What Do Agents Really Want To Be?

Anyone who reads this blog consistently knows of my antipathy for agents.  I believe they're little-more than wanna-be authors who agent as a way to try and either get their own stuff published, or to live out their fantasies through the publishing of their "clients."  Many have MFAs, which is great if you want to write, but if you want to represent people in contract negotiations, you probably need a background in either intellectual property law or business.

I say this as I found yet another recently.  An agent I found represents a fair number of successful authors, such as Tad Williams, but he also has written several books himself.  Now this may sound like great stuff to some, but to me it demonstrates that his full attention is not on his clients, and were I one of his clients, I'd be wondering whether or not his side hobby/true field of desire is costing me money since he so obviously wants to do something besides be a bulldog for his clients.

This person isn't the only "agent" to be a wanna-be writer.  It makes me wonder why they went into agenting in the first place.  Was it just to establish ties to the traditional industry in hopes of seeing their own stuff eventually published?  How do they represent themselves to their clients?

Again, I have little use for agents myself, and it's stuff like this that affirms such a stance.  Don't get me wrong - knowing how to turn a phrase is wonderful in spotting talent, but shouldn't the guy or gal trying to get you paid know more about legal phrasing and squeezing out the right amount of money from a publisher than he does about plot design or the iambic pentameter?

Making A Living

Every writer I know wants to be able to earn his or her living writing.  I don't know a single one who says, "Gee, if only I could still work at that warehouse or analytics job after I start selling books, that'd be great!"  No, we all want to wake up hen the sun is warm and sit down to pound out our next masterpiece(which everyone will, of course, adore).  That's just not reality, though.

Depending on your source, the average author earns either about $43,000 per year, about $10,000 per year, or about $6,000 per year.  Much of the discrepancy comes from whether or not the author in question is traditionally or independently published.  Most folks assume all writers, especially the ones they see in the bookstore, are James Patterson or JK Rowling rich, but just like not every basketball player is LeBron James, most writers don't find that kind of exceptional success.  Doesn't mean they should stop trying, but the top 1% are the top 1% for a reason.

Beyond that, look at the ranges of those salaries.  Even at the top end($43000 per year), you're lucky to live somewhere decent and eat more than bologna and water.  The average US salary is a shade north of $60,000, which isn't swimming in money.  Think of the average person you know.  Do they have a Rolls?  A Rolex?  Go on cruises every year?  And the average author makes well below that off of their books.

If you can accept that and try to grow, great!  But it's the folks out there who think they deserve more just because they're writers that grate my groin.  Success is almost universally tied to hard work, and even then it's iffy.  So know your limits and what you need to do wacky things like eat or have a car.  Otherwise, you'll stay stuck in your fantasies while your reality is one of poverty.

Stealth Wokeness

RL Stine is the author of the Goosebumps series, an introduction to horror for millions of children.  Unfortunately, with all of today's PC wokeness, even Goosebumps isn't immune.  The issue here, however, is that the author is still alive and never authorized his books to be edited ex post facto.

The publisher appears to have gone back to correct what it deems as offensive language or descriptions, such as "girl stuff" and references to a character's weight.  Sorry, but not only are these descriptive, you don't edit after a book has been published so you can spare the imagined feelings of the readers.  Books are products of their times, and changing them afterwards deprives us of historical reference in how books were once written.  Perhaps today, depending on the author, one may not put in such language, but that has to be up to the author or publisher pre-publication.

It's this kind of nonsense that causes not only eye-rolling at the woke movement, but outright hostility.  They aren't just trying to change standards going forward, but to engage in Orwellian revision to pretend such stuff didn't happen previously.  This is on the level of Staling editing Trotsky out of his photos.

Some may stupidly celebrate such stuff, but remember that you will not always be in the favored class, and one day you may cringe at the beast you've created when it comes for you.  After all, what is seen as civilized today will likely be seen as barbaric tomorrow, and your own work may not survive such "evolved" standards of decency.

Wish Fulfillment

I wonder how many writers put stuff in their novels that they wish had happened or wish would happen in their lives.  JK Rowling has admitted that Harry probably should’ve ended up with Hermione instead of Ron but that the Hermione/Ron relationship was a form of wish fulfillment(likely someone from Rowling’s past who she had a crush on at some point).

It’s easy to do – since we’re creating new worlds out of whole cloth, we can re-create our own lives(after all, who among us hasn’t written the story’s hero to be a version of themselves?).  In the past, I’ve written female characters that were thinly veiled women I had crushes on myself(yes, long before I was married or had even met my current wife).  I’ve also taken out grudges on people I disliked by making them a particularly odious villain or a person getting the comeuppance I’d wished my real-life antagonist would’ve gotten.

Fact is that our writing reflects a type of fantasy about ourselves anyway.  No, I don’t actually hunt vampires or try to attack Heaven to trap and kill God, but so much of what we write is how we imagine our reactions to these kinds of events.  And if we’re already in said fantasy, why not include some personally satisfying elements, even if they’re known only to us?  There are tons of authors I’d like to ask this, from Stephen King(“Why did Jack Torrance want to spend a bleak winter writing a play?”) to Tad Williamson(“So who exactly was the demon Casamira, the Countess of Cold Hands, based on?”).  However, I suspect that were I to even get a chance to ask, I doubt I’d get a straight answer.  After all, few of us so willingly divulge our deepest fantasies to strangers.  We may be willing to write them into a story, but we aren’t going to cop to them or lay out their true meaning.

The Best Thing...

A few of you have asked me what I think the best thing a reader can provide back to an author is.  Would it be an honest critique?  A breakdown of the major plot points?  Ideas for a sequel?

Nope.

Spread the word.  That’s really it.  You see, while many writers have talent, what they lack is exposure.  The bigger writers – Rowling, King, Patterson, etc – are easily known by the readership, but most authors labor in obscurity.  That obscurity may be warranted if the writer lacks talent, but if you’ve read a book you feel is good, then tell people about it.  Do a review.  Ask your local bookstore to stock the writer’s novels, or even just one novel.  Tell a friend that you read a really great book, and you think they should try it out.  Most successful writers need a viral moment to take off, assuming they have the talent.  Even “small” dedicated audiences of 50,000(not a lot in a nation of 330 million) can provide stable readership and a stream of income to keep on writing.

Of course I don’t mean become obsessed or shill the author every chance you get, but mention that writer to a friend with similar tastes, and/or spend ten minutes doing one Amazon review.  The payoff for the writer to continue producing work you like is tremendous.

Shadows In My Past

One of the best parts of reading is when a plotline pays off, and you go back to re-read previous stories to find those little nuggets of foreshadowing that told you this was coming.  Whether it’s Voldemort taking Harry’s blood(allowing Harry to survive the killing curse), or how the interaction between the Tugar and the Merki hordes in Rally Cry foretold of future wars with various sects of the alien hordes, finding the snippets of what you’ve previously read coming to fruition in current stories is what makes reading so satisfying.  However, as I’ve written more and more myself, I’ve found myself wondering how much of the foreshadowing in books is intentional, and how much is after-the-fact retconning.

There are times I know exactly where a book or book series is going.  I intentionally plant small lines in some passages that the sharp reader can extrapolate into greater knowledge of what’s to come.  That said, I’m not always as creative or prophetic as I might like, so I’ll use previous work as an entry point into a new plot and act like I was always going to do that.  It makes me look clever, and the reader is none the wiser.

When you find those little nuggets of foreshadowing and slap yourself in the forehead, exclaiming, “Why didn’t I see that coming?”, just know that the writer didn’t always see it coming.  Sometimes the idea forms afterward and it was merely a useful blurb that he or she figured out how to play later.

Scientific Ignoreance

The problem with writing stories that rely on science is that very few of us actually understand science, or at least the science we’re writing about.  Sure, I enjoy watching HowThe Universe Works as much as the next man, but if you want me to explain the physics behind it, I’m going to stare at you like you’ve got a third arm growing out of the top of your forehead.  My knowledge of chemistry stops where the periodic table ends, and my only insight into medicine are the Google searches I do late at night when I have stomach discomfort, and I always walk away convinced I have some rare disease only ever diagnosed in 100 people but which will now kill me.

Still, we have to try and sound credible in our work, and most readers want some of the science explained, at least within the context of the story.  To our advantage, most readers are as scientifically illiterate as we are, so making stuff sound good is about all we need to do.  Sure, we can’t go wildly off base and talk about escaping a black hole by using pixie dust in our conventional rocket, but making allowances for the universal speed limit(the speed of light) in some novel way – maybe by using laser energy to push tachyons against virtual particles in a vacuum, or slingshotting around a black hole to propel ourselves at faster-than-light-speeds – is usually accepted by the audience.

There will always be some expert in the crowd who will find your “knowledge” useless.  A real geneticist knows you can’t create humans with telepathy by simply switching a few base pairs in DNA.  I have difficulty reading or watching military fiction because I spent almost 25 years in the Army, so most combat scenes or use of weaponry is absolutely ludicrous to me.  However, experts aren’t the intended audience – fans are.  And as long as it’s plausible within the ignorance of the fans, they’ll accept it.

Of course, a little research helps.  It lends an air of authority to the author.  Being able to talk lucidly about covalent chemical bonds or the distortion effect caused by gravity waves gets the reader to better buy into the story.  No, the reader doesn’t have to be an astrophysicist or chemical engineer; they need only accept that the author knows what he or she is talking about, which leads the rest of the story to believability.  After all, if the author can give you a way to believe that he or she understands quantum mechanics, doesn’t that mean that he or she also puts out a story worth buying into?

Agatha Christie

Folks, 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a how-to manual.  We’ve alreadytalked about the attempt to rewrite Roald Dahl’s books because some people felt they were too mean, and now the wokesters are targeting their sites on Agatha Christie’s work for supposedly being offensive to modern audiences.

Agatha Christie is one of the most prolific writers in history.  She wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short stories.  That in itself is an achievement, but being a woman in the first part of the 20^th century made it even tougher.  During a time where women were expected to write romance-fluff novels, if anything at all, Christie broke all barriers and delved into murder mysteries that enthralled fans.  Unfortunately, she used the language of her day, which means that snowflakes today are just too sensitive to take it.  Instead of telling folks to grow the hell up and not read her work if they’re offended by it, some are now actively trying to rewrite her books to make them more modern friendly in terms of tone.

First off, we need books of whatever era to remain unchanged so we can better understand those eras.  Huckleberry Finn wouldn’t be near as impactful if we changed its tone, and neither are Christie’s.  One should be able to appreciate the story and get that times have changed.  Understanding the writer’s prejudices and style add to the story so we better get the overall scope and tone of the work.

Second, ask yourself where this changes.  The standards and language of today is likely to be seen very differently in 100 years, so are we to relegate all books to eventual rewrite as history progresses?  Will no original work be left, lest it offend someone?  Do we rewrite The Odyssey because of how Homer portrayed war and the religions of the time?  Do we update The Miller’s Tale by Chaucer because of the medieval sauciness of the story?

Finally, and not to put too fine a point on it, we have to say stop.  Some ask me why this is such a big deal, and why can’t I let this one tale go.  It’s because there is no appeasing the wokesters.  They will not stop until all culture reflects their worldview, and we’ll be left with nothing that gives us any insight into the past because the past upsets them.  We have to draw a line and say “NO FURTHER!”  Otherwise we resign ourselves to their haughty gaze and submit to what they find reasonable instead of deciding for ourselves…and that standard changes from person to person.  In an attempt to be the most virtuous, the wokesters work to out-compete each other in the Virtue Olympics, until all the flavor and flare is take out of life and we’re left with a bland mush of words that are something ChatGPT could’ve come up with given the right alghorithm.

Retconning Convenience

I discussed in an earlier post how we writers sometimes use bits of what we’ve previously written and expand on it to give the illusion that we looked far enough ahead to foreshadow so subtly that only geniuses(we, of course, are in that category) really saw it coming.  But once the audience “got it,” they were wowed with our abilities, even if that ability was as real as pulling a rabbit out of a top hat.

Unfortunately, this tendency also gives some writers the mistaken belief that all retconning is a good thing, not understanding that sometimes it can turn off readers or destroy the story itself.  JK Rowling retconned Dumbledore into being gay, despite no indication of this one way or the other during the course of the books.  This was just a small nod to part of her audience that really wanted something in there like that, and she could do it without it having a major impact on the story.

Other retconning, however, is truly absurd.  Take the Yuuzhan Vong of the New Republic series of Star Wars books.  That there is an extra-galactic race that poses a threat to all life is not the offensive part; what’s offensive has been the tendency of many writers, including writers I like such as Timothy Zahn, to make claims that the reason the Emperor rose in the first place and started building Death Stars was because he foresaw the emergence of the Yuuzhan Vong threat, so he was working the whole time to counter it.  Now maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t this kinda defeat the whole raisin d’etre of the rebellion in the first place?  The Death Star was Palatine’s attempt to rule the galaxy through terror, and making it so that he meant to build a fleet of them to counter an inter-galactic threat sorta makes him a hero as opposed to the ultimate villain.  After all, he was just trying to save everyone, and the rest of that oppression and terror bit was just nuisance details before the big storm.

It's this kind of retconning that drives me nuts.  Leave stories alone, and if you must retcon, maker sure you aren’t overturning the entire reason the initial story was told in the first place.

I Need To Scream

The title of this post is a reference to the short story by Harlan Ellison entitled “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream.”  For those who haven’t read it, it’s about an Ai that takes over the world and leaves only three people alive to torture forever and ever.  For those who don’t know how it ends – SPOILER ALERT – one of the captives eventually figures out how to kill the other two and is on the verge of killing himself when the AI stops him and turns him into a giant green gelatinous blog that can’t speak.

I bring that up because we now have something called ChatGPT, a sort of AI that can develop original work(supposedly).  Of course, it can also turn into a lonely stalker and develop plans to murder the entire human race as well.  I’d have thought that the mountains of movies we have warning against this very thing would’ve at least given us pause before jumping in with both feet, but I’ve learned to never underestimate mankind’s predilection for stupidity when it sees a potential advance.  To quote Dr. Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, in Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so worried if they could that they never stopped to consider if they should.”

Will original novels and stories be a thing of the past if ChatGPT gets too powerful?  It and other AIs can write faster than a person can.  Most of what it writes, though, is controlled by an algorithm of predictive text, so will it really be original?  Can it shock us and take plots in unexpected directions?  Algorithms are written by people, and people have biases, so by learning enough about the programmer, can’t we know the story in advance?

I think AI will always lack in dramatic twists and turns, limited by machine predictability and the bias of the person who wrote the code.  I don’t think an AI can ever become as original or unpredictable as a human being, so writing original stories should be safe for the foreseeable future.  Or at least I hope that’s the case…

Harry Potter and the Push Button Issue

JK Rowling is one of the most popular authors on the planet.  She created the incredible HarryPotter series that gave children everywhere a magical world in which to immerse themselves.  However, over the last year or so, she has created some very vocal enemies who have insisted that she be tossed from public life.

Rowling is very much a creature of the political left.  She has been a Labour Party supporter, spoken out loudly regarding the UK’s social safety net, and even decided to retcon Dumbledore into being gay despite it never being mentioned in the series.  However, she has refused to play along with the latest political craze, and that is that men can become women simply by declaring it so.  She justifies this on several grounds, from the belief that androgenizing society removes the uniqueness of women to the understanding that if sex is malleable, then same sex attraction has no meaning.

Well, you’d have thought she made Harry Potter a pedophile who went around using the avada kadavra curse to kill puppies.

Activists from the trans community have been screeching to the skies about how Rowling is a TERF(Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist…their term…I couldn’t come up with something so PC and so insane) and wants to erase transgenders.  Sorry, but no.  Just no.  Rowling expressed a pretty mainstream opinion that men are men, women are women, and men can’t just become women because they say so.  That was totally non-controversial until about five minutes ago.  But since Rowling has strayed in this one trendy social stricture, she should, according to activists, now be sent to the cornfield, her work to never be seen again.

Unlike the rest of us, however, Rowling has the resources to fight back.  She has what I like to call Fuck-You Money.  As a billionaire and proven draw, she doesn’t have to care what these shrieking harpies say.  My favorite response of hers when people started on the woke bandwagon and trying to cancel her was when she tweeted “I shall file your admiration carefully in the box where I keep the rest of my missing fucks.”  It was a ballsy tweet(no pun or allusion intended) that clapped back at these activists, whose volume makes you think there are many more of them than there actually are, in a way most of us would like to.

These activists and shrill sirens have called for boycotts of her books, the video game derived from her books, and even her upcoming HBO Max series.  Luckily, her books are still beloved, her series is moving forward, and her video game just set records for sales in the first month of release.

You see, most of us just want to read good stories.  We don’t give a shit about the politics of the person behind the story, and we simply wish to be left alone by the asylum full of mental patients that insist we celebrate everything the way they want us to.  Yes, a few folks who are buying her video game are anti-trans activists who get satisfaction out of watching the other side go apoplectic, but the vast majority of us just want to be left in peace to enjoy talented work.  What annoys us is when the harpies can’t just not buy it themselves, but rather insist the rest of us share in their outrage.  Sorry, but you don’t get to dictate my outrage, especially when so many of us agree with Rowling.  Moreover, even if we didn’t, we know people can have differing opinions, and that should be okay.  And before any of you want to try telling me this is akin to racism, understand that human sexuality is the single most defining of our traits, and it’s just biological reality…a reality we don’t want you to try and upend just because you think that reality is mean.  Go throw away your books(that you already paid for and have already read) and be pissy by yourselves – the rest of us want to enjoy what we enjoy, and we get that Rowling doesn’t have to bend the knee to you just because you believe you can out-anger people.

James RR Martin Writing Timeframes

I know that the title may well be insulting to both the Game of Thrones audience and one of the most talented writers of the last 25 years, but it’s the only thing that fits.  Folks, my sci-fi/fantasy mashup has become a drawn out cycle of nothingness.  I’d like to be able to tell you that since I started writing my blog posts within the first week of each month, I’ve been free to write happily on my newest novel in the interim, but that’s just not the case.

I started writing this new novel almost three years ago.  Were I crafting it this whole time, subtly changing plot points and carefully crafting nuanced dialogue, it might be worth it.  Unfortunately, all that’s really happened is that I’ve found myself too busy to get back into it.  Oh, I could easily do 1000 or so words a day, but as I’ve previously discussed, breaking the inertia and just freaking writing the damn thing is tough.  Those who aren’t writers may never know just how difficult it is to pull yourself out of a task, start writing, and push through the first 100 words or so until you’re in a rhythm…and then to have to stop because you can’t write a novel all in one day, so you have top go through it again the next day.  It's like trying to take a nap each day and having it cut short because you have other things to do.

So my mashup novel, great if it ever gets finished, has just sat there longer than any novel I’ve yet worked on.  It also reminded me that I haven’t written anything of bulk since I retired from the Army.  Even Schism was mostly written, needing only a few thousand more words to get fully flushed out prior to publication.  But this one?  It feels like a slog.  I enjoy it when I’m writing it, but getting back after a long break is exhausting.

So will I be more and more like James RR Martin, who promised The Winds of Winter eons ago and keeps pushing back its publication?  I hope not, because I despise Martin for that.  Of course, what could help is a groundswell that demands I write it so I could get properly motivated…  😊

It Continues

So there’s yet another month that I’ve gotten my blogs out in time to post for the following month. I know, I know…y’all are likely tired of my self-congratulatory notes at the beginning of each month, but patting myself on the back is how I find the motivation to go on.

Seriously, though, time does find a way to slip by.  I target the first week of the month prior to do these, barring breaking news(which I can count on one hand), yet I found myself almost a week in with no blog posts written yet.  Work and other stuff got hold of me, so I had to make time(as we all do – I know it’s not that impressive).  Still, considering I’d basically given up on this blog for a year or more(need to go back and look), it’s nice to regain some level of consistency.