Weeks 27 & 28 - Vindication

 

Update – First of all, I want to thank however many of you—yes, even the bots, and especially you, Switzerland—are actually reading this thing. I’m sorry I’ve let you down. This was supposed to be a blog about me trying to write a book a month over the course of a year. Mostly it’s been one long whinefest of me making excuses and the various creative ways I’ve discovered how to procrastinate. Every now and then I do actually write something, and I did sub the book I’m STILL working on, so it hasn’t been a total loss.

But there’s not much of an update to give because over the last two weeks I haven’t done all that much. June pretty much got eaten up by a mass of overlapping paid assignments—which, to date, I haven’t been paid for. The publishing house is HQ’d in Texas, which has been having problems lately, with hurricanes, flooding, power outages and heat waves. For all I know, the owner is one of the millions of Texans currently without power. Or maybe the bank they use to transfer my money has fallen off the grid, or been washed away. Meanwhile, my ten-year-old furnace has picked right now to have an expensive breakdown, so I could really use that paycheck. Those of you with jobs, start saving NOW. You’re going to need that money down the road, because Social Security won’t pay enough to live on. Assuming it even still exists by the time you turn 65.

I have been going through my old notebooks, and I have uncovered a couple of ideas I want to explore and maybe even turn into quickie books for much-needed cash. But first I have to write them, which for me is clearly the tricky part. I want to say I’ll get my butt in gear and do better, but I can’t give any guarantees. Remember, I’m a writer. We make things up for a living.

$$$$

While screwing off watching YouTube one day—one of the reasons I haven’t written anything but flash in the last two weeks—I came across this video, “My Ex Literary Agent Told the Truth” by a writer going by BBG. The words “literary agent” grabbed my attention so I tuned in. I’ve forgotten how to make links and don’t want to bother with experimenting, so just go to YouTube, type in the title in Search and it’ll pop up. That does work.

Briefly, here’s his tale of woe: his agent invited him out to lunch (her treat, even) and told him she might be able to sell his fantasy book to a subsidiary line of a major Big 5 publisher. However, he would have to make certain changes: 1) change the B-plot romance to a gay relationship and make it more important to the story; 2) de-age the adult protagonists to better fit a Young Adult/New Adult audience; and 3) emphasize the writer’s own sexuality (which he didn’t go into, but let’s assume it’s not straight) when marketing the book. Nothing was said about racial diversity, but that’s okay. If there aren’t any main characters of color, they’ll just put something symbolic on the cover. Worked for Twilight.

In short, the publishers weren’t looking for well-written books, they were looking to check trendy boxes. As the agent told the writer flat out: “They have a quota.”

At which point I nodded my head at the screen and uttered a sigh of relief that I’d missed out on the Berkley open call. I wasn’t being paranoid or defeatist. My adult-themed fantasy with the straight, white male protagonist and his romance with an equally straight white woman is probably unsellable in today’s market, at least if I try to go through traditional publishing. It probably wouldn’t even make it past the query stage. Maybe not even past the agent stage. Not without serious rewrites. I do have a tough prominent female character who, if you squint hard enough, might pass for a lesbian, but since the only other woman in the book is technically her sister there’s no chance for romance there. The new lead would have to be the black kid, the nephew of the writer who created the only black character in the story. Nope, hold on a sec. He’s straight and male. Better gender-swap him. Now the black writer’s niece and the blonde white lesbian can have a steamy romance while solving the mystery. Hell, we don’t even need my original straight male lead.

Yeah, that’s not happening. If you want to read that other book, somebody else will have to write it. I’m sticking to my story as originally conceived. My book would not have been chosen as is, not by a major publisher. And it wouldn’t be my fault. I have been vindicated.

Not that any of this makes me feel any better.

As for the writer in the video, he couldn’t make the changes either. The required changes would have gutted it and destroyed his whole intent. It would have been an entirely different book. It wouldn’t have been his anymore. In the end, he walked away, and so did his agent. At the end of the video we’re told the agent left the industry. She couldn’t sell books any more. Not original books by original writers. Not unless the writers were good at churning out generic box-checking diversity books because that’s all publishers want right now. I’m not sure if it’s what the readers want. If I knew what the readers wanted, I’d be writing that.

Because that’s the only way this climate is going to change. Somebody’s going to publish something that’ll become the Next Big Thing, and all the other publishers will scramble to become the first to be second. The books they’re publishing today will be sitting on Barnes and Noble’s discount shelves, or languishing, barely touched, at library used-book sales.

I hope that writer in the video writes that book. I’d rather it be me, but—well, go back and read the update. Or maybe I can fix that. Who knows? I’ve got the rest of the year to get my act together. See y’all next week.