You Write Well, But...

That little coordinating conjunction always spells trouble. I used to be a professor, but now I’m an editor. I read many, many student papers—and now read many books—where the author doesn’t write well. I write well, but…

I ponder this as I have just received a nice rejection letter, this one from Two Dollar Radio. My writing is good, but not exactly what we’re looking for. My stack of such letters teeters over my head. Well, it would if I printed them out. It is easy to say no over the internet.

In a world where good writers have trouble publishing, what does that say about the publishing industry? I’m reading a novel right now that’s very interesting. On the literary front it can’t be called great, but it is a good book. The writing is good, but…

In publishing, the choice comes down to fit and money. You’re supposed to research your potential publisher—as if you’d have any time between working twelve hours a day, writing in the other four or so you have to spend awake, and trying to stay alive—to see if they publish your kind of writing.

An artist knows s/he is unique. I don’t know to whom to compare my book. Edgar Allan Poe, by far a superior writer to me, invented at least two literary genres on his own. Of course, he struggled to get published and died at a young age. Now he’s immortal.

Always the editor holds the keys. They decide if you write well, and if you do, whether you are worth publishing or not. Are you willing to die for your art? By that I mean wait until after you’re dead to have anyone notice your work?

Those of us who write because we’re writers don’t do it for commercial gain. We write because we’re writers. The writing may be good, but is there money to be made? Not just some money, but lots of money, we really mean.

Until you can show the greenbacks they covet, they will write you emails saying, “You write well, but…”

Comments

Working Through It

The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time. Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot. Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group. Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday. I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare. I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run. And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined. One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful. They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only. Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away. They also met on Saturdays. Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...

Patterns

There’s a pattern I’m noticing. For fiction publishers. Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle. Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers. The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in. That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested. I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns. This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses. I check many lists. What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic. It’s literary but it’s weird. Publishers don’t know what to do with it. If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered. Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...

Creativity

Maybe you’ve noticed this too. When you step away from fiction writing for a while, your creativity becomes flaccid. I’ve had to step away from this blog for a while because I was writing my sixth nonfiction book. God, I’ve missed fiction! Now that I’ve entered that phase of waiting for publishers to respond, I’ve turned my limited writing time back to fiction. I submitted a couple of stories this week and am waiting to hear about those as well. When you’re a writer, waiting is a way of life. Opening my software where I store my fiction stories, I was amazed by how many I found. Some of them are bad—so bad that they’ll never (rightfully) be published. Some are surprisingly good and have been sitting around while I finished up my nonfic. The vast majority, however, are unfinished. Some years back I realized that when I’m writing in the heat of inspiration but don’t have time to finish a story that I need to write down where I...

K. Marvin Bruce

Search This Blog