On why I'm doing what I'm doing

[avevale_intelligencer]

First of all, everyone who wants to be a proper published author should read this informative and helpful post from seanan_mcguire, in order to understand why I'm settling. (You should also read anything else she writes. She's good, and she's published, and she knows what she's talking about.)

I know print-on-demand isn't real publishing. It's only not vanity publishing because I haven't had to pay them for it. And I know, because many people tell me so, that the system for getting published is perfectly fair and reasonable and if I haven't got good enough to be accepted by an agent or a publisher then I just haven't got good enough, and if I don't have the gumption to keep trying and learn from multiple rejections then that's my own lookout.

Well, I've been writing since I was at least ten, and reading since I was three or four, and I'd say my comprehension is pretty good, though my problem with publishers' submission guidelines I've already documented. If there's any more to learn about how to write then I've probably missed out on it by now. I'm fifty-four now, depressed and exhausted. I don't have time to get good, and I don't have the gumption (and I know it's lazy of me) to start at the top of a very long list of agents, work through and build up a pile of letters saying "We are not taking on any new clients at the moment." No agent, no editor, has the time or the inclination to tell me what I'm doing wrong in my writing (apart from "I didn't love it"), and I shouldn't waste the poor overworked people's time by asking. They have real authors to take care of.

I need to face that this is the writer I am, this is the writer I'm going to be, and if my stuff pleases anyone at all then I should be grateful for that and not expect any more. I am not a special snowflake, or even a snowflake at all. (Check out the subtitle of the journal.) Hence Lulu.com.

(Of course, if Orion or Tor or Curtis Brown or somebody bursts through the door clutching a copy of Three Windows and crying "This is fantastic, what else have you got?" I'm not going to be cloddish about it. :) But that's a Lottery dream, and the thing about those is that real life is still there when you wake up.)

This has been to some extent a vent.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

You are good and you can write. The thing that isn't added to all the publishing 'rules' is that it also takes luck on top of talent and so forth. It's that last little thing, it's incalculable and it's Not Fair. I have been where you are, I was there for years and years. I had had consistently rubbish luck and then suddenly I had one little flash of the good stuff, and it came via a print-on-demand publisher. POD is a grey area: it's not just 'vanity', far from it and there are some very respectable POD houses (Immanion, for one). I'm currently agentless, but I like your work and if I have the chance and you have something suitable (would need to be novel length) I can and will show it to my editor, if you wish. Use the contacts you have -- Seanan and I have the same editor, and if she hears good of you from two directions, it will up her interest. But please don't give up or give in.
I look forward to your collection and I will talk to another friend who sells small press stuff at cons to see if he'd carry your book with the others. Best wishes.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

It maybe because I Am Not A Writer (of fiction, anyhow), but I don't get that approach.

As a musician, I have a vehement dislike of big music publishers. If EMI or Sony came knocking, I would *honestly* not be interested. I've had a teensytiny taste of having to produce my art to other people's requirements and I didn't like it one little bit.

What I don't get it why it's OK - in fact normal - for independent musicians to produce their own music, publish it, market it and gig it. All the money that they earn goes to them, and they have control over the production of their art.

But people in the publishing world seem to frown upon it for some reason, and I don't understand why writing should be so different... Lulu.com and the suchlike are simply tools to get the material into other people's hands, just as Soundsgood.com or any other CD pressing company.

Take control. Publish your art yourself, and rejoice in the printed word - regardless of whether you paid someone else to be judgemental at you or not.

Hurrah for "Three Windows"!

[howeird]

Seanan is a good example of an extremely assertive self-marketer. I've watched her go from a shy young woman hiding in the back of a filk band to a multi-talented Force Of Nature during the past dozen or so years. Most of us don't have the drive, energy, spare cycles and perseverance she has shown, and that's pretty much why we're not published. Jay Lake is another good example, as is John Scalzi.

And of course a significant chunk of it is luck.

If it's any consolation, you *are* world famous. At Conflikt 2009 "classic filk" circle I announced I was going to sing a song by Zander. There was a lot of "ooh" and "aah" in response to that. When I got to the chorus of Sam's Song, it sounded like everyone was singing along.