What to do when the problem is You?

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

I'm treading on thin ice here and probably shouldn't be in this forum at all, but I'd like some advice. Or at least consolation.

Let me put down the basic facts, first: My writing is sound. I am very good. There is nothing more I need to learn to reach publishable quality. (There is always more to learn, of course, but I'm good enough now.) I know that sounds like boasting, but I have ample evidence to support it. Let's just take it as fact for what follows.

Because now that I'm shopping novels around, I'm getting rejections from agents that say, "it seemed like such a perfect fit but I just couldn't fall in love with it", and "I'm just not enthusiastic enough about the premise of your story". Dozens of rejections along these lines.

Combine this with the opinion someone with authority gave me, that my writing is excellent but 'weird', and the problem is pretty clear.

It's me.

I am not being rejected for technical flaws in my writing, or for any mistakes that I can learn to avoid. I am being rejected because of my viewpoint, my voice, and the ideas that I bring to the table. They are not rejecting my writing. They are rejecting me.

I can learn to write better. I can swerve to try and catch the popular trends. But any part of me that gets into a story poisons it. People who know me share enough of my weirdness to rave over my books, but to the faceless publishing industry I'm too bizarre. In today's economy nobody wants to take a chance on a weirdo, no matter how well he writes.

I don't know how to fix this. I can't learn my way around it. Maybe I can write a mainstream-mimicking story with no voice and no ideas of my own, but I think it would bore me to tears.

One editor gave me advice, but I'm not sure it's good. He told me to own my weirdness, make it my brand, on the chance that tastes will change and the industry will want what I have to offer someday. This is cold comfort, and a hell of a long-term gamble.

I don't see many other alternatives, though. Any advice?

Shadow_Ferret · May 11, 2010

Without having read any of your work I can't attest to your weirdness.

As far as anything else, I've always subscribed to Shakespeare's "to thine own self be true."

Ineti · May 11, 2010

How do they know you're weird outside of whatever you write? Do you send them pictures of you dancing naked in lime Jello with a cat or something? Do you write weird non-writing related things in your cover letters? Do you talk with a weird voice on the phone?

Assuming your writing is sound and you're getting comments from agents, it's likely they're not rejecting you and just don't have a fit for what you write. Rejections happen all the time in this business, often not because of the quality of the writing.

Keep plugging away and submitting your stuff. If you believe in it, eventually someone somewhere will want to buy it.

Tasmin21 · May 11, 2010

Remember that one person's weird is another person's genius. I'm of a mind with the editor, you need to own this!

All those rejections are telling you is that you haven't gotten your work into the correct hands yet. And when you do, boom! You're going to stand out like a blazing beacon in a field of cookie-cutter copycats.

This is your voice, it is what makes you you. Don't give that up.

suki · May 11, 2010

I'm of two minds on this. And they're sort of conflicting, but it's one of those on-one-hand...but-on-the-other things...

First, if you are confident it's your ideas and not your execution, then keep at it until you find the right fit between a publisher and one of your books. Then, if that book is successful your "weird" could be a marketable style/brand.

On the other hand, you might need to break in with a more mainstream book to get in the door. There is an ocean of distance between just-too-weird-to-sell and "chasing trends" or writing a "mainstream-mimicking story with no voice and no ideas of my own."

So, you can keep running full speed ahead and hope you find the right book to break in. or you can find a more marketable book for your break in book.

And I'm not saying you necessarily should change anything about your writing. I think it's certainly one possible path to say screw it, this is what I write and then just keep writing and trying.

But I'm also saying, as a counterpoint, there may be a slightly more marketable novel in you that could help you break in sooner, possibly.

It's true that because publishing is a business, writing well isn't enough. You also need a marketable plot and characters. Because no matter how well executed, if there's no market for it, there's no market. And I get that you might be thinking, "But how can they know there is no market unless they try to sell it?" And I get that, and on some level even agree, but people get fired for taking too big risks with other people's money.

A third option, of course, is smaller presses, who might be willing to take more chances. And after that, self-publishing. If you are supremely confident there is a market or know how to market yourself, using a reputable company to self-publish might be an option as well.

good luck.

~suki

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

Ineti said:
How do they know you're weird outside of whatever you write? Do you send them pictures of you dancing naked in lime Jello with a cat or something? Do you write weird non-writing related things in your cover letters? Do you talk with a weird voice on the phone?

No, none of that.

True weirdness doesn't advertise. The truly weird camouflage.

No, they were saying my writing is weird. Convoluted plotlines that don't fit in any mold. Strange characters that are difficult to sympathize with. Bizarre themes.

In my last novel, the main character was a serial killer who was feeling remorse, and the plot was about her attempts to stop killing and regain her sanity. In my current WIP, the main character's goal is to commit suicide. The plot involves another character uncovering the Meaning of Life -- as a defensible thesis -- to save him. My stories are twisted. Good, but twisted. But those are the kind of stories and characters that I like!

Keep plugging away and submitting your stuff. If you believe in it, eventually someone somewhere will want to buy it.

I don't believe that's true. If one is too far out in the fringe, 'eventually' might take more than a lifetime. It's entirely possible that stuff can be too weird to ever sell. And it's possible I'm in that league.

cscarlet · May 11, 2010

I'm going to have to go with suki on this one. Not having read your work, I have no idea what to suggest except perhaps take "the business side" into account when you start on your next book. By all means keep it true to yourself, but maybe tweak the plot just a tiny bit to make it something marketable.

(Unless of course you don't really care about publishing and all you want to do is write books. In which case, write whatever the hell you want

)

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

suki said:
But I'm also saying, as a counterpoint, there may be a slightly more marketable novel in you that could help you break in sooner, possibly.

I keep thinking that, but then the problem becomes how I find that book. It's difficult to see the center when you're standing at the fringe. I have tried to tone my stories down and make them more normal but it doesn't seem to have worked. All the novels I've written (with one exception) has been aimed toward the mainstream, but I've missed the mark.

A third option, of course, is smaller presses, who might be willing to take more chances. And after that, self-publishing. If you are supremely confident there is a market or know how to market yourself, using a reputable company to self-publish might be an option as well.

I don't want to self-publish. I'm not comfortable around people; I have no skill nor inclination to market myself to them.

I haven't submitted to the smaller presses only because the larger presses take years before sending me a rejection. I have one manuscript that's been on an editor's desk for 20 months now. I'll get to the smaller presses eventually, it'll just take time.

No, right now it's the *agents* I'm worried about. Because they can reach the presses better and faster than I can, and they can do the marketing work I can't, or at least help me through it.

Jamesaritchie · May 11, 2010

First, the only way you know you're any good is if agents take on your work, and/or publishers buy it. There is no evidence that you're really good enough except for this: someone buys your work, and then readers enjoy it.

The number of would-be writers in the slush pile who all swear they're more than good enough, who believe their writing is as good as any bestseller out there, would populate a large country. Almost none of them are.

I am being rejected because of my viewpoint, my voice, and the ideas that I bring to the table. They are not rejecting my writing. They are rejecting me.

Let's assume for a minute that this is absolutely true. It still means you aren't good enough. Would-be writers who can write extremely well, but who never write anything worth publishing are a dime a truck load. There are tens of thousands of them. Every MFA class in the country is filled with such writers. There are multitudes of writers who can make a grocery list read like a Shakespearean sonnet, but who will never be published because their words are empty. They don't know how to tell the story they want to tell in a way that makes agents want to take it on, and editors want to buy it.

It is not your weirdness that's causing rejections. It may be your voice, but if it is your voice, then you aren't writing well. Good voice never causes rejection. Bad voice does. And all bad voice means is that you're aren't writing well enough to get your ideas across in a way that makes people want to read whatever you write.

I don't care how weird or bizarre you are, writers who are weirder and more bizarre are getting published. Trust me on this, you are not special enough to be the weirdest more bizarre published writer out there. No one is. It isn't your ideas that are stopping you, and it isn't your weirdness. It's the way you express those ideas and that weirdness in story form.

Expressing an idea, expressing weirdness, expressing bizarreness, in story form isn't about how well you write, just about anyone can learn to write very well, it's about how you tell the story, how you build the characters,

Any story, any story, no matter how weird or how bizarre, can be told in a way that makes it publishable. Maybe you can learn to do this, maybe you can't, but it is on you to learn it because this is always the problem.

When you start believing it isn't, when you start believing it's something that can't be learned, you're dead. It can be learned, if you have the desire and the talent.

But this is, of course, the trick. Talent is not how well you write a sentence, it's how well you tell a story. Even an extremely weird, unbelievably bizarre story, can be told in a way that makes agents and editors fall in love with it.

It's almost a cliche, but it's true, no agent or editor ever rejects a writer, they reject stories because the writer hasn't learned how to tell a story in the right way.

Bubastes · May 11, 2010

RemusShepherd said:
In my last novel, the main character was a serial killer who was feeling remorse, and the plot was about her attempts to stop killing and regain her sanity. In my current WIP, the main character's goal is to commit suicide. The plot involves another character uncovering the Meaning of Life -- as a defensible thesis -- to save him. My stories are twisted. Good, but twisted. But those are the kind of stories and characters that I like!

Maybe it's just me, but neither of these story ideas seem particularly twisted or weird. I'm inclined to go with JAR on this one.

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

Jamesaritchie said:
First, the only way you know you're any good is if agents take on your work, and/or publishers buy it. There is no evidence that you're really good enough except for this: someone buys your work, and then readers enjoy it.

I've had multiple Hugo award winners tell me I'm good enough. That's evidence enough for me. (But I have more.)

Trust me on this, you are not special enough to be the weirdest more bizarre published writer out there. No one is. It isn't your ideas that are stopping you, and it isn't your weirdness. It's the way you express those ideas and that weirdness in story form.

Expressing an idea, expressing weirdness, expressing bizarreness, in story form isn't about how well you write, just about anyone can learn to write very well, it's about how you tell the story, how you build the characters,

Any story, any story, no matter how weird or how bizarre, can be told in a way that makes it publishable. Maybe you can learn to do this, maybe you can't, but it is on you to learn it because this is always the problem.

I see what you're saying. Any character, any theme, any bizarre story can be told in an appealing way, but it might take a master of the craft to work those elements until they shine.

I'm not a master. Never said I was. I said I was good enough. The problem is that I am including story elements of master-level difficulty in my novels, when I have only a workman's level of skill.

But I don't know how to increase my skill to the level required. Feedback doesn't help; my crit group fawns over me. In order to improve from my current skill level, I would need feedback from my superiors, and that is difficult if not impossible to get. Professional authors have their own closed crit circles. I'm stuck with the hopeful amateurs.

The only other solution I can see is to spend years of trial and error until I luck onto the right combination of elements that are odd enough to interest me but that are within my skill level to write about. That's a depressing forecast.

when you start believing it's something that can't be learned, you're dead.

I think that overstates it a bit. I can't learn to be less weird than I am. I may not be able to learn how to handle the weirdness I've got. But that's not reason to quit; I have fans, so I know there is a market for my kind of stories. There's always hope that someone in the publishing industry might appreciate me.

backslashbaby · May 11, 2010

If you keep at it, I bet you get published. It sounds like you have something that scares a lot of folks off. It sounds interesting to me. Submit hundreds of times, minimum.

If you think it might be weird enough to take a hundred years to see the genius, I could see that from history. Publish it for free, then and get another career for money. That's kind of starving-artist territory there, otherwise.

ETA: crosspost. Sorry!

Amarie · May 11, 2010

RemusShepherd said:
But I don't know how to increase my skill to the level required. Feedback doesn't help; my crit group fawns over me. In order to improve from my current skill level, I would need feedback from my superiors, and that is difficult if not impossible to get. Professional authors have their own closed crit circles. I'm stuck with the hopeful amateurs.

Have you posted a few pages in SYW? I don't think you will find an excess of fawning there.

Amadan · May 11, 2010

RemusShepherd said:
I've had multiple Hugo award winners tell me I'm good enough. That's evidence enough for me. (But I have more.)

Hugo award winners do not have the same skill sets as agents. Yes, good writers can usually (not always) recognize good writing in others, but you know, if all these great writers are saying you're publishable, why were they able to recognize your unappreciated genius and yet no agent can? Are they all "weird," too?

Look, just about anyone who reaches the point where they can put together technically competent prose has risen above 90% of what's on the slush pile, and will probably find a few folks in the industry or who are otherwise presumed to know what they're talking about who will tell them that they should be published. If you have some author buddies or join a writing circle with a Big Name in it, you may even get validation from them.

But if it's so empirically, undeniably true that you are "good enough" to be published, then there are agents who will recognize that. They are not a special subspecies who just can't recognize good writing, and when you go down the road of believing that and thinking that you're just too weird and special to be appreciated by the likes of them, you are heading in the same direction as this woman.

Maybe you really are weird and your stories are weird and your voice is weird. Like Jamesaritchie said, there's no such thing as "too weird" if it's actually good enough.

I mean, I'm sorry, but you're kind of sounding like a lot of Special Snowflakes who get discouraged when their manuscripts get rejected and then they start muttering, "Oh, fine, I guess if you don't want to write the next Twilight rip-off you just can't be published..."

Drachen Jager · May 11, 2010

Amadan: Agents are not looking for good writing. Agents are looking for writing that they can easily sell.

Big difference. If you wrote the equivelent of Moby Dick today you'd have a hell of a time getting published. The writing is good but it only sells because it's a classic.

Drachen Jager · May 11, 2010

Remus Shepherd:

Try Tor/Forge. Because they don't have to sell the book to a publisher they're more likely to accept off-beat material. They're the only big publishing house that takes queries that I know of.

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

Drachen Jager said:
Remus Shepherd:

Try Tor/Forge. Because they don't have to sell the book to a publisher they're more likely to accept off-beat material. They're the only big publishing house that takes queries that I know of.

Novel #1 has been on an editor's desk at TOR for 20 months.

Novel #2 has been rejected by TOR and DAW, and is in the slush at Penguin/Ace.

TOR is always the first place I submit, despite their slow response, because I've met editors there.

Calla Lily · May 11, 2010

RemusShepherd, if you're up to it, I'll look at your Q and first 5 pages. I've left SYW, but I have minor scary rep there.

The first book I wrote straddled genres, was way out-there, and was a poster child for near misses. I rewrote it 5 times (yes, five) and learned a LOT in the process. My second book, written after that uphill climb, landed and agent and sold.

I'm not nice, but I'm an unashamedly commercial writer and I'll give you an honest assessment. Let me know.

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

Amadan said:
Hugo award winners do not have the same skill sets as agents. Yes, good writers can usually (not always) recognize good writing in others, but you know, if all these great writers are saying you're publishable, why were they able to recognize your unappreciated genius and yet no agent can? Are they all "weird," too?

First, one of the Hugo winners was an editor, not a writer.

Second, they said I was good enough but weird. The agents are saying that my stuff is good but weird. It's the same. The rejection is due to the weirdness. The 'good' does not overcome the 'weird'...especially when money is on the line.

Please stop using the phrase 'unappreciated genius'. I've described my writing as 'solid' and 'good enough', nothing more. You're trying to make me into a stereotype, and I don't fit that mold.

I mean, I'm sorry, but you're kind of sounding like a lot of Special Snowflakes who get discouraged when their manuscripts get rejected and then they start muttering, "Oh, fine, I guess if you don't want to write the next Twilight rip-off you just can't be published..."

Ma'am, this ain't my first rodeo.

Been doing this for more than ten years now. Rejections happen, and I don't get upset at the people rejecting me. I do, however, want it to stop, and I was hoping to get some advice here about making that happen.

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

callalily61 said:
RemusShepherd, if you're up to it, I'll look at your Q and first 5 pages. I've left SYW, but I have minor scary rep there.

When I get home tonight I'll take you up on this. I just went through another set of revisions on Novel #1, hoping to punch up the beginning, and I'd like some opinions. I'll post it to SYW later tonight. Thank you!

Amadan · May 11, 2010

RemusShepherd said:
When I get home tonight I'll take you up on this. I just went through another set of revisions on Novel #1, hoping to punch up the beginning, and I'd like some opinions. I'll post it to SYW later tonight. Thank you!

I'll comment in it, then. And I'll stop calling you an "underappreciated genius" if you stop calling me "ma'am."

linfred4 · May 11, 2010

Hi, RemusShepherd

Well, all I have to say is we are all weird in one way other another. But you could always step back and look at your work and say I am doing fine or even great. But you could also let someone else read it like a friend or family member, sometimes they may see what you can't see. But other then that i am sure what ever you write is great.

ChaosTitan · May 11, 2010

RemusShepherd said:
Rejections happen, and I don't get upset at the people rejecting me. I do, however, want it to stop, and I was hoping to get some advice here about making that happen.

My only advice, then, is write something at your skill level.

Upthread, you mentioned:

I'm not a master. Never said I was. I said I was good enough. The problem is that I am including story elements of master-level difficulty in my novels, when I have only a workman's level of skill.

But I don't know how to increase my skill to the level required. Feedback doesn't help; my crit group fawns over me. In order to improve from my current skill level, I would need feedback from my superiors, and that is difficult if not impossible to get.

Instead of trying to increase your skill level in order to write these "master-level" stories, try the reverse. Use the skills you already possess and write a workman-level story. You can't cook a gourmet meal with a box of Hamburger Helper, but you can feed yourself with it and leave the table satisfied.

It's the ability to utilize our present skills that allow us to grow and get better. But if you aren't properly using those skills you already possess, you'll never reach the skill level you desire.

RemusShepherd · May 11, 2010

ChaosTitan said:
Instead of trying to increase your skill level in order to write these "master-level" stories, try the reverse. Use the skills you already possess and write a workman-level story. You can't cook a gourmet meal with a box of Hamburger Helper, but you can feed yourself with it and leave the table satisfied.

Yes, but I also mentioned above that if I don't include the crazy elements, it bores me to tears. I write weird because I like weird. Can I write something I don't like? One of these days I may have to find out.

ChaosTitan · May 11, 2010

RemusShepherd said:
Yes, but I also mentioned above that if I don't include the crazy elements, it bores me to tears. I write weird because I like weird. Can I write something I don't like? One of these days I may have to find out.

Then my only other comment is this: make sure you're targeting the right publisher. Truly quirky, "weird" fiction tends to be easier to place with the smaller presses. You say you've submitted to Tor and DAW before. What have they published recently that's like your work, that makes you believe they're the right house for you? I'm genuinely curious here.

What to do when the problem is You?

RemusShepherd

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

Ineti

Purveyor of Prose

Tasmin21

They will come from below...

suki

Opinionated

RemusShepherd

cscarlet

AW = Procrastination.

RemusShepherd

Jamesaritchie

Bubastes

bananaed

RemusShepherd

backslashbaby

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Amarie

carpe libri

Amadan

Drachen Jager

Professor of applied misanthropy

Drachen Jager

Professor of applied misanthropy

RemusShepherd

Calla Lily

On hiatus

RemusShepherd

RemusShepherd

Amadan

linfred4

ChaosTitan

Around

RemusShepherd

ChaosTitan

Around

What to do when the problem is You?

Court Jester

Purveyor of Prose

They will come from below...

Opinionated

AW = Procrastination.

bananaed

~~~~*~~~~

carpe libri

Professor of applied misanthropy

Professor of applied misanthropy

On hiatus

Around

Around

*