Blog
Every day, writers are asked why they spend so much time writing and so little time marketing, particularly by people who don't write. Why aren't you twittering every few hours, we're asked. Why aren't you blogging every week (check!)? Why aren't you embracing the world of iPods and Blackberries and Palm Pilots and automatic dishwashers, which have brought so much financial success to so many authors I can't think of a single one off the top of my head right now?
These un-asked-for advisors may have thought no one was listening to their inane questions. But I was. Which is why, a few years back, I decided to podcast a novel.
I chose the website Podiobooks, one of the earliest and most popular of the fictional podcasting websites, which is still around. Scanning the site, I quickly noticed that pretty much every novel was either science fiction or fantasy. This is unsurprising, as the type of person willing to get their fiction through a computer and an iPod often tends towards the techie, rather than the artsy.
No problem, I thought. The first novel I ever wrote was a science-fiction book (about sending all the ugly people on Earth to another planet; more on that some other time), and it actually came the closest to publication of any of my five books. I grew up reading Piers Anthony and Orson Scott Card and Philip K. Dick. I could definitely knock out a fantasy novel. Helping my decision was this article, discussing Scholastic's search for new material as the Harry Potter series was winding to a close. My novel would also concern a young boy with special powers (though mine was chubby and Hispanic...take that, status quo!).
I started writing, at the breakneck pace of 1000 words a day. As soon as I'd finish a chapter, I'd post it up to podiobooks.com. Before long, I had a handsome little following, leaving me the occasional nice comment and the not-so-occasional demand for faster chapter release. What they didn't leave, however, was much money. Podiobooks operates through Creative Commons, meaning that no one need pay for the content, and it can be freely distributed (though not sold) by others. This means that the authors on Podiobooks are doing it mostly for love, and perhaps the hope that they'll be "discovered". This hasn't happened much, though there are a few outliers, such as the sci-fi novelist Scott Sigler, discovered on Podiobooks.
Some readers did leave donations, though I wouldn't see any of the money until I finished posting the novel. This was a problem in my case. As I reached the halfway point of the book, I realized I wasn't enjoying writing it. Though I was a big fan of genre fiction as a kid (and still worship the masters, from Tolkien to Dick to Asimov), I find most of it escapist. With all the television and film clogging our collective sub, un, and regular consciousnesses, the last thing we need is more distraction. For this reason (as well as the fact that I'd logged about $20 worth of donations in the months I'd been writing), I made the difficult decision to stop podcasting the novel. Though I knew it would frustrate some people, I figured my audience could hardly complain; after all, it wasn't as if they'd paid anything for my work.
I couldn't have been more wrong. Here is a short list of comments I received in the year after I stopped writing the book: "The Prick of the podiobook world". "Time for him to get a real job". "The author is a bit obsessed with money vs. his writing. You are young and irresponsible. Shame!" "Tommy the flake". "Stop begging for money and complete a book". "I would suggest counseling to get over your issues! Any future employer will be sure to see how unreliable you are!"
The full comment thread can be seen here, including my defense of myself, which I'll reprint at the end of this blog post.
Now that it's been a couple years, I realize how flattering all of those negative comments really were. The truth is that people were enjoying the book, getting invested in the characters and involved in the story, and were justifiably pissed off that they wouldn't find out how it ended. An author can't really hope for more of a visceral response than that. I still get a message every few months, on MySpace or Facebook, asking when I'll finally finish the novel and give everyone the closure they've been seeking. And in spite of myself, in spite of the flood of relief that came when I stopped working on the book, I'm starting to wonder if it might not finally be time to finish the damn thing. At least to shut up my detractors.
-t
My impassioned defense on Podiobooks:
Hello Everyone,
I apologize for taking so long to write a response. As many of you may appreciate, life is complicated, and things happen that render podcasting fantasy novels trivial. I don't mean to belittle what I or any of the other authors do here, but for reasons more personal than fiscal, other things have taken priority in my life.
First of all, to defend against a bit of defamation. I am 24 years old. I have written four complete novels. I have had two major agents, including ICM, which is the agency that represented F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many other great authors in the last six decades. I have written numerous short stories and articles, and had them published in major magazines (Tin House, McSweeney's, ReadyMade and others). I am not an amateur. I am not lazy. I write for two hours every day, and have for the last six years.
I stopped writing this book because it was making me unhappy. I don't typically write genre fiction. As a child, I loved science-fiction and fantasy, but these days, I find it escapist. In a world with so much television and film, so much fantasy, I think literature should aspire to more. Much work on this site does. I am not trying to denigrate what anyone is doing. I still have a soft spot for genre fiction. But it wasn't inspiring me. I felt like I was writing for no reason that mattered. So I stopped, and started work on a book that truly interests me.
Again, I apologize sincerely for not talking to you about this decision. However, I would like to say this: I don't care about money. That's so unbelievably ridiculous, it insults all of us. No one who writes professionally cares about money. (The other work I do is as a professional musician; a song/video of mine was recently featured on the front page of YouTube (which is a site that pays nothing, in spite of the fact that my video received over 150,000 views), which was part of my distraction from TBC, along with applying to graduate schools, and personal issues). However, if you expect to read books being written for no money, you do have to create a new set of criteria. I realize it's frustrating to get involved in a story and not get an ending. However, this is the price you pay for getting entertainment, entertainment that requires hours of thought, work and dedication, for no money. I do not feel obligated to you, because I have not received a single thing from you. I received far more frustrated emails after I stopped than friendly emails while I was writing. Just so you know, I have not received a single cent for the 35,000 words of fiction I presented on the site. I am not greedy. I am not lazy.
So there you are. Believe me when I say that I'm sorry to those of you who truly loved the book. I hope someday to return to it. But you will not make me feel guilty for my decision. And perhaps, next time you think to malign someone creating art for your benefit, you might consider that it is the responsibility of those who appreciate art to help support it, not just with money, but with respect.
Tommy Wallach
'The Bright Child'
www.tommywallach.com
www.twitter.com/tommywallach
2 comments / Comment now
Wednesday, 3 March, 2010
Anna Goodall was lucky enough to meet two great literary ladies in just one week ... both of whom have put memories of their extraordinary lives on the page.
I attended two events last week: historian and novelist Lady Antonia Fraser discussing the memoir of her marriage to Harold Pinter, Must You Go? at the Free Word Centre on Tuesday, and great editor and renowned memoirist Diana Athill, whose collected memoirs Life Class was published in late 2009, talking to Ian Jack at the Savile Club on Friday.
Must You Go? is currently perched atop of my substantial to-read list, so I am ignorant of the book's style and content, but the talk was hugely enjoyable and often funny as Fraser spoke very well and was not short of amusing anecdotes about her life with Pinter... such as when Pinter mentioned to Beckett that he was feeling rather gloomy about the world, and Beckett retorted, 'Well, you can't feel more gloomy about the world than I do'.
Having left a marriage and six children to be with Harold, the couple enjoyed thirty-three years of happiness before Pinter's death in 2008 and this memoir is clearly a celebration of this love: she half-jokingly complains of the letters from readers saying they never knew Pinter was so different from his public persona, and when the chair of the evening, PEN president Lisa Appignanesi, mentions that one of the things she loved about the book was that she would never otherwise have guessed that Pinter was such a romantic and sensitive lover, Fraser is wittily quick with her repost: 'I should hope not!'
Interestingly, Lady Fraser revealed that Pinter was an excellent editor with great concentration and attention to detail. He read her work chapter by chapter and she too read his work as he went along, each occasionally making suggestions. One feels that here was a relationship whose initial attraction and unexpected love was shored up by the respect for and deep interest each took in the other's work.
I can't quite leave the subject without mentioning that in person Lady Fraser was utterly engaging and still very beautiful. It would be easy to see how anyone could fall in love with her now, let alone thirty-five years ago, and she is one of those people that others flock to be around. It is a delight to have met her.
Diana Athill is a very contrasting person but equally charismatic, and in this case I have read her new collection of memoirs - and with great enjoyment. As I said I am entirely ignorant of Fraser's memoir, but one feels from the discussion that the book is a eulogy to her beloved late husband. Athill on the other hand is famous for her writing mantra that she learnt from one of the authors she worked with, Jean Rhys: to 'get it as it was, as it really was'. Indeed, at one point in Somewhere Towards the End when she is carefully considering death and dying, she writes of her thoughts on it that they are, '- not exactly comforting, but acceptable because true'. In a sense this is the essence of the collection.
Life Class follows Diana from an idyllic childhood, to Oxford and debilitating heartbreak, to the publishers André Deutsch which she helped found with the eponymous André and where she worked (outrageously underpaid) for over forty years editing the work of authors like Rhys, VS Naipaul, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, to her meditations, wonderfully frank and bold, about old age and facing death - not a subject easy to make enjoyable. In fact, to make over 650 pages of highly personal memoir interesting you have to be a very assured writer - and she is.
Strange as it sounds, I found Stet - her tales of being an editor, which I expected to love - somewhat dryer, although there are wonderful moments, than her brilliant account of her early life and the engagement that ended in heartbreaking rejection, Instead of a Letter.
Written when she was forty-six the most striking thing about the work is the clarity of her memories of childhood which are so vivid that they remind you exactly of the feeling of being a child and tug at the essence of your own hidden childhood experiences.
She is also frank about her obsession with sex from being quite a small girl (how many people have written about this?) and a significant discovery she made - she finds a very educational and rather saucy tome in her late grandfather's library and makes sure she reads every line! In fact, she is completely open and matter-of-fact about relationships and sex throughout her memoirs, though they have often brought her disappointment - an aspect that must have been, if not shocking, then highly unusual, especially from a woman, in 1963, and possibly is still unusual now.
Her description of her depression when her engagement ended in a most hurtful manner is perhaps her greatest triumph from this collection. Although Athill does think about why she might have been so predisposed to lose her confidence, she tries to reason it out and she is still thinking openly about it, she does not clamp down on or restrict her version of events. A less self-pitying account it is impossible to read. She is very exact about her sorrow, but her memories as she writes them are not set in stone.
Memoirs, however, are inevitably a way of trying to make sense of the past, but refreshingly both women seem to have fallen into memoir-writing almost by accident and both for cathartic reasons. Fraser recounts how her friend and publisher George Weidenfeld suggested to her that she write about Pinter over lunch about a year after his death, and that she found going over all the diaries she'd kept during their life together, on which the book is largely based, was a way of coming to terms with her grief; similarly, Athill's penning of Instead of a Letter was a new beginning for her, a way of leaving her old self behind, and something she wrote very naturally without really knowing why.
It's lucky for us that they both decided upon this method - if written with skill and for the right reasons memoir can be a most engaging and intimate form of prose writing, and both authors are tough but engaging women who have lived fascinating lives.
To finish, Peter (owner of Clerkenwell Tales), experienced a significant literary meeting of his own last week (although it is unlikely to end in marriage): one of his literary heroes Peter Carey made a special trip to Clerkenwell Tales to sign copies of his latest novel Parrot and Olivier in America for the shop... but better than that, the great man gave Peter a hug! Sadly, I was not there to witness it, but it is possibly Clerkenwell Tales's most exciting literary moment to date - one for the memoirs.
ACG
www.clerkenwell-tales.co.uk
What's hot?
Whoops! - Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester
On Love by Stendhal
The Exclamation Mark by Anton Chekhov
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne
Who did we spot?
Peter Carey - of course!
0 comments / Comment now
Friday, 19 February, 2010
A translation guide for those new to literary magazines' submissions guidelines. May it serve you in good stead as you embark upon this character-building exercise in creative masochism:
Submission Guideline Statement: "DailyRejection prefers that you submit only one story at a time, or up to five poems at a time."
Euphemism category: bid for mercy
Translation: Seriously? You were thinking about sending two stories at once? Aren't you the least bit grateful that we're letting you send anything at all? If someone offered to let you urinate in their kitchen sink, would you respond by asking if you could do it twice? Just piss in the sink and go home. As for poems, they're generally way shorter, so we can stomach two or three. But if you're more into writing long poems, please just send one. Or better still, none. Or just stop writing them altogether. What about haikus? We love haikus.
Submission Guideline Statement: "DailyRejection responds to all submissions within 1-3 months."
Euphemism category: creating realistic expectations
Translation: Einstein, the smartest man ever to walk this Earth, was the first to realize that time is relative. Obviously, we at DailyRejection don't count weekends as "time", per se. And it isn't as if we're going to count the hours we spend sleeping. Likewise, time spent eating, cooking, lovemaking, reading, writing, and voiding waste cannot reasonably be considered "time". "Time" shall be defined as any hours we spend at our desks, in our offices, actually looking through submissions. If you must have a hard number, you can expect a negative response to your submission in approximately 1-35 years, though keep in mind that the lifespan of the average literary journal in this economic and intellectual climate is far less than that. Similarly, most of our editors are already at death's door, thanks in large part to having read your submissions.
Submission Guideline Statement: "DailyRejection is happy to accept simultaneous submissions."
Euphemism category: stroking your ego
Translation: This fantasy you're entertaining, that more than one literary journal might accept your work, thus initiating some kind of heated bidding war between them, is highly adorable. It makes us want to tousle your hair and buy you a Beanie Baby.
Submission Guideline Statement: "Only previously unpublished works will be considered for publication in DailyRejection."
Euphemism category: bid for mercy
Translation: Everybody's band managed to open for Guns n' Roses once, and odds are if you keep sending these Hail Mary passes to journals, some half-asleep editor will accidentally put the accepted sticker on your Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope. But one concert doesn't make you Aerosmith, and one story doesn't make you Fitzgerald. Write something else, you lazy ass. If we Google your submission and it comes up as already published in the Best American Short Fiction On the Subject of Flightless Birds of 1998, we will bring all our considerable influence to bear and ruin your career for ever (possibly by nominating you for a National Book Award).
Submission Guideline Statement: "To get a better grasp of whether or not we might like your work, please read through a few issues of DailyRejection before submitting."
Euphemism category: shameless request for money
Translation: Nobody reads this magazine. Seriously. The editor hasn't read it in years. It's like, twelve people, now. And all of them are only doing it so they can submit something. Please, for the love of God, read a literary journal. Writers don't matter when nobody's a reader. Don't you get that? Stop updating your Twitter and read a goddamn literary journal.
Submission Guideline Statement: "DailyRejection regrets to inform you that we can no longer accept electronic submissions."
Euphemism category: bid for mercy
Translation: What is wrong with you people? We thought putting that electronic submission page up on the website would make life easier, but as soon as we did it, you started sending us everything you'd ever written down in your entire lives. Grocery lists do not count as stories, nor do Dear John letters or (most) suicide notes. Whether or not the Excel spreadsheets were meant to be experimental or ironic, we found them impossibly dull.
Submission Guideline Statement: "DailyRejection requests a moderate reading fee for your submission."
Euphemism category: shameless demand for money
Translation: Believe it or not, reading your stories is not a pleasure. The majority of your submissions make us wish that Homo Habilis had not developed the brain lateralization necessary to support a primitive cerebral analogue to Broca's area, allowing for linguistic development in Homo Erectus and full-blown language in Homo Sapiens. The others make us wish we were dead. Our $50 reading fee ($5 per haiku) will not come anywhere close to paying for the years of therapy that our readers will require in order to recover from your submissions. Have you ever seen a Vietnam veteran who can't relax, can't sit still, can hardly stop shaking, because the traumatic events they experienced decades earlier still haunt their every waking moment? That's what our readers are like. And they don't get subsidized health care.
Submission Guideline Statement: "For all submissions, please ensure that your name appears on every page. Also, please number your pages."
Euphemism category: you're an idiot.
Translation: Please make sure none of your story is written in nonsense words, and that you have printed out the pages, rather than mailed us the computer itself. Stories written onto the surface of your monitor will not be accepted. Remember that the mailing address should go on the outside of the envelope, not the inside, and that when we request a word count, we mean the number of words in your story, not the number of words that you know. Also, it's also worth noting that socks should be put on before shoes, and food goes in your mouth, not all over the table.
Submission Guideline Statement: "We look forward to reading your story."
Euphemism category: stroking your ego
Translation: We don't.
Tommy Wallach
Follow Tommy on Twitter http://twitter.com/tommywallach
1 comments / Comment now
Thursday, 11 February, 2010
0 comments / Comment now
Friday, 5 February, 2010
A character in Matieu Kassovitz's film Le Fabuleux Déstin d'Amélie Poulain encourages his on-screen companion (and, we assume, the audience) to 'change the world one random act of kindness at a time.' This gooey sentiment may bring about an entirely different urge in some viewers, but for all who balked, there is now a chance to change the world, one random act of writing at a time.
The wonderful editor at FiftyFiction has inaugurated a competition which asks people to send in photographs of stories that they've written on anything that was to hand. From haiku on cigarette packets to novellas on supermarket receipts this ingenious contest showcases the late-at-night-writing, the first-thing-in-the-morning-writing and, most importantly of all, that 50-word-stroke-of-genius-writing.
Go on, put the world to writes.
http://fiftyfiction.org/
Orlando Whitfield
0 comments / Comment now
Thursday, 4 February, 2010
Recent posts
1 comments / Comment now / Wednesday, 3 February, 2010
1 comments / Comment now / Wednesday, 27 January, 2010
0 comments / Comment now / Wednesday, 30 December, 2009
0 comments / Comment now / Friday, 18 December, 2009
0 comments / Comment now / Thursday, 10 December, 2009
0 comments / Comment now / Friday, 4 December, 2009
0 comments / Comment now / Wednesday, 25 November, 2009
0 comments / Comment now / Friday, 30 October, 2009
0 comments / Comment now / Wednesday, 28 October, 2009
0 comments / Comment now / Tuesday, 27 October, 2009
Read all posts
