Tag: advice (page 10 of 25)

Advice You Should Probably Ignore

January 3, 2012 / 667 Comments

25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing

I read this cool article last week — “30 Things To Stop Doing To Yourself” — and I thought, hey, heeeey, that’s interesting. Writers might could use their own version of that. So, I started to cobble one together. And, of course, as most of these writing-related posts become, it ended up that for the most part I’m sitting here in the blog yelling at myself first and foremost.

That is, then, how you should read this: me, yelling at me. If you take away something from it, though?

Then go forth and kick your writing year in the teeth.

Onto the list.

1. Stop Running Away

Right here is your story. Your manuscript. Your career. So why the fuck are you running in the other direction? Your writing will never chase you — you need to chase your writing. If it’s what you want, then pursue it. This isn’t just true of your overall writing career, either. It’s true of individual components. You want one thing but then constantly work to achieve its opposite. You say you want to write a novel but then go and write a bunch of short stories. You say you’re going to write This script but then try to write That script instead. Pick a thing and work toward that thing.

2. Stop Stopping

Momentum is everything. Cut the brake lines. Careen wildly and unsteadily toward your goal. I hate to bludgeon you about the head and neck with a hammer forged in the volcanic fires of Mount Obvious, but the only way you can finish something is by not stopping. That story isn’t going to unfuck itself.

3. Stop Writing In Someone Else’s Voice

You have a voice. It’s yours. Nobody else can claim it, and any attempts to mimic it will be fumbling and clumsy like two tweens trying to make out in a darkened broom closet. That’s on you, too — don’t try to write in somebody else’s voice. Yes, okay, maybe you do this in the beginning. But strive past it. Stretch your muscles. Find your voice. This is going to be a big theme at the start of 2012 — discover those elements that comprise your voice, that put the author in your authority. Write in a way that only you can write.

4. Stop Worrying

Worry is some useless shit. It does nothing. It has no basis in reality. It’s a vestigial emotion, useless as — as my father was wont to say — “tits on a boar hog.” We worry about things that are well beyond our control. We worry about publishing trends or future advances or whether or not Barnes & Noble is going to shove a hand grenade up its own ass and go kablooey. That’s not to say you can’t identify future trouble spots and try to work around them — but that’s not worrying. You recognize a roadblock and arrange a path around it — you don’t chew your fingernails bloody worrying about it. Shut up. Calm down. Worry, begone.

5. Stop Hurrying

The rise of self-publishing has seen a comparative surge forward in quantity. As if we’re all rushing forward to squat out as huge a litter of squalling word-babies as our fragile penmonkey uteruses (uteri?) can handle. Stories are like wine; they need time. So take the time. This isn’t a hot dog eating contest. You’re not being judged on how much you write but rather, how well you do it. Sure, there’s a balance — you have to be generative, have to be swimming forward lest you sink like a stone and find remora fish mating inside your rectum. But generation and creativity should not come at the cost of quality. Give your stories and your career the time and patience it needs. Put differently: don’t have a freak out, man.

6. Stop Waiting

I said “stop hurrying,” not “stand still and fall asleep.” Life rewards action, not inertia. What the fuck are you waiting for? To reap the rewards of the future, you must take action in the present. Do so now.

7. Stop Thinking It Should Be Easier

It’s not going to get any easier, and why should it? Anything truly worth doing requires hella hard work. If climbing to the top of Kilimanjaro meant packing a light lunch and hopping in a climate-controlled elevator, it wouldn’t really be that big a fucking deal, would it? You want to do This Writing Thing, then don’t just expect hard work — be happy that it’s a hard row to hoe and that you’re just the, er, hoer to hoe it? I dunno. Don’t look at me like that. AVERT YOUR GAZE, SCRUTINIZER. And get back to work.

8. Stop Deprioritizing Your Wordsmithy

You don’t get to be a proper storyteller by putting it so far down your list it’s nestled between “Complete the Iditarod (but with squirrels instead of dogs)” and “Two words: Merkin, Macrame.” You want to do this shit, it better be some Top Five Shiznit, son. You know you’re a writer because it’s not just what you do, but rather, it’s who you are. So why deprioritize that thing which forms part of your very identity?

9. Stop Treating Your Body Like A Dumpster

The mind is the writer’s best weapon. It is equal parts bullwhip, sniper rifle, and stiletto. If you treat your body like it’s the sticky concrete floor in a porno theater (that’s not a spilled milkshake) then all you’re doing is dulling your most powerful weapon. The body fuels the mind. It should be “crap out,” not “crap in.” Stop bloating your body with awfulness. Eat well. Exercise. Elsewise you’ll find your bullwhip’s tied in knots, your stiletto’s so dull it couldn’t cut through a glob of canned pumpkin, and someone left peanut-butter-and-jelly in the barrel of your sniper rifle.

10. Stop The Moping And The Whining

Complaining — like worry, like regret, like that little knob on the toaster that tells you it’ll make the toast darker — does nothing. (Doubly useless: complaining about complaining, which is what I’m doing here.) Blah blah blah, publishing, blah blah blah, Amazon, blah blah blah Hollywood. Stop boo-hooing. Don’t like something? Fix it or forgive it. And move on to the next thing.

11. Stop Blaming Everyone Else

You hear a lot of blame going around — something-something gatekeepers, something-something too many self-published authors, something-something agency model. You’re going to own your successes, and that means you’re also going to need to own your errors. This career is yours. Yes, sometimes external factors will step in your way, but it’s up to you how to react. Fuck blame. Roll around in responsibility like a dog rolling around in an elk miscarriage. Which, for the record, is something I’ve had a dog do, sooooo. Yeah. It was, uhhh, pretty nasty. Also: “Elk Miscarriage” is the name of my indie band.

12. Stop The Shame

Writers are often ashamed at who they are and what they do. Other people are out there fighting wars and fixing cars and destroying our country with poisonous loans — and here we are, sitting around in our footy-pajamas, writing about vampires and unicorns, about broken hearts and shattered jaws. A lot of the time we won’t get much respect, but you know what? Fuck that. Take the respect. Writers and storytellers help make this world go around. We’re just as much a part of the societal ecosystem as anybody else. Craft counts. Art matters. Stories are important. Freeze-frame high-five. Now have a beer and a shot of whisky and shove all your shame in a bag and burn it.

13. Stop Lamenting Your Mistakes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you fucked up somewhere along the way. Who gives a donkey’s duodenum? Shit happens. Shit washes off. Don’t dwell. Don’t sing lamentations to your errors. Repeat after me: learn and move on. Very few mistakes will haunt you till your end of days unless you let it haunt you. That is, unless your error was so egregious it can never be forgotten (“I wore a Hitler outfit as I went to every major publishing house in New York City and took a poop in every editor’s desk drawer over the holiday. Also, I may have put it on Youtube and sent it to Galleycat. So… there’s that”).

14. Stop Playing It Safe

Let 2012 be the year of the risk. Nobody knows what’s going on in the publishing industry, but we can be damn sure that what’s going on with authors is that we’re finding new ways to be empowered in this New Media Future, Motherfuckers (hereby known as NMFMF). What that means is, it’s time to forget the old rules. Time to start questioning preconceived notions and established conventions. It’s time to start taking some risks both in your career and in your storytelling. Throw open the doors. Kick down the walls of your uncomfortable box. Carpet bomb the Comfort Zone so that none other may dwell there.

15. Stop Trying To Control Shit You Can’t Control

ALL THAT out there? All the industry shit and the reviews and the Amazonian business practices? The economy? The readers? You can’t control any of that. You can respond to it. You can try to get ahead of it. But you can’t control it. Control what you can, which is your writing and the management of your career.

16. Stop Doing One Thing

Diversification is the name of survival for all creatures: genetics relies on diversification. (Says the guy with no science background and little interest in Googling that idea to see if it holds any water at all.) Things are changing big in these next few years, from the rise of e-books to the collapse of traditional markets to the the galactic threat of Mecha-Gaiman. Diversity of form, format and genre will help ensure you stay alive in the coming entirely-made-up Pubpocalypse.

17. Stop Writing For “The Market”

To be clear, I don’t mean, “stop writing for specific markets.” That’s silly advice. If you want to write for the Ladies’ Home Journal, well, that’s writing for a specific market. What I mean is, stop writing for The Market, capital T-M. The Market is an unknowable entity based on sales trends and educated guess-work and some kind of publishing haruspicy (at Penguin, they sacrifice actual penguins — true story!). Writing a novel takes long enough that writing for the market is a doomed mission, a leap into a dark chasm with the hopes that someone will build a bridge there before you fall through empty space. Which leads me to —

18. Stop Chasing Trends

Set the trends. Don’t chase them like a dog chasing a Buick. Trends offer artists a series of diminishing returns — every iteration of a trend after the first is weaker than the last, as if each repetition is another ice cube plunked into a once strong glass of Scotch. You’re just watering it down, man. Don’t be a knock-off purse, a serial killer copycat, or just another fantasy echo of Tolkien. Do your own thing.

19. Stop Caring About What Other Writers Are Doing

They’re going to do what they’re going to do. You’re not them. You don’t want to be them and they don’t want to be you. Why do what everyone else is doing? Let me reiterate: do your own thing.

20. Stop Caring So Much About The Publishing Industry

Know the industry, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. The mortal man cannot change the weave and weft of cosmic forces; they are outside you. Examine the publishing industry too closely and it will ejaculate its demon ichor in your eye. And then you’ll have to go to the eye doctor and he’ll be all like, “You were staring too long at the publishing industry again, weren’t you?” And you’re like, “YES, fine,” and he’s like, “Well, I have drops for that, but they’ll cost you,” and you get out your checkbook and ask him how many zeroes you should fill in because you’re a writer and don’t have health care. *sob*

21. Stop Listening To What Won’t Sell

You’ll hear that. “I don’t think this can sell.” And shit, you know what? That might be right. Just the same — I’d bet that all the stories you remember, all the tales that came out of nowhere and kicked you in the junk drawer with their sheer possibility and potential, were stories that were once flagged with the “this won’t sell” moniker. You’ll always find someone to tell you what you can’t do. What you shouldn’t do. That’s your job as a writer to prove them wrong. By sticking your fountain pen in their neck and drinking their blood. …uhh. I mean, “by writing the best damn story you can write.” That’s what I mean. That other thing was, you know. It was just metaphor. Totally. *hides inkwell filled with human blood*

22. Stop Overpromising And Overshooting

We want to do everything all at once. Grand plans! Sweeping gestures! Epic 23-book fantasy cycles! Don’t overreach. Concentrate on what you can complete. Temper risk with reality.

23. Stop Leaving Yourself Off The Page

You are your stories and your stories are you. Who you are matters. Your experiences and feelings and opinions count. Put yourself on every page: a smear of heartsblood. If we cannot connect with our own stories, how can we expect anybody else to find that connection?

24. Stop Dreaming

Fuck dreaming. Start doing. Dreams are great — uh, for children. Dreams are intangible and uncertain looks into the future. Dreams are fanciful flights of improbability — pegasus wishes and the hopes of lonely robots. You’re an adult, now. It’s time to shit or get off the pot. It’s time to wake up or stay dreaming. Let me say it again because I am nothing if not a fan of repetition: Fuck dreaming. Start doing.

25. Stop Being Afraid

Fear will kill you dead. You’ve nothing to be afraid of that a little preparation and pragmatism cannot kill. Everybody who wanted to be a writer and didn’t become one failed based on one of two critical reasons: one, they were lazy, or two, they were afraid. Let’s take for granted you’re not lazy. That means you’re afraid. Fear is nonsense. What do you think is going to happen? You’re going to be eaten by tigers? Life will afford you lots of reasons to be afraid: bees, kidnappers, terrorism, being chewed apart by an escalator, Republicans, Snooki. But being a writer is nothing worthy of fear. It’s worthy of praise. And triumph. And fireworks. And shotguns. And a box of wine. So shove fear aside — let fear be gnawed upon by escalators and tigers. Step up to the plate. Let this be your year.

* * *

Did you know that Chuck has a small army of writing-related e-books available? Each brined in a salty spice mix of profanity, inchoate rage, and liquor? Check ’em out, won’t you?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

December 27, 2011 / 17 Comments

Don’t Get Burned By Branding

Been thinking a bit about “brand” recently in terms of being an author.

For illumination, we turn briefly toward Wikipedia, that cultivated encyclopedia of the commons, and there we discover that the American Marketing Association defines branding as:

“Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”

Of course, you might look to an older definition —

As a verb, you might mean, “To be marked with a branding iron.”

You might further look toward one of the synonyms of the word: “stigmatize.”

Suddenly, I’m thinking less about Coca-Cola and more about a white-hot iron pressing into a beast’s flesh, the fur smoldering, the skin charring, blisters popping up like the bubbles in bubble wrap.

Not coincidentally, I now want a hamburger and a cold glass of Coke.

But that’s really neither here nor there. What I’m trying to suss out is, where does this leave an author in terms of branding himself or being branded? Is this more a symbol of what the author represents to customers, or is it instead an indelible mark scorched into the author’s metaphorical flesh?

I gotta be honest: I’m starting to lean toward the crispy char-mark than the marketing strategy. Because here’s what can happen: you write a handful of books of one type, and then you, as an author seeking to explore new territory, seeking to grow and change and spread your penmonkey ~~seed~~ wings in other genres and styles and biblio-realms, discover that, uh-oh, you’ve been branded. You’re suddenly That Guy — you’re the Guy Who Writes Splatterpunk Horror or the Girl Who Writes Scientologist Steampunk Space Erotica, and soon as you want to do differently, even once, nobody wants to hear it. More specifically, publishers don’t want to publish it — you’ve got your niche, you’ve built your fence, so now isn’t the time to stray, little pony. Don’t make us get out the shock-prods. Bzzt.

That’s not a rail against specialization, mind you — you want to forever write Hard Sci-Fi in Epistolary Format, hey, fuck it, find your bliss, little word-herder. But the moment you want to do differently, you’re going to find that brand starts to itch and burn and next thing you know you’ve got the loop of a catch-pole tightening around your neck and dragging you back to where you came from.

I mean, in 20 years do I want to be the DOUBLE DEAD guy? Fuck no. I don’t want to just write horror. Or urban fantasy. Or writing advice. I want to write it all. I want to write YA and pulp and maybe something more literary and some creative non-fiction and screenplays and TV shows and games and Martian manifestos and vile tweets and thoughtful reminiscence and — well, you get the point. I don’t want to be kept away from any story I want to tell. Put differently —

I want to write All The Words.

What’s a writer to do, then?

A few things, I think.

First: diversify early. Play the field. Write multiple things across multiple genres and establish yourself as an author who can write all kinds of awesome shit. Joe Lansdale did this early on: that guy wrote insane pulp and hard crime and funny books and short stories about Godzilla. No end to what Lansdale could do. (And I’ll note that such early diversification is easiest with short stories — you can write a lot of them quickly and get them out there in short order.)

Second: embrace self-publishing to some extent — I’m not a fan of putting all your eggs in one basket because next thing you know, those eggs are hatching and now you’re holding a basket of angry pterodactyls. See? Don’t you wish you left some eggs back at the fucking henhouse? (I think that’s the point of that old saying.) Self-publishing gives you strong authorial control over your content. You want to write a horror novel, a teen drama, and a sci-fi satire? You can. You can write all three and give them to readers and say, “Ta-da! Look what I can do!” You needn’t be contained or constrained as a self-published author.

Third: ensure that any branding you do is less about what you write and more about how you write. Your strongest marker as an author is your voice. (In fact, I’d argue we need to stop talking about Brand and start talking about Voice.) Your name and your voice should be all that matter in terms of your fiction — you find a writer you love, you should be willing to read whatever that writer writes. To bring Lansdale back into it, I’d read anything that guy writes. He could write a poem about the goddamn phonebook and I’d buy three copies. Lansdale is Lansdale — anything he writes is his and his alone. His sound, his style, his skill, it creeps into everything he does, soaking it through like a sponge. That’s what I want from an author: not genre, not a reiterative protagonist, not a ditch in which they seem forever trapped.

Am I glad Robert McCammon no longer writes strictly horror?

You betcher penmonkey ass, I am.

Don’t be burned by branding — especially branding you don’t control. Nobody puts Baby in the corner. Baby puts herself in the corner, and then when she’s done with the corner, she karate-kicks her way out of it and goes on a crazy Roadhouse adventure with the ghost of Patrick Swayze.

…uhh.

I may have lost the thread there a little bit.

All I’m saying is —

Own your voice. Live up to your name.

That’s what matters to readers.

(Related: Joelle Charbonneau talks about writing what you want to write. She also notes that our agent, Stacia Decker, encourages us to write what we want to write, which is exactly what you want in an agent.)

December 20, 2011 / 43 Comments

25 Ways For Writers To Help Other Writers

“Aww, gee shucks, mister, but you said December was the month of no mercy! Gosh and golly, talkin’ about how writers help other writers doesn’t sound too merciless, now does it?”

Oh, shut up, Beaver. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. This is the month of my boot shattering your penmonkey jaw and then I dance on your body and crush your chest with the weight of my blowhard advice.

But c’mon, son. It’s Christmas week. It’s time to spread a little holly jolly cheer.

Time to soak ourselves in Egg Nog and dance on tables, urinating nutmeggy love into one another’s eyes.

Um. … yeah. Let’s just move onto the list.

Here, then, are ways for writers to help other writers. Please to enjoy.

(And add your own in the comments!)

1. Buy Books

Writers don’t have to work very hard to get free books. It’s almost eerie — sometimes you swivel your office chair and there, on the floor behind you, is a book you never bought, a book not-yet-released, and the book whispers to you. Read me, it hisses. So, it’s important to make sure you spend some coin on books. Books by authors you know. Books by authors you don’t. Support individuals and support the ecosystem. I don’t need to tell you this — I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t buy a small freighter-load of new books every year — but, it’s worth mentioning just the same. Books, like puppies and wayward elves, need homes.

2. Tell Others To Buy The Books

For some fucking goofy-ass reason, people listen to writers. They think we know shit. (Uhh, and we totally do, heh-heh! Um. Yeah. *distracts you with a shiny tree ornament*) The assumption is that writers write books and so, writers are authorities on things like, say, books. So, when you read a good book, share the love. Doesn’t need to be #fridayreads, either — spread the gospel however you can, whenever you can.

3. Give Away Their Books

Someone not convinced that your authorial recommendations are made of gold? BOOM. FACE. Give them a book. Maybe that means giving them a book off your shelf by a writer you know and love. Maybe it means gifting them the book (and these days, gifting e-books is getting hella easy, so why not?). Sometimes it’s not about the book sale but the gentle pivoting of new readers toward favorite writers. Best way to do that is to lead by example: “Here is a book. You will read it. I have a gun.”

4. Offer To Read

We all have scripts and books and poetry and all manner of the written word that exists without reflection — we write it and we’ve no idea how it really is. It helps to have others take a look at it, see if we’re crazy, or geniuses, or crazy geniuses, or whether we’re just, y’know, pudding-brained dipshits. Sometimes it helps to have a fellow writer with all her writerly skills at the fore to come take a look inside the monster and see if and how the beast purrs — or if it’s just coughing up a mucusy hairball. *kack*

5. Sweet, Sweet Blurbage

I’ve recently gone out asking for blurbs, re: BLACKBIRDS, and boy howdy is it a shameless booty-shake — you’re saying, “Here, please carve time out of your life to read my novel of dubious distinction and then provide me with not just your thoughts but your thoughts distilled down into market-savvy nuggets of book-selling goodness.” Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t necessarily bad for the blurber — hell, I’ve had the chance to blurb three novels recently (Forbeck’s CARPATHIA, Blackmoore’s CITY OF THE LOST, Christopher’s EMPIRE STATE) that reminded me why I love books in the first place. So, as a writer, be nice and offer blurbs where possible. I mean, don’t blurb a novel you don’t like (or, worse, haven’t read), but if you’re into it — blurb it. And man, “blurb” is a strange word. I AM EMPEROR BLURB OF PLANET BLURB BEWARE MY BLURB ARMY! … no, I dunno. I really shouldn’t be allowed to write blog posts at 6:00AM on Sunday morning. Someone out there better send me some coffee. And fast.

6. Recommend Them To An Agent

Sure, some authors get agents the old-fashioned way — you write the book, you query, they want the manuscript, they read the manuscript, you send them cookies and bacon and a cigar box full of money and/or embarrassing pictures, and voila, you have an agent. But some agents only work on referrals, and so it behooves some authors — when they find a book-and-author combo they believe in — to recommend that author to an agent. Help forge those relationships.

7. Recommend Them To An Editor

Some writers work with (and require the services of) independent editors — once you find just such an editor, it’s like gold in your pocket. Share the wealth, then: tell fellow authors that if they need a good editor, then as it turns out you know just the one. The editor will thank you, too. With a puppy. It’s in all the editor-author contracts: each referral gets the author a new puppy. I’m sure I didn’t just dream that.

8. Get Them Work

We’ve all seen them camped out on bridges and beneath underpasses: a grungy rag-worn army of lost penmonkeys holding up signs, “WILL MAKE UP SHIT FOR FOOD,” or “I FOUGHT IN THE SELF-PUBLISHING WARS OF 2012 AND LOST BOTH EYES.” Here, then, is a “teach a man to fish” situation — if you have work to offer or work you’re passing on, it’s always nice to recommend another writer for that work.

9. Point Them Toward Opportunity

A variant of the above, if you know of a cool opportunity — a nifty anthology, a new lit-blog, a script contest, a chance to write the next Denny’s menu — then point them toward it. Share the wealth of possibility.

10. Buy Them A Drink

Whether we’re talking a cup of tea, coffee, Tito’s vodka or the tears of a grieving unicorn, writers will always always always appreciate a drink procured by a fellow penmonkey.

11. Buy Them A Meal

We’ve seen the commercials. The Sarah McLachlan music cues up. Aaaarrrms ooooof an Angel… and then we get a parade of images: hungry writers gnawing on manuscripts, caged, wild-eyed and apparently starving. And then you’re like, “Man, for a bunch of hungry guys they sure look a little fat.” Never mind that. We’ll appreciate a meal from time to time. If you’re having a good year, buy a meal. Cosmically and karmically, this should pass its way down: next time you’re having a bad year, a writer should appear and procure for you a free meal, too. That’s Penmonkey Law. That’s Holy Writ. Goddamnit.

12. Buy Them An Annual Health Care Plan

We writers probably have like, scoliosis or scurvy or syphilis and could really use a bestselling author to be our patron saint and buy us a yearly health care plan. I kid, I kid — but here’s where I don’t kid. Sometimes writers do fall into bad times, and that means they do genuinely need a leg up with medical bills. It’s helpful when other writers come to their aid, maybe organizing a fund (small or large) to help cover some costs.

13. Be A Sounding Board

Sometimes writers just want to talk shit out — does this plot work? Is this a good move? Will you listen to my pitch? Do you know anything about this publisher or this studio? Have you seen my pants? Have you seen my shame? Did I leave my shame in the pocket of my pants? Writers uniquely understand other writers, and so it behooves writers to listen to other writers.

14. Advise Them (When They Want Advice)

Sometimes it isn’t about listening but actually about offering advice. Writers are uniquely placed to understand the troubles of other writers, so it makes sense to not, you know, ask advice from a plumber or that toothless homeless lady who keeps dead mice in a mason jar. Just the same, unsolicited advice usually isn’t appreciated. From anybody. For anybody. Ever. Trust me on this one.

15. Fuck It, Just Talk To Them

It’s not always about being a sounding board. Writers are lonely little penmonkeys — we do not travel in packs or tribes or swing from tree to tree with our hooting brethren. Our day-to-day necessitates we operate in relative isolation, and so sometimes we just want to talk. To someone. About anything. Writers talking to other writers means both writers get to emerge from solitary confinement for a little while. That’s referred to as a “win-win.” Or maybe an “ook-ook.” I dunno. Don’t look at me. I’m not wearing pants.

16. Give Them Space To Crash… At Your Blog

Just as some writers do book tours, they also do blog tours — hopping from blog to blog, exposing themselves (er, not like that, you filthy little scum-badger) to different audiences in order to hopefully gain some new fans and friends and thump their drum without spending tons of bank in the process. Offer up your blog for that purpose to writers you dig and respect if need be. Share the digital space when possible.

17. Give Them Space To Crash… On Your Couch

Like I said: some writers do book tours. Or maybe they need to visit a place to do research or meet with publishers or escape extradition for their crimes against humanity. Either way, it helps from time to time to offer up your couch or a dog-bed or a spider-infested root cellar. I’m not suggesting you run a halfway house or something: your home needn’t be an Author Hotel for Wayward Writers. But for friends and colleagues, you’ll help them save a little money and likely earn crash-space on their couch if ever needed.

18. Defend Them From Trolls

Writers are sometimes Internet magnets for those Human Canker Sores known as “trolls,” and it helps to have other writers rise to the defense (though, of course, one should always be careful not to feed the trolls, too). Mostly it’s just, stand tall for your penmonkey brethren. You feel me?

19. Help Them Hide The Bodies

Sometimes an Internet flame war gets out of control and next thing you know, you’ve gone and killed a couple guys. We writers are inventive folks, and so it behooves us to bring the full creative weight of our critical thinking skills to bear on the task of helping our author buddies bury some motherfucking bodies. Uhh. I mean, this is all totally metaphorical. Totally. … Unrelated: anybody have a pickup truck?

20. If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say…

Hey, we all come across books we don’t like or writers we don’t respect. I’ve seen writers slag on Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown — and, trust me, I’m not a fan of either writer. But you get little value out of bagging on other authors, even if they appear to be easy targets. If writers are accepted curators of literary culture, then it pays to point people toward the Good Stuff and instead happily ignore all the Crap Stuff. Do we even need to talk about Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer? No, we probably don’t. Instead use your time to point readers toward awesome writers, instead. Be a fountain, not a drain.

21. Eschew Public Arguments

It’s best not to get on hot, sweaty writer-on-writer arguments. Nobody wins when writers fight. Except cats. I don’t comprehend the correlation, but whenever writers argue, cats gain more lives. True story!

22. Assist With Technological Challenges

It’s like that line from Ferris Bueller: “The Internet moves fast. If you don’t stop and learn about the newest coolest thing, you’ll be advertising your books on a Myspace page or a Geocities blog while you sink deep into the tar pits with all the other mighty reptiles.” I think that’s the quote. Point being, the ground is changing beneath the author’s feet these days — from social media to self-publishing, from HTML5 to transmedia, we’ve things we need to learn and those things will pile up into a wibbly-wobbly heap if it goes unattended. Other writers are equipped to share and teach about this heretical realm.

23. Share Your Penmonkey Experiences

At blogs like this I try to lay down the tracks of my penmonkey experiences — a trail of ink-soaked breadcrumbs not meant to demonstrate the One True Way but rather, to demonstrate one way through the dark forest of the authorial existence. I think it behooves writers to share that kind of information — to entertain, enlighten, and maybe to bring a little data to this otherwise rudderless life.

24. Kill In Their Name

Um. What? I didn’t say anything. I’m definitely not, uhh, asking you guys to kill in my name and drape the corpses upon altars made of my books. Totally don’t do that. That’d be aweso… awful.

25. Be A Pal, Pal

The world is a tough old bird. It’s not that writers have it uniquely terrible — hell, if you believe Forbes magazine, we’re some of the happiest job-having folks out there. Just the same, sometimes life throws an extra punch or two and leaves us with a bad review or a dead publishing deal or the other slings and arrows of everyday living. As such, it pays for writers to throw other writers a kind note — in short, just be a pal, pal. This writer thing we do benefits from the loose and uncertain bonds of community, but it’s on us to create and confirm that community — we must be self-driven to exit our caves and put on some pants (metaphorically, because, c’mon, fuck pants) and form bonds with other penmonkeys in the name of fellowship. If we want this thing we do to survive and thrive, we do it together, not separate.

* * *

Did you know that Chuck has a small army of writing-related e-books available? Each brined in a salty spice mix of profanity, inchoate rage, and liquor? Check ’em out, won’t you?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

December 13, 2011 / 158 Comments

25 Things Writers Should Know About Rejection

‘Tis the Month of No Mercy.

And so it is time to tackle the subject of…

REJECTION.

*crash of thunder*

1. As Ineluctable As The Tides

If you’re a writer, a writer who writes, a writer who puts her work out there, you’re going to face rejection. It’s like saying, “Eventually you’re going to have to fistfight a bear,” except here it’s not one bear but a countless parade of bears, from Kodiaks to Koalas, all ready to go toe-to-toe with you. Rejection, like shit, happens. Rejection, like shit, washes off. Get used to it.

2. Penmonkey Darwinism In Action

Rejection has value. It teaches us when our work or our skillset is not good enough and must be made better. This is a powerful revelation, like the burning UFO wheel seen by the prophet Ezekiel, or like the McRib sandwich shaped like the Virgin Mary seen by the prophet Steve Jenkins. Rejection refines us. Those who fall prey to its enervating soul-sucking tentacles are doomed. Those who persist past it are survivors. Best ask yourself the question: what kind of writer are you? The kind who survives? Or the kind who gets asphyxiated by the tentacles of woe?

3. This, Then, Is The Value Of The Gatekeeper

Hate the autocracy of the kept gates all you like, but the forge of rejection purifies us (provided it doesn’t burn us down to a fluffy pile of cinder). The writer learns so much from rejection about himself, his work, the market, the business. Even authors who choose to self-publish should, from time to time, submit themselves to the scraping talons and biting beaks of the raptors of rejection. Writers who have never experienced rejection are no different than children who get awards for everything they do: they have already found themselves tap-dancing at the top of the “I’m-So-Special” mountain, never having to climb through snow and karate chop leopards to get there.

4. It Always Stings

Rejection always stings. It stings me, you, everybody. Nobody likes to be rejected. A writer who likes being rejected is a writer who is secretly a robot and must be smelted down into slag before he tries to kill us all because he hates our meat. Pain is instructive. And it’s not permanent. Not if you don’t let it be. Some writers savor misery like a hard candy endlessly sucked in the pocket of one’s cheek, but fuck that.

5. Five Stages Of Grief

Rejection leads to a swiftly-experienced version of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s key to get to that last step as quickly as you can reckon. I actually have two additional steps in my personal process: “liquor” and “ice cream.” Your mileage may vary.

6. It’s Never Personal

It’s not about you. It’s about the work. I mean, unless it is about you. I guess it could be personal. If you send a story off to an editor, and you once shat in that editor’s fishtank, well. That might be personal.

7. Decipher The Code, Translate The “No”

Different rejections say different things. Not every “no” is equal. Hell, they can’t be — if I get 200 no’s and one yes, then that single yes invalidates all the no’s. One rejection might say there’s something wrong with the story. Another with the writing. A third likes the story, hates its role (or lack of role) in the market. A fourth rejection is upset at you — something about blah blah blah, bowel movements and fish-tanks.

8. The Truth Hides In The Pattern

Stare at a Cosby sweater long enough and it’s like a Magic Eye painting. Eventually you’ll start to see dolphins and Jell-O pudding cups and the secret Gnostic gospels of Doctor Huxtable. What were we talking about again? Right. Rejections. One rejection is not as meaningful as a basket of them. All the rejections around a single project become meaningful — a picture emerges. You can start decoding commonalities, sussing out the reasons for being rejected.

9. Some Rejections Are Worthless As A Short-Sleeved Straitjacket

Not every rejection — or every person wielding the big red “NUH-UH” stamp — is a quality one. Form rejections won’t teach you anything other than the fact that the editor didn’t have time. Rejections that never come — a “no” by proxy — are even less valuable. Sometimes you’ll receive a rejection that just doesn’t add up, leaving you scratching your pink parts in slack-jawed bewilderment. Recognize that some — not all, not even most, but some — rejections are as fruitful as a shoebox full of dead mice.

10. Beware Snark, Reject Cruelty

Every once in a while you’ll get a mean rejection. I don’t mean a rejection that takes you to task — that’s what rejections should do. I mean a rejection that is destructive over constructive. That insults aggressively (or passive-aggressively). Maybe the editor was having a bad day. Or maybe the editor’s just a sack of dicks. Rare, but it happens. When it does: ignore and discard. You’re expected to be professional. So are they.

11. Cherish Opportunistic Rejections

Cherish them the way you would a child, or a lost love, or the misery of an enemy as you slowly feed him into a growling wood chipper. By “opportunistic rejection” I mean, a rejection that aims to help you, not just reject you. A handwritten rejection, for instance, one that features an honest critique of your work, is fucking gold. Equally awesome are rejections that help you understand the good things about your story and, further, offer opportunity for future submission. Best of all are rejections that encourage you to resubmit — not other stories, but that story. My first short story on submission got one of those. I played ball. Resubmitted. Was published. Got paid. Freeze-frame high-five.

12. Like It Or Not, It’s Largely Subjective

Storytelling isn’t math. And neither is literary criticism. Any rejection is going to be largely subjective: it’s opinion. Doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong or has no value, but it helps to know going in that you’re dealing with a subset of opinions — informed opinions, most likely, but opinions just the same. Some rejections are objective, based on harder criteria. What I mean is…

13. Sometimes, It’s Totally Your Fault, Dummy

Objective rejections will take you to task for two primary things: one, you didn’t follow the submission guidelines. (Can I just say: always follow the goddamn submission guidelines? Even if the submission guidelines are like, “Each corner of the manuscript must be dabbed with the urine of an incontinent civet cat and the writer must write his name backwards for the magic to take hold,” you do that shit because you’re not a pretty pretty unicorn, you’re a horse like the rest of us, goddamnit.) Or two, your technical writing ability is for shit, at least in that story. If you can’t put a period on the right place or learn the difference between “lose” and “loose,” then you’re going to earn that objective rejection.

14. “It’s Just Not For Me”

You can read that kind of rejection one of two ways: one, your story was good, but just not for that market/editor/moon phase; two, the editor is uncomfortable with truth or doesn’t want to offend anybody and so is gently limping away from saying anything even remotely offensive or controversial.

15. “I Can’t Sell This”

This is a variant version of the above — but it speaks specifically to market. It doesn’t mean your book or story or article is bad, and hell, it may even be brilliant. That’s not the worst place to be, by the way.

16. Know The Signal To Self-Publish

Rejection as a whole is not a great reason to run out and self-publish. I mean, think about it: “Everyone else hates it, so why not punish readers with it? To the Resentmentmobile!” But — but! — sometimes, the overall pattern of rejection does indicate value in self-publishing. Getting a lot of those “it’s good, but I can’t do anything with it” rejections tells you that the risk-averse industry isn’t willing to, duh, take a risk. So, you can absorb the risk and self-publish. (Or you can continue to hope that good rejections will lead to an eventual patient acceptance — that’s what I did with Blackbirds.)

17. The Power In “Just Not Good Enough”

It’s sad at first. You wrench handfuls of hair from your head. You punch mirrors. You soak your pillow through with the tears of rage and regret. But then comes the realization: this story just isn’t up to snuff. It’s a powerful and freeing moment — freeing because, making a story better is entirely within your power. You can’t change market forces. But you can change the quality of your work. So do that.

18. Criticism Is A Conversation, But Rejection Is Not

Do not respond to an editor or agent and try to “re-convince them” to buy your work. At best it’s fruitless, at worst it’s completely deluded. The desperation wafts off you like dog’s breath. The door is closed, for better or worse, for right or wrong. Trying to kick it down does nobody any favors. Oh! And it’s unprofessional.

19. Just To Clarify: Don’t Be A Raging Dickheaded Moon-Unit

Further, don’t go writing said editor or agent with the desire to rant and rave at them. OMG YOU DONT GET MY BRILIANCE letters will out you as a crazy-headed Martian and will earn you mockery and scorn. Your best recourse to any rejection is to write a politely worded “thank you,” and then move on with your life. Put down the megaphone. Put on some pants. Squeegee the froth from your computer monitor.

20. The Common Bonds Of Weepy Wordmonkeys

Every writer, from the tippity-top of the industry to its sludge-slick nadir, has experienced rejection. Every book, movie, or story you love? It’s been rejected. Probably not once. But dozens, maybe even hundreds of times. It’s part of the writer’s career tapestry, part of our blood and genetic memory. Rejection is part of who we are as creative beings. Might as well commiserate.

21. Bumper Sticker: “Real Writers Get Rejected”

I’ll just leave that there for you to discuss amongst yourselves.

22. Put Your Rejections On Display

Build a wall. A shrine. A goddamn memorial display of all your rejections. Writers need to gain emotional power over their rejections. By embracing them and putting them up for all to see, you claim that power. Show it to others. Laugh at it. Find ways to surpass it. Stephen King reportedly collected all of his on a nail. I might stuff mine in a giant wicker man. When I die, I will be burned alive inside the rejectionist’s pyre.

23. Harden The Fuck Up, Care Bear

Any creative person has to be a little bit hard of heart — how can you not be? You can’t go sobbing into a potted plant every time you get a bad review. Just because someone told you “no, I can’t rep this, can’t publish this” doesn’t mean it’s time to head to the bell tower with a .300 Weatherby and start taking out anybody carrying a book or a fucking Barnes & Noble rewards card. Rejections toughen you up. Step to it. Suck it up. Lean into the punch. We all get knocked down. This is your chance to get back up again with your rolled-up manuscript in your hand and start swinging like a ninja.

24. Once Again, Time To Poll Your Intestinal Flora

The writer’s gut is his best friend — over time, the chorus of colonic bacteria that secretly control us begin to work in concert and soon start to get a grasp of what the best course of action is. As the parliament of micro-organisms attunes to your way of doing things and the world’s response, you start to get a clearer picture of how to handle individual rejections and how to move forward. I don’t know that every writer should trust his or her gut from the outset, but over time, you’ll have to. It’ll be that polling of your gutty-works that tells you how to judge individual rejections or rejections as a whole: it’ll tell you if it’s time to put the story in a dark hole, time to improve it, time to be patient and keep submitting or time to find a better and more independent path to publication.

25. Rejections Are Proof You’ve Been To Thunderdome

Fighters know one another because they look a certain way: busted-ass knuckles, a crooked nose, a scar on the lip, the suspicious gaps where teeth once grew. These are the signs of being a crazy motherfucking bad-ass. You see a guy whose body is a network of scars you don’t think, “Hey, he sure gets beat-up a lot,” you think, “Holy fucksnacks, that guy looks like he got thrown into a dumpster full of broken glass and he came out meaner than ever.” That’s how you need to see rejection. You need to see rejection as bad-ass Viking Warrior battle scars, as a roadmap of pain that makes you stronger, faster, smarter, and stranger. A writer without rejections under his belt is the same as a farmer with soft hands; you shake that dude’s hand and you know, he’s not a worker, not a fighter, and wouldn’t know the value of his efforts if they came up and stuck a Garden Weasel up his ass. Rejections are proof of your efforts. Be proud to have ’em.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

December 12, 2011 / 74 Comments

The Precarious Portentious Perils Of Self-Publishing

(Warning: unexpectedly long-ass post incoming.)

(Turn away now.)

(No, seriously, you were warned.)

I like self-publishing. I like having my hands in it. I like knowing what’s going on. I like owning the work from snout to tail, and owning the results of my work in the same way.

Further, I’ve read some incredible self-published work. Work that may never have reached my eyes were it not for the option for the author to circumvent the pomp and circumstance and reach me semi-directly.

So, count me as a fan of the option. In fact, let me say this to all writers: you should be self-publishing. Not all your work. But some of it. Take the option. Try it out. Diversification is good.

Okay? Okay.

Now, all that being said:

Self-publishing ain’t an easy road to walk. Oh, it’s sold that way. A lot of the self-publishing advice out there amounts to all the fucking wisdom of a Nike slogan: JUST DO IT, they say.

But doing the DIY-slash-indie-slash-micropub-slash-selfpub route is a path fraught with perils all its own — perils different from those encountered by the writer going the “other” way. And I’d like to talk about some of those perils here and now, both in order to make new writers aware of them and, further, to ideate some solutions for the aforementioned perils. I say, “Here there be gators,” and you say, “I will now show you my bonafide gator-whomping shock-bat.” And then we both turn toward the camera and show off our Mentos-twinkling minty-fresh smiles. Right? Right.

Maybe some of this will lend itself toward an eventual “best practices” of self-publishing. I dunno.

So. Self-publishing perils. Let’s have it.

The 800-Pound Cuddly Gorilla Named “Amazon”

This past week, Amazon said: “Hey, we’re starting this lending library, which is kind of like a Netflix for books available to Prime members, and that’s pretty cool. Self-published authors can be included in this and they’ll gain access to some part of the total money, but to gain that access they must choose to be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days.” That, of course, is the KDP Select program.

First, you’re probably going to want to check out David Gaughran’s post on this subject: “How Much Do You Want To Get Paid Tomorrow?” He says smart things. So, go there. I’ll wait.

Back? Good. I’ll say up front I’m not a fan of KDP Select at present: I sell 30% of my e-book wares directly to folks via this site and using Paypal. The money granted to me from KDP Select is mysterious: nobody’s had any experience with it yet and they’re asking for a lot given the utter lack of results. Further, I, as a bonafide paranoid, see glimpses of a Spotify future here for writers: suddenly for us to be making any money at all we have to make sure that 1.4 million people “check out” our books year after year. Overly fearful? Probably.

Just the same, KDP Select (which isn’t really what I’m here to talk about) is emblematic of a larger issue:

Amazon is a fucking megalodon shark in these self-publishing waters.

I know, I know, blah blah blah Smashwords, blah blah blah Barnes & Noble Nook. Your mileage may vary, but Smashwords to me is a non-option: it’s as ugly and obtrusive as a broken thumb. And B&N, I sell maybe 10% of my total to them. Maybe, on a good month. For the most part, my e-book revenue comes in as 70% Amazon, 30% direct sales. (Direct sales are up these days, though, from around 23%.)

Now, I like Amazon.

I don’t have any grave issue with them as a company and I’ve heard that working for them is a delight. Just the same, as much as you hear the self-publishing acolytes screaming about the mythic non-existent traditional publishing monopoly you rarely hear them issue concern over how Amazon is slowly reaching out with its big shark-gorilla arms and sweeping all the pieces toward its open slavering maw.

Say what you will about Apple (and you could): at least on my iPad I can read all kinds of e-books. On a Kindle Fire? I can read… well, Kindle books. Then you’ve got Amazon mobilizing its own publishing arms and swooping up authors under an NDA, and then you’ve got KDP Select and whatever else lurks in the wings. You start to see one possible future, which is when Amazon finally finishes carving its own proper kingdom out of the mountain and can suddenly exile authors once more to the caverns and chasms at the mountain’s base: they can say, “Hey, we’re revoking that 70/30 split and demanding exclusivity and we also want you to email us pictures of your genitals. Just so we have them. It’s in the terms of service. We own your pink parts. Thanks!”

Now, again: paranoid, I know. Just the same, companies aren’t people. Companies are beholden to a bottom line above an ethical proving ground, and once Amazon gains and retains all the pieces, they’ve no reason to be author-friendly. Because the ecosystem will have been redesigned and rebranded with the Amazon logo.

So. That’s the challenge. What’s the solution?

For me, it’s selling directly. Having that 30% margin proves I could, if need be, abandon the larger sites and switch entirely over to my own distribution (where the split is, by the way, better than 70/30) — and that may be the future for self-published authors: becoming our own distribution centers.

Shaking Your Can-Cans In The Whore’s Parade

We’re fucked for good promotion. Just fucked. Twitter has turned into a near-ceaseless whore’s parade of authors showing a ~~little~~ a lot of tit and advertising their self-published books over and over again. And I say that as an offender dancing in that very parade. I try to do right with it — try to be funny and engaging and equal out my self-promo whore-tweets with just as many non-whore tweets to water down the acrid bite of my whorishness, but just the same, it’s hard. And here’s the rub: it totally fucking works. If I advertise one of my books directly, you know what happens? I get sales. The more promo I do, the more sales I get.

Which means, being a trashy sloppy self-promo slut-bot is rewarding.

At least, it’s rewarding to my sales. I can’t say it’s particularly rewarding to my self-worth or my likability or my, I dunno, street cred. Do I have street cred? I probably have no street cred. My beard might. Alas: that’s a conversation for another time. Point being, promotional efforts on my part translate into sales.

This isn’t to say traditionally-published authors don’t do the same thing and don’t experience the same sense of gloomy shame — but I will say that, having publishers for both DOUBLE DEAD and BLACKBIRDS means I can lay off the stick a little bit. And it works: more people have reviewed and are talking about DOUBLE DEAD than any of my self-published work and in a very short time.

So — self-published writers have to be (put nicely) self-aggrandizing salesmen. And that’s no fun, not really. Thus I ask: what’s the solution? How else can we spread the word (and I mean, spread the words beyond our own social circles and beyond the self-publishing echo chamber, which is a very real and very troubling phenomenon)? Buying ads? Earning reviews in major publications? Wuzza? Wooza?

Discoverability And Filter Are Fucking Goofy

Related to the former challenge:

Discoverability and filter of self-published books are both crap. A giant, trembling termite’s mound of crap. Wandering a bookstore, I have a high quotient of browsing and I often find books I’d never have expected to find. Wandering Amazon just makes my eyeballs bleed. You’re practically browsing and filtering an infinity, and when you factor in the majority of self-published books, that means you’re going to browse a lot of covers that look like someone just ingested a rod of uranium and threw up in a clown’s shoe. (Meaning: revolting in the deepest, Lovecraftian sense.)

How do we change this? Do we need some kind of app that helps you discover books the same way an app helps you discover new music? How do we encourage the discoverability of our books? And us as writers?

Anecdotes And Edge-Cases Over Hard Data

Publishers have access to big data. Self-publishers have access to little data. Now, on a personal level, the little data matters and we need it — duh, we should know how much we’re selling. But what we don’t know is what’s going on outside our door. Yes, we hear the success stories, and we occasionally get numbers, but that doesn’t add up to meaningful data (though many of the zealots and cult leaders would have you believe that it does, but that’s how most Get Rich Quick schemes work).

We don’t know how successful self-publishers really are as a whole. Or why they’re successful, or what genres definitively work over ones that don’t, or how much contributes to sales. Big publishers have data that helps answer some of this: they have a much bigger picture (though an admittedly flawed picture at times) of the industry as a whole. Self-publishers learn only of their own little plots of land.

We operate in isolation.

Is anybody curating big data? And if they are, are they sharing it? How can we be more transparent with our numbers? Is it valuable to escape solitary and join the gen-pop in order to share bigger chunks of data?

Absolutely Zero Quality Control

All right, self-publishers, let’s get real for a minute.

Even after all that’s gone on in the last year, a lot of self-published books are still… well. Let’s just say they still suck a bag of dicks and then we all nod and frown and make sagely “mm, mm” noises.

Self-publishing has zero quality control. Zip, nada, nichts, bupkiss. Any goofy dillhole with a text file and a dream can punt his poorly-put-together-whatever into the marketplace to stink it up.

Now, I hear you, you have two retorts to this:

One: cream floats. To which I say: ennnh. Any browsing of the Kindle charts will show you that some truly execrable, objectively bad story-products find their way into the rankings.

Cream may float. But so does crap.

Two: traditional publishing has its equivalent share of stinkers. Yyyyeaaaaah-no. Not so much. If I take 10 randomly-selected books from the bookstore and then I choose 10 random self-published books, I genuinely believe that the bookstore books will at least meet the standards for being well-put-together and, to boot, will be books I don’t like based on subjective definitions. But I’ll bet you that at least half of the self-published books fail based on errors that any C-grade writer or publisher should’ve caught and fixed.

Let me just take a moment to share a post I saw on Authonomy:

“Virginia Woolfe – regarded as one of the most important women writers in history. — Self published

Mark Twain- The adventures of Huckleberry Fin- Originally self published.

A Time To Kill- John Grisham – self published.

Hmmm. You never know who else may be on that list.

I wonder what would have happened if that ONE agency hadn’t accidentally took home JK Rowlings Harry Potter. Do you think it would not have become what it is today if she had self published after so many rejections? I think it would have. The story people. That is what is most important to a 90% of your readers. I have read the perfectly edited MS of several writers and you know what, It’s so damn correct that it has become a basic cookie cutter pile of crap. But hey its perfect other wise. Writers are artists who do it for the pure joy of it and all I got to say about those who treat it like a buisness, following all the rules and etc just to make a dollar, you are not writers. You are not storytellers and you can self publish all day long and it wont matter. There’s no heart in it and the readers will know. What they won’t care about: oops. This sentence is missing a period. Oh no, they forgot the comma. Look, the dialog’s not indented. if the story is good enough, no one’s going to notice the small stuff. I’m not saying not to put effort into edting your work and making it the best possible, I’m just saying make sure your story is good because perfection is worthless to a reader.”

That’s all a little nutty. Isn’t it?

Writers can’t be businesspeople? Commas and periods and indentations are somehow too perfect? (And I keep seeing the myth that all these famous writers were self-published and so that means it’s totally cool, kay, thanks, bye. They usually miss that many of these writers were also traditionally-published and published in a very different ecosystem. And many were broke.)

Thing is, this attitude is pervasive in the self-publishing community — and nobody’s playing police officer and saying, “Wow, holy crap, that’s crazy. And, by the way, this is why we get less respect than we deserve.” Instead, you get the cheerleaders shaking their limp pom-poms, encouraging all the worst possible practices.

(For the record, that Authonomy thread was based on one of my self-publishing posts, apparently.)

This attitude is great for writers. “Who cares? Poop out a book!”

This attitude sucks for readers. “I just bought this book. And I think it’s made of poop?”

Why is this a challenge for all self-publishers? Because this is the stigma. Because this is what’s out there. This is your competition. What’s the solution? I really don’t know.

On one hand, it’d be great if Amazon and other sites had some kind of quality assessment, some objective scan of books to make sure that the covers don’t make me throw up and that sentences all have periods. But that’s never going to happen and, to boot, only puts more power in Amazon’s hands — and that gorilla doesn’t need to be jacked up any more than he already is.

If anything, it feels like this needs to come down to the community. Self-publishing no longer needs cheerleaders. It needs a dose of deep honestly and realism. It needs data above anecdotes, it needs new avenues instead of all of us being lumped into the same big sweaty room trying to hawk our flea market wares as if they were creepy dream-catchers we made out of tin cans and cat hair.

Your turn. Assess these challenges. Offer solutions. (Or debate the merit of their inclusion if so inclined — I’m just ranting over here, and will cop to that.) Offer your own challenges, if need be.

But let’s talk, yeah?