A writer, reloaded

Had my first hiccup in years with the site this week. At some point the entire thing became, well, unusable. Initially I suspected the cause was due to an upgrade of some of the underlying software on the server; being on a shared box, maintenance schedules are completely beyond any one occupant’s reaches. So I upgraded the Wordpress install and the databases to the latest versions. That got me closer.

Yet the content remained unavailable and attempts to access anything threw up ugly errors.

On a whim I started deactivating some of the plug-ins that add functionality to Wordpress. After squelching the Markdown plug-in, everything was lovely. Essentially the server upgrade was the catalyst, but the actual problem stemmed from how the new software interacted with a single pre-existing file that functioned incident-free for more than three years. Maybe I do have some tech chops still. Years of maintenance programming served me well.

While I’m doing some personal accounting, I’d like to explain why things quieted down so much on the site. Things are happening, but there’s been very little evidence of movement this summer.

Here’s the short version:

1) As a result of a reorg at work, I went from four bosses to one. Two of the four are, ahem, “exploring other opportunities.” Boy, I sure do wish them well.

2) My new boss kicks ass. And their new boss is even cooler.

3) The new bosses increased my responsibilities and compensation.

Essentially I’ve been attending more to my professional side, which left less time for recreation. I’ve also been taking a long hard look at the finances. Now that every dollar earned after taxes is mine to keep and not subject to division, I’d like to keep as many as possible. That led to some adjustments in savings and investments plans, as well as allocations.

Before I continue on with the previous entry, an email came in from a good friend about word count. In brief his question: how many words does it take to make a novel? While there is no hard and fast answer for this–it’s a subjective matter–there are some general guidelines:

Short stories: A few hundred to 15,000 words.

Novellas: 15,000 to 40,000 words

Young Adult Novels: 40,000 to 50,000

Novels: 60,000 and up.

Keep in mind, there is a lot of room within those guidelines. There’s also plenty of exceptions. Rather than arguing whether a manuscript is a novella instead of a novella, I think what’s more important than how long or short a piece of writing is, is whether the words on the page work. If the writer feels what’s on the page serves the story, and they’ve left nothing on the table, then the manuscript is the right length.

Certainly, history offers up several examples that prove this, great manuscripts in the 20,000 words range. Jonathon Livinston Seagull, for instance. Tuesdays with Morrie is another.

And brevity might be ultimately less of a problem than unwieldiness. Without naming names, there’s definitely books that are unmanageabe, verging on endless. To me, if it takes laying sideways in bed to keep from cramping my hands up while reading it because the goddamn thing weighs so much . . . anyway, I leave it at sometimes less is more.

There’s an old joke about the salesman and the engineer that shows why one often hates the other. Historically engineering types will design and build a product or service first, then–in the rarest of cases–market and sell it. A salesperson will invariably sell a new product and then call an engineer to build it, probably chiding the engineer at once because, hey, this project is already late!

In the second case, the movement initiates with a nudge from the sales and marketing group–some creative type looks at a gap in the current marketplace offerings, and promises a potential customer there’s a solution without questioning why there is no current one available. When reality sets in, and the salesperson learns that fulfilling the promise might take longer than the customer was led to believe. And so enter tension between sales and engineering. It’s a bit like War of the Roses, really. Neither can live with out the other, but all the same, compromise is unthinkable.

But what if it is possible to manage both sides with respect for the each parties role? In a more balanced model, creating a new product could depend less upon the advances of one faction at the expense of the other. Rather than two kids on a see-saw, where one rises and the other falls, and neither side really gets anywhere, it’s more like a tandem bike. Each party must pedal for them both to climb a hill.

Ideally, such a paradigm could manage customer expectation for an upcoming product right from the outset, while keeping everyone on the same page. Customers get something closer to what they were promised–and hopefully what they need. Engineers perform their design magic and sales types hit their numbers.Now consider a little word substitution.

Replace engineers with authors, customers with readers, and salespersons with publishers. Exclude the top three percent of novelists who make a full-time living at it, and virtually every fiction project is done on spec by a writer hoping to sell it at a later date. Branding simply comes later.

Publishers on the other hand want something as close to a sure bet as possible right now, or more of the same that sold last year, month, week, etc. Unless it’s non-fiction or a memoir, they are generally not interested in asking the magic 8-ball.

The problem any novelist faces is pretty obvious: publishers know what they want to buy and push, based on past sales and subjective tastes. Writers know what they like to write, but worry very little about what the market might want until after the fact. Readers know what they enjoy, and don’t care about the risks publishers and writers take on a project.

All in, this leaves a huge divide between the reader’s wants and the writer’s tastes, with a publisher ( whose slanted view is usually tempered with past successes and failures ) running interference between the two sides. How can the writer provide the reader with an entertaining story, and keep the publisher happy with sales? Better yet, how does the writer even know what the reader wants, since they are largely insulated from them?

Which is where the Internet comes in.

To Be Continued . . .

After coming out the other side of a long consideration period with a well-respected literary agency, the search for the right agent continues. In many ways, it feels like walking over the same ground–passing the same trees and bumps in the trail, even–as last year at this time. Tempting as it might be to embrace that logic, I think that attitude reflects a very close-minded view of the process. While it has taken a bit longer than I might have suspected to reach this point, the gains from the journey have been considerable.

For starters, I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about the project, the sort that could only happen by thrusting the manuscript in the wild. Crossing the threshold also led to several really good contacts. Additionally, I now know two great proof readers who I can trust to find every fuck up, and gained tremendous insight on how others with no emotional investment in the project view my writing. Reaching out has forced me to become a better listener, which has improved my writing in ways I could never have imagined. A lot of people have great ideas for improving a story. Plenty of those ideas are better than anything I might have mustered.

And there were less obvious, yet just as welcome benefits, too.

Despite the fact that every agent I pitched to lives in the fast lane of the publishing world, only two out of what is a considerable list were . . . well, I guess rude is the charge. Honestly for all I know, those few words of bile might have come not from the agent at all, but rather via the mouth of a embittered assistant. So the legend of the sharks of New York and Los Angelos eating the unagented writer alive seems to be a fallacy. And for any missives to the contrary, I’ve got a paper shredder and a blow-torch.

Perhaps a few other legends–surely those tales are true, the Internets tell me so–warrant a second look, too. For instance, the time from manuscript to market. Reviewing the origins of the most successful commercial writers, the amount of time each invested in placing their novel later deemed their breakout work varies wildly.

Here’s a few numbers I consider relevant:

Stephanie Meyer and John Grisham drew fourteen rejections apiece before placing their work. William Kennedy’s Iron Weed got slapped down thirty-four times, by well regarded editors. Stephen King had three unsold novels circulating between publishers in addition to Carrie, whose success brought enough interest in the first three books to net sales.

Regardless of the time, place, and author there is one intrinsic problem every writer faces when wooing someone to pick up their novel: figuring out how many desks a manuscript must land on before it reaches the right set of eyes. One writer tries thirty-five times, another two. Yet another, one hundred and twenty-two times.

Ah, but what if there was a mechanism to get a project onto a lot of desks at once? To end run the hordes of assistants and interns and even the agents themselves. Get right at the decision maker. What might happen to a project then?

If obstacles provide a means for someone to prove how bad they want something, I just may have found a solution to the problem. Check back in a few weeks for a Randy Pausch inspired announcement.