Maybe There Is Hope For Writers

-
Or, at least, there is someone with some sense out there.

Someone posted a link to this NY Times article on writing to the AMWA freelance listserve. It's brilliant and painfully, painfully true.

Typing Without A Clue

And it reinforces my sense that SOMETHING has got to change in the publishing industry, and that if it doesn't change itself, we-the-writers will figure out a way to circumvent it. Maybe POD. Maybe PDF. Maybe something entirely different. I don't know.

But there has be a way. There has to be. Because I'm tired of waiting to read Susan's novel about Trevor and the gang. I'm tired of not having hard copies of Joely's stuff. I'm tired of reading about people like Joe the Plumber and OJ Simpson getting published, while people who can actually tell a damn good story don't.

OK, so what if the rules are the rules and life isn't fair. I say let's change the damn rules already.

So there.

.

Comments

Joely Sue Burkhart said…
Bless you. I agree -- things need to change. I used to stew and fret that I'd never get to NY and now...maybe that's a good thing with authors getting cut left and right, editors losing their jobs, cutbacks everywhere.

Meanwhile, Samhain expands by buying another small press and Kindles are the new in thing.

So there is hope, if we're willing to change our thinking.

Yet I must admit to looking forward to Rose possibly hitting print in 2009.
11:18
Bethanie said…
Yeah, there is definitely a place for traditional books! And nothing says you've arrived like actually seeing your name in actual print (at least, I imagine it that way...).

But there is also room for improvement on the old system - a lot of room I would say. Figuring out just what that would be, will be the trick...
07:52
Anonymous said…
It's things like this that make me wonder why I still have faith in humanity...or concepts like common sense.

I still do not get who this "Joe the Plumber" is and why anyone should really give a damn. (Though, I'm not American so feel free to blame my ignorance here.) Knowing he has a book deal just boils my blood. Writing for the love of the process is one thing, the "15 minutes of fame" crap is another.

I thought OJ's book deal got canceled though? (Oh, pretty please, tell me it did?)
15:59
Bethanie said…
I'm pretty sure OJs book deal got cancelled, but not until the very last possible second - as in, I think there were hard copies printed... maybe... not sure about that... but the fact that he GOT a book deal in the first place, that's the thing that gets me. :-P
17:08
Susan Helene Gottfried said…
No, OJ's book came out. It was big news for about a week or so.

Anyway, I'm just now seeing this (where have I been? Oh, yeah, in blog panic!) or I'd have been by earlier. Because you know you can get the background material to Trevor's Song (that's the novel), right? The Demo Tapes ARE available and I've got copies here so I can autograph them...

(and if it sells really well, the novel will follow at some point!)
21:46
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friday Snippet - Mutagens

-
Welcome to my very first Friday Snippet! (*bites lower lip* nerves, nerves...) This is from a story called 'Mutagens' that I started a few years ago after having to edit a paper on childhood cancer. I had to do a fair amount of background reading on teratogens and mutagens and oncogenes and such like. Naturally, my imagination chewed on the science-y stuff, twisted it up with a bunch of other stuff bouncing around in my mind at the time - terrorism, homesickness, being a mommy - and next thing I knew I had this story idea burning a hole in my brain. This part is actually a bit that I cut when attempting to force the thing to be a short story, which it adamently refuses to be, so it will probably go back in in some form eventually. Anyways, here 'tiz: ******************************* She took James up onto the roof to play in the warm afternoon sun. So late in September the heat felt good, even though the light had taken on that glow that said in no uncertain terms that i...
Read more

Thursday Thirteen #5

-
Image
The subject of this TT comes to you courtesy of my 20th high school reunion, which I found out about yesterday, because an old friend found me on Facebook and sent me the info. It was kinda neat cruising the reunion website and seeing where people ended up, which naturally induced a bout of homesickness. Consequently, I give you... Thirteen Things I Miss About My Hometown That Have Ended Up In My Fiction 1. Moe’s Italian Sandwiches. It’s the bread, I think. And the absense of lettuce. And the particular meat they use. Or all of the above. I dunno, but you haven’t lived until you’ve had a Moe’s. Fiction: One gets shared in Dragons - in Prescott Park, as a matter of fact (see #7 below). 2. The Brioche. A café, which isn’t actually called that anymore, but I can’t remember the current name… Anyway, it’s the café on the square where I spent half of high school, every morning of my college career before I caught the bus, and as much time as I can manage on visits home. Fiction: Bits...
Read more

Lessons Learned

-
I thought the Character Clinic (CC101) Joely hosted over the weekend was fabulous! Even though I didn't win anything, I learned a ton about how to build characters and what I like about them - among many other things. And it's the "other things" that, for some reason, are really churning around in the ol' brain right now. Two interesting things occurred as a strangely direct result of CC101. One, I'm not prepared to discuss yet. It's still churning, and it ain't turned to butter yet... The other is the big one for me (a big pain in the ass, that is...): theme. Stories have themes. They just do. Any good story worth the paper or pixels it's printed on, anyway, has a theme, an overriding, overarching thread of wisdom that guides the ultimate outcome. That's how I define it for myself, anyway. I flat-out SUCK at theme in my own writing. There are reasons for this. First of all, I blame the fact that as a reader, I don't like to analyze. ...
Read more