spent the day trying to string them together into a coherent response. It seems I'm not up to the task. So here are the thoughts:

I'm very grateful that, when I decided to take reading seriously (more than just as fluffy break from all that Serious Stuff I had to read for school), I started with Anne McCaffery and Melanie Rawn.

I'm very grateful that, when I decided to take writing seriously, I was taking a non-fiction writing course taught by a woman who directed me to a writer's organization and encouraged me.

I'm very grateful that my first interactions with professionally published authors involved Holly Lisle, S.L. Viehl, and Carol Berg.

I'm very grateful that my first experience with a professional editor was with Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

I'm very grateful that my first experience with an agent was with Kristen Nelson.

I'm very grateful that it wasn't until I was four years into my journey of taking writing seriously that I first comprehended negative gender issues in my genre when Harlan Ellison groped Connie Willis at the Hugos.

I'm very grateful that I was raised in a family and an environment that I more often felt I was treated differently because I was smart, not because I was female and that it never occurred to me that my gender alone might cause issues.

I'm very grateful that it wasn't until I was a sophomore in college that I began to understand the more insidious ways our society perceives and enforces gender differences; it means I'm less likely to unconsciously enable the perceptions and enforcements, and that becoming aware of it when I did I felt more empowered to Do Something.

That being said, I probably wasn't nearly as removed from sexism as the above indicates seeing as how I am an Air Force brat (and the military ain't exactly known as a feminist beacon) and, out of a class of 24 biochemistry majors, I was one of five women. Mostly, I never quite processed myself as Other (not Other because I'm a girl; I processed myself as Other because I was a military brat, or because I spent nine years in a foreign country) or allowed society's labeling of me as such to stick or get in my way. The times it reared its head, I would more often than not personalize the encounter to make it more about my personality vs the personality causing the problem and found a way around it.

No matter how I managed to get through life without really letting gender issues bug me, it's not helping me deal with how I'm categorized now that I'm a mother who works from home part-time. My professional life is hidden compared to when I worked full-time out of the home. No one asks me "So what do you do?" anymore when I meet new people. They ask about Andrew. They ask about domestic things. They may ask if I still work or perhaps they'll ask what I do in my free time or what my hobbies are. I wasn't quite prepared for this subtle shift in how I'm perceived. (Nor was I prepared to deal with interacting with other mothers only in context of being mothers; one of the most uncomfortable conversations I had was at the mall's play area with a mother who had sat down next to me and whose child was interacting with Drew in some way; I could feel her hunger for adult conversation, and her absolute frustration that, when presented with the opportunity, she could only talk about her child; I could feel that hunger and frustration because it mirrored my own.)

I get fanfiction in that it's a response to art. It's the context of that response where I falter. For me, I get a response from art and I almost immediately remove it from the context that generated the response and put it in my own creative context. I may have to think on this further.

Kerfuffles 'R Us

Over the weekend, there were a couple of "internet slapfights" (nabbed from one of Elizabeth Bear's journal tags). One involved science fiction & fantasy, the other involved romance.

The romance one is about the rape romance subgenre, and Jenny Crusie's excellent response to the debate is the only link I can drum up at the moment. (That doesn't mean it's not being slugged out on the internet, it just means that romance isn't my genre and I have no idea where to go to get the good genre dirt. I tried a few likely suspects, but didn't get far. Plus, I wasn't invested in it. While I've never read a rape romance [nor do I have any wish to at the moment; that sort of character redemption isn't my thing], my first novel did involve a rape scene, though the perp was a villain and not the hero.)

So I approached the debate as summarized by Jenny more from a censoring is bad/write what the story requires perspective. In fact, I think the only genre where you should really be concerned about content influencing your audience is in YA, and that doesn't mean that certain things should be off-limits. Rather it means that the content better be handled very well and be very appropriate to the story and it probably isn't a bad idea to have a discussion about said content as an author's note at the end of the novel or on the author's blog or something.

As for the science fiction & fantasy thing, man. Where to begin? To summarize, the upcoming Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) election has sparked an at times rather heated series of debates among those who are concerned with that org and the future of the genre in general. Needless to say, I've been following a lot of the discussion with interest since this is my genre. Things turned decidedly, well, ironic when the outgoing SFWA VP, in an explanation as to why he didn't run for Prez and thus may have inadvertantly created the previously uncontested ballot situation, went on a rant about how the internet (or, rather, the results of the internet's popularity and constant presence) is "pernicious" and that people who publish their work on-line for free are "rotting the organization from within." He calls these folks "webscabs" and "pixel-stained technopeasant wretch[es]."

This provoked many responses, mostly outraged. The best, though, is from Scalzi, and he tackles the issue based on the meager argument the outgoing VP provided and cited some excellent examples. In the volume of comments and posts (not going to link them all; mostly you can read the comments from the couple I linked to get a good cross-section), a few folks are trying to bring things back 'round to a debate on the future of electronic publishing and digital media and what, if anything, we should Do about it. But they are so few and far between that I think the VP may have realized some of his error and has since rescinded the term "webscabs." The rest, however, I believe stays.

It is unfortunate that a writer, someone who works with words for a living, chose to express himself in a way designed to insult those with whom he disagrees and to demonize that which he doesn't like/fears with no substance to backup his rhetoric. It is especially unfortunate because a debate as to whether or not the internet effectively "sublimat[es] the private space of consciousness into public netspace" and, if so, whether or not that is pernicious, is a great debate to have, particularly within the genre. But then again, maybe that debate has already been waged and the matter concluded--though not, apparently, unanimously.

(Indeed, even discounting the verbiage, the VP doesn't really seem interested in having the debate--on The Internets is Bad or on Free eBooks are Bad. His only real example about the perils of modern web-based tech is this: "A problem with the whole wikicliki, sick-o-fancy, jerque-du-cercle of a networking and connection-based order is that, if you "go along to get along" for too long, there's a danger you'll no longer remember how to go it alone when the ethics of the situation demand it." Seeing as how there's an entire generation who basically grew up on the 'net yet has an acronym for "going it alone"--IRL--as a distinction from the internet, I'm not buying his argument before he even gets started. And regarding the e-pub stuff, he asserts his opinion as fact that free e-books are taking away his business/money/bargaining ground with traditional publishers, and offers no evidence of such.)

And in true, modern fashion, the offended folks decided to bite their thumbs at the VP. They've created T-shirts and icons with "webscab" and "pixel-stained technopeasant wretch" in unapologetic fonts. They've even created a day to celebrate their wretchedness. While I can understand after seeing all the response why the VP may feel the internet is pernicious, I don't think it's a substantive argument for his cause. After all, the power of the internet is only reminding him that he feasted on his own foot in this case. He didn't have to email someone else and ask that person to post the rant.

Redemption

No, not for me. For the contest I griped about for using scamtastic verbiage and tone in a newsletter. Actually, this post is long overdue, and thanks to author Steven Savile for leaving a comment on the above-linked post and thus reminding me the internet is a small place. At any rate, it's time to give credit where it's due.

Back in November when I received the newsletter that got me fired up, I forwarded my complaints to the folks who run the contest. I got a prompt reply thanking me for my email and telling me that my concerns were passed along to the folks who control the newsletter. That was the last I heard of it.

When I received the next newsletter, I was very impressed with the improvements. The sales pitch element was toned down and the content focused on the contest and how it has helped other writers. There was even a direct call for feedback about the newsletter content and such. Of course, there was no way for me to know if it was my email that triggered the change or something else. Still, I felt all warm and fuzzy. Even when some of the more recent newsletters went back to a stronger sales pitch tone, they at least didn't use the smarmy scam-type set up that got me angry before.

So for anyone who read my original post about the Writers of the Future Contest's questionable newsletter and was swayed to think less of the contest, please consider it redeemed. And if you're considering submitting to the contest, here's a quote from Steven:

I can definitely chart a turn around in my sales and upturn in career since the win back in 2002, and have no trouble being their poster boy for the contest. I went full time as a writer two years ago and am contracted up for a good two or three more.

If you'd like to get more specifics on Steven's experience, you can submit a question to him via his website. He responded to me (I was responding to his comment on my blog...ah the joys of tech) very quickly and candidly.

As for me, I will be submitting Ghost Story/Pinemeadow Fog to the Writers of the Future contest probably by the end of the month once I've finished revising it.

Promote Your Book on TV...For FREE!

For years, now, only the Big Shots in the publishing industry have been able to use TV time to advertise their books. They're the ones who do the talk-show circuit. They're the ones with the thirty-second ad with impressive background music and famous voice-over guys intoning some logline. You have to be a mega New York Times #1 Bestseller to get this sort of treatment.

Or, you did until this week.

Take a lesson from author and self-proclaimed deity and Asian Supremecist, Kenneth Eng, who dodges the important questions about his recent ass-hatery in order to promote his book.

That's right, you too can get that coveted air time by making raging bigoted comments in a somewhat obscure local paper. You just need to develop a key sense of narcissim and build a thick hide and adjust your auditory awareness (or at least refuse to be bothered by silly questions about your racist screeds in favor of babbling incoherently about your latest book).

I predict Kenneth Eng's next book is going to be a how-to for writers RE self-promotion. Or something else non-fiction about how evolution can be more logical, because that's totally the sort of thing I want to read about from an Out and Proud Bigot.

Update: Nevermind. This wasn't a good example of free publicity. The author in question was flogging a book that was released two years ago, when he has a book that just came out this month. Clearly, there's something else going on. Clearly.

My First Rejection with Feedback

Last Friday I received my first rejection with feedback. 'Twas not positive feedback. In fact, it was the very first time any of my characters have ever been called 2-D (the actual words were "cardboard cut-outs"). This is not to say the feedback was in any way overly harsh or vitriolic. In fact, the rejection made me do a lot of heavy thinking about just what I was trying to accomplish with the story anyway.

So after I swallowed the first sting of "No," I started assimilating the feedback. The critique focused on several details I had used that seemed to the editor to create very generic characters. Aside from one of the details mentioned, the others were not character signifiers but societal and class markers. More like brushstrokes to paint the background. So I was very confused with how they had been taken as character details. This has resulted in my logic twisting itself into pretzels as I try to figure out how much I agree or disagree with the feedback.

I moved away from the details as quoted and got to the characters he said were flat. I approached them more in terms of how I would usually determine whether or not I had well-rounded characters in my stories. What was the motivation? What was the background? I didn't get far for two of my characters (the two involved with the majority of the details quoted). So I agreed with the feedback and started to look for ways to flesh these folks out.

Then I stopped because it seemed like adding more details to distinguish these characters would detract from the point of the whole scene, which was to describe in an entertaining, everyone can relate to this fashion how something wasn't happening (with the lead-in scene keeping folks suspicious as to why the certain thing wasn't happening). Then I stopped and took a bird's-eye view of that thought and realized that I had just owned up to writing a plot-driven scene. This necessitated a closer look at the purpose of the scene, which was really an exercise of showing not telling the actions of a different character in carrying out the wishes of yet another character. All the character-driven aspects of the scene were there, just not for the characters actually in the scene. If that makes any sense.

By this point I'm feeling good because I've re-assured myself that I'm not a plot-driven writer despite that seemingly plot-driven scene. In fact, through all this hamster-wheeling, I realized something I do have to look for during revision for my short fiction. All of my writing is idea-driven. That is, I get an idea that involves both plot and character (usually a small piece of each that I then have to build on). In my novels, in order to make sense of the scale of the idea, I have to figure out why these characters are doing these things, and the writing of the book thus shifts from the idea to the characters. In my short fiction, I basically purge the idea, making sure I get from A to B as it came to me, thus shifting the idea to the plot. I'll have to be very aware of this in my revisions.

Speaking of revisions, I was back where I started with this feedback. How much do I agree with the comments? Do I flesh out the two characters and hope the details don't detract from the purpose of the scene? Or do I leave them as "insert yourself here" placeholders and acknowledge that such a device is going to make it nigh impossible to get the story published? Or do I take the feedback very literally and just adjust the details as quoted to something more unique even though that wouldn't be true to the characters and probably not even to the intent of the critique itself?

Sigh.

I'm going to have to leet this one stew for a bit. But it helped me figure out a few things about revising my short stories.

How We Use It

Recently I've been noticing the other work that writers who blog do. That is, the time they take to shine lights on things besides their own writing, usually by stepping out of their own spotlight and dragging something into it. What do I mean by that?

Well, there's the obvious. Most writers that have an on-line presence tend to spend at least some time sharing their writing process in the hopes of helping aspiring writers. Some do more of this than others. Holly Lisle, for example, is writing an entire Worldbuilding Clinic, of which the Create a Language Clinic I've talked about before is a part. There's also a ton of information available for free on her site. J.A. Konrath devotes his entire blog to discussing marketing strategies and the industry and other juicy tidbits helpful for those in the biz. Victoria Strauss and A.C. Crispin spend a good deal of their own time and money to hunt down and expose scam agents, contests, publishers, etc. for Writer Beware. And the list really does go on and on. As I said, that's the obvious method for writers to use a spotlight to reveal things that would help others rather than just basking in it.

The next obvious is to let others take center stage and share the wealth of readership. John Scalzi does this as often as possible, even to the point where he doesn't use any of his much-read on-line presence to complain about the books he didn't like. It's his policy. He interviews other authors every week, sometimes splurging with more interviews if he's got 'em. He even has regular "pimp" threads where he invites others to indulge in self-promotion and get the word out to his significant readership. S.L. Viehl (aka Lynn Viehl, aka Jessica Hall) also "pimps" books and authors on her also widely read blog, usually about once a month. I know I've bought at least two books due to Scalzi's and Viehl's recommendations.

Then there's the less obvious, using significant readership gained by being a mover and a shaker in the writing world to shed light on a cause not related to writing. Scalzi and Viehl do this fairly regularly with music. And I know I plan to use any popularity I have to "pimp" art and artists I like. But the Nielsen Haydens (and their guest bloggers) use their reknown for political discussion and offering different aspects of current affairs that may not be getting coverage. (Teresa Nielsen Hayden explains why here.)

It's nice to see all this...philanthropy, for lack of a better word. There's no rule that says you have to take your success and pay it forward or use it to promote something other than yourself. Maybe it's just everyone wanting to maintain good karma. Maybe the world's full of good people after all, no matter what you start to think after watching the news or voting.

I'll Never Learn

Holly posted about the practice that chain bookstores use as part of their business model: ordering to the net. She states that this practice kills books and careers, and concludes that, to support a midlist author's career (and, of course, your local independent bookseller), it's better to buy books from independent booksellers since they don't order to the net. I don't really want to analyze the argument since 1) I'm most certainly an outsider to the entire publishing industry and therefore don't have access to all the information that Holly does and 2) I think a lot of the argument gets back into that whole writing as art or business debate that and that's been addressed here.

No, the reason I'm posting is to talk about the flak her post generated and how I'm probably going to regret opening my mouth.

In presenting her argument against ordering to the net, Holly begins by calling chain bookstores the Villains of bookselling and indie bookstores the Heroes of bookselling. Then she immediately goes on to explain how the heroes (indies) do it right, focusing on the actual booksellers. I'm fairly certain she did this to emphasize the human element of the indies for stark comparison against the Corporate Buyer looking at numbers and nothing else of the chains. Unfortunately, for the chain employees (aka, the actual booksellers at the chain stores), this argument structure seems to be implying that, by immediately focusing on the booksellers at the indies who are doing things right and are therefore heroes, chain booksellers are doing it wrong and are villains. Hence the furor.

Holly calls such an interpretation sloppy reading because she never said any such thing. In fact, she only mentioned the chain bookseller once in detailing that readers need to beat booksellers over the head with the need to keep a book/author stocked to get the beancounters to take note and thus produce a miracle that would prevent the ordering to the net death spiral. She's taken the booksellers completely out of the equation, really. And the removal of the human bookselling element from the villainy of chain bookstores seems to imply that they are complicit in the corporate villainy or that they are incapable of handselling to save an author's career, which is just as bad since she's already established that that's part of the right way to do things--you know, the way the heroes do it.

The whole mess gets even more grand when Holly puts part of the blame for the furor on people who "so closely identify themselves with their jobs that they believe a hostile comment about a bad corporate business practice was a hostile comment about themselves." Wouldn't another way of saying "closely identify themselves with their jobs" be "passionate about their work," which is bookselling? Isn't that what she's claiming is missing in the bottom-line mentality of ordering to the net? Have we just run 'round in a circle?

But I've run into this sort of thing on the internet before and have been burned in trying to present a dissenting opinion when someone is clearly certain they are right about something. So even though I see how Holly's rhetoric in and composition of her argument could garner (whether intentionally or unintentionally--this is where I stop enjoying argument analysis because no matter what wording or structure Holly used, I cannot presume to know what she intended with it) just the sort of reaction she's ridiculing as not only idiotic and sloppy but also akin to libel, I should just roll my eyes and go about my blog surfing. No, idiot me, I decided to post a response.

We'll see what happens. What I would enjoy would be a discussion of the rhetoric she used and why. I'm a writer and thus a constant student of language. I'm always interested to know the thought process behind someone's words.

Us vs. Them

Or maybe it's just a gussied up version of writing as art or business, but I've already talked about that. So I'll set aside that aspect of Scarlett Thomas's essay about women in publishing. For some thoughtful discussion about the point of this essay, try here or here. I'm not going to discuss the point of this essay because I really couldn't find one. Thomas herself doesn't even seem to know what point she's trying to make. At the end of her essay, which is actually the transcript of a speech she gave at the Exeter University Feminist Research Network, her summation paragraph starts with this gem: "I’m not sure what this tells us about women in publishing."

I think what she's trying to say is that the formulae of commercial fiction is a prison for writers who want to be writing "deeper" stuff because they're not allowed to write anything other than the formula (and that the industry is actively involved in keeping things this way, even so far as to "trick" writers); and, it is much easier for men to escape said prison because they are less pigeon-holed by the formulae. This may or may not be true, and Thomas gives little in the way of supporting evidence for the latter aspect of her point. Also, her supporting evidence for the former is primarily a recounting of her own experience and sharing a few anonymous anecdotes. Therein lies my problem with this essay: her conclusions trend more toward conspiracy thinking when there is a more simple solution based on the information she shared.

Here's what she said about her experience in getting published:

I wrote my first published book during a month-long tantrum, to be honest. I have never admitted this before. In 1997 I had had my first proper novel turned down by a woman I had been sure would become my agent. This novel, Dog & Clowns, was a surreal story about three people who decide never to leave their house again. It had been turned down, and I was cross. ‘I am going to write a women’s crime series,’ I declared, quite randomly, to my partner. I’d seen these sorts of books on my mother’s shelves Marcia Muller, Val McDermid, Sara Paretsky. I have always liked puzzles, and mysteries and Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe. I was, at the time, very into 'playful' texts that messed around with genre or style. I was thinking, I can knock these things out. I can follow rules. I can SUBVERT rules.

She had a book rejected once by an agent. Granted, it was the agent she felt would be her best fit, and it would be wrong to assume that, just because she only mentions this one rejection, this book didn't have other rejections. Still, this sounds like the classic "brand-new" writer problem: it gets rejected once and the author either decides the book is utter garbage and never writes again or the book is perfect and the publishing world will never recognize it. At least Thomas decided to take her rejection and do something as productive as write another book. Unfortunately, she approached that book by looking down her nose at the genre she chose to write. And that's not the only problem she had when she decided to write the book.

In just one month (which involved lots of 18-hour days) I had completed the manuscript for something called And the Circus is Through, a novel introducing an amateur sleuth called Lily Pascale. ... The agent loved it. A week later, I was meeting an editor from Hodder & Stoughton for lunch in London. ... I was wrong about so much, then. I didn’t even know that the woman with whom I was having lunch was responsible for something called a ‘list’, and that on her list she only had female authors, and that these authors all wrote something known in the trade as ‘commercial women’s fiction’, a category governed by rules and conventions as precise as those governing Mills & Boon novels, or pulp westerns. I half-listened to what she said about how I should change the book (she talked about love interests and damsel-in-distress type things) and went home. Then I signed up for a three-book deal with this publisher.

Did you catch that? She didn't know anything about the editor or the publishing line. And given this as well as her insterests as desribed above, I'm thinking she didn't so much as read even one chapter of the novels on her mother's bookshelf. When she met with the editor face-to-face to discuss the book, Thomas admits to only "half-listening" to the editor's thoughts on revisions for making the book ready for the intended marketplace. Yet she still signs that contract. That's like buying the first car that crosses your path without looking at things such as brand, model, gas mileage, what other dealerships might be selling it for, how the brand performs, how its rated for things like safety, etc.

But she's admitted that she was desperate to be published and "wrong about so much then" so maybe we'll get some advice on what she did wrong? Maybe something about the need to research your market? No, these are the words of wisdom she has to share from the experience:

It’s hard for me to relate now to the person I was then. I would have agreed to anything if it would mean I would get published. And this is actually the kind of advice I give people now: don't do things just to get published. Write something you believe in. Of course I know now what I didn't know then, which is that you may as well try to get something you believe in published, as you are going to be asked to write almost the same book again and again and again..."

Well, there's something good in that advice. If you don't believe in your books, and, say, look down your nose at what you're doing, chances are you aren't going to sell very well. Readers are pretty keen at noting when they're reading something that the writer had no passion in writing. But to then take that good advice and warp it into a criticism of the repetitiveness of genre fiction--particularly serial genre fiction--makes me wonder if, in her drive to be published, she ever stopped to consider what such a thing meant.

I spent the next couple of months refining my manuscript. ... After she had read the revised manuscript, the editor sent me a 17-page letter, asking for more precise changes. ... the night before the editor came down to see me I sat at my computer and hammered out what is now the first chapter of the first Lily Pascale novel. I did it when I was angry, and I did it to show this editor that I could write exactly the kind of fiction she had in mind (I just didn’t want to). ‘I love it,’ she declared after she had read it. ‘Now, if you can make the whole book like this...’

I trust you noticed the "I just didn't want to" bit. Hello? If you've figured out what the editor wants, that you can provide it, but you don't want to, what the hell are you doing at that house?

But she eventually did "escape" to a literary house, where she would have known she belonged in the first place had she actually done any research into the business of publishing. From her safety on the other side of the fence, she decides to tell it like it is. That it wasn't her own damn fault for trying to do something she despised just to get published in a field she really didn't want to be published in. No, no, she has no blame in all of this except giving in to the "corporation rules" her previous editor adhered to. The real culprit behind her struggle through the darkness and into the light is the publishing industry's discrimination against women.

While women are stuck writing formulaic genre fiction for publishers that won’t let them do anything else, occasionally hiding their great ideas, observations and writing inside these books, men do the reverse: disguising often mediocre genre fiction as literary fiction. And it works! Look at Jonathan Franzen, selling us a family saga as if it was something new. Of course, feminist critique has moved on from simply pointing a finger at what men are doing and saying, ‘Why aren’t we allowed to do that too?’ and in publishing it isn’t that simple anyway but yet it is true that women are kept out of certain areas of publishing, including one area close to my own heart, the category loosely defined as ‘cult literary fiction’.

And then she combines her two points in a strange way that continues to make me think she doesn't understand the business of publishing at all and never will.

Of course, as long as different sorts of writing are contained in these prison-like ‘categories’, and the ‘market’ determines what gets printed and put on the shelves, it is unlikely that women will break out of restrictive popular formulae, or the female ghettoes within the Science Fiction, fantasy and crime genres.

I'm sorry, what else besides the market will determine what gets put on shelves? The market wants a good story, but even the best story won't sell if it can't find its audience, which is the purpose behind those "prison-like 'categories'" otherwise known as genres. Publishing as a market-based business is not going to change, not if publishers want to make money. Fiction categorization just may change, though, because more and more of the market doesn't adhere to compartmentalization in their reading tastes.

Scarlett Thomas's overall argument can be summarized in this excerpt:

Once you start talking to these authors you realise that most of them don’t want to write formulaic fiction at all, but once they sign their contract, they find that this is what they are required to do. Another editor I interviewed said, ‘Just as there’s a place for five-star restaurants, there’s a place for McDonald’s.’ But do the authors know they’re supposed to be the equivalent of McDonald’s?, I asked. ‘Not always,’ admitted the editor. It would seem that far from being a representation of ‘real’ women’s experience - which is how they defend it, by the way - chick lit is an exercise in suppressing it. And I do wonder if a similar thing is happening in women’s literary fiction; that if you send in a manuscript to a publisher that isn’t a contemporary saga, or a novel about relationships, it goes on the ‘no’ pile. After all, what would they tell the sales department? Originality? No, thanks. ... What if all women writers refused to write according to the formulae made up by people who think the public are stupid and that we should keep giving them the same old crap again and again.

This is not the right argument to be making to change anything about how commercial fiction is sold or how women are perceived/treated in publishing especially because, as Thomas reported in her personal anecdotes and implies with the whole golden arches analogy, the women who get "suckered" into writing formulaic stories don't bother to research their market and the houses to which they are submitting their work. And it's further evidence of that same ignorance of how the business works to suggest that any women's literary fiction novel that isn't a contemporary saga or a novel about relationships is automatically rejected because editors are only looking for projects that adhere to a formula they push on the market because they think the "public are stupid." It's even more ridiculous to make such an assertion given that Thomas herself in the same essay remarks how women are kept in their genre ghettoes because "the 'market' determines what gets printed and put on the shelves."

As I mentioned above, others are talking about the essay as if it really addresses concerns about publishing and women in publishing. And they are discussing it thoughtfully enough that I think Thomas must raise some valid concerns despite logic holes you could drive lorries through. This must mean that there are a good number of "cult" women fiction writers submitting to the right agents and houses, or are being upfront and candid about what they're trying to do with their current agents and houses in their book proposals instead of trying to sneak some literary stuff past their commercial fiction editors and hope they don't get caught and feel unfairly confined and restricted when they do. That leads me to conclude that there really isn't enough good discussion generated about this topic and so otherwise intelligent people are "taking what they can get" and trying to stick to the big issues in a flimsy argument.

How unfortunate. Equality in publishing (in the sense that women and men should both be able to follow their writing desires--much like boys and girls should be able to learn according to their tastes rather than be shunted toward and away from topics deemed appropriate or inappropriate to their perceived societal roles) is a laudable goal. Different ways to publish to a market or even just publish to make a profit that reduces the need for formulaic fiction is a great concept. Neither topic is presented in any coherent fashion in Scarlet Thomas's essay.

Not that it was necessarily meant to. Thomas was speaking to a sympathetic audience in an undisclosed capacity (i.e. maybe she was invited just to share her story and some dirt on the industry). She clearly doesn't like the way the business of publishing runs today. She also clearly doesn't like the way society still has wrinkles in how women are perceived and treated by society. The end result, then, is a speech that is more an extended whine with a few possibilities for coherent discussion rather than a "lecture" designed to inform an audience and generate an atmosphere for change.

While the former can be fun and has its place, I was expecting the latter since the subject matter (equality in publishing, flexibility in publishing) is so weighty.