Posts
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Thursday, May 6, 2021
A Twelve-Step Program for Writers • Part 6
In 1997, in a few minutes of whimsy, I knocked off twelve lines of highly concentrated and somewhat snarky advice for writers seeking to develop or repair their writing careers. To my surprise these words of wisdom remain available on the SFWA web site. To my even greater surprise Guy Stewart has taken the time and trouble to explicate them in depth. Herewith, Guy’s Commentaries.
—Bruce Bethke
The sixth step:
We are entirely ready to let someone else take the blame for the way our last book tanked.
As I only HAVE one book, I can’t exactly address this. My ONLY book is still being sold even though (as I talked about earlier), the contract I signed was essentially a work-for-hire and they continue to print copies (it’s ranked #1,775,076 today!) and sell it. So I can’t actually say it tanked…it’s just that I signed a stupid deal and have absolutely no one to blame but myself. I stopped promoting the book ages ago because I have little desire to lend my name to a poor deal I made when I was young.
So then, I’ll move on to the present. I have a science fiction manuscript that made it out of the slush pile at BAEN BOOKS. My agent is confident that VICTORY OF FISTS will sell somewhere. (It never did…) I had a short, kids’ science fiction story in the January issue of CRICKET MAGAZINE, and have had several more as well as appearing a half-dozen times in ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact. So what’s up now?
I’m looking at my platform whilst reading the book CREATING YOUR WRITER’S PLATFORM (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/create-your-writer-platform-chuck-sambuchino/1111306282?ean=9781599635750) in which Chuck Sambuchino forces me to ask the question: “What is my visibility as an author?”
That’s what a platform is.
It’s relation to the sixth step of the Twelve Step Program should be obvious, but if it’s not, it goes something like this: If you’re invisible as an author, then your book will tank.
Apparently, the halcyon days of book promotion tours on the publisher’s penny are gone forever. In fact, as far as doing tours at all, there are fewer and fewer places that a flesh and blood writer can go to. If there’s nowhere for a writer to go, then how do we let people know that we’ve written a book?
One way, I suppose would be to talk to all the people you see, but as a writer sees few people in a day, that’s sort of a moot point. How about the people you email, text, FB or otherwise interact with in cyberspace? How many of you have been to a webinar? (Scary fact: the dictionary program of Word RECOGNIZES THE WORD WEBINAR AS A REAL WORD AND IT IS ALREADY A PART OF THE STANDARD DICTIONARY!) How many of you even knew what a webinar was in 1990? (According to the online dictionary, the word is a portmanteau of “webcast seminar” and was coined in the early 90s.)) How many of you have led a webinar? (I can now say that I have – several times.)
With the birth of the cyber platform comes the necessity of having some sort of online presence. That of course, has created an industry dedicated to creating a class of cyber etiquette for authors. How many times can I mention my writing before my friends and online contact begin to block me—or worse yet, start to mark my FaceBook posts and emails as SPAM or junk?
So, in this cyber world, is Bruce’s Sixth Step even a valid statement anymore, because the only answer possible is that I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN PROMOTE ME!
Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp.
NEXT TUESDAY: Step 7, We humbly hope our new publisher will not find out what we said about our last publisher.
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
A Twelve-Step Program for Writers • Part 5
In 1997, in a few minutes of whimsy, I knocked off twelve lines of highly concentrated and somewhat snarky advice for writers seeking to develop or repair their writing careers. To my surprise these words of wisdom remain available on the SFWA web site. To my even greater surprise Guy Stewart has taken the time and trouble to explicate them in depth. Herewith, Guy’s Commentaries.
—Bruce Bethke
The fifth step:
We have proclaimed to God, to ourselves, and to anyone else who would listen the exact nature of the many failings of our former editors and publishers.
Before I go on here, I should say that I have a deep and abiding respect for Bruce as a writer, an editor, a teacher, and especially as a friend.
I hesitate to presume anything so rash as that I “know him”. Our lives have intersected a number of times, in several ways, and at more than a few venues. We’ve lunched together, worked together, and argued. But I cannot presume to know him because much of our relationship is mostly through the Internet these days.
On the other hand, I do know that he has a razor sharp sense of humor, a critical and perceptive eye, and I take anything he says seriously.
However, I do NOT take everything he says at face value!
When WORKING together, I interpret his comments to mean exactly what he says. In personal commentary, I ALWAYS take his comments to be carefully and clearly expressed. When we discuss the state of the world however, I take what he says as I would take a grain of sand (some would say “salt”, but I’ve learned his crystals aren’t that small, so I’ll say sand here and imply that it is a granite crystal): a possible irritant designed to elicit honest discussion or to simply make me think.
A bit of background before I go on: I am the oldest child in my family, first born male child and a son of privilege. I married into a family in which I was the last adult before the children were counted and figured sometimes I BELONGED at the children’s table at Thanksgiving.
As the usual oldest, I was always cast as the part of a parent, or the shoemaker or the princess’s father in high school. I had one friend who was older than me and mobs of friends who were younger. I was consistently cast in the role of “mentor” and have been my entire life. I had no older brother; I had no one to kick my metaphorical ass when I made stupid choices or decisions.
From the beginning, Bruce became my mentor. He’s not a lot older than me (I got to be a grandfather first!); but as far as writing and life experience, he is indeed my mentor. His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer before mine was and as a result, he was able to pull me up beside him and be a shoulder on which I could lean. He was an “award-winning author” first; published first; created a genre-defining word first; and was an editor first.
All of this I say to point out that I don’t take EVERYTHING he says as serious and sometimes have to search a bit to find the meaning.
The meaning here, if I may be so bold as to speak it, is that we should refuse to burn our bridges no matter how awful our experience. By this I do NOT mean that we be doormats to whims of agents and editors, I mean that gossip, slander (even if it’s true), and bad-mouthing someone is NEVER appropriate; not because “today’s junior prick is tomorrow’s senior partner” (in case you were wondering, it’s a line from WORKING GIRL) but because nothing ever happens in a vacuum and everything is fodder for character building.
Bruce is a smart man; he has learned from experience. He takes what he has learned and passes it on. Sometimes he passes it on without embellishment and sometimes he makes me dig for meaning. This is a “dig for meaning” kind of wisdom.
And if it wasn’t meant that way? Meh. That’s how I’m going to take it!
Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp.
NEXT THURSDAY: Step 6, We are entirely ready to let someone else take the blame for the way our last book tanked.
Sunday, May 2, 2021
Clash of the Schlockmeisters 3: Revenge of the Stiffs!
Once upon a time there was an absolutely brilliant science fiction and horror writer named Richard Matheson. You know his work, even if you don’t immediately recognize his name: a quick glance at his list of film credits on IMDB should elicit at least a few gasps of surprise, as a tremendous number of his novels and short stories were adapted for movies or television scripts and he did a lot of work adapting other writers’ stories to screenplays as well.
When looking at his bio on IMDB, bear in mind also that this is just a list of his work in visual media. In the 1950s he was a regular contributor to Galaxy, F&SF, and the rest of the pulp magazines, producing quite a few stories that continue to show up in “Hall of Fame”-type short story anthologies, and he wrote a bunch of novels that continue to live on in screenplay adaptations. Rather than recapitulate his entire career here, though, I’ll just point you to his Wikipedia page if you want to learn more, and finish with my assertion that if you’re an aspiring science fiction or horror writer and you don’t know Richard Matheson’s work, you should, if only to keep yourself from trying to rewrite stories he was writing and selling to magazines and as TV series scripts 60 to 70 years ago.
Which brings us to today’s topic. In 1954 Matheson wrote a clever little vampire/zombie horror novel entitled I Am Legend. This novel has been adapted to film three times: first as the 1964 Vincent Price film, The Last Man on Earth, again in 1971 as the Charlton Heston film, The Omega Man, and at last under its original title as the 2007 Will Smith film, I Am Legend.
The Vincent Price version is both the most faithful to the original novel and surprisingly good, for being a Vincent Price film. Apparently Matheson liked working with Vincent Price, as he wrote the screenplays for Roger Corman’s 1960s series of Edgar Allan Poe movies, all of which starred Price.
After The Last Man on Earth, though, true to Hollywood, the subsequent remakes continued to drift further and further from the original source material, until the use of the original title for the 2007 Will Smith version begins to seem like an ironic joke. So to kick off today’s discussion:
1. Which of these three films is the version most worth watching now?
2. Which is the version best avoided?
3. Did you know that The Last Man on Earth is in the public domain now, and that you can download or stream a fully legit copy from The Internet Archive?
4. For that matter, did you know that The Internet Archive exists, and that you can find an amazing amount of public domain material there? If not, why not?
5. Finally, given that Will Smith’s character didn’t just die but blew himself to little bits at the end of I Am Legend, what is your reaction to the news (I am not making this up) that Will Smith has signed on to star in the “Untitled I Am Legend Reboot,” which is currently in development?
The challenge has been presented. Have at them, hammer and tongs. And always remember:
Have fun!
See you tomorrow,
~brb
Thursday, April 29, 2021
A Twelve-Step Program for Writers • Part 4
In 1997, in a few minutes of whimsy, I knocked off twelve lines of highly concentrated and somewhat snarky advice for writers seeking to develop or repair their writing careers. To my surprise these words of wisdom remain available on the SFWA web site. To my even greater surprise Guy Stewart has taken the time and trouble to explicate them in depth. Herewith, Guy’s Commentaries.
—Bruce Bethke
The fourth step:
We have made a searching and fearless inventory of every old unsold scrap and fragment of manuscript in the bottoms of our filing cabinets, in hopes of finding something we can sell to somebody, somewhere.
Oooo…
Sitting beside me is a MS I will read then send to my agent—even after she told me she’d be happy to handle my NON-science fiction stuff, but just didn’t know what to do with my science fiction.
A bit of history, though. The reason it was never submitted...well, it WAS submitted. I worked with the editor of CRICKET BOOKS on it for nearly a year. She would send pages of suggestions, I’d rewrite and send the changes back. She’d make fewer changes, etc. All very cool and above-board.
Then something happened that I have never understood. I’ve pondered it for 11 years and I still don’t understand what happened.
Someone else published my book.
It’s true. Once day I was writing, happy as a clam, with a very possible publication contract approaching. A week later, the editor said I’d done good work, but we were done.
My book was an historical/fictionalized recounting of the Great Hinckley Fire of 1895. The event was not only full of excitement, but terrifyingly horrible. The same editor I was working with purchased and published a shortened version of the story in CRICKET MAGAZINE (where not only was it the lead story of the July 2001 issue, she also bought a “fact” sidebar! In my mind, I was practically THERE!)
Then the “other” book came out and not only did it recount the adventures of Maggie—but my character was named MEG…
That was eleven years ago. The “other” book is out of print, the author hasn’t written anything new in years and my novel, while similar, just needs a bit of brushing and polishing...as a time travel novel for YA.
I also sent off a short story that might or might not be dead. See, I “trunk” stories all the time. Most of the time it’s because they’re hideously bad. But sometimes I “trunk” them (I should probably change that. “Trunk” is an antiquated reference to taking a paper manuscript, tying it with twine and tossing it in an old-fashioned, round-topped sort of giant suitcase sort of like a pirate’s treasure chest)…sometimes I archive them because even though I LIKE them a lot, no one else seems to.
As has been my experience in the past, I just have to find the right someone. For example, “Mystery on Space Station Courage” was written specifically for HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN. They weren’t interested. When I sighed and sent it to the second market, CRICKET bought it and the relationship there was a long-standing one and the editor has moved on.
I had written “Peanut Butter and Jellyfish” specifically for ANALOG and while the editor thought it was nice, he didn’t buy it. I sent it around, then archived it. When I stumbled across a newer market whose audience was exactly the one I was aiming at, I sold it for a little bit of cash to CAST OF WONDERS in England. They made a podcast out of it that was fantastic!
While Bruce meant #4 tongue in cheek, I think I know him well enough to see that there’s a grain of real advice in there that has gotten me sales in the past—and just might get me sales in the future, as long as I stir in a modicum of honesty when evaluating those old stories…
Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp.
NEXT TUESDAY: Step 5, We have proclaimed to God, to ourselves, and to anyone else who would listen the exact nature of the many failings of our former editors and publishers.
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
A Twelve-Step Program for Writers • Part 3
In 1997, in a few minutes of whimsy, I knocked off twelve lines of highly concentrated and somewhat snarky advice for writers seeking to develop or repair their writing careers. To my surprise these words of wisdom remain available on the SFWA web site. To my even greater surprise Guy Stewart has taken the time and trouble to explicate them in depth. Herewith, Guy’s Commentaries.
—Bruce Bethke
The third step:
We have made a decision to turn our lives and our professional careers over completely to our New Agent. God help us.
As I’ve only had a FIRST agent, this is a tough one to comment on, so I’ll have to rely on the blogosphere:
“I gratefully signed with an agency, and we sold my first and second novels…in a two-book deal. But within twelve months, the blush of first love rubbed off the bloom, and I discovered that my first agent was not my match.” (http://www.themillions.com/2012/11/finding-true-love-finding-a-literary-agent.html)
“I was about to give up hope and on the verge of falling into a deep depression, when a big fat letter showed up from…a Literary Agency… “Dear Sir, I have read your most extraordinary book and would love to represent you”…someone thought my novel was ‘Extraordinary,’ so I read [in] the contract proposal…that he wanted $1800 to do some polishing of the novel…” (http://williammanchee.net/myfirstliteraryagent.html)
“…the first agent who took me on was a paragon of imperfection…we communicated only by phone, fax, or letter…She said my first novel was brilliant…I trusted her…she or her assistant rarely returned a call or replied to a fax…I never received a single copy of a rejection letter...The relationship was a black hole…I sent her a registered letter ending the relationship.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lev-raphael/first-kill-all-the-litera_b_1935093.html)
From what I can tell so far, God IS the only one who can help here…I don’t mean that in a bad way, but as a Christian, I have a decent idea about what I can control and what I have to leave in His hands. I can’t control anyone but myself (and if you put me in a room with a fresh Boston Cream Pie, I cannot even guarantee that…)
So according to Bruce Bethke, that is exactly what I’m going to be doing!
Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp.
NEXT THURSDAY: Step 4, We have made a searching and fearless inventory of every old unsold scrap and fragment of manuscript in the bottoms of our filing cabinets, in hopes of finding something we can sell to somebody, somewhere.
Monday, April 26, 2021
The State of the Loon • 26 April 2021
The Stupefying Stories 24 release date has been pushed back to at least May 15th, as I try to figure out what’s gone wrong with our marketing. Book sales—not just of Stupefying Stories but of all our titles—fell off a cliff about a week ago. Books that were selling suddenly stopped selling. KENP numbers dropped to next to nothing. It was already clear that our social media-based marketing strategy wasn’t working, but this is … something else, and we need to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it before we release more books. After all, there’s not much point in publishing a book if no one knows it exists.
Expect to see more inline banner ads on the Stupefying Stories web site. Like this. Click it. Please.
Rest assured that we’ll only be huckstering Rampant Loon Press titles here, unless, of course, someone wants to pay us to run their book ad on our site, or to do some sort of ad exchange or quid pro quo. We haven’t figured out any of the details yet, but if you’re interested in this or have any brilliant ideas you’d like to suggest, contact me.
Finally, coming Saturday, May 1st, something very new: The Peter Wood Flash Fiction Challenge. Watch for it!
—Bruce Bethke
Thursday, April 22, 2021
A Twelve-Step Program for Writers • Part 2
In 1997, in a few minutes of whimsy, I knocked off twelve lines of highly concentrated and somewhat snarky advice for writers seeking to develop or repair their writing careers. To my surprise these words of wisdom remain available on the SFWA web site. To my even greater surprise Guy Stewart has taken the time and trouble to explicate them in depth. Herewith, Guy’s Commentaries.
—Bruce Bethke
The second step:
We believe that an Agent far greater than Our Last Agent can restore us to publications, sales, and critical acclaim.
While I have seen this happen, I’m not sure that Bruce personally experienced this. For the entire time I’ve known him, he has been represented by Ashley Grayson Agency.
I haven’t had an agent long enough to wonder what “an Agent far greater” would be like. So far working with my agent has been a great experience. She understands me and after a few tries, I began to see what she was trying to tease out of my writing.
Hearsay is a different story altogether and while I’d never name any names, I have heard lots of stories. Also, if you’d like to read about bad agent experiences, you can read about them on plenty of author’s and writer’s group web sites.
What I’ve heard is that the agent doesn’t make or break you. For example, I’ve never had an agent before, yet I have written and gotten work published in some of the best markets: ANALOG, CRICKET, CICADA as well as others (including an article in THE WRITER). All of that without an agent.
What I’ve heard is that you and your agent are a team with different areas of expertise. Your agent may no longer want to be a full-time writer, editor, or publisher but they know the industry well enough and have enough connections within the industry—as well as knowing what editors and publishing houses want—to have a good idea of where to direct your work.
Agents have also built a level of trust with editors at publishing houses and when they send a piece to an editor, the editor knows that the manuscript has been edited to within an inch of its life! They know that all that needs to happen now is for them to sit down and find out if this piece will fit the company’s goals and programs.
The gist of it is, is that the writer produces the best and most original piece of literature that they can. They tell their story as clearly as possible. They pay attention to all the things first time writers have drilled into their heads (whether by teachers, mentors or by reading about writing: dialogue. pace. plot. characterization. milieu. originality.).
Working together, the writer and agent form a team. For many, it’s a lifetime thing: besides Bruce, writer Anne McCaffery and her agent Virginia Kidd worked together for decades. But like everything else, blaming your non-success on anyone but yourself is an exercise in futility as the only person you can change in this world is yourself. I suppose that would be the best anecdote to go with this second step of Bruce Bethke’s Twelve Step Writer’s Program…
Guy Stewart is a husband supporting his wife who is a multi-year breast cancer survivor; a father, father-in-law, grandfather, foster father, friend, writer, and recently retired teacher and school counselor who maintains a writing blog by the name of POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/) where he showcases his opinion and offers his writing up for comment. He has 72 stories, articles, reviews, and one musical script to his credit, and the list still includes one book! He also maintains GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST CANCER & ALZHEIMER'S, where he shares his thoughts and translates research papers into everyday language. In his spare time, he herds cats and a rescued dog, helps keep a house, and loves to bike, walk, and camp.
NEXT TUESDAY: Step 3, We have made a decision to turn our lives and our professional careers over completely to our New Agent, God help us.
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
