In the process of learning how to run a small-press publishing company and produce a decently professional-looking product, it seems I’ve lost sight of a key detail. The original mission of Rampant Loon Press in general and Stupefying Stories in particular was to use the attention people wanted to pay to me, because of some stuff I wrote back in the 1980s and 1990s, to get them to pay attention to new writers who are up and coming now.
To some extent we’ve succeeded. I do feel a certain pride whenever I see the name of someone who we were the first to publish, or one of the first to publish, now appearing on the cover of a major magazine, or on the shortlist for a major award, and or in a press release announcing their new novel.
Along the way, though, I’ve neglected to continue to cultivate the Bruce Bethke® brand, and that plot has gotten a bit weedy and overgrown lately. The point was driven home to me during one of my recent web-ins to a panel at a con. Once the other people on the call realized who I was and what I’d done, the conversation pivoted—and for a few minutes it was fun, but then all the questions started to take on the form of beginning with, “Back in your day…”
The snark is strong in me. It took a great deal of willpower for me not to begin to answer questions like that with, “Well, kid, back in my day, we didn’t have those fancy-shmancy computers! We had typewriters! And slide rules! And we were happy to have them! We put men on the Moon with slide rules!”
Actually, one of my best friends from high school (and my roommate for a year in college) now has some kind of post-PhD degree and works for NASA, doing AI. His software is still crawling around inside rovers on the surface of Mars. Back in “my” day we used to sit up till the wee hours, shooting the bull about the future and imagineering what might come from having real functional artificial intelligence, or at least the ability to get time on the mainframe to debug code without having to stay up until 2 AM to do it.
But why ruin a good story! Get off my lawn, ya whippersnappers!
There is a distinctly generational aspect to a writer’s career. At first we write to impress our parents and teachers, and we learn to write what pleases and impresses them. Later, when we get a little older and try to move out into the bigger world, we transfer this appeal-to-adult-authority sort of writing to editors and publishers, as we’re still writing to try to please and impress people older than ourselves, because they control the futures of our careers.
Later still, assuming the writing has been working, we shift over to writing to please and impress our contemporaries. This is usually where most writers’ careers peak, as we tell stories to amuse and impress our friends. Make no mistake, there is a great deal of success to be found in doing this.
But…
But, writers age. Our contemporaries fade away. The audience turns over, and shifts to becoming ever younger. Eventually you find yourself writing to please and impress people much younger than yourself, and it’s a challenge. They don’t speak quite the same language you do. They don’t have the same cognitive mappings. Things that you think are brilliant, clever, and profoundly meaningful are Dad Jokes to them. If you are really lucky, you can make the transition to being one of the adult authority figures whose approval they seek.
For most writers, though, this is where the career peters out, and they wander off, muttering about diminishing sales, lack of publisher support, what’s the hell is wrong with the market these days, and how all the new stuff hitting the bestseller lists lately is total crap.
Creative careers—all creative careers, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, or whatever—have three distinct stages. First you imitate. Then you innovate. Then, if you’re lucky enough to stick around that long, you can instruct. But what comes after being an instructor?
“I know!” my wife says brightly. “You become an influencer!”
Oy vey. Must I?
—Bruce Bethke
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While you’re pondering the answer to that horrible question, influence this!
Available now in paperback, on Kindle, and free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers!
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1 comments:
"But what comes after being an instructor?
“'I know!” my wife says brightly. “You become an influencer!”
"Oy vey. Must I?"
Sorry, it's already happened without your permission. As you noted at the beginning, "...whenever I see the name of someone who we were the first to publish, or one of the first to publish, now appearing on the cover of a major magazine, or on the shortlist for a major award, and or in a press release announcing their new novel."
An influencer isn't a career choice, it's what happens when you follow your instincts and promote OTHERS. Yes, you invented "the C word", it's a sentence in the Wikipedia entry on "The C Word"... Cool. But...when you first published "them", you've done the thing teachers do: invested in a future you may never SEE. You don't know which of the "someones" you published first is going to "rocket to the top"!
More importantly, you'll NEVER know how many people say, "You know, without Bruce Bethke's influence I never would have..."
And you know what, that's OK. It just IS.
Guy
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