What editors don't understand (#2,459)


Friend of mine was recently talking to an editor-type, who wanted to know how the work on his latest book was progressing. He did the writer shuffle, but the editor insisted on trying to pin him down.

"So what happens to this character?" asked the editor. "How does [the character]* pull the [plot point]* off?"

"Don't know," said the writer.

The editor-type went nuts.

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

The meeting went downhill from there. I'm not sure if the editor-type thought my friend was bullshiting, being cruel, or somehow slacking off. But the upshot of it was a screaming match and some door slamming. Sorry I missed it, actually.

Now maybe he was bs'ing, or being cruel, or even slacking off, but what he said about not knowing what specifically was going to happen was surely true. The good stuff only happens when you get there. (Ditto the bad, but we don't have to go into that.)

That's what being a writer is - to a large extent, figuring it out when you get there is what makes it interesting.

That's not an editor's head -- an editor has to think more like an engineer, figuring out how things are going to be connected. They want to make sure the bridge is going to stand before they cross it. Writers just say, hell, let's get to the other side. We'll figure out how we do it when we get there.

* The specifics are irrelevant. Besides, by the time I explain the specifics, you'll be checking ESPN for baseball scores.

Book wars


In case you haven't heard . . .

Amazon.com extends Internet price war on books

By HILLEL ITALIE (AP)
NEW YORK — The book price wars are no longer just for pre-orders.
Amazon.com was offering hardcovers of John Grisham's "Ford County" and Barbara Kingsolver's "The Lacuna" for just $9 on Tuesday, the official release date for both books. Hardcovers generally have a list price of $24 or higher.

The price wars are driving publishers nuts. Even though no publisher has directly supported the lower prices with steeper than normal discounts (at least none have admitted it), the discounts are seen as decimating price points and killing or at least harming independent bookstores, who are losing sales because they generally can't offer to sell the books for less than they pay.

(The usual discount to book stores is 50 percent. That means the store paid somewhere in the area of half the list price to get the title. There are all sorts of promotions and other complications, but it's a useful rule of thumb. Oh, and authors generally get in the area of 6 to 12 percent, depending on the type of book, how many ultimately sell, the contract, etc. Yes, the guy or gal who wrote it gets the least amount of money in the process.)

There's some anecdotal evidence that the deeply discounted books are eating into the sales of other books a little lower in the pecking order, but given how slowly publishing works, it may be months before the real impact of this known.

At least somebody thinks people want to read books, and that they're worth bargaining over. The only problem is whether anyone will be able to afford to publish books when this is over.

Or write. But that's another subject . . .

Propaganda of the Google sort . . .

Google's sunshine profit - oh wait, typo, I meant prophet - has an op ed piece in the NY Times today about how fantastic the Google agreement is for readers. I'd post a link but it's such a self-serving piece of bs that I don't want anyone wasting their time reading it.

But if you do, here's my response:

If what Google has done is such a great idea, and so nobly motivated, then surely Segey Brin won't object if Google's code and data are used and redistributed, at profit, by others, without consultation or prior arrangement. If intellectual property laws are so out of date when they are applied to "old media," aren't they even more anachronistic when applied to new? Surely the world would be spectacularly better if all coding were open source as soon as it was written, and all of the physical representations of that coding, and the tangible and intangible results, wherever they might reside, were accessible to all, without limitation or cost. It would be a win-win for all.

Idealism in the employ of profit making is an old cliche.

The worst part of the agreement is that, if you're an individual author without a huge wad of cash, you basically had to sign on to the agreement to guarantee* any future control over your work.

So basically, I had to form a partnership with the SOB who robbed me. But at least I can sleep better with the knowledge that I'm doing it for all mankind.

*Ha!

Problems loom


This is how books get too . . . something.

I'm writing a thriller with one main plot and a couple of side plots. (If it were a movie, you'd call the secondary threads b and c stories, related but not precisely part of the main story line.)

Generally when I work on a book, no matter how many subplots, etc. it has, I go straight through, with occasional deviations for interesting developments or research or just because why the hell not. Every so often, though, I'll concentrate on what I consider the main story or thread, then go back and work on the others.

Which is what I'm doing this time. In fact, I even went further - I plotted the different sections out for length, something I've never done with a big book.

The main story line was figured at 300 pages. It's now over 500.*

Heh. Probably ought to come up with an ending soon, ya think?

(*Figure a standard big book novel is going to be about 500-600 pages.)

The settlement


Earlier this week:

(From Publisher's Weekly, an industry trade magazine)

In testimony before the House Judiciary subcommittee this morning, Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights, in her first detailed comments on the subject, blasted the Google Book Search Settlement as “fundamentally at odds with the law.” In a blistering assessment of the deal, Peters told lawmakers that the settlement is in essence a compulsory license that would give Google the ability to engage in activities, such as text display and sale of downloads, that are “indisputable acts of copyright infringement.”

Most damaging, however, was Peters’s insistence that only Congress—not the courts—could enact such licenses, and her repeated assessments that the settlement deprived Congress of its role. “By permitting Google to engage in a wide array of new uses of most books in existence the settlement would alter the landscape of copyright law,” Peters said. “That is the role of Congress, not the courts.” She said that by allowing out-of-print works to be swept into the settlement, the deal “makes a mockery of Article I of the Constitution.” Only Congress, she stressed, after a full public debate, can set such new rules.

Excellent points - so why weren't they made, say, months ago, rather than almost a week after authors had to decide whether to opt into the agreement or not?

Google's digitization was a clear violation of copyright law - piracy, pure and simple. And the agreement negotiated by the Authors' Guild is a piss poor solution.

Unfortunately, unless you're in a position to sue Google, the only practical way for an author to even attempt to get Google to stop abusing your copyright is to opt in, and then tell them they have to obey the law. Which is kind of like having to get murdered to get someone to enforce traffic laws.

And you can't even object to the settlement, unless you're part of it.

For the record, I opted in, after long debate. But I still think it stinks.

Publisher math


Me: I'm getting the copy edit first thing Tuesday?
Editor: First thing.
Me: That means it'll be there when I get up and am ready to work?*
Editor: First thing.
Me: Overnight?
Editor: Overnight.
Me: Overnight Express, or Supersaver?
Editor: (mumbles) Supersaver.
Me: Which means 10:30. If the UPS route isn't screwed up.
Editor: Whatever.
Me: And you need it back when?
Editor: This Monday.
Me: Monday?
Editor: That's a whole week. Seven days.
Me: Seven? I get it Tuesday. I have to finish it Friday by about five. Unless I send it by mail. Then I have until Saturday.
Editor: UPS. I need it first thing Monday.
Me: First thing.
Editor: I get in at 8, and I need it on my desk.
Me: Eight is first thing?
Editor:That's right.
Me: For you, not for me.
Editor: It doesn't matter to me when you start working.
Me: So you're giving me two and a half days to do this -
Editor: Two and a half?
Me: I told you last month, the one day this month I won't be here is Wednesday. You said you'd make a note of that.
Editor: I did.
Me: Two and a half days to go through a copy edit is not a lot of time.
Editor: What two and a half days? You have all the way until Monday.
Me: First thing.
Editor: First thing.

* A lot earlier than you think. A whole lot earlier than 10:30 a.m.

Rewriting





Thriller giant Jeffrey Archer is putting out a new edition of Kane & Abel, one of his earlier thrillers. Not content to just approve the new cover, he did something few authors are brave enough (or have the pull) to attempt: he revised the book.

I don't mean change a few words here or there. He supposedly added 27,000 new words . . . though allegedly he also cut enough that the book's actually a little shorter. (I've never heard of an author subtracting words on a rewrite, so take that with a grain of salt.)

Me, as soon as I'm done with a book, I'm done. I'd prefer not to come face to face with any part of my past . . .

Copyright

Copyright Critics Rationalize Theft

Writers, composers, designers and other
content creators need to fight back.

by Mark Helprin

. . . Their work is peculiarly vulnerable in that it is easy to appropriate....

Were this vulnerability unaddressed, the producers of intellectual property would be put out of business unless they were independently wealthy or worked either as amateurs or drew salaries at the pleasure of, and beholden to, boards, committees and overseers of every type. Always at risk, the independent voice, the guarantor of political freedom and personal dignity, would be dangerously depressed along with the arts that sustain civilization. Amateurs alone are insufficient -- unless one believes that the work of Herman Melville, Thomas Eakins and Aaron Copeland does not merit full-time employment.

Full article here.

Letter to the editor


The copy edit from hell goes back. Excerpt:

. . . Finally, what is up with [copy editor]? If he's not making snotty remarks in his queries, he's rewriting the copy and screwing crap up. This is the second ms. in a row where he's gone over the wall. . . .

Remind him that I have access to heavy weapons and enjoy using them . . .

Past perfect


Used to help explain when something happened, or to put it succinctly: to distinguish one past from another . . .

Unless you're the copy editor from hell, apparently. Then everything happened at the same time.

F@#$#ing hell . . .

Of Starfighters and fiction


One of the difficulties for a fiction writer, especially in a thriller genre, is the constant need to come up with situations that are plausible if not entirely true to life.

Like getting Starfighters to Moscow ten years after the last one has flown.

The trick is not so much being able to bend reality or even being able to fig leaf a solution; the problem is more one of generating an emotion in the reader that allows you to get away with stretching the story. Because after all, a reader who wants to see a Starfighter in Moscow won't particularly care how you accomplished it.

This is a tricky thing to try to explain, even to editors, especially ones who either don't read the genre at all - and thus don't know the readers - or are deaf to emotional tones. (And yes, there are editors like that. In fact, you tend to run into the problem more with editors than readers, since the latter often self-select out and know what to expect. They also tend to be more forgiving.)

We're all deaf to some things, and we all draw the line on believability in different places, depending on what we know, what we think we know - and most importantly, how we feel.

How much a fig leaf do those Starfighters need? Probably depends on whether you've seen one rush by you in the night . . .

Where is Rod when you need him?


So I was invited to write a short story for this Twilight Zone anniversary anthology, and it's an honor and cool and all, but damned if I can't nail the ending.

Not for lack of trying. I have about a hundred endings. But getting the right one to fit, so the story is a Twilight Zone story but not a cliched Twilight Zone story -- arg.

Somewhere around version ninety-eight I realized just how much the master's voice over at the end really does for an episode.

Too bad I can't just cut and paste.

Every problem has a solution

So I wake up in the middle of the night and realize there's a massive hole in the end of the book . . . which means ripping out one hundred pages and fixing it, like yesterday . . .

From now on, no more going to sleep.

Unarmed, mostly . . .

In answer to the question in comments a few days back -

I attend editorial meetings armed only with my wits and a cup of coffee. Sometimes only the latter.

Marketing session are a different story. And you don't want know about cover meetings . . .

We only work with legends

So a good friend calls up and starts talking about this book project he's got out at a publisher. And of course the unwritten rules is that even among friends, you don't talk too much about the project itself, because you don't want to jinx it, so he's talking about the editor...

Him: He's great. A real editor. A throwback type who really edits.
Me: Uh-huh.
Him: You know what I mean. Really helps improve the book. Understands what writing is all about.
Me: Uh-huh.
Him: A legend. Old school. An editor's editor.
Me: Wait a second. Who are we talking about?
Him: Xxxxxxx.
Me: Xxxxxxx?!? Are you kidding? . . . I've never seen him sober.
Him: I rest my case.

Then again, Xxxxxxx has never seen me sober, so maybe I'm old school, too.

What I learned from the editor today . . .

Snowmelt is one word.*

*But not according to the Blogger spellchecker. The OED and Shorter Oxford don't like either. I'm guessing the Brits never really cared much for snow, at least not in Oxford. I don't know what Blogger's got against it.

Re-re-rewriting

Most writers are unrepentant tinkerers, never really content with how a sentence sounds, let alone how a story goes. Given the chance, they'll change, edit, rearrange, shift, rework, rethink and rehash for the rest of their lives.

I'm one of them.

Deadlines usually save me. To get it out the door (or off the computer) by a certain time, you have to stop tinkering eventually. My rule is that, once it's done, it's done, go, get out, move on, no looking back.

Of course, that doesn't really work with a book. The copy edit comes back, then the proofs, and, arg, the finished product. Which in my mind, and I'm sure in most writers' minds, isn't really finished - it's just the state of the story when an arbitrary deadline arrived.

I try to avoid making too many changes at either the copy edit or the proof stages; the first because I don't necessarily trust myself to be objective - the first time you see the book back, no matter how good it really is, it sucks - and the second because publishers tend to completely freak when you do much more than point out typos.

But lately, I've been confronted with another stage - the excerpt for the web stage. The other day, looking over the first chapter of the new Rogue Warrior book, Dictator's Ransom, I was confronted with a whole bunch of prose that read not the way I wanted it to read. (Kinda like that sentence.)

It was tempting - beyond tempting - to revise it. But would people who then bought the book notice the changes and say, WTF?

I guess there's a philosophical question there: once it's "done," should it really be "done"?

I made a few changes, and probably would have made more, had a deadline not loomed... good thing it's football season, or I might still be tinkering.

And now for the shameless plug: www.dictatorsransom.com

Finally, we start to get serious . . .

I won't go into a big tirade about Afghanistan/Al Qaeda, since the few people who might actually read it already know pretty much what's going on. But the administration finally seems to have gotten serious, or almost serious, or almost-almost serious, about dealing with Al Qaeda there - and in Pakistan.

At least they've finally formally said it's OK to operate there.

Actually, they're just belatedly recognizing (part of) the reality. In truth, parts of the Pakistan army have been at war with America for several years. They've been firing on Americans for quite a while now.

Here's a story that actually has the balls to say what's going on there - first thing I've seen in the MSM that acknowledges that Pakistanis are attacking Americans:

Right at the Edge

By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: September 7, 2008

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have established a haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghan border. This is where the war on terror will be fought – and possibly lost.

Click here to read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07pakistan-t.html?ex=1378526400&en=d7b4e7009f1bf45c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Filkins' article will seem pretty pessimistic. There are a lot of people who will tell you he's not pessimistic enough.

It's funny: when I first started working on Leopards Kill - which was about two, maybe three years before it came out - I thought it would be old news by the time it was published, because surely we'd have woken up . . . more and more, it looks like a dark prophecy.

Copy editor hell

Some days after wading through a long and harrowing copy edit, I like to grab a beer and sit out on the front bench, watch the cars go by, and think of the nervous breakdown the copy editor who worked on Fight Club must have had . . .

Thrillerfest

The International Thriller Writers Association held its annual dinner and group therapy session last night in New York. The Guru was there, of course, holding court in a corner of the Hyatt bar, a place where more books have been inspired and brain cells killed than any other place in Manhattan.

My only disappointment was that David Hagberg wasn't wearing a tux. On the other hand, he did have some clothes on, so I should count my blessings.

Prior to the real start of festivities downstairs, ITW gave out awards:

BEST NOVEL
The Ghost by Robert Harris (Simon & Schuster)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (William Morrow)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
The Midnight Road byTom Piccirilli (Bantam)

2008 ThrillerMaster Award for recognition of her illustrious body of work and many contributions to the field was granted to Sandra Brown.

But Jim Rollins' recounting of the "best" Amazon reviews ever received by members was what stuck with me. A couple (paraphrasing):

"All your books really suck, but this latest one was by far the worst..."

"This book is so bad I'd un-read it if I could . . ."

Amazing how mothers can turn on their children...