Crossing the (Creative) streams

It used to be that not only every genre, but also every industry had a wall around it. If you video game writing, that was about all you did. Now creatives are jumping from fiction to tabletop RPGs to comic books, etc.

Let me introduce you to workaholic, Shanna Germain. Part owner of Monte Cook Games and full on writer/editor of ficiton and RPGs. A talented profession who knows no bounds.

Episode 181 – Schrödinger’s Brat

Is it too soon to say Genre Snobbery is dying?

When Kazuo Ishiguro wrote The Buried Giant, he claims that he discovered a prejudiced to orges (genre snobbery) existed.

Which seems a bit odd to me when the man has been writing for over 33 years, but it does make for a good sound byte as he promotes his book.

Better yet, it means that Ishiguro has teamed up with Neil Gaiman a man who has successfully jumped from comics (sorry, I meant graphic novels) urban fantasy to children's books, to talk about the inherent marketing con/need for respectability of the concept of genre.

One part of that public discussion happened over at the New Statesman, read it and enjoy. I do get a kick out how both writers had to wait for over a decade before their publishers felt that the new literary climate was safe enough for certain stories.

Never let anyone tell you that your idea is not cool enough to publish

Frankly, I wish I had thought of this one. Kud-effin-os.  Just proves that if you do something with enough talent and panache, you can get it published. 

And to prove my point, the Tor.com blog goes into how the cover needed to convey the right amount of menace and not fall into kitsch. If that was my book cover, I'd be hyped.

On the other hand, it doesn't hurt when  you can get GRRM to say it's "Game of Thrones."

Frankly, if anyone else had said that, I'd take that with a salt shaker.  Does anyone think that the statement "Game of Thrones" is now an overused descriptor? For TV, it seems to mean genre TV with cutthroat politics/soap opera. For books, cold  mean almost anything like, "regular fantasy," "grimdark" or even "Our PR maven has no clue."

10 Things Writers Should Know about the business side of writing.

Chuck Wendig's blog is always good for shaking the proverbial writing tree and seeing what hits the ground. This week's entry by the talented Kameron Hurley reminds us that all publishers, epub or traditional, are seeing the biz differently than you. They see it literally as a business and your book, and you by extension, as a  product and a method of marketing.

If they don't see you that way, they won't be a publisher for long.

With that in mind, I've got some quick rules of thumb for you about publishers and your writing career. There are always exceptions to these, some of which prove the rule.

1. A Writer's Vision is for marketing copy only: If you talk about your vision -- as in how a publisher doesn't get your "vision" or your genius -- it's a clue that you don't get   that a novel is a collaborative project. A good editor and publisher can be a godsend on cutting the chaff to make your book a leaner, meaner storytelling machine.
2. Copy Editors edit, Editors advocate :  When you meet an editor at conference or con, you'll meet your story's champion. They will try to do their best for the story, not you, your story. So while that means they might go to bat for the story against the publisher, they'll also go to bat for the story against you if you insist on keeping things that distract from the focus of the story.
3. Self-Publish? Congrats you're a publisher: Back in my early days, it was hard enough to wrap my head around the idea that proofreading wasn't done by editors -- they've got enough to handle (advocating, profit/loss statements, finding more quality stories). They hire copy editors to handle the proofing. And you should too. If you can't afford one, find a volunteer. Same goes for covers and probably marketing as well.
4. Volunteers take their sweet time: There's that old adage that you can have two out of three things when working on a project, either fast, cheap or good. If you're getting a volunteer to help  (especially  people you shanghai in with promises of "exposure.") then prepare for them to take their time. They have lives and are doing you a favor.
5. Consider yourself on a 10 year plan: If you look up any "New" Writer's award, you'll find a good decade of practice and exposure behind them. Some wrote in fanfic, or advertising or in other fields like RPGs or non-fiction. You are in for the long haul buddy.
6. Writing may always be your part-time gig: There's more and more scuttlebutt that the days of a full-time novel writer maybe coming to a close, or that it's reaching a long nadir of sorts. I say this not to discourage, but to help brace you for the long slog ahead.
7. Paid writing is paid writing -- if that's what you want: You may find that if you really want that writing lifestyle, you'll have branch out in ways that keep you at the keyboard, but not necessarily doing what you dreamed of. Fiction novel writing is one of the toughest gigs to get and there's more luck involved than most people are willling to admit. Non-fiction, advertising, how-tos, pretty much everything pays better with more frequency than a novel. 
8. Business 101 is not Ethics 101: And Ethics 101 is that doing something legal is not the same as doing something that's ethical. As Ms. Kameron Hurley can attest, read your contracts and assume that publisher's know you're going to fight that boilerplate contract that tries to have you sell all of your rights in perpetuity for $500. Or that if you're an artists that negotiates doing your own book cover, then get paid for it as a separate item, otherwise you just did work for free.
9. Don't write for the market, but that is the harder road: You're going to write your next novel for a minimum of two years, maybe more. You have to love what you're doing or you're lose steam. Sometimes what you think is cool isn't a slam dunk for the marketeers, and that's all right, but know you've got an uphill battle (Says the guys who is trying to pitch a Weird Western.)
10. Live more, read more, write more: Seeing how real people live and interact, seeing how other writers tackle the same stories as you do and seeing yourself improve will help you inch closer to perfecting your craft.
11. Bonus Round! Read and write out of your comfort zone: Creativity is like a body that needs food and exercise. And just as eating and excising the same every day short changes a body, the same goes for your writing. Try new things and stretching yourself, you may discover unexpected inspiration and new tricks.

Now go fourth, my writing comrades and write!

Old Habits, how soon we go back to thee (NaNoWriMo)

GrrrrrrArrrghhuggh!

Nope, that was not me doing a drunk Chewbacca impression. 

Here I am hitting the keyboard for effin NaNoWhat'sit and it was going ... okay ... at first.

I had a lot more typos because I was sailing ahead on the whole "It's about the words. Rewrite later. When you like have a whole novel to rewrite." 

But this week, I find myself going back and tweaking and tweaking. Sure, the end result is better. But I could still be doing that next month. (Why is there no NaNoRe-WriMo?)

Okay. I could blog more about it. But then, that's less time writing, right?

Dang. I can't win, can I?

Write What You Know. Why Are You Taking That So Literal?

I've heard it, you heard it, that whole bit of advice that the best thing to do is write only what you personally know. 

Throughout history, this chestnut has come in and gone out of fashion, for every Mark Twain and Jack London that went West, there's been a Shakespeare and Edmund Spencer.that wrote of the fantastical while sitting at a desk.

Of course today there's a whole genre of Literature of thinly-veiled autobiographies with the serial numbers scrubbed off. These seem to also be the favored sons of several Literature awards.

For a time there was even a vanity publisher website that told prospective customers to  avoid any writing advice from genre writers since they know nothing about writing since they had the temerity to break this "cardinal" rule. 

You know what happens when you insult an entire industry of writers? Especially one whose livelihood  rests on their capacity for excess imagination and creativity? 

It it ain't pretty.

But why take that advice literally. Seriously, who does that?

That's why good genre writers spend so much time world building and researching. 

While they can't visit another planet or an alternate history where "Native American" tribes called on spirits to jettison the colonists, they can research the historical and scientific data to create a exotic and plausible setting. 

But an exotic setting, is only but part of a good story.

Beyond just a good setting, it needs to be filled with believable characters that act with an internal consistency.  And for that you can always write what you literally know, drawing inspiration and education from the people in your life.

This hits on the paradox of being a good writer. While you've got to sequester yourself away to be a keyboard monkey, you can't write about the human condition, regardless of the reality you're in, unless you meet and interact with people.

So in that case, when it comes to the heart of the story -- regardless  of the genre icing on the cake -- then you do need to write the characters you know.