Across the Great Divide

There are few things more horrific in a writer's life than discovering that a manuscript is gone.

I mean, just GONE. Not there. Not where it used to be. Or, if there, filed under some name so obscure, it will never come to mind.

After a lifetime of writing first drafts by hand, and slowly putting them into the computer chapter-by-chapter (printing them out all the way), I decided - or not, it just happened - to skip that step and write directly on the computer.

It worked so well, I could hardly believe it. It took so much of the drudgery out of the process. I could type like the wind. Mistakes didn't matter. I could move blocks of text around. It was great! (Why didn't I think of this before? What a stick-in-the-mud I had been.)

But I had no idea I'd undertaken a paradigm shift (please forgive the awful term, but I can't think of another one: whackydoodle, maybe?) of monstrous proportions. When writing in longhand, the novel would develop in 3D. I could scribble in the margins, cross out paragraphs and then re-insert them elsewhere, shuffle pages around with different potential bits of story on them. Throw things out that I knew were superfluous. Eventually, organically, the manuscript would grow and take shape, with a parallel refining process happening on the computer.

It worked for about six novels. Why did I stop? Because when I sat down and began writing The Glass Character, I never expected to start a new novel. I was just going to make some notes on Harold Lloyd (honest!). But something happened: some sort of dam broke. It started to pour rather than trickle, so I figured this swift new method was the right way to do it.

I guess I must have tried to duplicate the old system electronically, or something, but it was a complete disaster. I saved each bit of material, potential or actual or even horrible, in a separate file. Then I decided to clump the files together, but I didn't erase all the individual ones because I wasn't sure where they were.

I ended up with two "sets", but not duplicates of each other, though close in some places, plus maybe thirty more individual files scattered around under names I could not remember. A jigsaw puzzle, potentially whole, but rattling around in a box. At the time I wrote it, I knew I'd remember how to retrieve all this: easy stuff! It always worked for me before. (Ironically, at this point The Glass Character existed unequivocally in only one form: the hard copy.)

I'm no Luddite, but it seems to me that making the leap from pencil to keyboard is more radical than people realize. I did a reading at the Vancouver Public Library a few years ago, and was astounded when all the other writers said (or admitted, with considerable embarrassment) that they wrote their initial drafts in longhand. Truly, I had believed I was the only one left.

Yesterday was not a good day, but nevertheless I sucked it up, reassembled the puzzle and put together seven queries. I hate odd numbers, but this was as far as I could go without collapsing. Knowing that the really big presses (Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins) won't look at unagented work, and falling completely flat in my search for an agent (remember the rubber stamp?), I knew I'd have to start with the mid-list presses where I can represent myself. This wasn't a bad thing: I like those presses, and I like what they can do for authors.

Then imagine my dismay (dismay, dismay) when I found out that one of the most potentially desirable presses had had to downsize so radically that they moved out of their old quarters and in with another publisher: the literary equivalent of moving back in with your parents.

It wasn't a good sign. I had to assume the other six were struggling equally. Many had switched their main mandate to non-fiction (with a side of kids' books, which are usually written as ongoing series) because there is a perception that literary fiction just can't make it in a competitive market.

I think publishers need a paradigm shift of their own. I believe that literary fiction WILL sell via Kindle and other electronic media. But these guys and gals aren't yet thinking in those terms. They're thinking of paper and book-binding and expensive author tours. What about ONE YouTube video that goes "viral"? It'd be the equivalent of a hundred author tours, not to mention millions of trees in an already-denuded forest.

I'm really up against it here, and I've never known it more than I do now. I feel so strongly about this novel (which I haven't written much about, with my deep dread of jinxing it) that at the moment I have to continue to plod on in the old system. Sending paper and envelopes and stamps (with my DNA on them: some small comfort) is horse-and-buggy stuff.

But there's another side to this. Emailing manuscripts to publishers isn't a magic solution, as I've found that they're very easy to ignore or even delete. That's because editors don't yet know how to work with them.

They don't pile up on your desk in a slippery mountain, begging for your attention. They're more abstract than material. Subconsciously or otherwise, editors are used to riffling papers and marking things up with a red pen. A link in your inbox just can't compete.

How do I know this? Oy vey, how I know this! That's the whole point of this post. You don't just chuck out decades of habit and experience, and methods that have worked efficiently for years and years, just because the rest of the world has told you to throw the whole thing out and start over.

We're between systems here, and writers are suffering because of it. If and when I write another novel (and a plot is squeezing itself into my brain right now), I may well use my computer, but I will be extremely careful about saving things. I can't just stick every fragment into a separate file, being certain I'll remember where I put it months later.

I'll try to be aware, as I write, that I am attempting to make a leap across a great chasm. It isn't just a different method of production, but a radically different system, demanding a whole new way of thinking.

Hey, mid-list publishers! Are you listening? I think I might be on to something here. And while I'm at it. . . listen, have I got a novel for you!

Once more, into the void

You've got to ask yourself why you do this.

Why, when it's already happened two or three times.

It goes like this. After having published two well-received novels (though admittedly, no threat to Stephen King or J. K. Rowling), you write another one. One that you're proud of, one that you are sure will find a home with relative ease.

Surprise: it's punch, punch, punch in the face. Sorry, but that's what it is: all those rejections, as if your work never existed and never drew all those (now sadistic-sounding, hope-dangling) reviews.

Maybe it's all over. N'est-ce pas?

More than once - perhaps three times, since I began to send out fiction - I've received a form rejection at a certain time of year.

The week before Christmas.

This is a season of fizzy hope, anticipation of a wonderful holiday followed by a fresh start in the new year. So why do editors routinely send these things out NOW?

Well. . . like everybody else, they want a clean desk to come back to in 2011. A lot of loose ends in the form of rejected novels are lying around, and one has to be efficient, doesn't one?

Isn't it better to get the slight/damage over with now, rather than prolonging the illusion/delusion of acceptance for a couple more weeks?

Aren't you a real writer? Don't you know what that entails? Be a man! Suck it up, girl friend! It's just a rejection. At least the one I got today was a form letter, not my own letter sent back to me with a rubber stamp on the corner (which actually happened to me, and which I wrote about a couple of months ago).

One must never, never, never, never, NEVER answer a rejection. Don't express an opinion, or it will get around like wildfire that you are "difficult" and no one will want to work with you. Or at very least, they'll think you're oversensitive and probably shouldn't be working in the field at all.

So I answered the rejection. I just - told the guy. Told him, not that he shouldn't have rejected my work (which he shouldn't), but that his timing is lousy and steps all over the feelings of writers everywhere.

He will likely be angry, piqued, may even send me a blast I'll receive on New Years Eve or some-such. They always get angry if you say what you feel, or hope.

Especially, in the week before Christmas.

Weird or. . . ?

No, this post isn't about William Shatner (much), or the Loch Ness Monster or All-Bran Cereal or any of the other fine products he's pushed over nearly 80 years. I can just see him lumbering around, looking not so much like a fat octanogerianerean (or however the bleep that's spelled - 80 years old, anyway) as a fat, lumbering seventyarian. In other words, he's pretty well-preserved.

What I really want to write about are the twists and turns, the contradictions that drive writers mad. I just finished reading an article in the Huffington Post (give it a try if you haven't seen it - I'm still trying to figure out their mandate), by some writer-or-other - hell, my memory is lousy these days, but I think her name was Muffy - who in essence is saying that writers should suck it up, quit their bellyaching and get down to the nitty-gritty of sending out their manuscripts (one by one, by post, with a stamped, self-addressed envelope: "You do want your manuscript returned, don't you?" reads the withering directions on one publisher's web site), rather than bitching away on Twitter and Tweeter and Woofer and all those other sociable networks about how publishers are rotten and unfair and don't understand genius when they see it.

At the same time, feeling in much the same state myself (after sending out one too many stamped self-addressed envelopes and having them seemingly disappear), I sent a distress-call to one of my favorite writers. One of the best in the country, as far as I am concerned, with an impeccable track record of beautifully-wrought, gripping novels. I've reviewed several of them, and every time I was assigned one I thought, "ahh, I'm in for a good ride." And I was never disappointed.

This selfsame writer answered my moaning email with, in essence, this statement: I'm going through exactly the same thing. Publishers have turned me down repeatedly, and agents just aren't interested. A good, even a great track record means essentially nothing. The industry has tightened up so much, there's so much anxiety about survival that they want a "sure thing", something that will rake in as much money as possible.

I don't want to dump on publishers. They're doing business, for heaven's sake, or trying to, in a culture that is reading less and less. In no other field would there be such nasty criticism of the need to make a profit in order to survive. It's almost as bad as the head-shaking writers provoke by insisting that they want to be published. Shouldn't art be its own reward? What kind of egotist actually wants to see his work in print, or needs people to read it?

There's another factor at work here. I can only imagine how many unsolicited manuscripts every publisher (micro to macro) is constantly deluged with. Most probably aren't readable, let alone publishable. Somehow they have to pick through all this and find books, real books that might work on the shelves. Books someone might want to buy.

But at the same time, I get a feeling of a deep disconnect between the lightning communication of 2010 and the horse-and-buggy approach of the SASE and the printed-out, mailed manuscript (each setting the writer back about $12). Something ain't adding up. And success is getting more dicey with each passing year.

The whole field is. . . weird. . . or what.

I think William Shatner should investigate this, give it one of his histrionic voiceovers, one of his "hey-I'm-just-in-this-for-the-money" things. He should have some scientist slide over a giant ice field with his breath puffing out in clouds. He should show rare fossils (Shatner? - or editors who've been around too long?). Lights should flash in the sky, probably some kid with a flashlight, but never mind, that's pretty weird in itself, isn't it?

Writers have to be: tough but sensitive; not care what anyone thinks (art!!), but constantly and feverishly working to get attention; solitary (sit alone at the keykboard for hours) but sociable (get out there and mingle and work the room!). They have to be so many opposite things that it's no wonder so many of them go crazy.

Getting published is the Holy Grail, and sooooo many writers seek it, the "cuppa Christ" Indiana Jones craved. They just assume that, once they get their hands on it, everything will go smoothly from then on. (Haven't I written about all this before? Sorry. This one is really about William Shatner.) The truth is much more complicated. I don't feel so alone now, knowing that one of the foremost writers in this country is having a lot of trouble getting his books in print. But I also feel somewhat gobsmacked.

I shall have to regroup.

Like some nut, I won't quit, because this is what I do. But I have to say, this field I'm in is the strangest I've ever heard of, full of impossible twists and turns. Publishers want something original, of course. Not the usual boring stuff. At the same time, they want a sure thing, "more of the same", so that their ready-made audience will keep buying books. Harry Potter sells better than Campbell's Soup.

I don't have Twitter or Tweeter or whatever that stuff is, marking me either as a dinosaur or as someone with a whole brain who doesn't communicate in idiotic, ungrammatical fragments. (Is that why people can't get published? Do they think a novel is just a series of glued-together tweets?) So I'm hopelessly behind, and no one will ever know who I am. It took me centuries to decide to write a blog, and I don't think I have a huge fan base. I keep doing it anyway, mostly because it's pretty enjoyable and a great way to dodge my real work (which is, right now, letting publishers know that I have the best novel in 30 years tucked under my arm and will let them see it if they ask real nice.)

Oops, I said this was about William Shatner. William Shatner has written novels. Well, sort of. Someone writes them for him, just as someone eats All-Bran for him. He just provides story ideas, probably retreads of the original Trek series (which I'm watching again, and enjoying hugely - it wasn't as tacky as people say it was, and broke a lot of new ground).

I kind of like the fact that this actor was working steadily in 1966 (and '67, and '77, and '87, and. . . ), and in essence has never stopped. Self-parody doesn't bother him, and somehow or other he has mastered the art of marketing the Shatner brand. And he will probably go on until he drops.

Smart. . . or what?

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POSTSCRIPT. These things always come on a bad day, somehow. I just got a statement from my first publisher stating the amount of royalties earned and the number of copies sold in the past year. The royalties totalled almost -$100.00 (yes, MINUS a hundred), and the number of copies sold worldwide was two.

Reviewers called the novel "a contender for the Leacock medal", its style/charm/allthatstuff comparable to Ann Marie MacDonald (an Oprah pick) and Gail Anderson-Dargatz. "Fiction at its finest". Now, do I really owe them a hundred bucks???