On J.K. Rowling and Books

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

By now many of you may be aware of a certain article on the Huffington Post which calls down J.K. Rowling and berates her for her work, and for not stepping aside to allow others to move up. I'm not linking to it because I don't want to give that kind of tripe the time of day, let alone the hits. I must admit it's caused a bit of a stir in writing circles.

But I am giving it some time of day now, because such thought is double-plus ungood. In fact, it's just plain stupid.

Larry Correia and me, waiting for a panel to start.

It came to my attention on Facebook the day it was published, and again the next day when a friend/fan tagged me with it. I'll paste my comment in below:

"I read the article last night. I was, frankly, shocked. Summmarized, the message was, 'You've made enough money now. Go away and let the rest of us have it instead.' 

"While I might debate the worthiness of a popular offering (ONLY if it is particularly bad), I would never EVER go so far as to say that ANY writer should ever stop writing. (Quite aside from the fact that it is, for any true writer, impossible to do.) 

"It's very much an entitlement viewpoint. I have no interest in it, or her.  

"And as many have already said, she caused me to lose all interest in reading anything she has ever written. If her logic is this faulty, I'm pretty sure I'd throw it through the window well before finishing it. And before someone tosses out the argument that I'm doing what she's been accused of doing (condemning without reading), I HAVE read something she wrote: I read this article. In detail. It's very much akin to my refusing to go see [the movie] Armageddon after having seen the trailer: there were so many factual errors just in the trailer, I knew I'd walk out before the film hit the halfway mark.  

"Much thanks to Fritz for the compliment to my writing. I'm not sure scifi/mystery crossovers can truly be termed "literary," though many (including my publisher) have done so. I shall, I think, simply accept the accolade and move on from here. *bows*"

I would like to add that said debate of an offering's worthiness would be in private, with only a couple of other people, and certainly not trumpeted from the rooftops of social media.

Me at the release party of my Displaced Detective book 3

There is also this bit of disingenousness that I caught and tagged. The below is a compendium of my posted comments on Larry Correia's blog on the subject:

"I think I’mma call bullshit on her whole claim of, 'I’ve never read a word (or seen a minute)' of the stories. 

"Why? She refers to Rowling’s body of work as a 'Golgomath.' 

"Now, I’ve read all the HP books and seen all the HP movies, and I still had to Google the word to discover that it’s the name of the “new” leader (the old leader having been assassinated by same) of the tribe of Giants in Russia, from one of the later HP books (Order of the Phoenix), and he’s on Voldemort’s side. Probably the most obscure and least-referenced of all the Giants mentioned in all of the HP books…yet she manages to zero in on it and use it. 

"I’m an HP fan too, though maybe not as fierce as some, and I didn’t catch it. 

"And if you wanted to use a simile riffing on giants, why use one that nobody, not even HP fans, would instantly recognize, and that requires hunting to find, when you could just refer to Rowling’s body of work as a 'Goliath' which is a metaphor that most everybody is likely to at least recognize? 

"And if you’ve never read any HP, how do you even know there are any giants IN it? 

"What’s wrong with that picture…?"

The notion that one author has to step aside so others can move up is utter claptrap ridonkulous. Now, if one is at a convention, where the attendees have only the funds available on their persons, there's something that approximates a zero-sum model. Note I said APPROXIMATES. These days we have credit cards and Squares and electronic swipes and ATMs to get around that problem, and while I'm not Larry or J.K. I still do pretty well at a con. Outside, in the world at large, there isn't a zero-sum game -- nowhere close. 

In the company of Les Johnson and Chris Berman.

More, and frankly, telling Rowling to knock it off is telling a grand master of the game to take her chess pieces and go home. Note I didn't use a simile there; I didn't say it was LIKE telling a grand master to go home. I said it IS TELLING a grand master to go home. In the end, it's no different from someone having told J.R.R. Tolkien, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or even Shakespeare, the same thing. They also wrote for love of writing and for the paycheck. Doyle even revived a character that he hated -- Sherlock Holmes -- for the sake of the paycheck, and because he got so many fan letters wanting more...much the way Rowling is getting fan letters wanting more Harry Potter books. Last I heard, she was considering (depending on who you talked to) either an adult series about the aurors they became, or a series involving some of the other children at Hogwarts. Whichever, I'll be getting them. If she writes them, we will buy.

And that is good, because the kids will also buy, and they will become avid readers. And they will grow up to be avid readers, and they will buy our books too.

But tell me this: how can you criticize and put down another author's work as childish (which the writer of this article did, because she said it was a shame that adults ever read the books), when you claim never to have read the material? How can you know it really is the way you think it is, without seeing for yourself?

The first book co-authored with Travis S. Taylor.

Yes, I freely admit it. I am a Harry Potter fan. I am not a particularly rabid one, but I did enjoy the films, which in turn introduced me to the books, and I ended up reading every one, and waiting for the latter books to come out -- though not with bated breath. It was more a case of having piqued my curiosity to see how it would all work out in the end. (This is, by the way, the sign of good writing -- she made me care about the characters. If there are other problems -- punctuation, grammar, awkward wording and structure, too much description, all these accusations have been leveled at Rowling -- look to the editors; it is their job to see that those things are corrected by the writer.) More importantly, I am a writer myself. I know how the business works, on many levels. I know what constitutes good writing, and I know that success in this industry is to some extent dependent on whatever the Next Big Thing is, and whether or not you manage to catch that metaphorical wave with the surfboard of your writing. Okay, crazy sounding analogy, but still, it fits. 

The second book co-authored with Travis S. Taylor.

You know what I tell interviewers -- and students -- when I'm asked how to become a writer? I tell them to READ. Then read, and read, and read some more, and read the GOOD STUFF. The stuff that becomes, or already is, classic literature. Because in the end, they all started out the same way we do: potential writers sitting down with a blank piece of paper and an idea, having never written a story before. But they do it in such a way that it speaks to the human condition, to the human heart, and that's how and why they become classics. In reading classics, modern and historic, the conscious and subconscious mind picks up on how and why these stories "work" for us, and then when you sit down to write your own stories, your brain 

distills out what it learned from reading the classics, and your own writing becomes better for it. If you're lucky, like I have been, you have friends among those upper levels willing to take you under their wings and mentor you, teaching you to make your writing better and better. If not, why not? I've found that the majority of authors are more than willing to sit down and talk to a newbie writer, or to a writer who hasn't had the same level of success, and offer suggestions and advice. How do I know? Hey, look at some of the pictures in this particular blog article -- I took my own advice and ASKED 'em!

What you DON'T do is tell the writers of those classics, those best-sellers, to take a hike.

The HuffPo writer started off by saying her friend told her people would think it was just sour grapes.

Hey, Ms. Shepherd? She told you so.

--Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

P.S. There are some other really good commentaries over on Sarah Hoyt's blog and the Mad Genius Club blog.

Tidbits They Don’t Tell You In Author’s School, Part 5

by Stephanie Osbornhttp://www.stephanie-osborn.com

We've been talking about the little odds and ends that beginning writers NEED to know, but often aren't TOLD. Things that it's useful to know about to avoid making mistakes. At this point, we have managed to sell our first novel to a publisher, get through the editing process, and review the eARC and galleys. We're picking up today with what you should be doing AT THE SAME TIME YOU'RE PREPPING FOR RELEASE. So. Back at the ranch...

Meanwhile, you and your publisher are working on the public relations and publicity campaign. Start making appearances before the book is released if you want to build buzz. Build a website. Blog. Tweet. Face. Space. Link. Plus. Pin. Good. Net. Ning. Tag. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to find out.) If you can find a way to get your name out there, and to get your book’s name out there, do it.

After the book comes out, you get to do the interviews, talks, and book signings. Most of the time YOU have to schedule these. If you can afford a publicist, it helps. If not, network like crazy. (See building buzz, above.) Ask for reviews from bloggers and interviews from bloggers and BlogTalkRadio hosts. Those are good starts, and they're a good way to get the hang of interviews.

Somewhere in there, you start writing your next book. Yes, you heard right. You write your next book. Otherwise it will be delayed and the fans you start accumulating will become bored waiting.

Tidbit Seven: You NEVER really get done. Because since you're now writing your next book, you're starting all over again. But there's one difference: you have an "in" now, with your publisher - and it's you. You are now your own "in." This is a good place to be.

Tidbit Eight: Once you’ve realized Tidbits One through Seven, congratulations. You are now an experienced, professional author.

Feels good, doesn't it?

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Tidbits They Don’t Tell You In Author’s School, Part 4

by Stephanie Osbornhttp://www.stephanie-osborn.com

We've been talking about the little odds and ends that beginning writers NEED to know, but often aren't TOLD. Things that it's useful to know about to avoid making mistakes. At this point, we have managed to sell our first novel to a publisher. We're picking up today with Tidbits Six and Six-A.

Tidbit Six: Getting a contract in hand is NOT the end of the job. It’s the beginning. Or maybe the middle.

 

Because now you get to work with one or more editors, copy editors, and proofreaders. Multiple times. Read: for as many iterations as it takes to get the book into the condition that the publishers consider ready for publication.

And sometimes that's quite a few. Yep, I don't even have to say it now, do I? Because by now you know that I'm giving you a course I learned in the proverbial school of hard knocks.

 

Tidbit Six-A: Be aware that you are NOT required to do everything, or even anything, the editors say. But you better really be confident you’ve done it exactly right, because these guys are more experienced than you are and know what they’re doing.

 

Travis, God bless him, has repeated this to me more than once, and I think it's finally taken.

So you have the book edited, it’s in gorgeous shape; the cover art has come down and it’s beautiful. You’re done, right? Nope. Now you get the e-ARC, the electronic Advanced Review Copy. You get to review that, make corrections, and send the corrections back.

See, the e-ARC is usually a .pdf file, and the conversion isn't always as smooth as we'd like it to be. It can lose italics and tabs and returns and other such formatting, or it can just wrap a line funny. (Sort of like the paragraph breaks in this blog post, for some reason.) It's also another chance to look for copy errors (errors in spelling, punctuation, typos, etc.) before the book goes into production. This is also the file from which the ebooks are likely to be converted.

NOW you’re done? No. Now you get the galley prints. These are unbound first run prints of your book. Again, review for errors and send back the corrections. Yes, same reason as the e-ARC. Yes, I've caught my own goofs in the galleys as well as errors in setting the galleys - which unlike the old days, is done electronically now. But just like converting from your .doc to .pdf, things can go wonky.

 

And guess what? The book still hasn't been released. We'll talk about that...next week.

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Tidbits They Don’t Tell You In Author’s School, Part 3

by Stephanie Osbornhttp://www.stephanie-osborn.com

We've been talking about the little odds and ends that beginning writers NEED to know, but often aren't TOLD. Things that it's useful to know about to avoid making mistakes. So far we've covered a pre-tidbit, Tidbit One, which was about finding out how long a novel is FOR YOUR GENRE, and shooting for that length; Tidbit Two, which was about not OVERSHOOTING your novel length, and Tidbit Three, which set up the social structure of the writing society. We're picking up today with Tidbits Four, Five, and Five-A.

Tidbit Four: The old adage, “You can’t get published without an agent, and you can’t get an agent without being published,” isn’t true – but it isn’t far from it. Many of the big publishers won’t even look at anything that isn’t handed to them by an agent. With some of them, it’s impossible to even find contact information for the budding author. Contrariwise, most agents won’t look at anyone who isn’t published. But there are some good publishing houses out there that DO accept unagented submissions. The trick to these is that, unless you know somebody, your submission goes into a “slush pile” and will remain there for some time. Slush pile submissions are read in the order received, so your baby will be there for however long it takes for the company’s readers to dig down to it. So be prepared to be patient.

Tidbit Five: A mentor helps. He or she should be someone already experienced in the business, and willing to take on a protégé. HE is the “somebody you know,” your entrée into the business. He can act as your reviewer, your advisor, your agent, your friend, and your shoulder to cry on when an editor says your beloved baby is a pile of horse manure.

Tidbit Five-A: Editors do sometimes say this. Or words to that effect.

Yes, once again, it happened to me. The gist of what was said was, "I hate the beginning, I hate the ending, and everything in between needs to be rewritten." My mentor gently told me through my sobs that it was obvious that that particular editor did not understand my style, and to ask my publisher for another editor. I mopped my face and my nose and had a frank conversation with my publisher. It wasn't that that was a bad editor, or that I was a bad writer. Now, some years later, I do see some of the things he was getting at. But in general, the situation was simply having an incompatibility between writer and editor. It does happen.

Your mentor can point you in new directions, and tell you if and when someone is trying to take advantage of you. Sometimes he even becomes a co-author, and then it’s really fun.

And once again, that's what happened to me, too. My mentor, and now co-author a couple of times over, is a certain guy named Travis S. "Doc" Taylor, New York Times best-selling author and star of National Geographic Channel's Rocket City Rednecks. (He wasn't a TV star when I met him, though. I don't think he was a best-seller yet either. But he was good and he was in the business and he was willing to "pass it forward.") It's been, and continues to be, a great collaboration. We've written a science fiction novel called Extraction Point! which is the first in a series through Twilight Times Books, and we've written a nonfiction book called A New American Space Plan, which is scheduled to be released by Baen Books November 2012.

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Tidbits They Don’t Tell You In Author’s School, Part 2

by Stephanie Osbornhttp://www.stephanie-osborn.com

We've been talking about the little odds and ends that beginning writers NEED to know, but often aren't TOLD. Things that it's useful to know about to avoid making mistakes. Last week we covered a pre-tidbit, and Tidbit One, which was about finding out how long a novel is FOR YOUR GENRE, and shooting for that length. We're picking up today with Tidbits Two and Three.

Tidbit Two: It IS possible to have a novel that’s TOO LONG. You see, there’s a bit of alchemy mixed into publishing. There’s some arcane formula publishers use to transmute word count into page count. Page count, in turn, converts to shelf space. Use up too much shelf space on one book, and the publisher suddenly can’t display as many books. So your wonderful, two hundred thousand plus word count book that spewed out of you like water from a fire hose probably isn’t usable, unless you can find a way to cut it down into two or three books.

Trust me, I've been there. Yes, I broke it into multiple volumes.

Tidbit Three: There is a pecking order among authors, and it is not entirely determined by tenure, sales figures and awards. Who published you? How big was your last advance? (This is, not coincidentally, often determined by the size of the publishing house.) The bigger the publishing house, the larger your advance, the higher up the pecking order you are – at least in the minds of some. Be prepared to experience resentment from those below you, and disdain from those above. Some of us view the playing field as level – but not all.

Not quite what you expected to hear? Sorry. When was there ever a decent-sized group of people who did NOT establish a stratified society, or social subset? Writers are people too. Better to find out now than later, when you run into somebody way above you in the pecking order and who recognizes said order.


Yeah, been there, too.


-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Tidbits They Don’t Tell You In Author’s School, Part 1

By Stephanie Osborn http://www/stephanie-osborn.com

I’m a pretty decent writer. And well before I decided to submit a novel manuscript for publication, I did my homework. I knew about query letters, slush piles, and house formats. I knew some publishing houses don’t take unagented submissions and some do. I knew how to find the correct name and address for a submission, and to address the query letter TO that person. I knew how to make my query letter POP.

But once I got into the industry (translated – I had a manuscript under contract), I discovered that there are a few little details they don’t tell you in author’s school.

Sub-tidbit: Everybody knows not to trust spelling and grammar checkers, right? They don’t know there from they’re from their… (finish the statement on your own). Good. ‘Nuff said. On to the serious stuff.

Tidbit One: Different publishers have different definitions of what constitutes novel length. For some, it’s anything over forty thousand words. For others, it’s sixty, and for most in my genre (science fiction and mystery, often combined) it’s around one hundred thousand. This is a rough rule of thumb, and generally the bigger the number, the more leeway you have, plus or minus, in your word count. But make sure you know what the definition is for your genre, and MAKE IT LONG ENOUGH, or you could run into problems.


Yep, been there, done that. Nobody gave me a t-shirt though. Should have.

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www/stephanie-osborn.com

Guest Blog: We Can Rewrite It - We Can Make It Better

Better, stronger, faster...never mind.

Today I'm proud to introduce a guest blogger, a good friend of mine, known in fandom, an excellent beta reader (for me, for Sarah Hoyt, and I don't know who-all else!), and talented aspiring author, Courtney Galloway. I'm not going to waste a lot of space here yammering. I'm going to let Courtney speak for herself.

~~~

First, a quick thanks to Stephanie, for asking me to blog here as a guest!

Lots of folks have chimed in over time about writing groups and the good, the bad and the sometimes very ugly aspects of them. The question for me has always been, well ok, how do you recover from the bad or the ugly then? For a long time I wasn’t sure I had an answer to that.

Quite a while ago, maybe a year and a half or two years ago, I came up with a fantastic idea for a story. Of course, me being me and having my kind of luck, I came up with it the night before my writer's group meeting and not a week earlier when I could have had a least a few pages to submit. Anyway, I took my little idea to the meeting with me, figuring if nothing else, when we were done with the critiques - if we had time and the guys didn't object, they could help me brainstorm some of the finer points I hadn't fully figured out yet. In theory, this would have been a perfect scenario. I'd already built good trust with these guys and I respect their input and opinions.

However, the reality was that we had a guest that day. Unknown to me, while our guest wants to write - she never has. She had also never been trained on proper critique etiquette. Yes, boys and girls there is such a thing as critique etiquette, i.e.: critique the technical merit not the idea, be polite, keep it impersonal, and all the other lovely hints and tips you find in things like the Turkey City Lexicon.

I asked if the folks would mind helping me brainstorm on my new idea, and everyone was more than happy to. So I laid out my little brain child of an idea, and the guys gave me some very good ideas both on how to address things I hadn't been able to figure out, but also some aspects that hadn't occurred to me yet that would be vital information for the story. Then our guest spoke up, saying that she hated stories that ended that way (open ended for the reader to decide how they want to envision it ended). That they made horrible stories. That she refused to read them and told everyone she knew not to read them. I was quite simply eviscerated and left the meeting rather despondent.

While I stayed in love with my little fragile idea, and took down notes on what the guys had said, I had not been able to put down on the page more than 58 words of story text. Even that text I knew just wasn't quite right, not quite what I wanted it to be. But trying to work on it was about as effective as bashing my head against a brick wall just for the entertainment value.

To be honest, the experience was almost enough to drive me to leave the group if the woman returned. I agonized about the idea, because I really liked the guys - but I just wasn't sure I could deal with this woman's oblivious sabotage. I made the supreme effort, went back, tried to understand her. Which is how I found out she'd never written before, but wanted so badly to, and that she'd never been trained how to critique. The woman is older than I am - roughly late 60's. So I tried to reach her, to reach out to her. I sent her the Turkey City Lexicon and basically trained her on the proper way to do a critique in a writing group. She improved greatly in time. My little story however stayed a stunted, sickly thing.

Today, I finally had the brainstorm I'd been needing so badly. A new opening scene, new aspects of dealing with a tricky part in a smooth and simple fashion that the reader can accept without getting a headache, and enough material to change the basic story enough to let me try again. And perhaps even reclaim it. The basic premise of the story - the idea - is unchanged, but my new view of it is from a different enough angle, that I think I just got my story healed and functional again. YEAY!!

I made all the notes so I wouldn't forget my brainstorming and am hoping to get to the actual writing tomorrow if my luck holds. We're swamped prepping for the trip to TN this weekend [actually in late May  ~S.O.] for our niece's graduation. So if I don't get to the actual “words on the page” stage - I'll be all set to do so when we get back!

 

-Courtney Galloway

http://courtneygalloway.wordpress.com/

~~~

And I, for one, have no doubt but that she will. And I look forward to reading it.

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com