The Publishing Biz - Episode 7 - Back to the Drawing Board
Well, dear readers, it's time to face facts. One or more of the following statements is true with regard to my book:
1. It sucks
2. I am not publishable as a self-help author
I shudder to think that number 1 is the reason I have been unable to get an agent or a book deal. However, at this point, my book has been read (at least some of it) by about 25 people, and only four or five have really enjoyed it. More importantly, I've distributed PDF copies of the manuscript to visitors of this site who have requested them by email. In all cases, my only request was that they get back to me with feedback - positive or negative. Nothing. Not one response. So, I can only conclude that these people either didn't like the book or, worse yet, couldn't even get into it enough to know if they'd like it. Sure, one or two may have loved it but never got around to telling me so, but more than ten? Methinks something is up. And then there's the publishing community.
My last sortie into enemy territory consisted of attendance at a West Coast writer's conference, a conference that had quite a few reputable non-fiction agents on hand. I delivered my well-honed pitch and showed off my attractive cover to anyone who would listen. I was asked to send a proposal to seven agents. Yippee! Much better than the year before. "Your concept is really fresh, and it sounds like you've got a solid promotion plan." Head in the stars, I left California and returned to execute the formalities of becoming a published author.
Proposals went out, and form-letter rejections came in, so fast that I wondered if Uncle Sam is now outsourcing to FedEx. All but one rejected me outright. One nice guy actually scrawled some notes on the letter - something like, "Good concept. Your platform needs work." (Lesson Learned: what agents and publishers say means nothing. Add them to the pile.) The remaining agent called me and told me he wanted to represent me at the upcoming Book Expo America conference in NYC. Yippee! I was on my way. Alas, as I am businessman at heart, I know better than to do a deal without doing my homework.
I didn't much like the Kinko's-looking business card this guy gave me, but I thought, "Hey, it's not about the card if this guy has the right connections." So I drilled him a bit via email. Who have you represented? Who do you know at what publishing houses? And so on. After all, I'm not going to the dance with some turd on my arm, right? Nothing. He never returned my email. So here I am.
What to do? What to do? I'm not into self-publishing (click here to read why), so I have a problem. I am committed to the ideas that underpin this site and my book. I truly believe that vast numbers of people would be happier if they understood more about themselves and their internal motivations. I just have to find some vehicle to find out if I'm right. Clearly, a non-fiction book isn't the answer, at least not right now. So I have to find another way, and I have.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I am going to write a fiction book that delivers my non-fiction message, something not unlike Pirsig's, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, at least in terms of format and intentions (hopefully, in terms of success). Thanks to Ian over at Psybertron for recommending I give Pirsig a look. The bad news is that this site is going to grind to a crawl while I get this done. But fear not, illuminated cave-people.
I'm toying with some method of disclosing bits and pieces of the story as I write it. At first thought, this seems preeminantly ill-advised. I am a bit of a word sculptor, which means that I initially create this blob of an idea and then hone it down to something recognizable. Is it wise for me to open the Kimono so early in the process? Would those who think me somewhat competent at conveying ideas come to an altogether different opinion if I do? These are tough questions, and it will be a while before I can answer. For now, I'll try to post something relevant as often as possible. I may turn this into a meta-blog for a while, just dissemanting information I find interesting and related to my theme. Honestly, I don't really know how this is going to play out. Anyone got any ideas? Alice, want to take the helm? Or maybe I should let the Koran-crapping Freedomslave have at it. Decisions. Decisions.
In closing, let me leave you with the story idea for my fiction book.
A 24 year old college grad, recently downsized from corporate America, takes to the road to pursue his vision of freedom. He and his three friends pack up a VW van and follow the jam band, Phish, on a cross country tour that puts them in situations that force them to confront their understanding of themselves, the world, and what it means to be free. It's the movie, Road Trip, meets All The Pretty Horses (if you haven't read it, shame on you.)
No, this is not autobiographical. But I will say that I am not unfamiliar with what goes down in this environment. If anyone knows of any fiction that is similar to what I'm doing, do let me know. I will shamelessly rip off anyone to achieve my goals.
Until...
posted by Chris Wilson at 6/01/2005 12:01:00 AM
9 Comments:
One major problem with communicating complicated ideas through fiction is finding characters one would expect to say what needs to be said.
Emotion-laden ideas such as duty, honor, love, and greed are readily rendered in fiction, so many are the avenues your story may travel to arrive at your point(s). Otherwise, good luck...
I stumbled onto your site a couple weeks ago and really enjoy it.
6/01/2005 06:09:00 PM
I don't think getting fiction published is any easier.
6/02/2005 07:36:00 AM
My academic friends? Now *that* is funny. The people who were once friendly with me when I expressed an interest in a psych PhD program now will not even return phone calls. To them, I'm a hack. Moreover, no academic is going to try to get something he or she didn't create (or think of) published. The academy isn't what it once was. Let's just leave it at that.
You're right, Bill. Some of the ideas behind my concept at complicated, which means I have my work cut out for me. However, I think I've got it worked out so that the story will be absolutely believable and real. The trick is going to be weaving a polemic into a good story without distracting readers too much.
Getting published is *infinitely* easier IF the story is good and the writing is good. The writing is completely secondary in the nonfiction market. Those crass souls have figured out that a mediocre (or even bad) book by a well known celebrity will make more money than a brilliant book by a nobody. But in the land of fiction, there are only a handful of somebodys. Everyone else has to compete on the merits of their work. While I have no idea if this is something I can succeed at, I'll take my chances in a meritocracy any day. It's not like there aren't plenty of books and examples of how to do this. I am nothing if not adept at assimilating information and putting it to work.
6/02/2005 11:38:00 AM
"I hope you don't give up the blogging in the meantime - it doesn't have to give away any part finished work - it can be an avenue to vent those tangential thoughts."
Yeah, I'll still throw out whatever I can, but, believe it or not, I actually try to make my posts more than just off-hand thoughts. All I'm saying is that those days are behind me for the next few months.
"You're in fact doing exactly what I would be doing, if I had the courage and less immediate family responsibilties to take a risk right now."
Courage? C'mon old boy. A bit dramatic, no? It takes courage to quit your job to pursue a writing career. It is nothing more than a shift in priorities to spend less time blogging and more time creating a cohesive literary artifact. The only difference between many published and successful authors and you is that they didn't see writing as a risk, but as a necessity. Not to be harsh, but write your damned book.
"PS - I wasn't one of those ignorant buggers who got your PDF and didn't bother to respond am I - if I did I don't remember - can I make amends if I did ?"
I don't know who I sent it to. My machine crashed and I lost all EC email. So if you have a PDF of my book, then yes you're guilty. But no worries. I'm over it and moving on.
As for Phish, I wouldn't call myself a huge fan or anything. They had their moments, but I'm not much for watching people experiment on stage. Give me the finished product. Anyway, I've seen them four or five times and I've seen Trey's solo act a couple of times (once very recently).
The reason I've chosen them is because there is a worldview that is held by many of the traveling neuvo-hippie fans that is the exact antithesis of the enlightened caveman view. Having a main character pursue their version of freedom because he's frustrated with his life sets a nice stage for him to learn the fallacy of their model, and thus the legitimacy of mine. And the road trip combined with the eclectic and dynamic crowd interactions from show to show offer just the opportunity to write in characters who will help the main character in his growth.
"Cue sound of jaw connecting with floor. You couldn't write this stuff - could you ;-)"
I hope so. That's sort of an obvious example of writing the exact opposite of what the reader would expect. Trick number 47 in the fiction writer's toolkit. :-)
Yes, All The Pretty Horses deals with the Mexican American border. It's a beautiful story, but it's not hing like ZMM or On The Road in its philosophical content. It's more earthy and pragmatic. Actually, Billy Bob Thornton did an amazing job of cinematizing the book. The movie stars Matt Damon and it's really great. Normally, I'd say read the book first, but in this case, do whichever you prefer - just check them out. McCarthy is the Faulkner of our time - pure literary genius.
"I wasn't sure if you were kiddding (I have to go back and read again), but don't do something like Pirsig did.In fact don't do anything like Pirsig did. Let this book be an inspiration, something to show you what's possible, but you are certainly capable of your own wonderful vision."
I'm only interested in following in Pirsig's footsteps from a format perspective. He uses a story to get across his philosophical ideas. There are other good examples of this - Sophie's World comes to mind, as does The Celestine Prophecy. I do have my own vision for how this will unfold, and I think it'll be pretty unique.
It will at first seem to be a defense of mainstreamism, though at closer look, it will be a presentation of a non-reactionary alternative to it.
It'll be a while before I can foist anything upon any of you to read, but rest assured I will and I look forward to your comments.
6/03/2005 02:49:00 PM
I'm email challenged at the moment - had yet another wonderful full system melt-down. But I should be up and running soon.
6/03/2005 04:16:00 PM
Ian, I'll not mince words. If you have a story inside you, you have no choice but to tell it. Fuck all else. Write it. Start now.
Alice, I love you baby, but you overproject. No question Rand beats you over the head in Atlas Shugged, but even at its worst, the book is a locomotive. Maybe your experience was filled with constant reminders as to Rand's shortfalls as a novelist, but the fact is that her story is immense. The value of her fiction is that it pursues one question - what if the doers stop doing? As pendestrian as you may find it, the reality is that no one has ever explored that question so powerfully. She may bore the literary masses, but she makes a point that has never been made as effectively since. That's worth a lot.
As luck would have it, I found the way to perpetuate this blog. His name is Eric. Look for cartoons and essays that embody my concepts but push the boundaries. Get ready - this shit ain't even close to over.
6/04/2005 02:52:00 AM
On the contrary, Rand's central thesis is that there is a point at which there is nothing to lose by doing nothing because there is no longer anything appreciable to gain by doing something.
Think of the Laffer Curve with regard to taxation - at some point, the tax rate is so high that rich people no longer invest their money. This is because the return on investment, after they have paid all the taxes, doesn't sufficiently offset the risks inherent in most business ventures. The result is that the government's tax revenues actually start to go down. (We can thank Jimmy Carter for proving this in the 70s.) The Laffer Curve is nothing more than a real-world visual example of Rand's thesis.
Atlas Shrugged contemplates the world that would emerge if those who insist on equal results rather than equal opportunity were ever in charge. Regardless of her limitations as a fiction writer, she was effective enough to change this caveman's worldview for good.
6/04/2005 10:30:00 PM
Let me try to catch up here.
"We'd be in the shit - but who said they should stop !!??!!"
No one is proposing that the doers stop doing. The idea is that conditions can get to the point where it is no longer worth it for the doers to do - the rewards do not align with the risks. Rand was posing the scenario that those conditions came about and caused exactly that. Her point was to make it clear that our policies and attitudes have to protect the doers' desire to do.
"And some countries do quite nicely with a bit of socialism thrown in for good measure. You might not like to live there and that's why you don't, but some people kind of like pooling their resources and they don't seem near annihilation as Rand suggests."
I've covered this before. The idea is that socialism only works in homogeneous environments where there is a social stigma associated with being on the dole. Every socialist or quasi-socialist country on this planet is experiencing the pain of globalization. (Read my post on Scandinavian economics.) That is, their homogenous societies are giving way to heavy immigration, and the immigrants don't have any regard for the frowns of the locals at their overt willingness to get money for nothing.
My point - Rand was right, and her predictions are already coming true. But instead of the doers moving to some secluded mountain community, they're moving to America. Multinational businesses are closing in record numbers in Europe because the cost of doing business there is not recoverable in revenues - exactly as Rand predicted.
This is why her work is so important - if these people who buy into the necessity of the 35hr work week, 6 weeks of vacation, and impossible bureaucratic red-tape to fire someone could internalize what their policies lead to, the world's economy would literally take off.
Alice, I'll concede that Rand was preachy. There's a book called Intellectual Morons that has a section dedicated to Rand and the almost cult-like following she had. No question, she was a whack-job in a lot of ways, but this does not diminish the value of her work - she said things that had never been said before in a way that had never been explored. I can say that I didn't ever notice that I was being lectured throughout the text. Maybe it's because I was sucked into the story, even if it was written in a somewhat pedestrian way.
You're right about Orwell. The message in Animal Farm was not that the animals should not take over. It was that they should have been more careful about who they chose to lead them (or allowed to lead them, depending upon how you see it).
For the record - my view is that socialism is inherently flawed and can NEVER succeed in a heterogeneous population. It comes down to the fact that centralized decision making can never be as effective as distributed decision making regarding private property owned by individuals. Read Hayek's, The Fatal Conceit.
Lastly - Thomas Sowell is not, nor has he ever been, a liberal of any sort. He does not in any way advocate or believe in any form of utopia. Indeed, the concept of the constrained vision comes from Sowell, and it is explicitly non-utopian. I wonder how you thought otherwise.
6/09/2005 01:50:00 PM
Pardon the misunderstanding. Me, unhappy? Uh, not a chance. When I am not nose down in my various economic and artistic endeavors, when I peek out and take stock at my life, I'm shocked at the bliss. Really.
And liberal? Only on social issues. I am a strong believer in Sowell's constrained vision, though I like to augment it with the acceptance that there will always be people who hold the unconstrained vision. I don't believe for a moment that mankind is even remotely perfectible.
My focus is on specific humans. I don't think there's a limit to what we can attain on an individual basis, at least with respect to inner peace and long-term satisfaction in life. One fundamental requirement, I think, is the acknowledgement of the constrained vision. That guides us properly in our understanding of economics and dealing with people we don't know. Nothing Utopian there.
6/13/2005 12:16:00 AM
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