The Evolution of a Text

Huh. It’s mid-April, and this is my first post of the year. Other things have been keeping me much too busy. In fact, the only reason I’m posting this now is that I’m sufficiently stressed out over other affairs that I wanted to do something unimportant, so it won’t matter if I screw it up.

Warning: This is a long post.

Back in February I was invited to write a guest blog entry for a blog devoted to writing advice, which I did, with this result.

However, it took me several tries to get there, and I thought it might be amusing to look at just how it developed. I knew I wanted to write about how would-be writers tend to forget that writing professionally is first and foremost a business, rather than a purely artistic endeavor, so I started out with this:

Why We Write:
Art vs. Commerce

I had never met another writer before I sold my first novel. I had never attended a workshop or taken a creative writing class. I didn’t subscribe to any writers’ magazines or read any books about writing, and back then there weren’t any websites or blogs or newsgroups. I’d never been to a convention of any sort. Everything I knew about the writing business came from reading submission guidelines and Writer’s Market – I believe it was the 1974 edition – or from implications in various story introductions and essays. Oh, or from personal rejections from editors.

(For those of you too young to know about Writer’s Market, it was just what it sounds like, a fat annual hardcover volume listing markets that would consider submissions from freelancers. By the time each volume saw print, many of the listings were out of date. By the time the next edition came out, it seemed as if most of the listings were out of date.)

Perhaps as a result of this isolation, I never had any doubt about what I was doing, or what I wanted out of my writing – I wanted to sell stories that people would enjoy reading.

In May it will be thirty years since my first novel sale, and in that thirty years I’ve met hundreds of writers, attended dozens of workshops, taught writing classes in many forms, and while I still know why I write, I honestly don’t know about a lot of you other folks.

Then I stopped. This wasn’t so much advice as autobiography, which was not what I had been asked for. So I started over, trying to compress the stuff about my own background. I got further this time…

Why We Write:
Art vs. Commerce

I’ve been a professional writer for thirty years, and in that time I’ve met hundreds of would-be writers, in person and online, at conventions and workshops, in classes and contests. Many of them, probably most of them, seem to me to have wrong ideas about the business of writing. A lot of these seem to derive, at some remove, from not being clear about their own reasons for writing.

So let me ask all you would-be writers out there – why do you write? Do you write for love, or for money? Is it art, or commerce?

Do you know?

It does matter.

I sometimes do novel critiques for money, and there’s an assumption built into those that the author whose work I’m assessing is looking to publish it professionally through a regular commercial publisher. When I write up my reports, what I’m doing is giving my best estimate of what needs to be done in order to meet that goal. (Often, this boils down to, “Write a different novel and do a better job of it.”)

I’ve also taught writing classes, and again, there’s an assumption that I’m teaching my students how to produce stories they can sell to commercial publishers. After all, that’s what I do. It’s my known area of expertise, and the reason people are willing to pay me for this stuff.

Every so often, though, I get a critique client or a writing student who has some other goal entirely. I always find this disconcerting. It usually isn’t apparent until I say something like, “No one’s ever going to buy this the way you’ve done it,” only to be answered with, “I’m not trying to sell it.”

Honestly, I don’t understand this. If you aren’t trying to sell it, what do you expect me to teach you?

In one case, many years ago, I was teaching a workshop and had a student bring in a story that was, in my professional opinion, ready to be published. Not only that, but it fit the theme of an open anthology that a friend of mine was editing. I said as much. I said I couldn’t critique it because there wasn’t anything wrong with it. I gave the author the name and address of the anthology editor and told her to send it in, and get ready for her first sale. I did everything but address the envelope for her.

She never sent it. I checked with the anthology editor later, and no such story had ever arrived, nor had the author’s name shown up on any submissions. I even checked with some magazine editors, just in case she’d decided to go that route, rather than the anthology. Nothing.

Eventually I ran into one of her former classmates from the workshop and asked if he knew anything about it. He said that he’d seen her at various workshops over a period of years, and about half her stories were deemed ready to submit to pro markets, but as far as anyone knew she had never actually submitted one, and had no intention of ever submitting one. She liked writing them and hearing people praise them, but wasn’t interested in actually getting anything published.

Now, I have nothing against writing for fun, and sharing your stories with friends. There’s plenty of that on the web, and before we had the web there were fanzines. It’s what most fanfic is all about, too. No, the part I don’t understand is paying hundreds of dollars to attend writing workshops when you aren’t interested in what the workshops are designed to teach, i.e., how to get professionally published. What did she get out of it that was worth the cost?

And I stopped again. I’d gone off on a tangent that might be interesting, but once again, it wasn’t really the advice I wanted to give. I backed up to where I thought I went off the rails and tried again:

Why We Write:
Art vs. Commerce

I’ve been a professional writer for thirty years, and in that time I’ve met hundreds of would-be writers, in person and online, at conventions and workshops, in classes and contests. Many of them, probably most of them, seem to me to have wrong ideas about the business of writing. A lot of these seem to derive, at some remove, from not being clear about their own reasons for writing.

So let me ask all you would-be writers out there – why do you write? Do you write for love, or for money? Is it art, or commerce?

Do you know?

It does matter.

If you’re writing for love, and trying to create art, that’s fine – but then don’t be surprised if you can’t sell it. Publishers are not in business to promote the arts; they’re in business to make money. Yes, they’re happy if they can do both, but money comes first. Money lets them stay in business.

Writers (and many readers) often gripe about seeing “crap” get published and make money – I’ve heard plenty of complaints about the works of Dan Brown or Clive Cussler or Terry Goodkind. They’ll also bemoan how neglected more talented authors are. The fact is, though, that Brown and Cussler and Goodkind sell hundreds of thousands of books and bring in big piles of money, and publishers are in business to make money.

There are those who claim that they sell zillions of books because the publishers put huge amounts of promotion behind them, but that’s reversing cause and effect. Publishers put most of that money into these books and authors only after they’d demonstrated that they’ll sell. Once you know you have a product customers want, it’s worth advertising it; if you have something where you don’t know whether there’s a market, putting money into it is a gamble. It’s much easier to get a snowball effect when the snowball’s already rolling. If publishers really knew how to turn any piece of crap into a bestseller, they’d do it all the time.

Okay, that was better, but still not going quite where I wanted. I tried again.

Why We Write:
Art vs. Commerce

I’ve been a professional writer for thirty years, and in that time I’ve met hundreds of would-be writers, in person and online, at conventions and workshops, in classes and contests. Many of them, probably most of them, seem to me to have wrong ideas about the business of writing. A lot of these seem to derive, at some remove, from not being clear about their own reasons for writing.
So let me ask all you would-be writers out there – why do you write? Do you write for love, or for money? Is it art, or commerce?

Do you know?

It does matter.

If you’re writing for love, and trying to create art, that’s fine – but then don’t be surprised if you can’t sell it. Publishers are not in business to promote the arts; they’re in business to make money. Yes, they’re happy if they can do both, but money comes first. Money lets them stay in business.
This often leads to a basic disconnect between writer and publisher. The writer assumes that his job is to write the absolute best story he can, but what the publisher wants is a story that he can
sell.

These aren’t necessarily the same thing. Pretty much every writer can point to bestsellers that he thinks are crap, but which sell just fine, and then there are those wonderful, brilliant writers whose work doesn’t sell. In fact, the term “a writer’s writer” is often code for “a good writer whose work doesn’t sell worth a damn.”

The fact is, the reading public doesn’t make their buying decisions based on what writers consider quality. Readers buy stuff they expect to find entertaining, and superb writing is fairly low on the list of elements that entertain your typical book-buyer. If the truth be told, there are several features that writers, especially beginning writers, worry about that most readers don’t care about, especially in genre fiction.

Originality, for example. Would-be writers are often obsessed with finding a story idea that no one’s used before. This is especially acute in the science fiction field, but it turns up in mysteries and fantasy and probably other genres I don’t know as well. I’ve been asked hundreds of times, “Has anyone ever used this idea?”

The answer is pretty much always “Yes, but it doesn’t matter.” Brilliant new ideas just aren’t that important. A favorite old story retold well is likely to be received with more enthusiasm than something completely new. How many versions of the Arthurian cycle have been successful? How many reworkings of the Iliad, or the story of Belisarius, or the Orpheus story, have there been? Oh, it’s nice if you come up with some stunning new approach, but it’s not necessary.

Accuracy is another one – but it’s a tricky one. There are things that you absolutely must get right, but what they are depends on your particular audience. If you’re writing a hardboiled detective story and your hero pulls out a gun, you better know what kind of a gun it is, how many rounds it holds, and just what a bullet from it will do. If you say it’s a .38 Police Positive, you better know that that’s a revolver, not an automatic, that it has no safety, that it holds six bullets, and so on.

But you don’t need to know the law, or real police procedures, or what the requirements for a P.I. license are, because readers generally don’t know that stuff.

If you’re writing romance, you don’t need to get the guns right.

If you’re writing science fiction, you don’t need to know much science. What’s important to the story is what your gadgets do, not how they work. Over-explaining will just slow down the story. Unless it’s important to the plot, you don’t need to explain how your starships can travel faster than light; they just do, by authorial fiat.

The only things you need to get right are the ones that will throw the reader out of the story if you get them wrong.

And style – I’ve seen beginning writers rework sentences over and over, trying to make every one into a perfect little gem. Readers don’t care; they just want the story.

That’s the essential thing – the story. Readers want characters they care about, going through experiences that matter. You can have the most brilliantly original idea ever, and if it isn’t part of a good story no one will care. You can have every detail of your setting 100% accurate, and if nothing interesting happens there no one will care. You can have elegant, perfectly-phrased sentences, but if they don’t tell the reader something he wants to know, no one will care.

Those bestselling authors who write “crap” are telling stories that readers care about.

Originality? Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon retells a story that’s been around for centuries.

Accuracy? Dan Brown’s history and theology are nonsense, but The Da Vinci Code sold a zillion copies.

Style? Pick your own example; there are plenty.

But these people are telling stories that catch readers’ interest, that touch something below the conscious level. On a technical level their work may be lousy, but it doesn’t matter.

And then on the other side, I’ve seen unpublished work that was beautifully executed but that’s never going to sell for one reason or another. I’ve argued with writers who won’t compromise their artistic vision.

That was almost right, but it wasn’t really “Art vs. Commerce” anymore. Also, I wasn’t happy with the tone — it seemed too negative. And I wasn’t coming up to a tidy ending. So I retitled and revised it, and here’s what I actually sent in:

Worrying About the Wrong Things

I’ve been a professional writer for thirty years, and in that time I’ve met hundreds of would-be writers, in person and online, at conventions and workshops, in classes and contests. Many of them, probably most of them, seem to me to have misguided notions of what matters in the business of writing. They think that if they can just master all the techniques, and turn out a good enough story, they can sell it.

It doesn’t work like that. It’s not technique that matters.

If you’re writing for love, and trying to create art, that’s fine, go ahead and focus on technique – but then don’t be surprised if you can’t sell it. Publishers are not in business to promote the arts; they’re in business to make money. Yes, they’re happy if they can do both, but money comes first. Money lets them stay in business.

This often leads to a basic disconnect between writer and publisher. The writer assumes that his job is to write the absolute best story he can, but what the publisher wants is a story that he can sell.

These aren’t necessarily the same thing. Pretty much every writer can point to bestsellers that he thinks are crap, but which sell just fine, and then there are those wonderful, brilliant writers whose work doesn’t sell. The term “a writer’s writer” is often code for “a good writer whose work doesn’t sell worth a damn.”

The fact is, the reading public doesn’t make their buying decisions based on what writers consider quality. Readers buy stuff they expect to find entertaining, and superb writing is fairly low on the list of elements that entertain your typical book-buyer. If the truth be told, there are several features that writers, especially beginning writers, worry about that most readers don’t care about, especially in genre fiction.

Sometimes would-be writers worry about stuff because it’s what they learned in English class.

Sometimes they worry about stuff because it’s what workshops focus on.

Sometimes they worry about stuff because it’s cited in “how to” books.

Sometimes they worry about stuff because it’s what they care about.

It’s fine to care about all these things, and to do your best to get it right, but technical quality is not what will make your story sell. There are several things that writing workshops and rabid fans focus on that just aren’t that important in the real world.

Originality, for example. Would-be writers are often obsessed with finding a story idea that no one’s used before. This is especially acute in the science fiction field, but it turns up in mysteries and fantasy and probably other genres I don’t know as well. I’ve been asked hundreds of times, “Has anyone ever used this idea?”

The answer is pretty much always “Yes, but it doesn’t matter.” Brilliant new ideas just aren’t that important. A favorite old story retold well is likely to be received with more enthusiasm than something completely new. How many versions of the Arthurian cycle have been successful? How many reworkings of the Iliad, or the story of Belisarius, or the Orpheus story, have there been? Oh, it’s nice if you come up with some stunning new approach, but it’s not necessary. Your story may be as old as humanity itself; what matters is how well you tell it.

Related to this is the notion that one must avoid any sort of cliché. Writing workshops will often convince beginners to avoid phrases like “white as snow” because they’re clichés.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re clichés What matters is whether they communicate with the reader. “White as snow” works because most people have seen snow, and they know just how purely white it is. It still conjures up a definite image.

“Black as pitch,” on the other hand – how many modern Americans have ever seen pitch? How many even know what pitch is?

It’s not whether it’s a cliché that matters; it’s whether it still conveys what the writer wants to convey.

Accuracy is another issue that writers get hung up on – but it’s a tricky one. There are things that you absolutely must get right, but what they are depends on your particular audience. If you’re writing a hardboiled detective story and your hero pulls out a gun, you better know what kind of a gun it is, how many rounds it holds, and just what a bullet from it will do. If you say it’s a .38 Police Positive, you better know that that’s a revolver, not an automatic, that it has no safety, that it holds six bullets, and so on. Get that wrong, and you’ll knock a lot of readers right out of the story.

But you don’t need to know the law, or real police procedures, or what the requirements for a P.I. license are, because readers generally don’t know that stuff.

If you’re writing romance, rather than mystery, you don’t need to get the guns right. Romance readers generally don’t care.

If you’re writing science fiction, you don’t need to know much science. What’s important to the story is what your gadgets do, not how they work. Over-explaining will just slow down the story. Unless it’s important to the plot, you don’t need to explain how your starships can travel faster than light; they just do, by authorial fiat.

The only things you need to get right are the ones that will throw the reader out of the story if you get them wrong.

And then there’s style – I’ve seen beginning writers rework sentences over and over, trying to make every one into a perfect little gem. Readers don’t care; they just want the story.

That’s the essential thing – the story. Readers want characters they care about, going through experiences that matter. You can have the most brilliantly original idea ever, and if it isn’t part of a good story no one will care. You can have every detail of your setting 100% accurate, and if nothing interesting happens there no one will care. You can have elegant, perfectly-phrased sentences, but if they don’t tell the reader something he wants to know, no one will care.

Those bestselling authors who write “crap” are telling stories that readers care about.

Originality? Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon retells a story that’s been around for centuries.

Accuracy? Dan Brown’s history and theology are nonsense, but The Da Vinci Code sold a zillion copies.

Style? Pick your own example; there are plenty.

But these people are telling stories that catch readers’ interest, that touch something below the conscious level. On a technical level their work may be lousy, but it doesn’t matter. They connect with the reader.

That’s what matters, and that’s what will sell a story, where originality, accuracy, and brilliant prose won’t. You can be hackneyed and inaccurate and sloppy, and it won’t matter, so long as you don’t commit the one unpardonable error, the one thing that really counts.

The one thing you must never be is boring.

If you care to do a side-by-side comparison, you’ll see that Victoria then edited it a little – with permission, and with me approving all the changes – to produce the final version.

Which still isn’t exactly what I’d wanted to say in the first place, but it was close enough, and I wasn’t willing to put in any more work on something I wasn’t getting paid for. So there it is.

5 thoughts on “The Evolution of a Text

  1. Thanks for sharing that. I’ve seen lots of folks put up sketches and color tests of paintings and the like before, but I can’t remember seeing something like this before. It’s very helpful, beyond just the point you were making.

  2. It is interesting to see the progression. When I’m working on an article on security, I have a similar cycle. The first one is usually too flip. The second too grim. The third goes off on a tangent. Usually draft five or six is the one that gets to my first editor. My co-workers usually prefer the first draft, though.

  3. I don’t usually go through this many iterations; usually I work it out better in my head before I actually start typing. This time, though, there wasn’t room in my head, what with all the other stuff I was doing (novels, real estate, etc.).

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