Week 21 - Diverse Thoughts

 

Update – Finally, something succeeded. I did, for starters. I began making a short daily schedule with time earmarked for writing, dealing with the paid work, and doing mundane chores. And it flippin’ worked. I started writing again. I got the paid assignment done ahead of schedule. I took time out at the end of the day to wind down and slept a whole lot better. Then I took the weekend off for Memorial Day and fell right back into my unproductive habits. I’m going to call that my vacation. I get another assignment tomorrow so I’ll be going back to the now-proven plan. I’m going to get another sub out in the mail by the end of June. This I swear!

I continue to be popular with Hong Kong bots, and my US numbers are starting to jump from single to double digits (10 counts as a double digit, remember). My reader from Switzerland still shows up occasionally, and there’s a new one from Singapore. I can’t believe I don’t have more traffic from Russia; I thought they had bots that hit blogs for a living. What’s the holdup, comrade?

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I could have had a second sub this month, but didn’t find out about the opportunity until the deadline had passed. Maybe that was a good thing. I’ll let you folks be the judge. The publisher was Berkley Books, a division of Penguin Random House so it’s legit. They had a three-day open window, same deal as the one I entered: synopsis, set number of opening pages. More genres, though. Mine’s a mix of a couple but still would have fit. Except for…

After the fact I went on the site and checked their specs. It was pretty much the same as the one I entered, with one additional paragraph that included the words “diversity” and “fresh new voices.” That right there told me all I needed to know, and what my chances would have been. They want publishable (and hopefully sellable) books, but that’s secondary. Their primary goal is to show how progressive they are by checking as many diversity boxes as possible.

I am a woman. Once upon a time that by itself would have made me a diversity hire. However, just being a woman isn’t good enough any more. Gay is the in thing now. Or being trans. Or being a person of color, as long as it’s other than white. If you’re a black trans lesbian with no previous experience, you can write your own ticket. Don’t believe me? Check out who’s been writing Marvel and DC comics for the last five years. In addition to being female, I’m white, straight, and over the age of 50. Strikes one, two and three right there. My book’s protagonist is a straight white male doing traditional straight white male things (he’s a private detective). Forget about getting a turn at bat; I’m not even going to make it to the plate. Not at any publisher that openly states they’re looking to include inclusivity.

What I’m about to say is going to be offensive to a lot of people. Fortunately, most of those people are on Twitter/X, which I’m not. I doubt if any of them are reading this blog. I should be safe enough to speak my mind.

Here’s the deal: I’m a white woman. I grew up in the ‘60s in white suburban neighborhoods in a lower middle class white family. This continued into adulthood, by chance more than choice: I moved to Amish country to be close to a job and just stayed there. Not much racial or gender diversity on display here. That’s my background, that’s my comfort zone. It’s what I know. Writers are always told to “write what you know.” When I write, all my characters start out white and straight. Except when I’m writing M/M romance; then they’re white and gay. Or nonhuman. But that’s a whole other topic. The point is, white and straight is my default mode, and that’s not in fashion right now. What, and who, I choose to write about may cost me sales, or even publishing contracts.

But here’s the thing. I’m not against diversity. I grew up reading science fiction, where all the nerds and misfits hung out. All the ideas conservative mainstream publishers wouldn’t touch were crammed into one little genre. So were all manner of writers, of varying skin tones and sexual persuasions. Nobody really gave a damn, as long as they told a good story. Yeah, women still had a better chance if they used initials or unisex pen names, but that was fading out by the ’70s. Mostly. J. K. Rowling’s publisher advised her to use initials because they were afraid boys wouldn’t read a book written by a woman. Again, I digress.

My characters start out white and straight. That doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. I’ve already had characters swap race and gender while I was writing. My M/M romance Belonging was conceived with a traditional straight man and woman couple until I discovered Supernatual. Then it became secret Wincest fanfic. It was my best seller to date, by the way. I “cast” Sam and Dean in another book. Dean made it through intact, but Sam turned into a brownskinned man. His character just worked out better that way. I’ve got another book, already written, in that stalled series of mine, where a character who was meant as a walk-on tribute to Buffy the Vampire Slayer morphed into a bisexual Pacific Islander/Hawaiian woman and became vital to the plot. I was really proud of myself for that one. I was checking diversity boxes that didn’t even exist. That was a couple years back, though. Pacific Islanders have their own tribute month now, shared with Asians.

Maybe I could have sent that one to Berkley’s open call. I don’t think it would have helped. Because, in spite of her inclusion, the lead is still a straight white male, in love with a straight white woman. (Who shapechanges into a rattlesnake. Where’s the reptilian shapeshifter representation? Huh?) I’ve already got plans to give Hawaiian Girl her own story, but that won’t happen until after the series is over, and the series heroes are all straight white males. With guns. From Texas. I think that project may be doomed.

Too bad. That’s how I conceived that series, and that’s what I’m sticking with. Same for the detective story. It was supposed to be an all-white cast, but the mercenary characters’ series had been created in the late 1970s, so their number had to include a token Black member. He ended up adding to the story, and necessitated a race change for another character. None of that changed my lead, who will remain straight and white. Nor would it have swayed the editors, whose quest for good books is just a smokescreen for an opportunity to virtue signal.

Books aren’t supposed to be about representation. They’re supposed to be about the story. If a trans black lesbian writes a compelling, superior book, by all means snatch it up and get it into bookstores. That’s what you should have been doing all along. Quality books by any writer deserve to get a shot. Those books enrich us all. But if you’re going to pass over good books in favor of box-checking, or force changes to a story in the name of “representation,” that’s not diversity. That’s tokenism, and that doesn’t help anybody. Least of all the writers and the markets you ignored for decades and are now trying to court because it’s trendy. And now that I’ve successfully shot my budding career in both feet, I’ll shut up, like a good little straight white woman writer. See y’all next week.

 

Week 20 - Do You Feel Lucky?

 

Update – Pretty much more of the same. I worked on a paid assignment, wrote daily flash while letting the books languish, and far too often ended up wasting time playing computer games. But there’s been a change. The writer’s block may be over. Yesterday I went back to the detective novel and it’s flowing again. Once I get through the current scene, it should be smooth sailing—or, in my case, typing. I may actually have a finished, polished novel ready when/if I hear back from the open call. And I’m doing it all while tackling yardwork and putting out a blog on a weekly basis. Yay, multitasking!

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That’s the good news. But there’s a lot more to it if your goal is to sell the book you’ve written. There’s rewriting, polishing, editing, and getting the word out/promotion so people are clamoring to buy the thing when you’re finally ready to publish. And one other thing that’s just as vital as any of those and maybe more important than even the writing itself, and that’s luck. You can write a brilliant book, but if you can’t get it in front of an editor who agrees with you, it’ll end up back in the drawer. Or you can write a crappy book but it hits a chord with the reading audience and word of mouth does your PR for you. Or you can write a so-so book that has so-so sales but at least you made it onto bookstore shelves, but only because it landed on the right desk in front of the right person at the right time. Countless stories told by countless successful, unsuccessful and semi-successful writers down through the decades have led me to the conclusion that talent, hard work and persistence in submitting don’t mean diddly without a nudge from that fickle bitch, Dame Fortune. Like it or not, more often than not it’s all pretty much just a crapshoot.

Which really scares the crap out of me, because my luck has never been the best.

Here’s the most recent example: Saturday. The Preakness. I hadn’t been planning to watch, but I was between putting off writing and putting off yardwork so I decided to tune in. The horses were just heading into the gate. I picked one at random, the aptly-named-for-writers Imagination. Didn’t know a thing about him. He had good odds, and the announcers said he’d never placed lower than second in any of his previous runs.

The race begins. My horse and another horse shoot out of the gate and surge to the front of the pack. There they stayed, right up until they hit the top of the stretch. The one who’d been in the lead the whole race stayed there and ended up winning. My horse did a fade and ended up finishing seventh in a field of eight. Wouldn’t be the first time Imagination wound up letting me down.

Nor was this whole scenario anything new. Back in ancient times, when I was a kid, the fam used to tune in for the Kentucky Derby and sometimes the Preakness and the Belmont. We’d pony up (yes, that’s a pun) a quarter apiece; the money would go to whoever’s pick did best. Picks were made at random so no one could claim the favorite. I never won. Ever. Each time my chosen horse would make a great showing and then run out of gas at the stretch, coming in behind everyone else’s. Such is luck.

One time, by chance, I did pick the favorite. Finally, the money would be mine! Guess again. At the finish line my pick was nowhere in sight. During the run the favorite pulled up and never finished the race. We got a post-race shot of him being led back to the stables. I think that was the last time I ever bet on a horse race. Experience taught me when it comes to money I do have luck, and it’s bad.

Imagine how I feel about getting my work before a name publisher, let alone scoring decent sales.

And yet…hope springs eternal. I keep writing, and I keep sending things off to market. Because you never know. Things could turn around. Because as bad as it can be, it’s not going to get any better if I stop sending stuff out.

That’s the secret to success. You write and write and work your ass off to improve. Make that sucker the best sparking manuscript it can be. Luck’s good and all, but it never hurts to give your work a fighting chance. Sooner or later it’s going to land on the right desk at the right time, and you’ll be on your way.

Stellar luck to everyone, and may the odds be ever in your favor. See y’all next week.

Week 19 - Frozen

 

Update – Not much went on last week. I had a boring assignment—simple typos and punctuation errors on almost every other line made it drag on and on—to the point I finally just quit working and went back to computer games. Yes, I had a relapse. I got the assignment done before deadline, but my own writing, not to mention the yard work, suffered as a result. It doesn’t help that my area has been stuck in a bad weather pattern of primarily clouds and drizzle with only glimpses of sun. I think the sun is getting back at us for being eclipsed last month. It’s just warm enough and wet enough that the grass grows like mad but you barely get the chance to mow it. Supposedly this should be prime writing time for me, but…

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I might as well come right out and say it. I’m caught in yet another writer’s block. I’m not sure what brought it on. I’d blame the tooth extraction, which restricted my diet to soft, mainly healthy foods for almost a week (and cost me almost $700 I don’t have), but this has been going on since before my dental work. Ditto for the eye exam and the new glasses—which are working fine, by the way, so I can’t blame that either. I’m also able to eat junk food again, which I proved by devouring an entire bag of potato chips (sour cream and onion ripple chips, yay!) in lieu of a regular meal. I’ve been moving around more and sleeping relatively well on a regular basis, so that can’t be it.

The last time I worked on the detective book was when I sent out the sub package. That was late April. Haven’t touched it since. I thought about going back to the romance but didn’t. I have a notebook of flash scenes to comb through in search of inspiration but haven’t looked at it. A couple of ideas surfaced briefly and then sank again. For nearly an entire month all I’ve written is nightly flash, and even that feels lifeless.

And then I gave up over the weekend and got back into the computer games. This time it was Sudoku. Spent an entire work day on that one. That’s what I did instead of wrapping up the paid assignment. It almost went to two days, except I got so furious at myself I shut down the computer, went outside and mowed a section of lawn I’d meant to tackle over the weekend. Then I went grocery shopping and bought that bag of chips I talked about. The adrenaline surge got me back on track and I easily finished the paid assignment before deadline. I’m feeling better now. But I still can’t write.

I think I’m having a crisis of self-confidence. It’s only recently that I’ve come to realize how derivative a lot of my ideas are. And that I may be neuro-divergent, so my characters don’t necessarily act like normal people. It doesn’t help that the publishing world has changed drastically since my childhood, when SF and comic books ignited a desire in me to tell stories for a living. Back in those simpler, non-corporate days, even mediocre writers could earn a living wage just by churning out books. It’s not that easy now. Not to mention you can find yourself abruptly cancelled by internet trolls for, well, pretty much anything, or nothing at all. This is why I’m not on social media.

Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself. There are a lot of writers worse than me out there who are selling well and making a living. Maybe that’s what I need—hit the libraries, find a really hideously-written best seller and boost my self-esteem by figuring out how I would have done it better. I’ve already got one in mind: a recent YA book by a former romance writer that, to judge by the reviews, borrows heavily from the work of one of my favorite SF authors. It even has a plucky girl protag who speaks in current American slang even though the story takes place on an alien world with no connection to Earth. Sounds like just the thing to make me feel like writing again. That’s how a lot of us got started: we read a bad book and threw it against the wall while yelling, “I could write better than that!” And proceeded to do so, either via fan fiction or diving straight into submitting to publishers. Because you don’t need to be a good writer to sell a book. You just need to tell a good story. If the reader’s entertained, they won’t care if the book is bad. The only time you fail is when you fail to be entertaining. Or fail to write anything at all.

You can’t give the people what they want. The people don’t know what they want until they see or read it. Or, as someone once responded on an internet discussion about what editors were looking for: “Nobody was looking for Harry Potter.”

I can write. I can sell what I’ve written. I’ve done both before. Just stop worrying about being perfect and sit down and tell the story. If people like it, they’ll let me know. If not…what the hell. I’ve got plenty of others waiting in line. I just have to get myself to write them.

But not today. Today I’m going to get out of the house and see if I can find a copy of that book so I can see how bad it really is. I also want to get a copy of Last Action Hero, another story about a fictional character finding himself in the real world, with the added bonus of starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m going to need another bag of chips. See y’all next week.

Week 18 - Help! Skynet is Trying to Steal My Job!

 

Update – trying to catch up on the dates here… This should be for the week covering April 28-May 4. What did I accomplish? Writing-wise, not a whole helluva lot. I haven’t touched the detective story since I subbed the chapters and synopsis. I haven’t even combed through my files. I’ve mostly been working on a paid assignment and writing nightly flash. Part of my work week got taken up by a tooth extraction and the subsequent recovery (I’ve learned I can survive on bananas and apple sauce) and the need to leave the house to buy new glasses. And I took Saturday off because it was Free Comic Book Day and I had to drive into the city to pick through the offerings. I’ve been going to that store for 40 years, give or take. This is its third location. The owner (actually the second owner) recently retired, so it’s now on its third owner. I hardly buy anything any more but I like to keep up with the industry. Maybe I should do a sequel to the detective novel, with the detective helping out a comic book character. No, wait, that was Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Never mind.

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The following is an unhinged rant based on nothing but my own paranoia. Take it seriously at your own risk.

As mentioned, I made a sub to a publisher last month. Normally agent-only, this publisher has an open call every year, usually covered by the SFF thread on the writers’ site I belong to. This year was different. The news was that subs to the open call would be sorted by an AI (artificial intelligence) program, which would skim the entries and assign them to editors looking for that sort of book. That right there killed a lot of people’s interest. Doesn’t sound like many folks bothered to enter this year. Except for me and maybe a handful of others. But now I’m getting second thoughts.

I’ve been vaguely aware of the artistic community’s concerns about AI producing artwork. Here’s how it works: you feed existing images (created by people) into the system. The system scans, or “scrapes” the data and learns how to create its own “art” based on prompts from the programmer. The more it ingests, the more it “learns,” the harder it gets to tell a computer-generated result from that by someone with a pencil or paintbrush. It used to be easy because the computer would give people eight-fingered hands, but that bug seems to have been squashed.

So HAL-9000 can “paint” a Bob Ross picture now. So what?

So there are programs that can replicate a person’s voice to the point you can’t tell the fake from the real thing. Someone’s already produced a fake Taylor Swift song. How soon before we get a “new” Beatles album? They can write, too. There’s the dude on YouTube who fed dozens of Batman comics into his system and then had it write a comic book script. It was hilarious in its ineptitude but had its own illogical logic. And the Joker’s dialogue was eerily on point.

Then there was the freelance writer who said her assignments dried up almost overnight because her clients found they could use their systems to generate press releases and ad copy. Filler stories like coverage of town hall meetings have already appeared in newspapers, generated by machines that were given meeting notes and a general template.

And now here we are, sending our prose to a publisher that told us up front it’s going to feed our words, our ideas, our writers' voices into a machine.

The Batman fan already proved AI can write a story. A story that sucks, but most first drafts by beginners suck. We get better with practice. And by reading—or scanning—and studying the work of better writers. How long before the machines get good enough to put us writers out of business?

Don’t laugh. I learned many sorry truths during my years in the work force, and here’s one of the top five: if your job can be done by someone or something else for less money, sooner or later it will be. This is why factory work went overseas, and why want ads include lines like, “Recent grads encouraged to apply. Experience not required.”

Not to mention machines don’t require a paycheck, days off or medical benefits. And they never demand a raise.

“Yeah,” I hear you asking, “but can it write a book? A good book? Something people will be willing to read?”

Yes. I think it can. If not right at the moment, then very, very soon. I doubt if the top tier, like Stephen King and John Grisham, are shaking in their boots right now. The rest of us, though, better start looking over our shoulders. Because there’s a genre out there that’s ripe for the plucking if you’ve got an AI program and a hankering for money.

I’m talking about category romances. You know, the kind Harlequin puts out. Boy meets girl (or boy meets boy, or they/them meets him/her, or whatever) and they fall in love. Details vary, but that’s essentially the plot. Harlequin used to have specific formulas (maybe they still do) for each of their imprints so readers knew exactly what they were getting each time they cracked a cover. They’re short, quick beach reads or rainy afternoon books, the literary equivalent of a McBurger. Time was, if you were good enough, fast enough, and could write to the formula, you could make a halfway-decent living at this.

That’s what I’ve been aiming for, what with all the looming bills. Except I’m not that fast, and have this pesky habit of veering off the formula.  Whereas a well-trained AI program could, in theory, poop out a readable romance novel in a matter of days. Or hours. It may not be high quality, but then again, neither are mine. Neither are most books in any genre. The difference is, a publisher would have to pay me advances and royalties. With AI, any profits go straight into the publisher’s pocket.

Let’s assume readers can’t tell the difference, or don’t care as long as they enjoyed the story. Whose book do you think the publisher is going to invest in?

It wouldn’t mean the end of human writers. There are stories only real writers can bring to life, and cream will always rise to the top. But the other eighty percent of books on the stands? The ones that go into spinner racks at truck stops or bargain bins at indy book stores? The writers of those books are doomed. Once AI learns how to crank out generic entertainment, most of us bottom- and mid-listers are going to be out of work.

Looks like I’d better get my fingers in gear before that happens. If it hasn’t happened already. Any day now Publisher’s Weekly is going to run an article revealing, “Ha ha, that book you read last week was written by a machine. Bet you couldn’t even tell.” A lot of readers will probably just shrug. And a lot of us writers will be forced to hang up our laptops.

Geez, I hope all those Hong Kong bots aren’t scraping this blog for ideas, or for training purposes. I may have just given the game away.

I think I’ll get an Alexa. When I ask it a question and it responds with, “Hasta la vista, baby” in an Austrian accent, I’ll know the jig is up. See you all (maybe) next week.

 

Week 17 - The Trouble with Goals

 

Update – other than subbing to a publisher’s open call, last week was pretty slow. I spent most of my time doing paid work and worrying about a scheduled tooth extraction, more over the cost than over the operation itself. Everything went well, by the way. By next week I’ll be able to eat crunchy junk food again. In the meantime, I’ve been surviving mainly on bananas and apple sauce and probably losing weight. There’s an upside to everything.

I started going through my old files for flashes and snippets I can use to either write stories for subbing or collect as is for a self-published humor anthology. The one file dates back ten years. So far, I haven’t found anything useful in it. All the entries pretty much all suck. I picked up one of my more recent longhand flash notebooks and I’m having much better luck. There’s the start of a whole novel in there that I began and may go back to, along with a bit that would fit the anthology. And that’s just in the first five pages. I might have considered the flash bit for expansion, except Stephen King used a similar idea for one of his earlier stories, so probably not. Even though mine would be totally different—I can even think of a romance angle—somebody on the internet would be bound to complain because the internet complains about everything. This is why I avoid social media.

My goal for this month is to get off my butt and get serious. I managed to make a sub in April; I need to do a lot more of that if I want to pay off my bills. I’ll be skimming those notebooks for story prompts on a nightly basis, and hopefully longhand some future subs. I also want to get this blog back on schedule. This update is supposed to cover April 21-27, and here we are in May already, a full week behind. So I’m going to aim to post again on Monday or Tuesday, then settle into my original post day of Sunday once I’m caught up. Hopefully that will get me back on track.

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So here we are at the start of May, almost halfway through the year. So far, not so good. I have yet to write a book (first draft) in a month. I have yet to finish either of the two books I started the year with. At least I had enough of the one book in good enough shape that I was able to make up a submission package for that publisher. Now I just have to finish the second draft, do some hands-on research to make sure everything’s good, do a spot-check third draft to iron out the wrinkles and I’ll be prepped and ready for a possible acceptance call. I’ve got a year to do all this. Can I make it? I dunno. See the opening lines of this paragraph.

Setting goals is the easy part. Seeing them through takes determination, hard work and faith in your own abilities, plus rock-solid belief that yes, things will come out in your favor. I’ve been falling short in all of these, all at once and in various combinations. A lifetime of bad luck and bad job experiences will do that to your confidence. Also, being fast and prolific helps the modern writer, and I’m neither. That’s something else that’ll have to be fixed if I’m going to succeed at this.

Because that’s the trouble with goals. They don’t achieve themselves; you have to work your ass off on a number of levels just to give yourself a fighting chance. Yes, luck helps, but you can’t count on that. Luck only works if you do. Like that open call. I’d been thinking of subbing to that publisher after the book was done, but the opportunity arose and I was ready. I had three edited opening chapters. I had a completed manuscript so I could do a detailed synopsis. I’m a member on a writing site where I learned about the open call and the fact they were taking partials and not complete manuscripts. All that is opportunity. None of it would have meant squat if I hadn’t taken action and sent my entry in.

But it’s not over yet. Now I’m on the clock. I have roughly a year to complete and polish the book. If I’m lucky, it’ll land on the right editor’s desk at the right time. If I did my job right with the partial, crafted an interesting story with original characters and just enough hook to snag attention and make Marketing think, “We can sell this,” then there should be several “right” editors.

And while I’m waiting, I can continue to work on other projects, like short stories and self-publishing and churning out romance novels. The romance books I’m 95% sure will be accepted. But how will they sell? Depends on how hard I work to meet my goals—not just in writing, but in research and sales techniques. The harder I work at the right things, the better my odds become. Then when the sales happen and the money starts trickling (pouring would be better, but I’m staying cautious) in, I can brag to everybody about how “lucky” I was.

None of which will happen if I don’t send things out. I won’t have anything to sub unless I write it first. Maybe my first goal of the month should be, “Establish a viable work schedule and stick to it.” Wait, I tried that last month. The only reason it didn’t work was because I didn’t. Back to my original goal for May: “Get off your lazy ass.” After all, I’ve got hundreds of Asian bots relying on me for weekly content, not to mention the viewer in Switzerland. I can’t just let them down. See y’all next week.