Adventures in e-Publishing

Or “The Anti-Epic”

The other day, in my Creative Writing class, I gave a mini-lecture on the importance of conflict in a story. The following story is replete with conflict. The imperial army of tradition publishing is at war with the upstart rebels of e-Publishing who are, at once, a valiant force for democracy and a populist movement pushing mediocrity. Our protagonist is waging an inner struggle between a hero and an antihero: The hero is a dreamer bent on overcoming significant obstacles to achieve a nearly unattainable goal. The pathetic, unlikable antihero cowers when faced with risk and fails to achieve the necessary motivation to become what he claims to want to be. External complications provide additional conflict in the form of a wonderful wife, child, and job which simultaneously enrich the protagonist’s life and dissuade him from taking a plunge that could put them all in jeopardy. And then there’s the postmodern element wherein the reader actually comes into conflict with the text itself: The protagonist simply might not be good enough to succeed at his chosen task, but the reader needs to evaluate that and it’s nigh-impossible for a writer to write something better than he can write in order to juxtapose that against the protagonist’s meager skills. (Say that sentence aloud three times fast, and then tell me it’s not “meta.”)

That’s plenty of conflict.

The problem with this story is that it lacks plot. Our hero/antihero, desiring to become a full-fledged Writer with a capital W, cannot decide whether or not to publish a novel as an e-book. Fearful of making a catastrophic mistake which will jeopardize his chance to have the novel picked up by a literary agent and sold to a major publishing house (or a very small publishing house, which would still be cool), he waffles like Jean Valjean trying to make up his mind about turning himself in (which goes on for-fricking-ever in the novel and about two minutes in the musical). He attends a meeting of a local writer’s group where a woman who works for an e-publishing company, selling her services to aspiring writers seeking to circumvent the traditional structure, rails against the injustice of the publishing business and the superfluous-ness of literary agents. He discusses the idea with the professional editor he hired, and she reminds him that there is still a stigma against self-publishing, despite what someone with a vested interest in e-publishing might say. He reads about novels which begin as e-books and become wild commercial successes. He talks with a literary agent who laments the “sea of mediocrity” in the e-book world. He reads some e-books and, though some are decent, others can’t even demonstrate proper spelling. He is unsure of his course.

So our protagonist decides to set out on a journey. That’s how these epic tales really take off, right? Only he is hesitant. “I’ll only go as far as Rivendell,” he thinks. “Or maybe just to the edge of the Shire.”  He decides to make some of his short stories available on the Kindle. His editor confirms that this is unlikely to threaten his chances to publish his novel in a more traditional way. He thinks of it as an experiment, an effort to learn if e-publishing is enough to consider as an alternative to another round of query letters. 

Click here for the story.

He posts one. It turns out to be very easy. It is free. The process is like a gentle walk through the rolling hills with Hobbit homes built into them. The story is written in first person, and our protagonist worries people will mistake the character for his own voice. He knows he needs to give readers some basis of comparison.

Click here for the story.

He posts another. It's a better story, so he hopes more people will read it.

He makes an author page on Amazon. This is even easier.

The End.

Where is the resolution? The climax? Hell, there wasn’t even any rising action. He had a litany of problems. He dipped a toe into these icy waters, but not enough to truly address the issues presented at the beginning of the story. What happens next? Does he quit the job he loves in order to pursue his writing dream full time? Does his wife leave him because he’s clearly lost his mind? Does he try to e-publish and fail miserably, ending up a pathetic, broken man? Does someone knowledgeable sweep in and leave an insightful comment on his blog which propels him down the proper course, or perhaps down some dark and twisted way that leads only to tragedy? Or do spammers alight on this post to try to sell him over-priced sunglasses, women’s handbags, potentially toxic herbal penis enlargement pills, or the chance to bet on obscure foreign sports in online casinos? Or does his life continue as though none of this has occurred?

There’s a lesson here, too. Conflict, though vital, is not sufficient to create a satisfying story. There must be action. A character who cannot decide what to do cannot generate enough of a plot to fill a novel. At best, he only produces short stories.

A Writer's Quest for Quality

I love the Demotivators from desprair.com. Tonight, while gathering my thoughts before beginning Chapter 9 of my current novel [read: Procrastinating] I came across this one on another writer's blog (Lily White LeFevre's blog, here) and just had to re-post it. Okay, enough procrastinating. Let's get marching!

Willamette Writers Conference

Here's why I'm not going to be blogging just yet about the Willamette Writers Conference: I'm an idiot. I forgot the power cord to my laptop at home, so when the battery runs out in a moment, I'll be limited to my phone. Suffice it to say that the experience has been wonderful already. We're only through the first day, and I've already exceeded my personal goals here. It's all gravy from now on. When I get home and can plug in, I'll scream to the digital heavens about how great Willamette Writers is (are?). Until then, keep your fingers crossed for me that it just keeps getting better.

On Sharing the Draft of My Novel with Friends

Before Christmas Break, I asked four of my colleagues from the English department at the high school where I work to read the first draft of my recently completed manuscript. That was foolish, because I then spent my whole break feeling a consistent, low-grade anxiety about their possible reactions. I recently asked my wife to read it, and she promised to start today. Now I’m an nervous wreck.

One of the things all these people have in common, besides being people I respect and care about (my wife most of all) is that none of them ripped the book out of my hands, squealed with pleasure, and ran off to tear through it in a single sitting. In fact, when I returned from my anxious break and found that most of my colleagues hadn’t read it, I was greatly relieved. As much as I would be horrified to hear that they hated the book, I think I would be even less capable of responding appropriately if they loved it. At least, when they apologized for not getting around to it, I knew what to say. “That’s okay. You’re busy. It’s no big deal,” I lied.

Don’t these people understand a writer’s relationship with his or her novel?

Of course they don’t. That’s a stupid question. To paraphrase my African-American friends, “It’s a writer thing; you wouldn’t understand.” More specifically, it’s a novelist thing. I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t written at least one novel can really understand the relationship.

I’ve been thinking about that relationship (as I’ve stewed and fretted about my coworkers avoiding me because they hated my book), and I remember hearing more than one writer describing his or her novel as a child to whom they’ve given birth. I categorically reject this metaphor. It’s wrong in too many ways. In fact, any writer who utters this kind of drivel should not only avoid using metaphors in his or her own work, but should probably also not be allowed to have children.

A novel is only like a child in the most superficial ways. It’s fun to start. It takes a while. It hurts to finish. And then it’s ready to be presented.

But even these similarities don’t stand up to close inspection. When you begin a novel, as you fall into the joy of the story and pass that point where you know it can’t all fit in a short story, you inevitably begin to dream about the rest of the book, its reception, the fame and wealth it will bring when throngs of adoring fans beg for a sequel. Not so, for children. If, in the act of making babies, you start to think about your future child, even if you limit yourself to only the most positive parts of child-rearing, the way your father will shake your hand outside the delivery room, your mother’s happiness when she picks up the baby for the first time, the look on your son’s face some Christmas morning, the pride your daughter will take in some spelling test or piano recital, the funny stories you’ll tell to his prom date to embarrass him before he heads out the door, the moment you walk her down the aisle… Any one of these moments would sufficiently ruin the mood enough that no one would ever make babies.

And yes, writing a novel is a significant investment of time, but unlike a pregnancy, there’s no natural mechanism which assures that it won’t take a year, or five years. And if you don’t finish your novel that might be a bit disappointing, but let’s not fool ourselves about the false equivalence to the heartbreak of losing a pregnancy.

I’ve heard that labor hurts. A lot. In the process of crafting your novel, you may run into barriers that might make you cry out in exasperation, but that’s not quite the same thing. Also, those frustrations, while far less pronounced than the pain of childbirth, don’t come exclusively at the end of the process. Writer’s block is the unpredictable false contraction that pops up during the first trimester, or the second, but doesn’t mean you’re anywhere close to finishing the book. Oh, and if that false contraction is bad enough, you can walk away from the novel for a year or two. I’m pretty sure you can’t take a hiatus in the middle of your pregnancy. But again, I’m not speaking from experience.

And then, when your baby is born, it’s really born. It’s out in the world, fully formed and ready to go. Your job instantly changes. And people can immediately see your baby, and coo over it, and no one I’ve ever met says, “I don’t really have time to look at your baby right now,” or “I’ve examined your baby and he just doesn’t do it for me,” or “Your baby is pretty enough, but I’m just not sure what she’s trying to say to us.” The baby is there and perfectly wonderful. The novel is a rough manuscript and you have to schlep around, begging for some agent to pimp it to publishing companies. If you treat your baby this way, immediately looking for someone to pimp him on the streets for cash, you should be locked up.

So what is a writer's relationship to his novel like? What metaphor might explain this better to that first group of prospective readers who just don’t understand how important this is to you?

I think writing a novel is more like trying to build a boat in your backyard. At first, you’re excited about the drafting of the plans. Everything is possible. Will it have a motor? Will it have a sail? Why stop at one? Maybe a crow’s nest, and replica cannons, and a satellite navigation system! Throw them all in there! Why the hell not? And if your spouse is noticing that slightly mad gleam in your eye, you don’t have to show her the plans quite yet. They’re just sketches, after all. Who cares, right?

And then you actually go and buy lumber. Very quickly you realize that you aren’t quite up to this task. You know a thing or two about boats, but mostly from pictures and movies, and there’s really not enough room in your backyard to build the Queen Anne 2. But you’ve nailed some boards together, and you’ve made adjustments to your plans, so why not continue, right? Who cares?

Now the hull is starting to take shape. You find yourself telling friends that you’re building as boat. After their reactions, you find yourself keeping it a secret again. Don’t worry. They’ll forget.

You make time in your schedule, but not too much. It would be embarrassing to have to cancel engagements because there’s a half a boat in your back yard. The neighbors complain about the hammering after dark, so you move some things around and try to do most of the work on weekends during daylight (okay, well maybe that’s the exact opposite of the novel, but we’re still closer than a pregnancy), and you just keep adding more lumber. You realize you’ve made a significant investment in this thing, but it’s a sunk cost (you do note the pun), so you can’t stop now.

You find that you’re acquiring all these new tools, too. Back in high school, your shop teacher seemed like a nice enough guy, but you just didn’t understand how he got so excited about this kind of thing. Now you imagine calling him up to show it off, but you reconsider and decide to wait until you know it will actually float.

You start to get really worried that the neighbors will look over the privacy fence and see what you’re doing. You know they’ll call you "Noah" behind your back and make jokes about the coming flood. They would call your sanity into question, and you’re not sure you could blame them. But it’s really coming together.

At the end of the building, there’s a lot of sanding and painting involved. If you hadn’t committed to the thing a long time ago, you’d never go through all this drudgery, but now it seems like an act of love. You wonder how it has come to pass that you actually take pride in your new talent for sanding. It’s not exactly something you could put on a résumé, but you’re pretty sure you’re above average at it.

Now you think it’s finished, but that means you have to decide who will see it first. It’s just too big to put on the trailer all by yourself. Plus, even though you’ve walked around the thing a thousand times, you worry that someone else will immediately see a gaping hole in the hull you managed to miss. And what if your friend takes one look at it and says, “That’s going to sink,” or “That’s the ugliest boat I ever saw,” or “I don’t get it”? Bearing these possibilities in mind, you don’t want to throw a big party, pull a huge sheet off the thing, and yell, “Tada!” So you choose very carefully, make those selective phone calls, and ask for help.

And then they say, “Yeah, I’ll come help, but I’m busy, so it might be a while.” And you want to scream, “I have a yacht in my backyard! I built it with my own two hands! We’re talking His Majesty’s Sailing Ship ‘Novel’ here! I’m not kidding, it’s a giant f---ing boat!”

But you don’t do that. Because you are already the guy crazy enough to build a boat in your backyard, and crazy people can’t afford to shout at their friends.

So that’s where I find myself.

Now, assuming my friends and my wife don’t try to save me from embarrassment by dissuading me from proceeding, I’ll try to get an agent. Basically, I’ll be asking people to climb aboard and find out if she sails or sinks once we’re off shore. I understand why people don’t want to be on that maiden voyage, even the people nearest and dearest to me.

But I wish they could understand why I’m being so weird. I’m telling you, it’s a giant f---ing boat!

Pitch for Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

I'm going to enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. They ask for a 300 word itch. Here's my 297, with some very good feedback I've received on the list-serve on Amazon for exactly that purpose. Please feel free to add your two cents. Nickles and dimes are better. Feel free to hammer it (how much change would that be?).

Pitch:

On her knees, hands tied behind her back, Portia looks up at the two government agents who will torture her before killing her. Why would she give her life for the boy who showed up at school halfway through the year? Sure, he's special. But Portia doesn't care about politics. So why is she helping Calum escape from their boarding school? After all, he's not interested in her. He's dating her roommate and former best friend. As one of the agents touches the knife to her skin, Portia acknowledges the sad fact; she's broken her strict rules. She's fallen in love with Calum.

Portia’s Broken Rules tells the story of Portia, the consummate popular girl who knows all the tricks for getting the right boy, handling herself at the party, and staying in the spotlight. It also tells the story of Calum, the lower-class guy who finds himself at the elite prep school. And the story of Jenea, Portia’s mousy best friend who finds herself in a relationship with Calum. So what if Portia has secretly fallen for Calum, despite all her rules? It’s the most innocent love triangle in the world.

Except…

Except that world is the most elite prep school in Phalangium, a country where the upper class maintains control through The Subjugation, the ritual Highs use to take control of the bodies of their servants; to humiliate, to punish, to kill. Calum, a Low, could destroy the strict caste system if he can’t be assimilated, because he knows how to perform The Subjugation. If Calum steps out of line he’ll have to be killed, along with anyone foolish enough to get too close to him. There is no innocence in Phalangium. But in the midst of so much pain, can there be any real love?


Comments so far:

Barbara J. Angstadt says:
Benjamin -
I really like your pitch; it starts out sounding like a fairly routine boarding-school novel (except the government agents bit, a teaser to the final paragraph) and then it adds the twist at the end. Personally, I'd love to read your book. It sounds original and edgy. Good luck in the contest! :-)

Sheryl Dunn (SWOOP) says:
Benjamin, don't use any wording similar to "tells the story of" in the pitch. That's telling. Just show us what the story is about with the emphasis on your main character.

Kieth Massey says:
Hi Benjamin,
I wonder if you shouldn't bring in a description of the alternate world/country where this happens a bit earlier, perhaps even highlight it as a fusion of a fantasy world with elements of a typical teen's existence. For me, I was reading this as our world/country, albeit one in which a young person is facing down an intelligence officer, so when the final description came, it seemed intrusive to me, kinda like, oh, all the above was taking place in Phalangium, etc.
My two cents.

Vivian Davenport says:
Benjamin,
The story starts out sounding like Portia's story but the last paragraph makes it sound like Calum's story. It's difficult to critique the pitch without knowing whose story it is.
We should know the sci-fi/fantasy aspects of this in the first paragraph, not the last.
If this is Portia's story...
The first paragraph has way too much detail about Portia. The first two sentences are real grabbers, and I think you should answer the question right away, not wait until the last sentence. You could combine two things like: [She loves him, and she loves him more than her country's strict caste system.] Then start the next paragraph with info about the Highs and Lows and The Subjugation.
If this is Calum's story...
Don't start off with Portia.
Now why is a lower-class guy attending an elite prep school? Is he attending there under false pretenses?
Capitalize the title.
Drop the 'finds him/herself'. They weren't dropped from a plane, were they?
Good luck!

Any other suggestions out there?

Writing My Way Through a Short Summer

So I recently returned from a trip to London, Paris, and Madrid. I took a group of forty high school students, parents, and fellow teachers. Great fun was had by all, and much exhaustion was produced. If you'd like to read about the trip, I blogged the whole thing here at:

Central High Europe Trip

Now, after some days of decompressing, I am finally getting started with a real summer break. My plan was to put in flooring, dry-wall, and a drop ceiling in an unfinished room in our new house, but according to the guy at H&R Block it takes two to three months to get the eight grand stimulus-for-buying-a-new-house-money from the gov'ment. Without that job, I thought I'd work on school stuff, paint myself a copy of Picasso's Don Quixote for my classroom, maybe paint the walls in the living room (if Paige and I can agree on colors), and generally sit on my butt until early August, when we head out to Cincinnati to see my family. It's my mom's sixtieth birthday (man, that sounds weird. Mom can't be sixty!) and she wants to go to Dollywood. As much as I'm looking forward to the time with the family, those of you who know me can probably imagine just how well I'll fit in at the Country and Western version of Disneyland. Imagine a half-naked, foam-cheese-hat-wearing, body-paint-covered Green Bay Packers fan screaming his head off at Wimbledon, or a golf tournament at Pebble Beach, or a televised chess match. That will be me. I haven't worn an earring in five years, but I'm thinking of finding my old skull and crossbones earring and putting it back in just to heighten the effect.

Anyway, that leaves a month in the middle for my summer. So I started the painting of Don Quixote, then realized that, as much as I love the painting and the story, I really should read the book. So I started it (spoiler: it's really good) and I got an idea for another novel. Now, I know I haven't finished the trilogy (quadrilogy?) I'm two books deep in right now, but since no one is nibbling at those, and this will probably be more marketable (what the hell do I know about marketability?) I've started writing this new one, and I'm going to see how much I can crank out over the next month. It's fun because I'm writing in the voice of a woman looking back on her high school years and a) I'm not a woman, and b) she's funny, so it's really challenging to get her voice just right. I considered teasing out the first few chapters here, but I know I'll want to do lots of editing before I take that leap, and, at the very least, I should let Paige read it before I completely humiliate myself. Still, I think the project has promise. Wish me luck!

P.S.
Does one wish writer's luck? Actors are encouraged to break their legs (it's a dangerous profession). Should you wish me carpal tunnel syndrome?