Stories like this

Ignore that this guy is getting his novel published. For these purposes, its nice, but not required.

First off, the story itself is nicely crafted. It's the type of writing and story that carries my interest even outside of the marriage and book publishing topics. I sometimes wish this is what I was writing. Or at the very least that I was writing like this.

But the point I really want to ram home is that this guy took four years to write his novel. Four years. I've long since forgotten how long I've been at mine. My guess would be 3 years. Four years is possible.

And his original drafts were, if he is to be believed, dreck as well. Of course, admitting your work was originally dreck is easier once you have published a book and have an agreement for a second. First off, its easier to take criticism when once you've succeeded. Secondly, its much more complimentary to you if you cleaned up this original mess you made into a sellable novel. "I worked slavishly to clean up this mess" is better than "the words pretty much fell onto the page as they are here."

This is all on my mind because The Oven and I were discussing my progress on my novel last night. Or lack thereof, anyway. And so I rededicated myself to editing.

I have a new novel fleshing itself out in my head that I'd like to eventually write. But I'm determined not to start it until the work in progress is finished. Finished finished.

The honest truth is I'd like to finish this damn thing and it be good. Almost to the exclusion of its publication.

Which is easier: Hitting .250, or writing a half-way decent novel?

Bill James at Slate.com wonders "why are we so good at developing athletes and so lousy at developing writers?"

James makes some good points, but mixes in one truly aweful one and ignores another somewhat easy explanation.

The easy explanation is that writing, at all but its top-most performance, is very subjective, while baseball isn't.

Sure, Shakespeare is universally regarded (and maybe because of that gets undue regard). Outside of him and a handful of others, "good" writing is subjective. Romance, legal thrillers, etc etc etc. Is Grisham good, or a mere hack? He's certainly good at what he does, but does "what he does" constitute hackery? Stephen King sells millions, but is he merely rewriting the same 5 or so stories? Is he formuliac? Is he verbose? Does it matter? The Invisible Man by Ellison (the one about race, not Sci Fi) is considered a classic. It is one of probably one or two books I've ever started that I couldn't finish. It was like reading by rubbing my eye against broken glass.

On the other hand, a guy who hits .300 is pretty good hitter regadless. You can nick-pick whether he gets on base enough, or whether he has sufficient power for this position or that, but honestly, .300 is good. James wonders if some of it is because we already have Shakespeare and Dickens, but we "need" new baseball games every day. It sounds good on first inspection. But we also "need" new books every day. And despite James' contention that we would could and would fill any expansion of baseball teams with new talent of equal character (James suggests even 5,000 [5,000!] teams could be filled with quality talent!), I just don't think its true. In its formative days writing had Dickens and Shakespeare; baseball had Aaron and Ruth. Today, a watered-down and mass produced writing has King and Grisham, while a watered-down and mass produced baseball has all those .240 hitters and come-this-year, gone-the-next relief pitchers with whose names I won't bore you.

James cites baseball's payment-on-potential nature. In other words, baseball pays a young high schooler based on potential, but a writer must toil for years before finding any type of success. True. But a young hurler can have a big impact quickly, and that impact can be predicted with some measure of consistency. Absent injury, a guy consistently pitching 8 innings of 1.25 WHIP ball is likely to be a productive player. A person consistently writing a novel a year, even completely readable, well-written novels, isn't necassarily ever going to turn out a great novel, let alone a profitable one.

So I put it to you: Which is easier... hitting .250 (a mediocre average that would make you an iffy prospect) or writing a half-way decent novel?

Hacked to death

As a newspaper editor, I've had occasion to peruse a decent amount of self-published works. I can tell you this: Most of them are self published for a reason.

Now, no less an author than Edgar Allen Poe has taken the self-publishing route. But, with the obvious benefits of hindsight, he was pretty damn good. Admittedly, the publishing biz isn't doing good biz right now. I harbor no ill will to those who self publish, nor do look down upon them. In today's world, they are a bit of a revolutionary, I think.

But getting back to the original point: Most are self-published for a reason. Say what you want about publishing biz problems, and stock subject books with unoriginal, copy cat plotting, but if you read a bit of self-published work, you'll start to see that there plenty of good reasons lots of those books aren't getting through. Writing isn't hard, necessarily; writing well is.

What always struck me about these self-published books is how obviously bad they were. The authors either had an obvious axe to grind and either were just piss-poor at hiding it or didn't care to hide it, or just weren't great writers. And I'm not suggesting they had to be the next Hemingway. The next Hemingsomeguy would have been fine. I've read my fair share of what I would call "mediocre" novels published by publishing houses. Its one of the ironies of the biz that its nearly impossible to get published, and that good authors regularly struggle, while the industry goes on its merry way publishing some very tepid stuff. Works that are instantly forgettable and not especially well written, well plotted or well charactered.

It's the lack of self awareness that worries me. These guys obviously either were so egotistical that they thought publishing would win them accolades, or they just didn't realize that their works didn't even compare to the mediocre stuff out there.

That is my fear: I don't want to spending all this time doing all this work (both of which I have a love-hate relationship with anyway), all while the end product is just so obviously bad. If I can't get published, I can't get published, I just don't want to be so bad its obvious to everyone but me.

PS - I'm not doing Nano, but I'm going to use the month to sketch out and structure "Slide", my next novel, and edit Falsely Accused.

PS - stay tuned for updates all this week!