(no subject)
Jul. 19th, 2011 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatApparently if you are a sci-fantasy writer and wish to make any sort of living, you spend 75% of your life wandering about promoting yourself and your work like crazy. It's the big difference between literary writers and genre writers - I've noticed. The literary writers online - don't do this. They sort of sit on their laurels...and well write, teach courses, go to a few conferences, and that's it.
The genre writers on the other hand, particularly the sci-fantasy ones - seem to travel about the world either on their own dime or someone gives them money (can't quite figure out which - guessing a bit of both or they'd be broke by now, one would suspect because world-wide traveling can't be cheap) jumping from fan convention to fan convention and book signing to book signing, etc. Lord knows when they find time to write admist all this hubbub. Although, considering I find time to write and tell myself stories and blog with a full time 8 hour a day, mentally exhausting job...shouldn't be that much of a surprise. My father wrote a book in airports and at motels while he flew to and from meetings (the original road warrior). He was in and out of airports so much when I was a kid, that the other kids in my neighborhood thought he was a pilot. Which was admittedly easier to wrap one's head around than organizational and compensation consultant, who wrote mysteries in his spare time. Didn't get them published because he sucked at marketing himself. Now self-publishes them.
Been reading my correspondence list - and all the professional writers are blogging long-ass posts from some convention, book signing or awards conference advertising themselves and their work like crazy. The only one I sort of envy is Neil Gaiman who is by far the most successful of the bunch and the most famous. He just won two Shirley Jackson Awards - didn't know there were such things. Rather adore Shirley Jackson, although she rarely won awards and struggled mightily. What is it with the entertainment industry and awards? No one else gets them. People who work long days, sweating in the street fixing a sewage system, or abating asbestos from cables, or ensuring such things get done in a timely manner don't get awards. I'm guessing the reason people in the "entertainment" jobs do - is they are unappreciated or scoffed at, so need to some respect from somewhere - all people need that after-all. Also...it provides the rest of us with a way of choosing amongst the vast majority of content out there. Sure there are critics, but critics as we all know tend to be unreliable. Awards are far more positive any how, and they are based on the opinions of people in the actual field - who do it for a living. Also it's, let's face it, a lot more fun to predict which favorite tv show, book, story or movie is going to win than say which sewage construction worker did the best job. Entertainment takes us out of ourselves and our mundane lives - let's us escape...without nasty side-effects. And we adore those who entertain us - because they provide that means of escape or in some cases they communicate our greatest fears, joys, woes to the universe - connecting us with people we'd never met otherwise, like-minded souls across a vast divide.
So who's to say really which job is the most worthwhile? If any? And the awards are a means of showing some appreciation to those artists who move us the most.
Speaking of nasty ways of escape? Read about a really nasty drug the other day called Bath Salts - which causes severe psychotic episodes. Episodes that remind me a bit of zombies. The people who take these drugs - get high, but also often go violently and scarily insane. And are difficult to sedate or restrain. One woman scratched herself to bits - thinking bugs were crawling under her skin.
She looked like she'd been drug for miles over broken glass. Another woman was so violently deranged, it took six men to restrain her, and nothing worked to sedate her. A man - climbed a pole and threw things at the street. Another man killed his entire family while on it. Talk about your bad acid trip. It's like something out of a horror movie. Britain banned the drug in 2010 or 2009. Now its made it's way to the US and they are having troubles containing it - since it is sold in bath shops and stores as well "bath salts". This is why we can't legalize drugs - some drugs turn people into violent psychopaths right out of a Stephen King horror flick. The fiction writer in me went nuts over this story - I kept playing with ways to turn it into short story or novel.
Okay off to bed. Damn, I can't make it to bed until 11 no matter what I do. Feeling the Wire withdrawl, big time. I'm starting to figure out the narrative tropes that turn me on. The Wire hits so many narrative tropes that turn me on, it's not even funny. And I love, just love to pieces, all the main characters - well with the possible exception of Burrell and Valcheck, who I keep wanting to spork with a spoon. Great rec guys. You were so right about the Wire.
The genre writers on the other hand, particularly the sci-fantasy ones - seem to travel about the world either on their own dime or someone gives them money (can't quite figure out which - guessing a bit of both or they'd be broke by now, one would suspect because world-wide traveling can't be cheap) jumping from fan convention to fan convention and book signing to book signing, etc. Lord knows when they find time to write admist all this hubbub. Although, considering I find time to write and tell myself stories and blog with a full time 8 hour a day, mentally exhausting job...shouldn't be that much of a surprise. My father wrote a book in airports and at motels while he flew to and from meetings (the original road warrior). He was in and out of airports so much when I was a kid, that the other kids in my neighborhood thought he was a pilot. Which was admittedly easier to wrap one's head around than organizational and compensation consultant, who wrote mysteries in his spare time. Didn't get them published because he sucked at marketing himself. Now self-publishes them.
Been reading my correspondence list - and all the professional writers are blogging long-ass posts from some convention, book signing or awards conference advertising themselves and their work like crazy. The only one I sort of envy is Neil Gaiman who is by far the most successful of the bunch and the most famous. He just won two Shirley Jackson Awards - didn't know there were such things. Rather adore Shirley Jackson, although she rarely won awards and struggled mightily. What is it with the entertainment industry and awards? No one else gets them. People who work long days, sweating in the street fixing a sewage system, or abating asbestos from cables, or ensuring such things get done in a timely manner don't get awards. I'm guessing the reason people in the "entertainment" jobs do - is they are unappreciated or scoffed at, so need to some respect from somewhere - all people need that after-all. Also...it provides the rest of us with a way of choosing amongst the vast majority of content out there. Sure there are critics, but critics as we all know tend to be unreliable. Awards are far more positive any how, and they are based on the opinions of people in the actual field - who do it for a living. Also it's, let's face it, a lot more fun to predict which favorite tv show, book, story or movie is going to win than say which sewage construction worker did the best job. Entertainment takes us out of ourselves and our mundane lives - let's us escape...without nasty side-effects. And we adore those who entertain us - because they provide that means of escape or in some cases they communicate our greatest fears, joys, woes to the universe - connecting us with people we'd never met otherwise, like-minded souls across a vast divide.
So who's to say really which job is the most worthwhile? If any? And the awards are a means of showing some appreciation to those artists who move us the most.
Speaking of nasty ways of escape? Read about a really nasty drug the other day called Bath Salts - which causes severe psychotic episodes. Episodes that remind me a bit of zombies. The people who take these drugs - get high, but also often go violently and scarily insane. And are difficult to sedate or restrain. One woman scratched herself to bits - thinking bugs were crawling under her skin.
She looked like she'd been drug for miles over broken glass. Another woman was so violently deranged, it took six men to restrain her, and nothing worked to sedate her. A man - climbed a pole and threw things at the street. Another man killed his entire family while on it. Talk about your bad acid trip. It's like something out of a horror movie. Britain banned the drug in 2010 or 2009. Now its made it's way to the US and they are having troubles containing it - since it is sold in bath shops and stores as well "bath salts". This is why we can't legalize drugs - some drugs turn people into violent psychopaths right out of a Stephen King horror flick. The fiction writer in me went nuts over this story - I kept playing with ways to turn it into short story or novel.
Okay off to bed. Damn, I can't make it to bed until 11 no matter what I do. Feeling the Wire withdrawl, big time. I'm starting to figure out the narrative tropes that turn me on. The Wire hits so many narrative tropes that turn me on, it's not even funny. And I love, just love to pieces, all the main characters - well with the possible exception of Burrell and Valcheck, who I keep wanting to spork with a spoon. Great rec guys. You were so right about the Wire.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-26 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-26 09:37 pm (UTC)My father who was a Road Warrior for 30 years, upon retirement and finally getting around to writing again and self-publishing, has neither the energy nor the physical stamina to do the traveling about again. (Bad back and he is 75). A friend of his - who started out - self-publishing, then finally got a publisher, St. Marks Press, is a mystery novelist. She's been touring the country - book store to book store, book signing to book signing, all paid out of her own pocket. Even with the publisher. She barely makes a dime off of her work. It's painful.
But like all jobs - there's always a frustrating down side.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-26 09:41 pm (UTC)I was lucky in that my publisher paid for this tour. But it's my 10th book and the only one with serious money and steam behind it. A coincidence it's my biggest success? No. But you have to pound the pavement either way. It's not optional anymore.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-26 10:13 pm (UTC)(This may explain why I want to rip books like the Twilight series to shreds, because I know how much money the publishing industry threw at that series, money that they took away from far better written YA novels...such as Kristin Cashore's Graceling, which I just finished. But I also know from my various discussions with trade publishing editors and agents - Meyer's Twilight series is their bread and butter. They'd be out of business without it and nothing would get published.)
I remember the story about The Horse Whisperer - picked up at a rights convention - based solely on the first five chapters. It's a cinderella tale. First novel. But for every one of those..there
are people like Kathy Wall - a mystery writer, paying her own way or a James Yaffe, another mystery writer/and television scribe (who I know no one has ever heard of) doing the same thing. I remember Yaffe telling me once - only write if you have the drive, and have something to say - don't do it for fame or fortune, both are unlikely to come your way.
But most writers pound the pavement. I know Stephen King, John Grisham, JK Rowling, and George RR Martin all did. As did Jim Butcher. The lucky ones - get a best-seller. Most, pray for one, much like my co-workers pray to win the lottery - better odds winning the lottery.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-29 02:02 am (UTC)Back in 2006 Warren Ellis said he was going to have to cancel his comic con appearance because he couldn't find a hotel he could afford...
he posted bitterly about it on his blog, and Joss posted back kidding around, but Joss also made some calls (at the time Joss was writing for Marvel as well as Dark Horse, and probably knew some people at networks and movie studios too) and got him a room.
It is a fun read:
http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=1848
it is possible that Joss gave up his own room and decided to just from home for one long day in San Diego... I don't know.
I was just in Chicago yesterday to meet Jim Butcher ... and he affirmed that his publisher arranged the signing (and that he couldn't wait for the tour to be over with so he could get home), but clearly he has become a bigger name these days.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-29 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-29 12:21 pm (UTC)and I was expressing surprise that Butcher evidently is a superstar... I hadn't thought he was. I'm glad he is.