What Really Changed in Publishing

Writing advice abounds online, in books, and magazines. An entire industry has been built around the craft and art of writing (and another industry around how to market that writing) so why do we on Novel Matters keep talking about this stuff?

You can Goggle "how to write a novel" and choose from hundreds of thousands of sites with advice, tips, and know how. Why, oh why, do we keep showing up every week to toss our pebbles into the writing ocean?

Maybe because we're delusional. I'm willing to at least consider the idea. Delusional people often make great artists. So, maybe it's that.

I think when we started this blog back in 2007/08 our reasons were different from today's. It was exciting back then, we were all published and writing for publication. We had daily conversations with industry people, agents, editors, publishers. The future was uncertain, but it looked bright in terms of our writing lives.

Things changed.

There are six of us writing Novel Matters and I don't speak for the other five.

I'm going to talk about what changed for me.

One the surface, it appears what changed was something pretty bad. I haven't published a novel since 2009. That's bad. Publishing novels was the whole point of getting into this gig, right?

That's what I believed when I stepped into the arena. I was here to write and be published.

Things changed.

I've written four (and a half) novels since Talking to the Dead. Good ones, too, though you'll have to take my word for it because none of them are published. Am I bitter? Not even a little. Tempted a few times, sure, but I managed not to fall into that pit. Because things changed.

I changed.

I'm not juggling fluffy puppies in the air, here. I'm not blowing sunshine and trying to tell you I've turned into a writer uninterested in my work being published. That's not the part of me that changed. What changed was when I started the writing journey I was convinced I knew what I was doing. Years later, I've arrived at the place that awaits everyone who journeys this far in pursuit of art. I arrived at myself.

Once, I thought because I read Ibsen, and Chekov, Dostoyevsky, and Hardy, because I read Alice Munro before reading Alice Munro was cool, because I took seriously the three hundred years of literature that came before our time, I had what it took to be a writer, maybe even a good one someday.

 Failing to publish for five years, brought me to the place of being completely honest about who I was as a person. Not as a writer. A person. To shed the layers and arrive at a place where I was forced to be completely honest about the stories I am uniquely qualified to write.

It was difficult for me to admit.

I'm not Alice Monro. I'm not Marilynne Robinson. Or any number of writers whose work has changed me. That was hard to face, but it wasn't the really difficult bit. The hardest part was accepting the fact that the truest stories I write--Bonnie Novels--terrified me. Because I realized the novel I started (and am currently working on) is the very best and most true thing I have in me.

And it's kind of dorky.

It's not high literature. It aspires to little more than entertainment. Its main theme is simple, the premise can be easily stated in thirty-five words or less. And I'm having the time of my life.

I changed.

Maybe that's the reason the six of us show up here three times a week and talk about writing. Because things are changing and we need to talk about them.

We're changing and we need to talk about that, too.

The 10,000 hour club and other musings.

I've never read Catcher in the Rye, never read anything by J.D. Salinger, never seen a documentary on him, though I might try to find the documentary Bonnie talked about in her post on Monday, where she certainly gave us a lot to chew on.

She made a very good observation when she said the media called him a hermit and recluse, yet the life he lived was only selectively hermit-like. I'm sure Bonnie's correct in that his part-time withdrawal from public life may have been partly "because he understood his capacity to be a dangerous man ..." But I'm taking a guess when I say I think he was probably also a media snob. He wanted his fame and fortune, but on his terms.

Like so many other famous people we could name.

Well, in all fairness, who of us doesn't? Who of us writers who dream of best-sellers, book tours and movie deals---and struggle with envy for those few who do achieve those things---don't want fame on our own terms? But is that realistic? Is it fair? We aggressively woo fans, hoping they'll buy our books and support our writing habit ... so long as they keep their adoration at arm's length? There's something very one-sided about that to me. Yes, I understand the need for privacy and safety and boundaries, but in my opinion, those who step from private life to public life have an obligation to the ones who help them achieve their dreams.

I know, easy for me to say since I'll never achieve the kind of fame we're taking about. I just don't happen to be a fan of elitism, or snobbery on any level.

That said, I'd like to address the other part of Bonnie's post, the 10,000 hours part. If the premise is true, that would be 416 days of round-the-clock, non-stop writing to master the skill. Taking my average weekly writing time and multiplying that to the 10,000 hours necessary to master a skill, I figure it took me 13-15 years of writing to reach that milestone. Like Bonnie, the thought of considering myself a master is laughable. But trust me when I say I've come a long, long way in 28 years, which is how long I've been diligently at this writing life.

And I have to believe if, after all those years of striving, I'd managed to gain even a tiny fraction of  the fame of a J.D. Salinger, I think I'd show more appreciation. At least I hope I would.

My musings aside, I have two questions for you:

1. Do you fear the fame you may be courting?
2. How long has it taken you to reach the 10,000 hour club --- or where are you on your journey?

Write the Story you Want to Read

"Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read." The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (page 74).

We've all heard it before: write the book you want to read. We give mental assent to this phrase: Yes, yes. What I want to read. Only that.

And yet.

We sit down to write and the screaming memes drown out the book we mean to write. The voices of people who would judge the work before it sees light of day (we ascribe this, usually without knowing if it is true or not). The voice of mom, or our Sunday School teacher, or whoever. If only we could be left alone with our thoughts.

Dig around for some cup of courage that allows us to write through the din of voices. We tell ourselves no one will read the darn thing anyway, save some glassy-eyed agent's assistant. Who will know if we pour our misunderstandings onto the page?
Banish the memes and what is left? The basket is lighter. Honest prose. True story.

And yet.

There is the doubt that we are not up to the task. A story grand as one we want to read certainly requires a steady hand. And look. Our hands tremor. Our word reach is puny. We must look up the word rigour in the dictionary because we most certainly are using it incorrectly.

Sign up for NaNoWriMo and learn to let the words fly, land where they may. We sprout wings and realize trusting ourselves isn't the point. That writers are, primarily, untrustworthy folk. There's joy in that.
Memes exiled, the issue of self trust resolved, we solider on with the scraps of truth left to us. The basket is nearly empty. True story.

And yet.

There is the story. The tapestry in our minds has turned to a single clanging gong on the page. Stiff, shrill, obvious. We have misplaced our campfire enthusiasm, shelved our wide-eyed curiosity in favour of experience. By accident we bought into the social media gimmick that word count and to-do lists, and deadlines mean we have arrived (where, exactly?).
It turns out we must rid ourselves of ourselves. Dissolve ego in the acid of honest prose, good story. The basket is empty.

And yet.

We are left with exactly all we had in the beginning. Nothing more than our restlessness and longing.

Round-Table: Beginnings Written and Chopped

I fell in love with sumptuous writing when reading Annie Dillard's essays, An American Childhood. I find it oddly comforting that she understands what it is to fall in love with those first words we splatter on the page. Here's a quote from her book, The Writing Life.

Sometimes the writer leaves his early chapters in place from gratitude; he cannot contemplate them or read them without feeling again the blessed relief that exalted him when the words first appeared--relief that he was writing anything at all. That beginning served to get him where he was going, after all; surely the reader needs it, too, as groundwork. But no.

Ha! My first read-in-front-of-anybody piece was a short story for a creative writing class. It was a short story, right? My professor told me to lose most of the beginning and shave at least 4,000 words off. Ouch! I cut about 10,000 words off the front of Goodness & Mercy. But I kept those words in a file I titled, "Wonderful Words to Save." It's a lot easier to cut unnecessary words, if you tuck them away. I've actually used some of those wonderful words in other places. I'm wondering how the other Novel Matters ladies decide what to keep and what to cut, especially at the beginning of a piece.

I heard a speaker say at a writers' conference that we need to open our novels exactly where the story begins. That may seem like an obvious concept, but sometimes we do forget. I know I do. We want to set the stage, so to speak, introducing the reader to the setting--macro and micro; and to the characters, giving plenty of background so they'll understand them better when the scene actually begins; and giving plenty of backstory so the reader will have a grasp of the conditions that led to the story that's about to unfold. Go ahead, write all that. Consider it a warm-up to the real writing. Because once you get past all that, once the stage is set, once the director is ready to call, "Action!", THAT'S where you want to begin, and not a moment before. I love nothing better than to pick up a novel I know nothing about, open to the first page, read a paragraph or two, and say, "Wait a minute. What?" Then go back and read it again because I'm completely lost. Well, that's how it should be. My daughter Mindy when she was growing up, would walk into the middle of a conversation, listen for a moment, and say, "Wait, start over," because she wanted to hear everything she missed. But getting into a novel is not like walking into a conversation. It's stepping into a completely unknown situation and MOVING FORWARD to find out what it's all about. The reader should have a plethora of questions about all kinds of things when she begins reading. And turning pages, one after another, is how she'll get answers. At least she will if the author knows what he or she is doing. Because it's the author's job to anticipate and answer those questions, to supply a satisfying experience for all involved.