The other day I was in the thrift store looking at the books. At the end of the shelves, an older balding man was hitting on two SSU students, who were also looking at the books. Here is the conversation I overheard:
Balding Man: I read all the time. I read a book a night, usually.
Student 1: Oh yeah? That’s cool.
Balding Man: Yeah. Of course, I don’t buy all those books. I get them from the library.
Student 1: You download them?
Balding Man: Huh?
Student 1: You download the books?
Balding Man: Oh. No, I use the library for … never mind.
Student 1: Okay.
Student 2: I have a library card.
Student 1: You do?
Student 2: Yeah.
Student 1: Why?
Yeah… Let’s just hope Student 1 was not representative of her generation.
I am tired of answering this question: When do you think your novel will be finished, Joy? I realize that people asking me this mean well. They are just impatient for me to have a finished book and are wondering what is taking so long. So I thought I would answer the question on my blog for all to see.
So, I have been working on a novel for a couple of years now. It seems like it should be done. I want it to be done, believe me. I’m sick of it. But it’s not done and there’s nothing to do but keep working on it until it is. But I am working on it. At this point, it has gone through 35 drafts. That number is a little misleading because due to computer difficulties, sometimes I have to save a new draft before reading all the way through. Even considering this, I have edited the novel at least 25 times so far.
It is true that many novelists can write a book in a year, but that’s not me, not yet. At least not with this novel, which is very complicated. Why? A couple of reasons:
The first draft was 560 pages. That is too long. And yet I write tight and try to only put in details that build the story. As a result, finding things to cut is difficult. I am carefully, slowly, winnowing it down. It is currently at 505 pages. I want to get it closer to 450, so I have a while to go.
The novel deals with three interlocking narratives. It is a story about a grandmother, daughter, and mother. The structure of the novel is told from the daughter’s point of view, but the narrative is regularly interrupted with stories of the grandmother and mother. As a result, if I cut something, there is a ripple effect where everything else is impacted by the change. So cutting takes a lot of thought, and thinking takes time.
The novel is set in the past. It spans almost 100 years. So there are questions like “how would a woman in 1887 act if she found herself at a boxing match?” Or “would it be possible to put a piano in a covered wagon in such a way that it could be played during the overland journey?” Or “what happened to American-German immigrants during World War II?” Each question requires research, which takes time.
The world of a novel is complex. There are so many things to consider–emotional nuances, the smells in the room, how well the sentences flow, whether the reader can easily follow along. Each issue needs my full consideration.
I don’t know how to write a novel. Sometimes the way to learn something is to just do it. Novel writing is like that. You have to plunge in and learn as you go. And learning means mistakes, and mistakes mean re-doing things several times until you get them right. This takes time.
Writing a novel makes me anxious. Every day, some yokel on the Internet tells me that book publishing is dying and that no one is reading and that you need to be a celebrity to publish books these days, and so on and so forth. It makes me anxious and sad. That, in turn, leads to me procrastinating by doing things like writing long blog entries about why it’s taking me so long to write my novel. It is hard to write when you are worried that no one will ever see what you are working so hard on. Add to that a lot of time (like years) and it starts to become a complex. I try not to get discouraged by all this, but sometimes I do, and I lose productivity. Usually it’s just a morning here and there, since I’m pretty disciplined, but it does add up.
So there you have it. On the bright side, the novel is closer to a finished book than a rough draft. It feels like a book now, not just some unwieldy Word doc on Kyle’s server. I am notoriously bad at predicting how long it would take for me to finish, but I’m hoping it will be done by the end of the year.
Aside from a new book by Kyle Rankin, this article pointed out that an astounding number of books by big writers are coming out this fall. They include new books by Thomas Pynchon, E. L. Doctorow, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, John Irving, A. S. Byatt, Dave Eggers, Philip Roth, Barbara Kingsolver, and even Vladimir Nabokov.
This is unheard of. Never have so many major writers released new books at the same time. And all in a year where everyone is moaning that publishing is dead dying. Apparently not. Not, at least, if we all buy some books this fall–sounds like there will be plenty to choose from.
The other day, I was saying how I should have been a playwright. All my formative reading was in plays. I used to go to the library when I was 15 or so and get out stacks of plays a foot high and sit in my room all night reading one after another. I know, I was the coolest teenager ever.
Anyway, if I were more inclined toward plot-oriented fiction, I might have gone down the playwright path. But after reading this article in the NYTimes, I’m glad I didn’t. Apparently, there is a gender bias against female playwrights in the theater.
At least, that’s according to a three-part Princeton study looking into whether “women who are authors have a tougher time getting their work staged than men.” Short answer: They do. And shockingly, at least to me, it’s the female artistic directors and literary managers who are doing the discriminating.
Ms. Sands [who headed the study] sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said.
… Ms. Sands put it another way: “Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.”
Fascinating. And … disturbing. Less surprisingly, this is also the fault of the female playwrights. There are fewer of them, they produce less work than the men, and the quality of their work seems to be lower. That makes sense if they are working against a bias–it takes a lot of nerve to write knowing that is against you.
Still, despite that, plays by female playwrights make more money than plays by men: “Plays and musicals by women sold 16 percent more tickets a week and were 18 percent more profitable over all.”
“Yet even though shows written by women earned more money, producers did not keep them running any longer than less profitable shows that were written by men.”
Pretty surprising stuff. Depressing too. However, I still refuse to watch a staging of The Vagina Monologues.
Oh British journalism. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you. Here is an article by a British woman about how hard it is for her, an anorexic, to eat normally for a week. Yes, she decides to live out a fantasy and eat everything she wants like a “normal” person for three weeks, just to see how she fares. (Spoiler: it’s hard for her.) When I read this, I get the feeling of impatience I always get when I read about eating disorders. Who cares about the last time you ate Yorkshire pudding, lady? I realize these people are sick, and I really do pity them, but they are also so boring. Reading about someone’s obsessions is like reading about people’s dreams–they are only interesting to the person who has them.
In the end, she realizes that she is gaining weight, so she suddenly decides to be anorexic again. Because, somehow, “all this eating has proved what I thought all along: food makes you soft, lazy, undisciplined.” Huh? This author comes off as narcissistic and mentally ill, which is pretty irresponsible on The Daily Mail’s part, if you ask me. What’s next, a kleptomaniac who gives up stealing for a week? A schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur explaining why he really is god?
The article does do one thing, however. It shows how utterly pointless eating disorders are. As the author herself says: “Oh, and by the way, at the start of this odyssey I weigh 8st 2lb, which is slight for my 5ft 8in frame. What a silly, empty half-century achievement that is.” Amen, sister.
Writer John Green, who I am starting to become quite a fan of, has an interesting post on book advances and publishing on his blog (not to be confused with his vlog). He considers which is a better option for an author to go with–Editor 1 with a $300,000 advance for three books or Editor 2 with a $30,000 advance but a “significantly better hardcover royalty.” He says Editor 2 and I agree with him. Although, turning down a $300,000 check is far easier when it is hypothetical.
The blockbuster mentality of publishing scares me. It doesn’t seem to work all that well for publishers–if you invest a bazillion dollars in a book and it only sells 1,000 copies, that’s a pretty big loss–and it doesn’t allow writers to build their careers slowly. Also it encourages publishers to let people like Kanye West write books. What can I say? I guess I’m more of a slow and steady kind of girl.
Publishing is a mess. Here’s proof. Kanye West is writing a book. It is 52 pages, some of which are blank, some of which say things like “I hate the word hate!” Personally, *I* hate the trend of letting every celebrity write a book as part of their brand expansion, but this time it’s extra insulting. You see, Kanye West doesn’t even like to read.
“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed,” West said. “I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph.
“I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life,” he said.
Great. So the dude is writing a book–or “writing” it, most likely–but he doesn’t read books and is even proud of his ignorance. This is depressing. I don’t blame this stupid guy for wanting to promote himself through writing. I blame the publishers for putting out his book. Back in the day, people had to at least pretend at literacy to write, but apparently that’s gone out the window now.
Recently I read an annoying interview in Poets & Writers with four literary agents. It isn’t Poet & Writers’ fault that the interview is annoying, it’s the agents’. They seem insincere, like they are too aware of how they sound to the reader, and in the process end up contradicting themselves.
First they say that all they care about is what’s on the page, that they want originality, the voice of that next new exciting writer. Then they say things like: “But at the same time, I do get things and think, ‘How is this like something else that has sold well?’” So when you stumble on something that is original, the first thing you do is look for something else that is like it and assign it a monetary value? That, uh, doesn’t make any sense.
Next the agents claim that they don’t care who a writer is. Heck, they don’t even read those synopses we writers struggle over. Connections, credits, who you know in the industry, who recommends you, all that is secondary. “It’s the work, the work, the work. You have to focus on the work,” they declare. Then in the next breath, they explain that they get the vast majority of their clients from referrals (you know, people who know other people who know them, i.e. connections?). So… it is all about who you know, but that’s not important to you?
But the thing that really annoys me is their attitude on short stories. Despite the number of well-reviewed and well-known short story collections out there, apparently short stories just don’t sell:
RUTMAN: We don’t really have much choice but to represent talent in whatever form it happens to come. And if it happens to come first in short story collection form, that does not make things easier, practically speaking, but it’s not in itself a reason not to do it. The climate hardly encourages it, and it’s not fun to call an editor and say, “What I have for you now—brace yourself—is a collection of short stories.” I mean, that’s like a meta-joke, I suppose, at this point. But you shouldn’t just abandon it. You know it’s going to be hard so you ask yourself, “How fired up am I about trying this?” With a story collection, that question is a good test of how intrinsically great you find it.
STEIN: It had better be super-duper-duper-duper good.
RUTMAN: Right. One of my colleagues gave me a collection not that long ago. It was sort of short, and the author had not really tried to publish any of them, and I took it home, sort of unhappily, and I ended up being like, “Oh. Okay. So this is a person who can do this.” If you feel that way as an agent, what are you going to do, say no? It just doesn’t really feel like a smart option.
STEIN: But novels are beginning to feel that way too. I mean, really—it’s like the novel is the new short story.
RUTMAN: The short story is the new poem…
STEIN: Yeah, the short story is the new poem, novels are the new short story…. It’s hard out there.
Hmm… Maybe it’s not that hard. Maybe the problem is you guys. I mean, this lady doesn’t seem to have any problem selling short stories (the video opens a new page):
I am sure these agents mean well. I am sure they are good at their jobs. It just annoys me that they seem governed by a lot of (seemingly) arbitrary rules about publishing and yet on some level they are denying that these rules control them. It’s not about the work for you folks–it’s mostly about how well the work sells. And that’s okay. That’s your job, after all, your livelihood. Just be honest about it. That’s all I’m asking.
Marcia Simmons is blogging again, and starting off with a bang by talking about something that annoys me too: The idea that the demise of the newspapers has to do with blogs. It doesn’t. It has to do with mismanagement and conglomeration. Or as Marcia said:
1. Newspapers, most of you were horribly mismanaged by poor businesspeople or unethical tycoons (on the high corporate level). Publications aren’t like real estate. You don’t buy as many as you can cheap and then flip them for more cash. You don’t pile debt on your business when you notice that your market share is shrinking. Newspapers, you were online before most “blogs,” and most of you did not use that opportunity to figure out how the internet works and use it to your advantage. Newspapers never made their money from subscriptions (that barely pays for the printing); they made it from the ads. That is still true on the internet! I am not sure why you are having such a hard time with a model you originated?
Bloggers pointed people to you, saying “I don’t have the skill or time to tell you this story, but go to the professionals and read their work on their site.” And you reacted like they were trying to take your money. Now, after many many years, they finally are. I don’t blame the internet for ruining newspapers, I blame greedy, short-sighted businesspeople.
