This is kinda-sorta related to a link Sarah sent me today (go read it - Sarah's comment on the post is excellent), via my usual leaps of illogic. The aspiring author's expectations seem to be set somewhere between "If I'm good enough, they'll see my brilliance and love me" and "They don't love me: they must hate me."
It's the same kind of thing that causes Joe Beginning Author to obsessively parse out rejection letters in the hope of divining some notion of the 'real' reason for the rejection (otherwise known as rejectomancy): we at the outskirts of the industry have no idea what actually goes on between when we send our story in and when we get it back. Some of us even harbor the quaint notion that we're going to get an unbiased read. We're not. (That's not to say there's a big hairy blacklist and if you put a toe over the invisible line you get smacked. It's more that slush readers have this humongous pile of unread stuff threatening to bury them, so they're looking for reasons to kick the story, not reasons to take it.)
Publishing does have a hefty image problem in the science fiction community, and deservedly so: as far as I can tell no-one really knows what happens between when a story is bought by a publisher and when it emerges sometimes years later as an actual book with cover art and everything, or if the people in the editing side of things know, they aren't telling us peasants slaving over manuscripts.
The result: we work on inference and observation. We see that everyone who's anyone in the field knows everyone else, and the obvious conclusion is that they pass information around and form a kind of quasi-monopoly, except for the designated pariah who dares do things differently. Naturally, writers being writers, the tendency is to leap from that to conspiracy and active collusion, and from there to an ever-growing blacklist and rumors of strange favors as a prerequisite along with the arbitrary "rules" like "thou shalt not commit prologue" and "thy urban fantasy shall be told in first person by a kick-ass female; mind thou that she be hot stuff"
Authors tend to be prone to conspiracy theory and paranoia anyway - a secretive cabal pulling the strings makes a much better story than random crap happening to some poor schmuck. Not falling into the conspiracy trap means finding out what I really can expect, and not letting myself fall into either the "They just don't understand my brilliance" trap or the "They hate me and I've been blacklisted" trap. Realistically, I'm not even on the radar - there's no way I'm going to be actively targeted.
On the flip side, I can expect that most places my manuscripts wind up, the first person who looks at it is likely to be an idealistic, poorly paid intern, and given the physical location I'm dealing with and the reluctance to move to electronic submission processes, probably one from a specific location and culture. If I start with something guaranteed to piss that sort of person off, I'm going to get bounced.
As to how to hook the poor sod reading the slush pile, who mostly wants to get away from the reams and reams of mind-bogglingly awful and is looking for reasons to cut the whole experience short and move to the next one, that I'm not so sure about. Sarah's advice yesterday helps, but what else is there?
How do we jump ourselves past that gate?
Showing posts with label Conspiracy theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conspiracy theory. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Have you heard the one about the Priest who....
I have been reading quite a few conspiracy thrillers of late and have noted that the Roman Catholic Church has become the perfect conspiracy-novel ‘bad guys’. When I say RC Church, I really mean the Vatican and its more sinister offshoots.
Now as an Englishmen, I am expected to be rather suspicious of Rome; after all, the Vatican has made serious attempts to exterminate us in the past. Indeed, there is much sword waving over Islamic terrorists but for most of my adult life it has been good Catholic boys who have tried to kill me. The Church has only just stopped praying for the conversion of England, probably because after five hundred years they have finally accepted that we are a lost cause.
However, I am somewhat bemused by Rome as the supreme conspirators and have mused over why this should be so. One reason is that the Vatican is old, the oldest continually active religious-political institution in the western world. The throne of England is the second oldest but is a bad choice for conspiracy theorists, with the exception of David Icke who thinks that Her Britannic Majesty is a giant alien Illuminati lizard from the constellation Draco bent on ruling the world or a certain London shopkeeper who thinks His Royal Highness Prince Philip runs relative-killing black ops units for MI5. As for the good old Church of England, well.... let us just say that no one believes that it could organise itself long enough to come up with a decent conspiracy.
The Vatican has a long history of interfering in politics and, because it was based in southern Europe, where gangsters, politicians, terrorists, businessman and priests tend to overlap to the point of being indistinguishable, some of that politics has been very exciting indeed. Look up the strange affair of Roberto Calvi, Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano of Milan, who was known as God’s Banker because of his Vatican links. Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in what looked like a ritualistic Masonic execution supposedly ordered by the Mafia on behalf of the powerful P2 Masonic Lodge. London’s Metropolitan Police Force – the best police force money can buy – rather bizarrely ruled that Calvi committed suicide.
As southern Europe has been somewhat northernised by the European Union, power in the Vatican has slipped eastwards to popes from places like Poland and East Germany. This further separates the Vatican from western culture. For example, no one in the Vatican seems to have anticipated that the appointment of an anti-Semitic bishop, who believes in the Protocols of Zion but not in the Holocaust, might be an issue.
The Vatican is authoritarian, demanding obedience because it is still politically based on a medieval political structure. It is also secretive, another essential requirement for a good conspiracy bad guy. The Vatican’s odder offshoots, such as good old Opus Dei, with its neo-fascist roots, add more grist to the conspiracy theorists’ mill.
So the poor old Roman Catholic Church finds itself the number one choice for any conspiracy novel whose plot needs an all purpose group of sinister manipulators. The CIA must be so relieved.
Now as an Englishmen, I am expected to be rather suspicious of Rome; after all, the Vatican has made serious attempts to exterminate us in the past. Indeed, there is much sword waving over Islamic terrorists but for most of my adult life it has been good Catholic boys who have tried to kill me. The Church has only just stopped praying for the conversion of England, probably because after five hundred years they have finally accepted that we are a lost cause.
However, I am somewhat bemused by Rome as the supreme conspirators and have mused over why this should be so. One reason is that the Vatican is old, the oldest continually active religious-political institution in the western world. The throne of England is the second oldest but is a bad choice for conspiracy theorists, with the exception of David Icke who thinks that Her Britannic Majesty is a giant alien Illuminati lizard from the constellation Draco bent on ruling the world or a certain London shopkeeper who thinks His Royal Highness Prince Philip runs relative-killing black ops units for MI5. As for the good old Church of England, well.... let us just say that no one believes that it could organise itself long enough to come up with a decent conspiracy.
The Vatican has a long history of interfering in politics and, because it was based in southern Europe, where gangsters, politicians, terrorists, businessman and priests tend to overlap to the point of being indistinguishable, some of that politics has been very exciting indeed. Look up the strange affair of Roberto Calvi, Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano of Milan, who was known as God’s Banker because of his Vatican links. Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in what looked like a ritualistic Masonic execution supposedly ordered by the Mafia on behalf of the powerful P2 Masonic Lodge. London’s Metropolitan Police Force – the best police force money can buy – rather bizarrely ruled that Calvi committed suicide.
As southern Europe has been somewhat northernised by the European Union, power in the Vatican has slipped eastwards to popes from places like Poland and East Germany. This further separates the Vatican from western culture. For example, no one in the Vatican seems to have anticipated that the appointment of an anti-Semitic bishop, who believes in the Protocols of Zion but not in the Holocaust, might be an issue.
The Vatican is authoritarian, demanding obedience because it is still politically based on a medieval political structure. It is also secretive, another essential requirement for a good conspiracy bad guy. The Vatican’s odder offshoots, such as good old Opus Dei, with its neo-fascist roots, add more grist to the conspiracy theorists’ mill.
So the poor old Roman Catholic Church finds itself the number one choice for any conspiracy novel whose plot needs an all purpose group of sinister manipulators. The CIA must be so relieved.
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