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Sep. 14th, 2005 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaMy readers sometimes wonder if there are any recent books I like enough to talk about in a positive way.
Yes!
I just discovered a new author. Janet Fitch wrote White Oleander, which I've had on the TBR queue for some time, but she also wrote a YA novel, Kicks. One of my beta readers who loves lots of action (and whose even-more-elderly mother is also a writer) passed Kicks along to me when her mother recommended it. She thought I might like it, because it's all "thinky" and stars smart people getting into some "real life." Sort of a "Freaks and Geeks" similarity, and she knew how much I liked the geeks and how unlikely/dumb I have always thought it would be for a girl like the star of F&G to want to be cool (how boring! How could you bear the tedium? What would you talk about and how could you think when in such a mess?) ANYway . . .
I loved the novel. I couldn't stop reading it. I just eat up stuff with lotsa thinkin', and this has it, although I feel that there's plenty of conflict and action. Some of the stuff was in there to keep teens reading, I know (the reminders of how "mean" the girl's mother was to be so strict and need so much help, and so forth), but part of it was to show the character's epiphany and change. The book was about a smart girl who thinks running with the wild ones would be so wonderful, and who finally overcomes her fears and follows her "black sheep" friend (who is a lifelong friend, one who has always needed to be the center of attention and do bad things, but who was also not so wild until NOW) into real trouble. Then she figures out pretty fast that this wasn't the road for her. She gets out, but the friend doesn't want to. This book gave me some insight as to why some people might want to be the way the "black sheep" friend is. I never could figure it out at all before. So . . . the book succeeded.
The greatest thing, though, was her incisive insights (is that redundant? Kind of) expressed as one-liners or great paragraphs. And her language is beautiful. It really is. I am told that in White Oleander, she really soars. So I need to get to that one really soon.
I'll say this much, though. After having so MANY little talks with people about how "we need action up front" and "we have to know where this is going" and so forth, and "don't do a Typical Day or a Normal Life setup," I have to wonder how she got this one published. The entire beginning would seem to one of "those" readers like just an exploration of how this heroine's world is at the opening, and they'd toss it aside, and would miss a great reading experience. *I* enjoyed it greatly, because I always enjoy stuff like that and I imagine places where the author could be going with it, because I'm not in marketing, but I just wondered how she got this past the usual cries of distress in publishing committees. I'm just glad she did. Awe-inspiring work that I'd like more teens to read, but they probably won't, as they don't have time between readings of Really Exciting Stuff and blowjobs.
Oops, was I snarky alluvasudden? Won't happen again. You know me, baby.
But seriously, folks, I think that maybe I'll read White Oleander despite its huge success. (wink)
In other news, I was just brooding about the state of publishing after reading Agent007 and MissSnark. Agent007 in particular admonishes us (in an earlier post) that editors and especially agents may go out and read our weblogs/journals (they'll Google us up, baby, because they have SO much free time!) even before they read those requested partials, just to see if we complain about the state of publishing or if we talk about our struggle. They'll be scared and reject us if we seem controversial or whatever. (I think agent007 is great, brave and informative and helpful, and what I'm saying is NOT that this is a bad thing for him/her to point out, but that this is a ridiculous thing to see happening.) We'll be judged on our views about everything from rejection to the brand of oatmeal we mention. And it matters as much as the quality of the work, some say (in the Comments section of that entry.)
I think this is patently absurd. For one thing, they couldn't possibly have the time to waste. (They must assign this duty to their unpaid interns.) For another, you shouldn't judge THE WORK by using any outside force--you should judge the work on its own merits. A person might write well on a weblog and not be able to sustain interest in fiction, or might write wonderful fiction but have a weblog that is boring. Some jobs require that employers do a research project to make sure the applicants are Our Kind of People, but with fiction, what difference can it possibly make if we have a recipe blog or whatnot? I hardly think that an interesting, lively discussion of books and the industry and so forth is a BAD thing to have on your weblog. If you whine as much as I do, you might want to go back and lock those entries later on, after some of the angst passes. *wink* However, it's just crazy to say that you're going to decide whether to publish a novel by looking at somebody's weblog and making a judgment about that person (because usually we who have online journals create personas for those journals, and we may be quite mild-mannered in person--how could you know for sure?)
The work should stand on its own. Editors/agents used to SAY that.
Most readers won't have any idea what authors look like (if they flip the book over to glance at the photo, it's out of curiosity, not to help them choose which book to read) and don't care. What they're staring at is the words on the page and the vivid, continuous dream those words create. Publishing people shouldn't worry about whether the author might be homely (too ugly to go on talk shows--I am not making this up; it's really mentioned as a concern!) or might have a whiny weblog before she/he is famous and has to worry about Public Image. I've never set much stock by image, because I know it's manufactured. Look at all the people who have these great media images until they finally do something that unwraps their pretty package (and I intend no double entendre here) and reveals their true motives, their hidden agendas that aren't so admirable, and the unpleasant truth that they are not so beautiful on the inside.
As a child, I chose writing books as my career (back when you had to fill in blanks with "what you want to be when you grow up, if you ever do") in part because I loved to write and was told that I was good at it, and in part because the industry was a meritocracy, as far as I could see. Editors never looked at you in person, and only judged the work by its own merits. You never had to leave home--you just wrote to them and perhaps talked on the phone. Public intellectuals and famous novelists/literary types were revered in those days (the 1960s and 1970s), and nobody cared if an author was good-looking and could be on talk shows--they were on Dick Cavett anyway, ugly or gorgeous.
But now the world has finally ruined publishing. It is now just a corporate life, apparently, just like any other. You have to take the books you want to publish into a committee that includes publicity people who just want to know how they can position it and if it has competition, sales and marketing types who don't read but don't like your book anyway, and lots of questions about the author. Ack! It's just like junior high, just like any corporation with all the red tape and silliness and endless meetings. That stinks. I hate it. The days when an editor would read your manuscript, like it, buy it, write you the check, and husband the process of editing and producing the book are long gone, I know that, but still, you'd think that people would look MOSTLY at literary merit. You'd be wrongola.
It's the same thing I complained about when I worked at corporations. When I had to send my documents around for review (CONTENT review is what it was supposed to be for), I never got any content remarks ("You missed one of the software's features" or "This should be a 6 instead of a 9"). I always got remarks about the font or some graph needing to be centered or some silly format issue that had nothing to do with the message of the document or its usefulness (and besides, we had a standard format that we had to stick to and couldn't take such suggestions.) Everything was all about the looks of the document, rather than what it said. With very few exceptions. Now and then someone who was actually a user of the document(s) would call and ask a question ("How do we save a file under a different name in a different directory?"), and that would help me because I'd realize that information wasn't easy to find. I wrote Part I specifications for software modules as well as test plans and documentation, and most of the usefulness of the documents (assuming you have it in readable form with an index, table of contents, etc., and well organized so that readers don't have to search all over the place for related concepts) was in the CONTENT. But most people commented on the FORMAT, as if that were The Most Important Thing, like the clothes you wear or what your hair looks like. Maybe they just didn't grasp the concepts in the content or didn't want to read through it, and therefore picked something they could see in a flip-through. And then they e-mailed me so it would look as if they were Important and Had Issues. How silly. Just silly.
The world is crazy now. Surface and image (created image) is everything. All format, no content. All is image and appearance, all is spin. An empty balloon--a shiny balloon just the "approved" shape and the "right" colors and has the wording approved by committee on it in the Proper Font, but empty. Ridiculous.
It's kind of sad. And could there be a connection between this and the dumbing-down of America? I'd like to hear better news about the state of "learning" in the USA than what we heard on TV the other day about how we're way down as compared to twenty years ago. I suspected this. I think I started complaining about the "feel-good, self-esteem raising" classroom about that long ago. My teachers were wonderful and actually TAUGHT us things. I don't think teachers are allowed to teach any more, not so much. But that's another issue.
I just hate to see editors and other people who love reading stuck in those committees, having to play politics, having to justify all sorts of stuff that has nothing at all to do with the work and its artistic merits. So often, a book is said to not have good sales potential, but then it goes to another house that takes a chance on it (or has a hole in their list) and it becomes the Next Big Thing. Can't people see what's happening? They're sticking with the safe and tried-and-true, more of the same, and then the market gets glutted with the derivative works and turns away from the entire genre (sometimes for years--look at horror and Westerns; no, DON'T LOOK, because those genres NEED to not come back!) . . . until the Next Big Thing comes along. And no one knows what that is going to be.
I need to figure out who I can get to pose for my author photo. . . .
Yes!
I just discovered a new author. Janet Fitch wrote White Oleander, which I've had on the TBR queue for some time, but she also wrote a YA novel, Kicks. One of my beta readers who loves lots of action (and whose even-more-elderly mother is also a writer) passed Kicks along to me when her mother recommended it. She thought I might like it, because it's all "thinky" and stars smart people getting into some "real life." Sort of a "Freaks and Geeks" similarity, and she knew how much I liked the geeks and how unlikely/dumb I have always thought it would be for a girl like the star of F&G to want to be cool (how boring! How could you bear the tedium? What would you talk about and how could you think when in such a mess?) ANYway . . .
I loved the novel. I couldn't stop reading it. I just eat up stuff with lotsa thinkin', and this has it, although I feel that there's plenty of conflict and action. Some of the stuff was in there to keep teens reading, I know (the reminders of how "mean" the girl's mother was to be so strict and need so much help, and so forth), but part of it was to show the character's epiphany and change. The book was about a smart girl who thinks running with the wild ones would be so wonderful, and who finally overcomes her fears and follows her "black sheep" friend (who is a lifelong friend, one who has always needed to be the center of attention and do bad things, but who was also not so wild until NOW) into real trouble. Then she figures out pretty fast that this wasn't the road for her. She gets out, but the friend doesn't want to. This book gave me some insight as to why some people might want to be the way the "black sheep" friend is. I never could figure it out at all before. So . . . the book succeeded.
The greatest thing, though, was her incisive insights (is that redundant? Kind of) expressed as one-liners or great paragraphs. And her language is beautiful. It really is. I am told that in White Oleander, she really soars. So I need to get to that one really soon.
I'll say this much, though. After having so MANY little talks with people about how "we need action up front" and "we have to know where this is going" and so forth, and "don't do a Typical Day or a Normal Life setup," I have to wonder how she got this one published. The entire beginning would seem to one of "those" readers like just an exploration of how this heroine's world is at the opening, and they'd toss it aside, and would miss a great reading experience. *I* enjoyed it greatly, because I always enjoy stuff like that and I imagine places where the author could be going with it, because I'm not in marketing, but I just wondered how she got this past the usual cries of distress in publishing committees. I'm just glad she did. Awe-inspiring work that I'd like more teens to read, but they probably won't, as they don't have time between readings of Really Exciting Stuff and blowjobs.
Oops, was I snarky alluvasudden? Won't happen again. You know me, baby.
But seriously, folks, I think that maybe I'll read White Oleander despite its huge success. (wink)
In other news, I was just brooding about the state of publishing after reading Agent007 and MissSnark. Agent007 in particular admonishes us (in an earlier post) that editors and especially agents may go out and read our weblogs/journals (they'll Google us up, baby, because they have SO much free time!) even before they read those requested partials, just to see if we complain about the state of publishing or if we talk about our struggle. They'll be scared and reject us if we seem controversial or whatever. (I think agent007 is great, brave and informative and helpful, and what I'm saying is NOT that this is a bad thing for him/her to point out, but that this is a ridiculous thing to see happening.) We'll be judged on our views about everything from rejection to the brand of oatmeal we mention. And it matters as much as the quality of the work, some say (in the Comments section of that entry.)
I think this is patently absurd. For one thing, they couldn't possibly have the time to waste. (They must assign this duty to their unpaid interns.) For another, you shouldn't judge THE WORK by using any outside force--you should judge the work on its own merits. A person might write well on a weblog and not be able to sustain interest in fiction, or might write wonderful fiction but have a weblog that is boring. Some jobs require that employers do a research project to make sure the applicants are Our Kind of People, but with fiction, what difference can it possibly make if we have a recipe blog or whatnot? I hardly think that an interesting, lively discussion of books and the industry and so forth is a BAD thing to have on your weblog. If you whine as much as I do, you might want to go back and lock those entries later on, after some of the angst passes. *wink* However, it's just crazy to say that you're going to decide whether to publish a novel by looking at somebody's weblog and making a judgment about that person (because usually we who have online journals create personas for those journals, and we may be quite mild-mannered in person--how could you know for sure?)
The work should stand on its own. Editors/agents used to SAY that.
Most readers won't have any idea what authors look like (if they flip the book over to glance at the photo, it's out of curiosity, not to help them choose which book to read) and don't care. What they're staring at is the words on the page and the vivid, continuous dream those words create. Publishing people shouldn't worry about whether the author might be homely (too ugly to go on talk shows--I am not making this up; it's really mentioned as a concern!) or might have a whiny weblog before she/he is famous and has to worry about Public Image. I've never set much stock by image, because I know it's manufactured. Look at all the people who have these great media images until they finally do something that unwraps their pretty package (and I intend no double entendre here) and reveals their true motives, their hidden agendas that aren't so admirable, and the unpleasant truth that they are not so beautiful on the inside.
As a child, I chose writing books as my career (back when you had to fill in blanks with "what you want to be when you grow up, if you ever do") in part because I loved to write and was told that I was good at it, and in part because the industry was a meritocracy, as far as I could see. Editors never looked at you in person, and only judged the work by its own merits. You never had to leave home--you just wrote to them and perhaps talked on the phone. Public intellectuals and famous novelists/literary types were revered in those days (the 1960s and 1970s), and nobody cared if an author was good-looking and could be on talk shows--they were on Dick Cavett anyway, ugly or gorgeous.
But now the world has finally ruined publishing. It is now just a corporate life, apparently, just like any other. You have to take the books you want to publish into a committee that includes publicity people who just want to know how they can position it and if it has competition, sales and marketing types who don't read but don't like your book anyway, and lots of questions about the author. Ack! It's just like junior high, just like any corporation with all the red tape and silliness and endless meetings. That stinks. I hate it. The days when an editor would read your manuscript, like it, buy it, write you the check, and husband the process of editing and producing the book are long gone, I know that, but still, you'd think that people would look MOSTLY at literary merit. You'd be wrongola.
It's the same thing I complained about when I worked at corporations. When I had to send my documents around for review (CONTENT review is what it was supposed to be for), I never got any content remarks ("You missed one of the software's features" or "This should be a 6 instead of a 9"). I always got remarks about the font or some graph needing to be centered or some silly format issue that had nothing to do with the message of the document or its usefulness (and besides, we had a standard format that we had to stick to and couldn't take such suggestions.) Everything was all about the looks of the document, rather than what it said. With very few exceptions. Now and then someone who was actually a user of the document(s) would call and ask a question ("How do we save a file under a different name in a different directory?"), and that would help me because I'd realize that information wasn't easy to find. I wrote Part I specifications for software modules as well as test plans and documentation, and most of the usefulness of the documents (assuming you have it in readable form with an index, table of contents, etc., and well organized so that readers don't have to search all over the place for related concepts) was in the CONTENT. But most people commented on the FORMAT, as if that were The Most Important Thing, like the clothes you wear or what your hair looks like. Maybe they just didn't grasp the concepts in the content or didn't want to read through it, and therefore picked something they could see in a flip-through. And then they e-mailed me so it would look as if they were Important and Had Issues. How silly. Just silly.
The world is crazy now. Surface and image (created image) is everything. All format, no content. All is image and appearance, all is spin. An empty balloon--a shiny balloon just the "approved" shape and the "right" colors and has the wording approved by committee on it in the Proper Font, but empty. Ridiculous.
It's kind of sad. And could there be a connection between this and the dumbing-down of America? I'd like to hear better news about the state of "learning" in the USA than what we heard on TV the other day about how we're way down as compared to twenty years ago. I suspected this. I think I started complaining about the "feel-good, self-esteem raising" classroom about that long ago. My teachers were wonderful and actually TAUGHT us things. I don't think teachers are allowed to teach any more, not so much. But that's another issue.
I just hate to see editors and other people who love reading stuck in those committees, having to play politics, having to justify all sorts of stuff that has nothing at all to do with the work and its artistic merits. So often, a book is said to not have good sales potential, but then it goes to another house that takes a chance on it (or has a hole in their list) and it becomes the Next Big Thing. Can't people see what's happening? They're sticking with the safe and tried-and-true, more of the same, and then the market gets glutted with the derivative works and turns away from the entire genre (sometimes for years--look at horror and Westerns; no, DON'T LOOK, because those genres NEED to not come back!) . . . until the Next Big Thing comes along. And no one knows what that is going to be.
I need to figure out who I can get to pose for my author photo. . . .
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Dumbing Down of America
Date: 2005-09-14 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 02:40 pm (UTC)"... editors and especially agents may go out and read our weblogs/journals..." I'm with you. They won't. They simply don't have the time to bother with that. All they can and will care about is the manuscript in front of them. The only time I can see that happening is with a writer whose novel they've already purchased and who is either up against deadline or (more likely) already late with the manuscript. Then they might check the blog to see if the writer is saying anything that he or she isn't saying to the editor when they call.
It's another chimera. Too many writers want to blame something other than their own manuscripts for their failure to sell.
Discovery learning and lecture learning. . ..
Date: 2005-09-14 03:55 pm (UTC)I'm afraid you're right--writers are always looking for some "out" so far as why we got rejected. (grin) I think most editors were and are readers and book lovers, so I can't see why they would go by anything but the work itself. I should have thought that a controversial, eccentric author might be a marketing dream! We're more fun. We're weird. We're up for anything. So I'm not going to get wrapped around the axle or stop blogging because of such "worries."
I'll try not to whine so much, though.