And then they came for...

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Weeks 22 & 23 - What Grinds My Gears

 

Update(s) – Things went better last week, the week I’m writing about, than this week, the week I’ll be writing about next week. These updates would go better if I wrote them on Sundays, which was my original intention. Last week (May 26-June 1) I got stuff done, including paid work and writing. This week (May 2-May 7, the day I’m typing this) I finally started cleaning the weeds out of the yard and wrestled with a bad bout of constipation, culminating in a two-day descent into computer game hell once again. However, I got back to the writing this morning and I’m confident I can get the paid work done before deadline, so it’s all good. Next week I’ll see about getting myself back onto a less confusing schedule.

$$$$

As I feared, my last posted topic may have had internet repercussions. Over the last week my readership dropped alarmingly. Even the Hong Kong bots deserted me. Traffic’s slowly picking up again, though, so maybe it was just a glitch. And Switzerland’s still there. (waves) Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

To summarize, with clarifications: I am not against racial and sexual diversity in my reading and viewing material. I’ve included diverse characters in my own works, but only if it enhances the plot. I wasn’t planning on adding other races to the cast of my current book, but the Token Black Mercenary character started developing a personality, which led me to the conclusion his writer must have been a black man. This gave my main bad guy, the greedy, self-absorbed editor, the excuse to fire him for the crime of Writing for a White Audience While Black. The editor does a lot of reprehensible things, but that one should guarantee his infamy. It also made a crucial info source black as well, because he was the fired writer’s nephew and had actually met the two other writers the detective’s looking for. Plus it solved a background issue of my story being set in Philadelphia. Philly, like most major cities, is a melting pot of what Star Trek used to refer to as “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” If I hadn’t included at least one Person of Color in the cast, it really would have been a fantasy.

What I do object to is having diversity forcibly crammed down my throat, in the form of a constant stream of feisty Girl Bosses who can do no wrong (think Mary Sue, but as a lesbian POC), or race- and/or gender-swapping established characters in the name of “equality” (Doctor Who; Thor: Love and Thunder). I tune in to see Superman stopping bad guys, not Superman’s young-adult bisexual son sexting with his gay boyfriend. Yes, that scene appeared in a comic book.  There are exceptions: My Adventures with Superman, the Adult Swim cartoon, is a true delight, even though Lois Lane is now biracial (she’s half Korean, according to the producers), and Jimmy Olsen appears to be permanently black, continuing the race swap initiated by the CW’s Supergirl show. That’s because everyone, regardless of skin tone, still remains true to their original characterizations. The writers clearly respect the characters and their history. That isn’t always the case. When the writers start using someone else’s characters to pound their pet agendas into our heads, it’s time to close the book or turn off the TV. Or get the hell off the internet.

But what really ticks me off is what may be the true motivation behind the surge of inclusivity, at least for the corporations that own the IP rights to all these characters getting largely-inappropriate makeovers. As with everything in a capitalist society, it all comes down to money.

$$$$

Three real-life stories, two of which happened to me personally, two of which deal with diversity…at least on the surface. Story 1: Back around 2008 I lost what turned out to be my last full-time job when the company, a printing firm, sent its work to India. This was also around the time the economy tanked, and finding jobs was a chore. I got lucky and signed on for the US Census, essentially a two-year temp job with no benefits but great pay. When that ended I still had unemployment to tide me over while I started a new job hunt in the slowly-recovering economy. I found two possibilities on the internet: a newspaper editorial position that, from the location and description, sounded like my old newspaper job, just under new management. The other was a writing job I’d applied to years ago but didn’t get; I think I may have botched the interview. Both were the types of jobs I’d been doing for years, had an interest in and experience with. Both ads contained the lines Recent graduates encouraged to apply. Experience is fine, but not required.

In short, they’re not looking for pros. They’re looking for young and cheap. Preferably women, because women traditionally get paid less. That’s how I got to be an editor in the first place. I wasn’t young, but I had no experience and would accept pittance wages to get it. The other woman, who had experience, wanted more money. Guess who got the job. Now I had experience and needed full-time work. Good luck with that.

I clicked on the Apply Now tab for the newspaper job, only to learn it was already filled, probably internally. I sent a resume to the other one. Never heard back. They probably saw the writing-related experience I had and decided I was too rich for their blood. I eventually got my work-from-home job, so things worked out, more or less.

Story 2:  It’s a few years later. Harlequin, the romance publisher, was looking for editors for Carina Press, which I think is an e-book line. They had a list of qualifications that my work-from-home job had given me some experience in. The pay sounded a lot better than what I was getting. They also used the “recent grads” line, along with a new one encouraging interest from members of “traditionally marginalized groups.” Again, experience was welcome but its lack was not a deal breaker, and diversity was a plus. I sent in my resume, answering all the questions. And got a reply: “We’re not going to interview you.” It’s the only line I remember from their response. Not even: “We had 1000 applicants who live across the street from our offices” or even “We’ve decided to hire last year’s interns.” My application itself got shot down in flames. I wish they hadn’t responded at all. Nothing like asking about a job and getting a smack in the face for it.

Months later, I checked out their “meet our new members!” page to see who’d won the lottery. It looked like they did hire a lot of interns, or people who actually knew their way around a publishing house. Can’t fault ’em for that. Some of their hires had pronouns, like “they/them”. Hey, if you’re qualified, fine. What you do on your own time shouldn’t matter anyway. But my favorite part of this story is what happened some weeks afterwards. Both the editor and the assistant editor (I think, but can’t recall for sure, if she was the one who responded to my application) were abruptly fired. The editor was on vacation at the time. She’d been there for years and had built that line from the ground up. She was also probably pulling in a higher salary than the new kids would be getting. Last I heard, she was marketing herself as a “freelance editor” and offering paid tutorials in editing. She’s not young and cheap any more, and probably not diverse either. Such is karma.

Story 3: One of the writers at DC Comics—Zack Snyder, I think, I don’t feel like double-checking—[Correction: I ended up looking it up; Scott Snyder is the comic book writer. Zack (no relation) is a director who has done DC-related movies] had been running a workshop in comic book writing for several years before I learned about it. I applied for what turned out to be the last one. Only a set number, maybe ten, would be invited, but some of those lucky few would get jobs writing for DC. I was always more of a Marvel fan, but what the hell. I always wanted to write for comics. This could be my last shot.

Well, it missed. I didn’t get picked. I did not get to take part in the workshop. In the end, Snyder picked a trans woman. Most of his previous picks were people of color, trans, black, and any and all combinations thereof. Word is that Snyder, himself a straight white man, was deliberately seeking diversity hires to broadcast his “wokeness” and secure his own job. Hell, if I’d known that was a requirement, I could have faked being a lesbian. I even supported the Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy ship before it became canon. But there y’go. Now DC Comics is in the dumpster and the writers are begging their fans for money to pay their bills because wages are even lower than they were back in the 1990s, when comics were popular. And good. And yet these people are still getting assignments, although the work’s drying up as the backlash sets in. I probably get more from Social Security than they do writing for comics. I think I may have dodged a bullet here.

$$$$

All this is why I’m glad now I missed out on the Berkley open call. That “fresh, new voices” bit was the warning shot: published writers, fogies over 40 and white folks stay away. We’re not looking for good books; we’re looking to check boxes. Quality is an afterthought. My guess is, advances are going to be a lot smaller than they were ten to twenty years ago. Assuming they even pay advances. If it’s e-books, they offer a percentage of net sales. Either way, the publisher’s going to make money; you can bank on that. The writer? Maybe not so much. But with very few exceptions, that’s always been the case.

And yet I persist. There’s nothing much else I can do. I’m no longer young and cheap, and I’ve always been boringly white and straight. I have become unhireable. Might as well go out doing something I enjoy. And no, I don’t mean playing computer games. See y’all next week.  

 

Week 13 - Should It Stay Or Let It Go?

 

Update – Ran into another case of time managementitis, and had to spend the bulk of Easter Weekend wrapping up paid work before the Monday deadline. Before that, though, I did get back into the detective story. I came up with a reason why the love interest definitely needs to have a showdown with her dad. Hint: he was a church elder before he became a zombie hunter, and lately he’s been talking about the Biblical story of Lot and his daughters. Look it up; it’s a doozy. The woman should have no trouble at all now turning against her father, and with the readers’ blessing. That’s one problem solved. I also came up with a much better action for the writer’s revenge. I hinted at it in the first draft, but only recently decided on switching things up. It eliminates filler and makes more sense. I’ll be getting back to that later this morning. I’ve been thrown off track already this week by the discovery of a puddle of water on the floor of my laundry room, and the secondary discovery that my plumber won’t poke around under a mobile home. You have to hire specialists now. The other plumber I called won’t go under trailers either, but they’re willing to send a guy out to check it over. It may be an inside leak in the washing machine, or rainwater seeping in from somewhere. I won’t know until Friday, which is the soonest he can get here. In the meantime, I mop periodically. It’s always something.

$$$$

The above illustrates why I don’t have more books out, and why it takes me so long to finish something. It’s not just writer’s blocks, depression and life shit happening. I can, eventually, get a draft done. But then what?

Back in the days of yore, when I read how-to-write books and magazines, one repeated bit of advice was, “Finish the draft, then let it sit for (a week, a month, however long you feel comfortable with).” It’s to let that first hot thrill of creation die down so on the next pass you can view your work with a bit of distance and catch all the fubars and logic errors you missed while you were typing. Like Maggie having green eyes and a husband on page 27 and then being blue-eyed and single six chapters later. Or—one of my personal favorites, delivered by Stephen King himself in The Tommyknockers—a character who lost all her teeth several chapters in, but towards the end bares those now-missing teeth at the protag. She must have slipped off to the dentist between chapters.

I imagine this is where plotters have the advantage over pantsers. Plotters know their story from start to finish before they even start typing. Pantsers make it up as they go. Hence the bright idea that initially kicked off the story may no longer even be relevant by the time you get to the end. Characters may need to be added, or cut, or given their own separate story if they’re not important to the one you’re writing but still try to take over anyway. (All of this has happened to me.)

Here’s where my slow writing habits actually pay off. By the time I finally finish a first draft, it’s been so long since I wrote the beginning all the mistakes practically leap off the page at me. Also, all the changes I made along the way are still relatively fresh, so I can go back and set them up properly, and cut any superfluous subplots or characters in the process. By the time I reach the end it’ll have aged properly and I’ll know whether it works or not, or if it too needs to change.

That’s just the second draft, though. It doesn’t mean the book is finished. How long do you let a story cool down before you start revising? When do you know it’s truly done and fit to be sent out into the world?

Answer: you don't. It depends. I wrote the first draft of this book longhand two years ago. I let it sit for a couple of months before I got back to it. I’m not even through halfway through typing and and I’m still getting fresh ideas. This is what froze me on the series. What if I publish Book #1, get up to Book #3 and suddenly get a hot inspiration that would vastly improve the series as a whole, but contradicts most of (done and published) Book #1?

As I’ve said many times before: my brain and I have issues.

Which leads into another problem related to my slow pace. Back in the days when traditional publishing was the only game in town, it was okay if you only published one book a year. Two if you wrote genre and were popular. If you wanted to write more than that, you had to use a pen name (which, to return to Stephen King, is how "Richard Bachman’s" career started). But now we’re in the age of ebooks and self-pubbing, and all bets and rules are off. Prolific writers can put out a book a month, if they’re so inclined. There’s no publishing company to whine about flooding the market. In fact, oversaturation is encouraged. If somebody likes your book, they’ll want to read more, and they’ll want to read it now. If you’re writing a series, you can publish an installment every month if you’re up to it. In fact, a brisk schedule’s encouraged. We’ve got short attention spans these days. We don’t want to wait any more. We find something we like, we want to binge. Wait too long and the audience gets antsy and switches the channel. Or moves on to another writer.

Some writers can pop out a book every month (or more, if they’re writing to a formula. This is handy if you’re doing romance.) Some will actually be good. The bulk will probably be crappy because they weren’t given time to lie fallow between drafts. Some may not even get a second draft. If the readers don’t care then it doesn’t really matter. As a writer, though, you should care, unless you’ve signed a contract and you’re on a deadline. Or you’re hacking out stuff for quick cash. In that case, do what you have to and let mistakes slide. That's what the editors are for.

What I’m going to have to do is follow the second bit of advice that tended to come with the first one. Write your book, set it aside for a cooling-off period—and promptly start your next book. Pretty soon you’ll have a pile of drafts. Then you go back to the first one and revise. And so on down the line. At some point one of them will be ready to sub. You’ll know which one, and when. Send it out, start a new one, continue revising the others. When it sells and readers clamor for more, you’ll be ready for 'em.

That’s what I’ll be doing. At some point I will be writing a book a month. Doesn’t mean I’ll be subbing it the following month. Eventually I’ll have enough in the queue to start sending them out. Then there will be a deluge, and everybody will say, “OMG, she’s fast!” Once I’ve got a loyal following, and sufficient sales, maybe then and only then will I be able to slow down.

If we get to around September and my books start appearing on Amazon, you’ll know this worked. If not, it’s not because the plan itself is bad. It’s because I screwed up, or lazed  off, or got carpal tunnel or something. Or injured my leg because the floorboards in the laundry room rotted out due to the leak. Well, that’s getting looked at Friday. Updates to come next week. See you then.

 

Here's Where the Fun Begins

 

I might as well admit it now: the series has officially gone on the back burner. It’s not dead, it’s just resting. The side project is now the main project. I’ve been typing up the longhand in between paid assignments, doing spot research as I go along. Eventually I’ll reach the point where I’ll need to go to Philadelphia to scout locations. Sure, I could do that through Google Maps and websites, but where’s the fun in that? I deliberately chose Philly as my location because it’s within driving distance. Any excuse to get out of the house and not work.

Currently I’ve hit a bit of a snag. I read over the longhand before I type it up, in case I need to fix, add, subtract or otherwise change something. Well, Chapter 5 is going to need to be entirely rewritten. It introduces a main cast member, who I didn’t know when I created her. I discovered who she was as I went along. Now that I’m on the second draft, I need to make her match up with what I learned about her in the first draft. For instance, I’d originally intended for her and the PI main character to hook up. That isn’t how it turned out. She ended up hooking up with the caveman and the PI found love elsewhere, with a character I hadn’t even conceived of when I started writing. Hence the need for a new Chapter 5.

Because that’s both the joy and the bane of being a pantser: there’s no road map. You sit down and you find out what happens. You may not even have a plot when you begin; I didn’t with this book. I started with two characters and a premise: a caveman, claiming to be a fictional character, hires a private investigator to track down his author and find out why he’s been pulled into the real world. Plot, characters, incidents, ending and themes all popped up as I went along. When I was done I had a contradictory mess, but at least it had a linear plot and a satisfactory ending. And both my protags found true love. Who could ask for anything more?

That was the first draft. Now I’m on the second draft, where I have to make it all make sense. The second draft is for actual writing. Here’s where the fun begins.

For example: the woman in Chapter 5. She’s another fictional character, a ripoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (The publisher specialized in pulp-style knockoff series.) She was pretty generic when I started writing her. Then a chapter or so later, out of nowhere, she started speaking with a New England accent, surprising both me and my PI protag. Not a problem; far from it, in fact. It helped me develop her background. She’s a descendant of Puritans, trained to hunt and destroy supernatural monsters that threaten humanity. As the story went along, I discovered she’s also part demon and can talk to ghosts. For her intro, all I needed was to establish the accent, and show a flash of demon red in her eyes to convince the PI that a) she wasn’t just into cosplay, and b) there might just be something to the caveman’s outrageous story after all. She clinches it with another bit I’d originally introduced later on: she has a magic wad of cash that never runs out, so she can handle expenses when she’s on a case. Proof she’s not from around here. It also explains how fictional characters eat and have homes when they never appear to work at paying jobs. It helps the PI accept the Twilight Zone episode he’s now living in, and he allows her to join their hunt for the missing writer. And now we’re on our way.

Sounds like a pain in the ass, doesn’t it? Yeah, it can be at times. It can also be a lot of fun. Because this is primarily a mystery story, it allows me to play with the readers. The search for the missing writer is just the surface plot. One of the characters isn’t who he appears to be. This leads to a major twist at the climax, which I need to set up so readers won’t throw the book across the room. That means sprinkling in the kinds of clues that don’t look like clues but make sense when you get to the end. A great one hit me out of nowhere as I was nearing the end of the book. I decided to leave that aspect in, and have started laying the groundwork all the way back in Chapter 1. It also ties in to a side note I included that came from the original flash scene, where the caveman complains about retcons—how his writer gave him a sister and killed her off all in the space of a page, and he’s left to deal with memories and emotions for a person who never existed until that moment. That’s a clue now. Wonder if M. Night Shyamalan had as much fun writing The Sixth Sense as I am with this?

That picture up top is a clue too. It’s the scene in Star Wars where Han Solo says, “Here’s where the fun begins.” Mr. Ford never personally appears in my story, but his influence is felt. Indirectly, he’s the reason the writer ends up living where the characters finally find him. Personally, I’m more in the Indiana Jones camp, wandering around a jungle of words looking for hidden treasures. Not to mention my favorite Indy line: “I’m making this up as I go.” If that’s not a pantser, I don’t know what is. For you other pantsers out there, have a blast!