Showing posts with label publishers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishers. Show all posts

Friday, September 21, 2012

Why "just" is so unjust

 


Did I make a total fool of myself?

Was I unrealistic? Was I wrong to think, this time, maybe this time things will turn out differently?

I thought I had magic on my side. Not so much because of my writing, which frankly took a very long time to get off the ground. When I look back at some of my early efforts, I feel as if I have bitten into a lemon.

No, it was the subject matter, the discovery. When I jumped into this world, the story began to write itself, and I was certain I was on to a Sure Thing.




It was all about Harold Lloyd, sometimes called the Third Genius of silent film comedy. His life seemed unexplored, or at least not explored in the way Chaplin's or Keaton's had been. Turner Classics had just started showing his films, a lot of them, so it seemed as if every time I tuned in I saw him in some obscure short or other. Later I saw him in his full glory in the feature films that propelled him to greatness.

I was in love, and writing feverishly: a story had sprung up about a young woman going to Hollywood to fulfil her obsession with Harold Lloyd. And yes, I was aware the premise might be seen as cliche - the young girl getting off the bus and being awed by the Hollywoodland sign (as it existed then) - but my hope was that Harold's dynamism and quirky charm might win readers over.

I have never researched anything to this depth, and somehow I'm still doing it, finding bits and pieces that fascinate me, even though, at the same time, it's like being steadily kicked in the teeth.




When I allowed myself to fantasize - and for the love of God, what else do writers DO? - I saw this book soaring, finding a substantial readership for the first time. My first two novels were (wince) "critically acclaimed," code for "they didn't sell" . The Glass Character, a reference to Harold Lloyd's nickname for his screen persona, did not soar as I had expected, but plummeted like a shot partridge, landing with a sickening thud.

I am aware that since I last published in 2005, things have changed. Hell, everything has changed, even my own attitude. I anticipated a sort of
comeback, and after awhile it evolved into an expectation. I forgot all about the Ten Commandments which some rinkydink Charlton Heston of an instructor chiselled into my brain at some writer's conference: A writer must hope, but never expect.


 

What if we assumed that attitude towards, say, sex? Would the human race even exist any more? What is hope, anyway, except a form of expectation? In any case, I tried everything I could think of to get this book published and got absolutely nowhere. Very few even read the thing. Maybe the very idea of a novel about silent film seemed boring to them, something the public would never be interested in. Never mind that The Artist, a silent movie about silent movies, had just won Best Picture at the Oscars, one of the biggest upsets in film history, and Martin Scorsese's Hugo featured a Harold Lloyd scene with the main character dangling off the hands of a huge clock.

Did I lose my objectivity, fall in love with Harold Lloyd to the point that the story somehow went off the rails?

Did fascination somehow devolve into a crashing bore?


 


In my writer's life, it seems I've had mostly failure, if you count failure as rejection and not being able to get your projects off the ground. It's all about being noticed. Wagging your ass, as far as I am concerned. When I referred to wearing a clown suit the other day, I was talking about something that actually happened at a writer's seminar.

A woman who had had a formulaic detective novel published with a small press claimed that if you wanted to be published, you had to be "shamelessly self-promoting" and do anything and everything to get noticed.

"Wear bright colors!" she exclaimed. "Stand out! Make them remember you!" I remember she had an eye-assaulting orange shirt on with rainbow suspenders. It really did look clownish, as if Wavy Gravy had landed in the literary world.




I wonder about this "shameless" thing. So what is the opposite of "shameless"? "Shameful", I guess. The implication is that self-promotion is usually seen as shameful, something we simply must not do if we are to keep our dignity.

This is worse in Canada, it really is. We have to hate our own work, or at least disparage it and be modest about it to a clinical degree. And for God's sake, don't let anybody see it! At the same time, our heads are swivelled around 180 degrees by the (mostly-American) lecturers at the Surrey Conference who tell us to promote, promote, promote. Leap over the usual rules like Evel Knievel soaring over the Snake River Canyon.  If you don't somehow make this leap (it used to be Oprah's book club, until even Oprah plummeted to the very last name on the Fortune 500 "50 Most Influential Women" list), you'll either be stuck in the perceived backwater of literary fiction, or will never publish at all.

Everyone seems to know that the main way to make the fabled leap is to "know the right people", but it's never spelled out exactly how you do this. Every attempt I haved made to contact people who might help me has been brushed off or ignored outright, leaving me feeling humiliated and stupid.   Maybe you really do have to attend cocktail parties where everyone is slightly swacked, and rub your foot against an influential guy's leg under the tablecloth (or maybe tackle him in an empty conference room). 


 

In case you think I'm some sort of paranoid crackpot Ma Kettle type with a smoking shotgun, let me tell you a story. I went to the Surrey conference just as my first novel Better than Life was about to come out in 2003, and it was like attending one big giddy literary party.  I had already signed deal for the second one, then called Nola Mardling. I also had an agent who appeared and disappeared in the happy hubbub of the conference. I ran into an old professor of mine who was obviously thrilled with what was happening. Then I won a minor writing award at the conference. And when people found out I had a "book out", a real live PUBLISHED book, they were amazed and wanted to buy a copy. It was a heady time, but it was also very typical of me and my life that it all crashed, savagely, a year or so later. And I still don't really know why, because I swear to God, I tried as hard as I could.




The book had been taken out of my hands and no longer resembled what I had written. Even the main character's name and the eponymous title had to be changed. I can't describe how this affected me. She died. She was dead, her identity had been destroyed, and yet I had to trot around and promote the thing as if she were still alive and well.

The result was, I didn't know my character any more. She was a stranger to me. Everyone was mildly shocked: why should this bother you so much? Why is it such a big deal to you, only two words changed? Readers won't know the difference, and that's all that matters. Not one person saw why I was upset, no one tried to help or defend me; I was completely abandoned at one of the worst times of my life. By now we were on two different planets, and I was no doubt being perceived as "difficult" or even crazy. 

And a writer must be, in any and all circumstances, grateful.

Why did I put up such a fuss over such a minor detail as my main character's name?  Because it changed the entire energy of the book.

Think of it.

Oliver Smith?

Moby Brown?

Suzy Karenina?

You get my drift.

So why would I want to venture into such shark-infested waters again?




The definition of insanity, in some circles anyway, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I suppose that is what I have been doing, trying to transcend what happened and transcend the news that everything is different now, that it's nearly impossible to get published unless the publisher thinks your book will sell, not just sell but leap across that fabled gap into Fifty Shades of Greyhood.

I'm just waiting for Fifty Shades of Grey Part 7 or 19 or whatever it is up to now.  These things make writers crazy, for I hear the book (books?) is/are absolute shit. I can't stand to read them (so obviously, I have no right to have an opinion), but throwing up was never my idea of a good time. When I try to work a little sex into my novels, everyone is deeply embarrassed and tells me I must tone it down or take it out altogether. Meantime, middle-aged porn rules, with frumpy fat schoolteachers furtively masturbating in bed besides their oblivious snoring husbands while the heroine gets tied up and whipped by some guy who looks like Fabio in a suit.


 



It's a fuck book, folks, and it just shocks me that it has taken over the way it has. All my writer's life I've heard, "Well, why don't you just write. . . " (whatever is "hot" and selling like mad at the time). I want to do a whole post on that word "just", because it makes me want to SCREAM. "Just" means, "it's simple, don't you see it? Why aren't you doing it already? Why haven't you thought of it by now, any idiot can see it!"

Just find an agent. Just write a genre novel. Just copy someone else's salacious, gut-squirming style. It's like telling a terminally-ill person to "just" take milk thistle or meditate, it's very simple, or "just" have a more positive attitude, and you'll be all better in a flash.


 

The number of "justs" in someone's vocabulary is in inverse proportion to their actual knowledge about the subject. The less a person knows about writing and publishing, the more they bore and exasperate you with their endless blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  And I have had it, I really have.

I hate "just". It's a diminishing sort of word, condescending, implying you somehow can't see the most obvious solution to your problem and need to be set straight.  It's  almost the opposite of "just", which means, more or less, fair.  Just, in the sense of insulting gratuitous advice, isn't clearly defined in any of the dictionary meanings I've found. It's not an adverb, but a kind of command, and the closest simile I can find is "simply" (meaning you could do this easily, if you had half a brain). Simply write a novel, get on the bestseller list, and make a million dollars.



just Pronunciation: /dʒʌst/

adjective
  • based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair: a just and democratic society fighting for a just cause
  • (of treatment) deserved or appropriate in the circumstances: we all get our just deserts
  • (of an opinion or appraisal) well founded; justifiable: these simplistic approaches have been the subject of just criticism

adverb

  • 1exactly: that’s just what I need you’re a human being, just like everyone else
  • exactly or almost exactly at this or that moment: she’s just coming we were just finishing breakfast
  • 2very recently; in the immediate past: I’ve just seen the local paper
  • 3barely; by a little: inflation fell to just over 4 per cent I only just caught the train
  • 4simply; only; no more than: just a bad day in the office they were just interested in making money
  • really; absolutely (used for emphasis): they’re just great
  • used as a polite formula for giving permission or making a request: just help yourselves
  • [with modal] possibly (used to indicate a slight chance of something happening or being true): it might just help
  • 5expressing agreement: ‘Simon really messed things up.’ ‘Didn’t he just?’
 
 
 
(I notice that the last one looks a little like "sexpressing". Maybe my next novel should be called Sexpression. Or how about How I Tied Up and Tortured Publishers for Fun and Profit? Or even How I Learned to Love Being Tied Up and Tortured? It might just fly.)
 

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Do you call that thing a book?



The novel, the novel! Why do I set myself up like this? Why don't I just let it go?


I'm like a person who has had seventeen failed relationships, but keeps trying for more, keeps hoping for that one, elusive, "right" man who will change her life.

For more than a year now I've been trying to get someone in the publishing field interested in my novel about Harold Lloyd, The Glass Character. It occurred to me yesterday that I've been going about it all wrong. Why am I acting as if I've never been published before?







Here is a small sample of the reviews I got for my first two novels. This represents maybe ten per cent of them. Only one was strongly negative.

                            
Reviews of Better than Life (NeWest Press, 2003)
and Mallory (Turnstone Press, 2005)





"Gunning manages to illuminate that which is dark and secret with that which is rich and riotous in colour. She is an author able to open up the world of a fractured but seeking people and bring them into light, healing and hope." - Edmonton Journal


"As Anderson-Dargatz did with her town of Likely and Stephen Leacock did with Mariposa, Gunning has created a fictional place that's recognizable to anyone who ever lived in a small town. This delightful novel looks like a contender for the Leacock Medal." - Vancouver Sun





"Margaret Gunning writes with uncanny grace and unflinching clarity about what it is to be a young girl forgotten by the world. The ominous feeling that underscores much of of the novel is remeniscent of the best work of another Canadian author, Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose girl heroes seem to inhabit this same dark world." - Montreal Gazette
 

"Her expressive turns can spur shivers of pleasure. There is a contagious energy to Gunning's prose which often - and accurately - delineates Mallory's intense emotional improvisation, child-like perspicacity and surprisingly mature realizations." - Globe and Mail





"Better Than Life is fiction at its finest." - Edmonton Journal



                              
One of my editors phoned me after this outpouring and claimed it was "a miracle". She saw all this praise as some sort of supernatural event, not as the result of years of hard work, persistence, trudging along, heartbreak.

I sent out queries this time and did not even get responses, or else the response was no (a form letter, always) without even wanting to see the novel. The larger presses will not even consider submissions from the likes of me: you have to have an agent. The response from agents was even more miserable: nothing, or form letters, or even (the worst one yet) my own query letter back, in my stamped self-addressed envelope, with a rubber stamp on it that said LIST IS FULL.

In no case did anyone actually read my novel. It was dismissed out of hand.



I should have done it differently, but didn't even realize it until yesterday. I have two novels out already, for Christ's sake.  I'm not a novice. I'm not starting at the beginning. Why can't I jump over some of those early, sieve-straining steps?


So I've started to. And nothing definite has happened yet, but the energy seems to have changed.




I will never, NEVER learn how to do this, how to hawk my wares. I love to write - somehow it has survived the wars - but after 30 years of attempts, I still can't seem to figure out the elaborate, paradoxical, ever-changing games I must play to get my writing noticed.


If it weren't for you, Harold, and my love for you, I would have given this up a long time ago.





Monday, January 10, 2011

Jumping frogs and other phenomena of the literary swamp





I've been on a bit of a Mark Twain kick ever since I saw a superb PBS documentary about his life a few months ago. I got a copy of the DVD, along with two massive biographical tomes, the kind you can hold in each hand to attain rippling biceps in only three weeks.

I want to reread Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to see how much they've changed since my youth (ahem), but until then I tread deep water in these books, packed with too much information. Twain wasn't the nicest fellow, was an egotist, was moody, was often suicidal, and definitely pushed his own agenda. Good thing, too, or the following harrowing scene (which took place when Twain was still relatively young, but with a growing readership) would have erased Huck Finn from our collective memory:

"Sam, 'charmed and excited', had every reason to believe that a contract would be extended to him as soon as he walked through Carleton's door. So certain was he of this that he dashed off a private letter to his sponsor at the Alta, John McComb, in early February, boasting that he was about to 'give' Carleton a volume of sketches for publication. The paper printed a brief summary of this letter for Mark Twain's followers in mid-March - nearly a month after Sam had kept his appointment with Carleton, and been given the bum's rush.

"He never forgot it: his diffident arrival in the publisher's office at 499 Broadway, the brusque statement of the clerk that Mr. Carleton was in his private office: his admission to the great man's quarters after a long wait; Carleton's icily impersonal greeting: 'Well, what can I do for you?'

(Editor's note. This would happen to me on a good day. But wait! Here comes the best part.)

"Sam's abashed response - that he was keeping an appointment to offer a book for publication - triggered a temper tantrum from Carleton that lives in the annals of bad editorial judgement. . . Whatever the impetus, Carleton treated his speechless visitor to a vintage New York-style tongue-lashing At the end, he swept his arm around the room and delivered the coup de grace that will forever be associated with his name:

'Books - look at those shelves. Every one of them is loaded with books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don't. Good morning."

After this, the biographer Ron Powers cites the infamous "Whales, Mr. Melville?" (to which I add, "Scribble, scribble, eh, Miss Bronte?"). These can be lumped in with "These guitar groups are on their way out" (Beatles) and "Who's this Bob Dylan?" ( - oh, and - one of Twain's early magazine stories found an enthusiastic audience, but unfortunately the editor spelled his name Mark
Swain.)

There are whole books full of "famous rejections", which are supposed to make the aspiring writer jump up from his/her bed of suicidal depression, all fluffy and flumphy like freshly-plumped pillows. It doesn't work, however, because greatness has a way of coming through no matter what. Or does it? How many Huckleberry Finns languished in drawers somewhere, only to be thrown in the fire a la Thomas Carlyle when the weather got cold?

It's too depressing to contemplate.

Man walks into a publisher's office. Disreputable-looking, shabby clothes, big intimidating cookie-duster of a moustache and untameable head of (red) hair. Obviously a bad character. Has this manuscript he thinks he can sell me, haven't looked at it yet and haven't got time. Worked as a rough-and-ready reporter out West somewhere, has nothing to say to a sophisticated New York audience. Wrote one story, something about a jumping frog, that was published all over the country, but who wants to hear about a jumping frog? This fellow seems to have a million ideas spilling out of him, and we can't have that. He'll stain the Wilton carpet. Uncouth, he is. Smells like tobacco and gin. A man's man, with feverish ideas. But the stunned look, the look of a small child who has been slapped instead of kissed, reveals him to be just another no-talent who can't take his rejections like a man.

Friday, December 24, 2010

A Christmas Miracle



















Below is an actual email, from an actual editor in a publishing house. A couple posts back, I went on a rant about the habit of some publishers of getting all the loose-end rejections out by the end of the year, so that they usually arrive a couple of days before Christmas. This reminds me of kicking Tiny Tim in the shins, and I wrote to him and said so. I was expecting either no reply or a blast, and got this instead!

Kind of gives me hope.

December 23, 2010

Margaret Gunning
3589 Chestnut Street
Port Coquitlam, BC
V3B 5V3

Dear Ms. Gunning,

Please accept my sincere apologies for the inconsiderate delivery of our letter. I very much agree with you that declining manuscripts in advance of the holiday season is an insincere act to those whose craft is an inconceivably laborious and passionate one. While sending rejection letters is a solemn task, I know it is incomparably more severe to receive them. We strive to be as sensitive to authors as possible in our responses, which means replying promptly, albeit not always personally. In this instance I made an accidental, thoughtless error that although was not malicious in intent, was cruel in its execution. I am very sorry.

Regarding your manuscript, The Glass Character, I thought your narrator’s voice was very strong, and I personally enjoyed the subject of Harold Lloyd himself. Douglas & McIntyre’s fiction program has refocused, though, with a vision to acquire books that explore the boundaries of genre, style as well as content. Our editorial board found your novel topically intriguing; however, we did not feel the setting, atmosphere, and narrative arc were entirely developed or successful. Notwithstanding, we think that you will indeed place The Glass Character, and wish you the very best in doing so.

Thank you again for advocating in defense of yourself and other writers. I have truly taken your advice sincerely, and will strive to be ever more conscientious and diligent in the future.

I wish you a very happy new year.

Best regards,
Ebeneezer Editor

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Life's candy, and the sun's a ball of buddah

Eye on the target and wham,
One shot, one gun-shot, and BAM -
Hm. Well, it isn't Mr. Arnstein I'm after, but something infinitely more elusive and devious (and it plays a mean game of poker).
I want to get published again. I need to get published again. I have three books written, all finished and ready to go. Three. All are publishable, as far as I am concerned. But has anyone ever seen them?

That would be a big "no".
People have weird ideas about being published. "Must cost quite a lot, I'd imagine. Are you going to take out a loan?" "Is your book going to be on the bestseller list?" "Don't writers all help each other get published - I mean, kind of like one big artist's colony?" Yeah, like I'm going to tell all my sneaky colleagues how to get published so their nasty little novel can kick MY novel's ass!
It isn't at all what you think.
When my dream came true, after thirty years of pining and longing and bloody hard work, it came true the same way it does for maybe 85 or 90% of writers. There was one big popping flare of fireworks, then fast-fading embers raining down, then . . .
nothing.
It didn't matter how good the reviews were (stuff like "fiction at its finest "- no kidding). They meant nothing. I was supposed to run all over the country on my own dime and try to drum up interest. But I also learned that readings and posters and web sites and all that shit made no difference at all.
So what does make a difference? Something called "buzz". If a novel is "buzzy", it automatically has tons of readers right out of the starting gate.
Buzz is like sex. No one tells you what it's all about, or how to get it. You just sort of fumble around, and fail most of the time. And when the novel fails to sell, guess who gets the blame? Mr. Agent? Ms. Publisher? Don't make me laugh!
I can't stop writing, which I guess means something, good or bad. I have kept writing and kept writing through the most hideous, soul-destroying crises of my life. I now have two novels and a book of poems, all of which I feel deserve publication. I WANT SOMEONE TO READ THEM, GODDAMN IT!
In many people's minds, this is sheer ego. "Oh, isn't writing its own reward? Can't you just do it for self-expression?" (Or, worse, "leave it for your children").
No one expects a concert pianist (or a gymnast, for that matter) to play in an empty hall, but we writers are seen as crass and egotistical if we want someone to look at what we've slaved over for years. Stories must be TOLD, not chucked into a drawer. An untold story isn't even a story.
So, Mr. Arnstein, you big galoot, you mustachio'd rat fink, I'm pursuing you once again. Like Barbra Streisand in that ridiculous sailor suit , it's one roll for the whole shebang.
Hey, all you agents, pundits, arbiters of literary taste - get ready for me, love, 'cause I'm a comer - so even if this fantasy-trip is a bummer -
NOBODY
No, NOBODY
Is gonna
rain
on
myyyyy
paaaaaa
(rrrrrrrr)
rrrAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYD-UH!