Anger

Dave Freer wrote about anger almost a year ago. Mostly he wrote about the incredibly self-destructive anger that comes with being a writer.

I can’t improve on what he said particularly the part about how every crash is assume to be driver’s error even if the wheels came off the publishing effort before the driver took the wheel.

A few years before Dave wrote that, I stumbled on a book on burnout, because I hit a wall of sorts, where I couldn’t motivate myself to write, even when I wanted to write. (This wall is endemic. It comes, I fight against it. It comes again.)

The book on burnout was, of course, not directed at writers. It was actually a book on escaping the situation that caused the burnout. And the first thing it identified was the situation that almost inevitably causes the worst burnout – what they called the perfect storm.

Apparently people are able or at least willing to withstand working their hearts out at things where the outcome can’t be under their control (i.e. no matter how excellent they are or how hard they work, they can’t guarantee the outcome will be good.) They can survive this situation given, ideally, two things – recognition (pats on the back, prestige, the sense that what they’re doing is special and needed) and very good pay. The lack of control over their position will still tire them, and they’ll need vacations and cosseting. Now, if you remove just one of those compensations – the high pay or the recognition – you’re going to make it more likely that burnout will happen. If you remove both the compensations, so you have someone with no control over the outcome of their work, no high compensation and no recognition you’ve just created a mid list author... er... I mean the perfect storm for burnout.

Or perhaps “the reason my dentist thinks I should wear a mouth guard at night because of tooth-grinding.”

(Their advice, btw, was to run away from such a situation at all costs because it will kill you in a short time. Of course, for writers, at least up till now, the escape hatches are few.)

I happened to re-read Dave’s post last week, while looking for something on MGC and this brought to mind the book on burnout (remind me I need to find my mouth guard) which in turn came to mind again when I read a post by a friendly colleague about her extreme depression, brought about by... lack of control of the outcome, lack of recognition and lack of money. This post touched me greatly because there but for the grace of Baen go I. I was saved from being exactly where she is, by Jim and Toni giving me my own conference in the Baen bar oh... six? Years ago. Which in turn resulted in my hearing directly from Baen fans, so that even if the establishment doesn’t know my name, I do get people asking what happens next, and talking about my characters like real people, and that recognition keeps me going, even through all the worry about money and book distribution and my wretched attempts at publicity.

And then yesterday, while writing on rejections, it occurred to me that there is something there that links in with both Dave’s post and this colleague’s plea for help and that is – they treat us like children or fools.

Now, I mentioned this to a friend who said she knew many stores that treated their employees like that. Yeah, I’m sure she does. I know some computer shops that do the same. But it’s not an industry wide syndrome. Exploited employees can usually walk down the street and get something new. (Well, maybe not in the present economy.) In writing – though there are quite a few exceptions – the norm seems to be for anyone in an editorial position to treat the writer like dirt beneath their chariot wheels.

Crude, rude and overbearing rejections are not rare. Making generalizations about writers being like children are not rare. In fact, anywhere that industry professionals gather, writers will often be treated like idiot children.

My friend suggested perhaps this is because – though the number of writers who fit the stereotype is very small – there is a stereotype that writers are unstable.

I don’t think so. Look, the stereotype for postal workers IS that they’re unstable. Hence the “going postal” and I don’t see a supervisor treating a carrier this way – say, taking a professional of twenty years and telling him “you don’t know how to distribute mail. You can’t drive that car properly” or anything like that. Why not? Because they are afraid the postal worker will go berserk.

On the contrary, I think the general rudeness and unprofessional belittling of writers comes from the fact that until recently, to quote my grandmother’s expression for these situations, the publishing side of the equation had both the knife and the cheese. If you were so much as rude to them, or they just didn’t like you, you could be shut out of publishing. It didn’t even take any formal blacklisting. I personally observed one of these cases up close and personal (no, not me) and despite excellent sales all it took was putting word about that the writer is “hard to work with.” (Which isn’t even true.)

Even beyond that, if they didn’t actively like you/your book and get very involved in it, your distribution would suck, and failing all that if, by a miracle, you still sold, they were in control of your statements and you couldn’t see your numbers, so they could p*ss on your neck and tell you it was raining.

So you had to approach them cap in hand, and bow and tug on your forelock. You had to stay in their good graces to keep working, and your entire livelihood was dependent on this handful of interconnected (with some exceptions, like Baen) people.

Did this breed contempt? Good Lord, yes. I mean, seriously, it doesn’t surprise me that people with the ink barely dry on their fine arts diploma would presume to tell professionals how to do their job. What surprises me, under the circumstances, is that they didn’t feed us to literal lions for their amusement. (We won’t mention the metaphorical lions.)

What is the point of this? Other than venting my anger?

Well, writers are starting to acquire other channels. Not as viable as mainstream publishing yet, I’ll give you that. For all but a lucky few, it won’t support us... yet.

But things are changing very fast. And long before it is viable for a writer to make a living from self publishing, it will be possible for enough exasperated writers to walk away or die trying. (And no, I’m not ready to yet. Read about where I got a conference from Jim and Toni. And also, things seem to be finally starting to sell. And also, at this point I'm practically down to editors I enjoy working with. But there are a lot of people where I was a few years ago.) And for enough competing offerings to be available to take money from the publisher’s bottom line.

In other words – long before we can live without them, publishers will find they can’t live without us.

And then they’ll run up against that anger Dave mentioned.

I’ve long ago preached about writers growing up. Don’t bitch at an editor. Don’t tell them they’re stupid because they rejected you. (I’ve been on the other side of that desk. Most people who do that are not people I want to work with.) If an editor offers politely expressed non-ludicrous comments, consider them before you dismiss them. (But don’t rewrite unless they’re paying you or at least agreeing to read it again. As for ludicrous, if I get one more rejection critiquing a three page synopsis as though it were the whole book... I’m going to find my mouth guard.) Accept in your heart that no matter how good you are, some books are simply not what the editor (or sometimes anyone) is looking for. Be willing to move on to the next book.

Now, hark, for I’m the voice that cries in the desert, and who doesn’t expect to be heard until ... a year or two from now, when the desertion of the midlisters (and lower) starts hurting. And even then, it might take a while.

But perhaps it’s time for editors (and some agents) to consider (this just from things that happened to me I’ve heard much worse, and I’m sure our readers have too):

- Not telling the writer that you have read better things from your three year old son;

- not telling the writer that you disapprove of his/her moral stance and he/she must be “depraved”;

-not spending hours thinking of belittling ways to describe the writers’ work (the one that stuck in my mind was ‘flipping voices like a cook flipping pancakes in a cheap greasy spoon’ (12 years ago, from an agent for... Darkship Thieves.);

-not sending a rejection saying “your novel was terrible” when the only thing the author ever sent you was a request for guidelines (and the author hadn’t published yet, so chances of your having seen one of her novels are small to none.)

Editors should instead – particularly when they’re dealing with authors who have published more than one or two books – treat them as professionals treat other professionals. Oh, sure if there’s a chance you’ll buy the book if they fix a detail or two, point out what they got wrong. If they’ve got some egregious error of science of history (or grammar, like the lady who had a character with a “copulant face” in a story I read for a slush pile long ago. I was forced to point out “I think you mean corpulent, and that’s still wrong.) you can mention it politely.

Of course, if the author doesn’t behave like a professional, THEN you may take your gloves off, but don’t preemptively assume you’re dealing with the mentally unstable. It takes a degree of fortitude and work to produce readable work. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but truly, anyone off the street CAN’T do it.

See, now you might still have the knife, but the writers have the cheese. You’re going to have to behave as if they matter, because they do. And you won’t survive without them.

*crossposted at According To Hoyt*

Anger management and the working author

Being an author is one of those unusual highly skilled jobs that have absolutely no application criteria and a 'you got the job' rate of about the same size as make it into astronaut training. Oh and an average income - last survey I saw - of something like 1/4 of the minimum wage... which among many other reasons is why I sometimes feel there SHOULD be one entry criterion (I don't _really_ because I believe in an open and fair-as possible playing field. The 'fair' part is why I actually mention it.)

Almost every author and wannabe author I know could probably have used an anger management course before they started. And probably, with a few exceptions, a refresher every few months. I spend at least 80% of my time on the edge of livid with myself for not writing better, thinking smarter, catching the right opportunity, for thinking I have written the best book that will change the world (or at least sf) and no-one seems to read it (so I am angry with myself for not doing a better job). And that's just the start - The waiting, the stupidity, the attitudes, the arrogance (some of it mine) conspire to make the most even tempered and nicest person angry to boiling over furious a lot of the time. The fact that no-one has yet gone bat-sh!t crazy and taken out their agent, editor, publisher, cover-artist, blurb-writer, proof reader, reviewer, various distributors, Neilson bookscan, retail buyers and even book-stores staff - let alone the fine upstanding gifted people who did this to newbies http://www.examiner.com/x-562-Book-Examiner~y2009m3d20-20-famous-authors-who-were-rejected-repeatedly-and-sometimes-rudely-by-publishers continues to amaze and perplex me. Because that's your BABY. Even with the best will in the world (and that, trust me, is sometimes just a little lacking) NONE of these people will give it the love and care you feel it deserves. And some of them are useless bastards, and some are unmotivated jerks (like that store-clerk who didn't put your book - which only has a month of face time, on the shelf for 2 weeks) and some of them are out to screw you. The paranoids just have no real idea how bad it actually is ;-).

In these interesting times of course this paranoia (which isn't entirely unjustified) has knock-ons. Take this post: http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10006444/random-house-dodges-apple-ipad-to-keep-authors-in-the-dark/ Now, besides the fact that it is fairly obvious that, somewhere down the line the author has decided that he's prepared to risk burning his bridges with a very big publisher in order to poke it with a shark stick, the active dislike for large publishing does show through. It's largely hidden because authors are in an envidious position, where criticism of your publisher is a death sentence for your career - probably (a la John Norman) with all of them. Any gripe is either voiced in very private and trusted quarters, or couched in the most diplomatic terms possible. Of course for the industry's real darlings the opposite is true. Their income is thousands of mulitples higher than the average midlister (and no - there is no proportionality. Rowlings might be 50 times better than Joe Midlister, but she's not 100 000 times better and nor does she have a 100 000 readers who would enjoy her books for every one who'd like Joe's. The system is simply not very good at matching taste of reader and type of writer. It'd be good for readers and writers if it were, but fairly bad for our middlemen.) and so is the amount they earn for the publisher. Every whim is therefore catered to, and every effort made - more and better than they could have made themselves. There is a good reason financially for this... but did that ever stop the rest of us being as mad as cut snakes about it all? There is some justification in this too. There is plenty of evidence that extraneous factors besides the writing quality can and do push books into the public eye and make bestsellers of them. Most of these are not things that ordinary authors can afford to do, or have the skills or contacts for. I can't dispatch 20 people to go and buy every copy of a book in NY and place orders for more and buy those too and buy 40 000 copies and put myself on the bestseller list. But I believe it has been done. I have no control over pricing, over my cover, over my release date, over the push for retail buyers to make a big laydown happen, over book dumps over end displays, over tours to have dinners with book buyers, over appearances on Oprah etc. etc. Yet... these things do happen, and... some of the books they happen for are one-book wonders, because no-one will touch that author again. Quite often too they've lauched books that are, let's face it, good but no better and sometimes worse than Joe Midlist-and-staying-there's books. Remember Terry Pratchett was exactly that - Joe the ignored midlister for I think 20 years. Others have leapt from the starting gate to being on every shelf (though sometimes I wonder who BUYS them) on the basis of a subjective decision. This may be real life, but it does leave some very angry people out there.

Anyway - back to the knock-on effects of interesting times and e-books... It's fairly obvious to me that most White South Africans had no real idea of the depth of feeling of Black South Africans about Apartheid. And mostly they didn't really care. Some even kidded themselves it was really the best for them. And now the boot firmly on the other foot, it's very apparent that the Black and very wealthy powerful leadership are really, really enjoying schadenfreude and even it means hurting other black citizens, NOTHING is better than stomping and kicking those whiteys. They hero-worship the genocidal homophobic kleptocrat Robert Mugabe who has destroyed his country and has set the region back 50 years, because he kicked a few whiteys and spat in the West's eye. And that, I think, is the situation right now in publishing. Publishers probably are aware that some authors don't love them that much. But I think they have no idea of the years of deep bottled-up frustration and un-expressable anger that is seeting away in 99% of the midlist and newbies - and even higher up. So I think they also have no idea that most of these people would - given a chance - support a retail Mugabe (Amazon are no saints. And I wouldn't dish out halos over at Apple either). I don't think they realise that most of their midlist authors would take utter delight in leaving them and spitting in their eyes as they go. Apple has so far been kissing up to the big publishers. Amazon (and we don't love them, but they've been no worse for the little guys than B&N or most of retail) is taking an adverserial stance to them. I don't think Amazon is good for authors... but I can see that they will be bad for publishing. If they start winning, and offer a home (even with strings and nasties) to authors, watch. Authors will leave their publishers faster than rats leave a sinking ship, and they'll take glee in opening the stop-cocks as they go, even if it hurts their interests.

It's probably realistically too late for large publishing to mend the relationship. Throwing a lot more than just crumbs (and so far all they've done is point to gouging more, as thanks for helping them against Amazon) at the midlist could make a difference, but only if they're prepared to make big bold steps too - firing a few people, and improving the equity of spend and effort - neither of which are going to happen. Moving a few deck-chairs might. So... watch this space. I think that Amazon have started with moves to steal publishers only real assets. If Apple - or Google or any other player start too, we're in for interesting times. Small houses with some personal loyalty from their authors might survive. But the rest will die. It might not be any better for writers than Bob Mugabe has been for Africa though.

So where do you guys think its going?
And how do you cope with being frustrated and angry?

The box and the line in the sand

You have - again - Sarah to thank for this. She mentioned not long ago that I don't just think outside the box, I'm still looking for the box and may not be in the same universe. I am still in contact with the general reality, just at a rather obtuse and possibly abolished angle.

So far so good. The fun comes when I reach the line in the sand, that not exactly physical demarcation of "thus far and no further". I've hit it, or it's hit me, and it's proven wonderfully freeing. I've shut up and put up with all sorts of things I disagree with for long enough, but not any more.

What got me there? I finally realized that for all the "being good" and "doing the right thing" didn't work (the "right thing" being defined here as what the usual consensus says I should be doing, not what I believe I should be doing. Not only are they usually not the same thing, they're often rather interestingly opposed).

I've effectively given up any hope of mainstream publication for my novels. When Amazon moves to the 70% royalty level, I'll do what I need to to sell them there. The day job is going to take up so much time I'm not likely to be ready for it until then anyway, so no loss there. If by some miracle a mainstream offer does show up, fine, that's gravy. But I've taken enough shit at work and elsewhere that I'm not prepared to put up with it and make nicey-nice anymore.

Common courtesy, sure. Other than that, you get me as I am, warts and all (actually, there aren't any warts right now, but you get the idea), and if you don't like it, stiff. There's nothing anywhere that says you have to like me - and conversely, there's nothing anywhere that says I have to like you. I no longer care what you (in the generic sense) think about me. If you think I'm crazy because that box is nice and comfy, well, good for you. I like it out here, although I'd still like to find that blasted box so I can maybe get some idea why it's so flipping popular.

So there you have it: the pissed Kate manifesto. Who else has had a gutful and doesn't care what saying so brings?