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12/29/2002 Entry: "No more words...please...."

I'd forgotten how desperately slow I am when it comes to editing "Sakura." Four days of work and I'm still in the same two paragraphs. (Nipple? No nipple? Argh.) This bodes poorly for the hoped-for New Year's release. As in, it's not going to happen. Sorry, everyone. (That'll teach me to promise. Again.) Nevertheless, gradual progress *is* being made. Thanks to everyone for their support, and particularly to MD, who seems to have appointed herself my personal cheerleading section. (Hey, doesn't everybody want one of those?) And Skuld-chan, are you the Skuld-chan from Shoujocon? If so, nice to see you again. ^_^

Since the process of editing goes something like this--read paragraph, tweak, look at something else to clear the brain, reread paragraph, tweak, etc.--I thought I'd use some of those in-between moments to ramble about stuff. It beats playing Addictive until my eyesight blurs. (This ended up being so damn long I stuck it on the entry page. Blargh.)

I too have heard the siren song of LiveJournal. Alas, I know I don't have it in me to keep up two personal logs, and I don't want to abandon this one. Besides which, I rather like lurking off here in my un-communitied, non-friends-listed obscurity. I'll be like this eccentric hermit off in the woods with a whole lot of cats and a not very well organized garden, and people can stumble across my hut and we'll all have tea. Or, well, the cats probably won't, but the rest of us will.

Tsaiko, I think it was, posted something recently about trying to figure out how to get published, and mentioned that some of the sites she looked at wanted money to publish her book. Conventional wisdom states that the number one rule of being a published author is this: Money goes toward the author. *Always.* You should not ever, ever pay to have your book published. The only publishing houses that will ask for money from an author are scams or vanity presses; the former will take you for a ride, while the latter will not really earn you any respect, plus you'll have to market and distribute 1500 or more books yourself, which will be a real pain. (Take ten books of the approximate size of your prospective book and stack them on the floor. Now mentally multiply that pile by 150. Where will you keep them? Somewhere where they won't get wet or mangled, hopefully. Assume that all your local bookstores will take one or two--certainly not more than ten. How many bookstores will you visit? Do you have time to hike your books to conventions and sell them yourself? One of the main services of an established publisher is to take care of these problems for you.) I can't really speak to the utility of internet print-on-demand sites or e-book publishing except to say that my perception has been that unless your book is wildly successful a real publishing house would far rather have the first-time rights. (After all, that's one of their main selling points for a book.) So you might be messing up your chances for future publication. If you want your book to appear in ink-and-paper, my suggestion would be to do the dance of solicitation first, to send it to every publishing house that you could stand to have print it, and if they all turn it down to put it in a drawer for a couple of years, then take it out, look at it with fresh eyes, edit and revise, and try again. Self-publish only if there is no other way, or if you have profound moral objections to the sales-oriented model of corporate commercial publishing, and are willing to deal with the consequences of protesting it.

As for agents, it's a catch-22, because agents want to handle authors who have already been published, but it's harder to get published without an agent. You probably do want one, though, because they understand all the legal language in the contracts, and will keep you from signing away rights that you might want to keep. Here are two possible work-arounds. 1) Get a body of short stories published first, in magazines and collections, and then go to an agent with your portfolio and your prospective book. 2) Actually go through the whole submissions process and find a publishing house that's interested in your book. Then, before you sign anything, contact the agent of your choice and tell them that you have a publisher who's expressed interest in buying your work. Either option will show the agent that you're an author with some potential. Again, be wary of book-doctors or "agencies" that want a lot of money from you. A good way to pick an agent is to find someone who handles authors that you like or whose work is similar to your own. (Check out their web sites, or try to talk to your favorite authors at conventions or book signings.)

For anyone who's interested in publishing, I recommend a visit to The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site. Even if you're not planning do do genre work, they have some good articles. (Especially check out their "Writer Beware" and "Writing: The Craft" sections.) You might find Speculations of use too--they're membership-driven, so the non-member version of their market list is way out of date, but you can read the articles for free, and you might find something worthwhile there. ^_^

Getting back to fandom, Nayami was recently expressing distaste at the current state of X and was speculating that I seemed to have given up on CLAMP and to have chucked the whole thing to pursue my own story in "Sakura." Well, not entirely. I haven't given up on CLAMP's X--as naive as it sounds, I still have faith that it's all going somewhere and that I'll appreciate it when it's done. (I actually have rather a lot of hope for Sakurazukamori!Subaru, but expanding upon that requires a lengthy digression into Kabbalah, and I've already spent way too much time on this.) But I was a goofball who started writing "Sakura" without waiting for X to finish, and now I'm stuck with my outdated assumptions. A couple of things from post-9 X have snuck into the story--evil Hinoto, for instance, will find a place--but for the most part there's simply no way to bring "Sakura" back into line with the main continuity, so I'm not even going to try. Take it for what it is: an AU vision, a what-might-have-been in some other world. I almost certainly will write other stories that do follow the true continuity, though--I've got a Karen fic tugging at the back of my brain, for instance, but I want to see what CLAMP does with her first, *before* I start working on my story. (See? She *can* be taught!)

Speaking of CLAMP: The end of world is coming! (They've got those darn cloaks already.) Argh! Must write faster! ...Sorry, I've got a really cool, key idea for the resolution of the final battle, and I want to get to it before CLAMP does so that I'll look Really Smart if they do the same thing--but I want to surprise people with it in the story, so I don't want to tell anybody what it is beforehand. Aren't I silly? ^^;;; *sigh* I guess I can live without that ego-stroke, since at my current speed I probably won't be able to win this race. (I think the paragraph is almost working now, though. Yay.)

Lyn, I cracked up reading your comment about Sorata. Even if I don't know what a shana punim is. So I showed it to Shanti (who presumably does know), and she just about fell on the floor. ^_^

I really need to get around to adding some more weblogs to my link list.... At least I fixed the alphabetization glitch. ^^;;;

Okay, on the X fic review sites: I've been trying to write my opinion on this subject for the last several days, and it keeps turning into a vast and ever-expanding ramble. In its shortest possible form, it goes something like this: I couldn't do what they do because I'm a big soft dork, but I certainly understand the impulse. The more people press for a fandom in which everyone is nice and nobody gets hurt, the more fic bitch sites there will be, and the harsher they'll get. It's a polarizing process, wherein each side keeps exaggerating what makes it different from the other one, until you end up with extreme oppositions glaring at each other from across the fandom. You can't suppress the judgment function without making the fandom blander and, in my opinion, much poorer (it works the other way too, of course; God forbid the fic-rippers ever have the power to squelch the "let's all be nice" crowd), and if you try, then suddenly without warning that shadow bursts forth from the underworld with a mighty "RARR!" and then it's all brains and tentacles and crying fangirls. Not a very pretty sight.

Of course it would be a better world if people who didn't like a particular story or style posted polite, reasoned critiques that carefully took the author's feelings into account while still maintaining a scrupulous standard of honesty. It would also be a better world if the critiquers could count on a polite, reasoned, and appreciative (even when dissenting) response to their comments. Unfortunately, this isn't often the case. C&Cs are time- and labor-consuming, tend not to be appreciated if the author doesn't share the critiquer's fic ethic, and frequently are fraught with peril. "Hmmm," says the fic bitch, "do I put a lot of time and effort into serious and well-thought-out C&Cs that, if I'm lucky, will help this one author, but that are just as likely to be ignored completely or to bring a horde of shrieking fangirls out of their lairs to punish me, or do I do a bitingly humorous rip-job that a lot of people will think is cool and funny, that will draw attention to me and to the things I think are important issues in fanfiction, and that won't really piss off many more people than would otherwise have been pissed off?" Humor is popular, as both the fic-rippers and the OOC parody authors know.

There's certainly an element of ego-stroking involved, too, whether you create or partake of such a site: "Did you see how *bad* that was? Ha! I would never write something *that* bad! (Aren't I superior? Now pet me, dammit.)" It's the same reason people laugh at the Darwin Awards ("How stupid can you get? I'd never do something *that* dumb. ...You do believe me, right?"), which, when you think about it, are really horrible and tragic and humiliating for the people involved and for their families and loved ones. But we laugh anyway, and we feel a trickle of guilty or not-so-guilty relief. There but for the grace of God go I.... It's not necessarily flattering, but it is very human.

I laughed while visiting both of the X fic logs. Maybe this makes me a horrible person; I don't know. I laughed particularly hard at "Hitomi no Chikara"--and I've written Sorata/Kamui, so it's not just a dislike for the pairing. Sorry, ExDreamer. (If you want less mocking C&Cs than X Overdose gave you, email me the fic and I'll see what I can do.) On the other hand, I feel little sympathy for the author of the mall fic, because I found the fic itself to be mean-spirited and rather horrible. If you're going to write a story wherein the main point seems to be to trash-talk the characters of a series--no, even better, to have a wildly OOC character trash-talk them for you--for one thing, *why* (call me wacky, but don't most people write and read fanfic because they love the characters or at least find them interesting and engaging?), and for another, of course people who *do* care about those characters are going to leap to their defense. Unless you really are fresh off the boat and into the fandom, or else didn't think before writing, you should have anticipated that response and should be willing to deal with whatever reaction comes. And by the way, "It's supposed to be *funny*" doesn't work earn any more forgiveness for fic authors than it does for fic critics. So, no tears for Smalllady86.

To the people who object to the fic logs: your compassion does you credit. I wish I were that nice. ^_^ On the other hand, consider that it might be possible to shelter somebody too much. After all, it's through challenge and testing that we learn and grow as human beings. And what the protective emotional reaction forgets is this: no critic in the world can "make" an author give up writing, just as all the firestorm about the X fic logs can't make their owners give up their mission. Only the author herself can choose to write or not write. Think for a moment about what a tremendous power this is. You can be mocked, satirized, flamed, discredited, harassed, abused, or ignored--/but you will not stop writing until you make the decision to stop writing./ So why not let these authors find out how strong they truly are? ^_^

While I'm commenting, X Overdose, you really do need to watch out for the typos. They undermine your authority as critics. ^_^ Also, if you're going to excise portions of a fic, maybe consider summing up the missing action, since otherwise you end up with a somewhat disjointed collection of lowlights that doesn't really give a sense of the fic's overall shape and progression. (The Fic Bitches generally do this very well. btw.)

One-Eyed, *nice* review of Meimi's Hokuto story. Good for you--and for the author, who deserves the praise. ^_^ Also, in case you're wondering, I wrote all of the above ramble before seeing your actual review, so if you feel unfairly represented, my apologies. I just don't have the fortitude to rewrite it.

Okay, I really need to wind this up now, post, and get to bed. (It's actually a day or two after I wrote the top sections--and I finally did get out of that paragraph. Progress, progress. And I am not the only one who's falling into bed. ^_^ )