Category: Musings & Ramblings

Reaching Up

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings2 Comments

Last week, I emailed Brian White from Fireside Magazine and told him I wanted to help with the Kickstarter.  I offered to match pledges, up to $1000, for an hour.   Truth be told, I’d kind of been kicking myself for not trying to get on board with Fireside earlier.  I backed the first three Kickstarters, but that was the extent of my support.  When it looked like the third one wasn’t going to fund, I shrugged and was a bit sad but figured that was what came of trying to use crowdfunding on an issue by issue basis.

In the year since Brian started Fireside, though, I’ve been doing a lot of writing, and even more thinking.  For better or worse, the traditional publishing market is dying.  Within the next five years, there’s a good chance that people will be able to trade and sell used e-books the same way they trade and sell (and give away and leave in motel rooms and bus stations) paper books.  There are so many, many books being published each year that the chances of any one standing out from the crowd are even slimmer than that of finding the proverbial needle.  And this market, where people no longer believe that a new book is worth $25, where people will be able to sell books for pennies, where each book is competing with millions of others, is the market I’ll be publishing in.

So how does Kickstarter fit into publishing fit into trying to make a living off my writing?

Connections.  I think, more and more, we’re moving back to a place where the artist needs to come down from the ivory tower and be accessible.  This means connecting with people.  Yes, connecting with fans and readers is important, but it goes beyond that.  It’s connecting with the people who read and/or write the same kinds of things you do and with the people who’ve never read a word you write but follow you on Twitter and the people who pass by the blog and leave the occasional comment.  Because over time, the connections start to matter.

It also means supporting other artists.  It’s no good to go out, hat in hand, if you’re not willing to chip in a bit when someone else comes asking.  Because Fireside funding another year means more than having another literary mag that pays above market.

It means there’s a community of people out there who think that stories are worth supporting.  And that’s a community I want to be part of.

The Month That Very Nearly Wasn’t

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

February is starting to feel like a lost month.

It started off with such promise.  February is letter month, of course, and it was going to be the month that I finished my application to a writing workshop that’s taking place this summer.  I had thoughts that I might try and write a story to submit to Glitter and Mayhem.  Not to mention getting a renter in upstairs and starting work on the basement.

Thus far, the only thing I’ve managed to do is log a ridiculous number of hours at work.  I’m going to get the application finished.  Partly because it has a hard deadline of March 1.  Mostly because dreams take a certain amount of chasing before they can come true.

As for the rest of it, I’m pretty much operating in triage mode.  So if you don’t see me blogging or on Twitter, if you’re waiting for a letter that hasn’t arrived yet…  That’s where I am.  Hunkered down, waiting for the storm to blow over and the sun to come out.

 

“I know it when I see it”

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings5 Comments

One of the questions I’ve seen floating around blogs and #askagent sessions is how you know when it’s time to put a manuscript on hold.  The answer, it turns out, is rather like Justice Stewart’s definition of pornography:  you’ll know it when you see it.

After 3 contests, several requests for fulls, and a little bit over a year of querying, with no offers of representation, I’ve decided to put Pomegranate House on hold.  The fact that this doesn’t seem like a tough decision at all is part of what’s convinced me it’s time to do so.

The feedback I’ve gotten has been remarkably uniform, almost always along the lines of “I love your writing, but I’m not connecting with this piece.”  Several agents have mentioned they’d like to see my next novel, once it’s ready.  My takeaway  is that I could keep trying working on this one, keep trying to coax it into something the market finds palatable – or I can work on the next thing.

I’m choosing the next thing.

I’ve got a novel in progress that I’m super excited about.  It’s set in the near future.  Bronwyn, the heroine, used to be the First Lady, but now operates a stop on the Railroad, an underground network that smuggles dissidents and members of the Resistance out of the former U.S.  Then there’s the coming-of-age story I want to write, the one that chronicles three generations – son, mother, and grandmother – as each one leaves home and sets off across the country.   I also have a story tickling the back of my mind about a teenager who goes to visit an uncle on a dig in northern Iraq and gets pulled into the Persian empire.  (That one’s going to take some serious research.)  And if I ever get time, there’s a summer camp novel I’ve been wanting to write…

And who knows.  Maybe, after I’ve written a few more books, I’ll take Stephanie out again and find her a home.

“enclosed are three wishes”

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

The thing I love about February – more than the fact that days are growing a little longer, and the air seems a little warmer, and Spring seems to be just around the corner – is that it’s Letter Month.*

I had a splendid time with this last year, reconnecting with all sorts of people I’d fallen out of touch with (or wasn’t as in touch with as I wanted to be).  Including the friend I’d written all those magical letters to one summer.

So, even though I’ve got work and writing and life things pulling me in about five different directions right now, I’m going to do this.  I bought really cute note cards (you’re going to love them) and fairly cute stamps (I was bummed the Poets set was sold out).

Here’s the interactive part.  If you want a letter, email me, or connect with me on Twitter @bekkiwrites, or, if you want to be really mysterious and anonymous, put your address into my Postable address book.

And if you want to drop me a line or two, that would be most delightful.

* Yes, that link is a year old.  Rest assured, though, #lettermo is alive and well on the Twitter.

“Teenage Dream”

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings1 Comment

I met up with one of my CP’s yesterday (see Dahlia’s excellent post for more on CP’s).  We had a lovely time, discussing all sorts of topics, including what I think of as the elephant in the publishing room:  YA.

YA is hot.  It’s where publishers are buying, and where authors are selling.  It also seems to be where the writing community on the internet is hanging out.  Most of the writerly people I follow on Twitter write YA.  Contests, even if open to adult authors, tend to heavily skew toward kid lit.  Most of the agents I follow rep it, if not exclusively.  A “YA ______” seems to be the top of most agent wishlists.  And quite frankly, this isn’t anything new.  YA has been a trend in publishing for so long I’m starting to wonder if it’s now the norm.

What I’ve been noticing about YA lately, and what makes me a little frustrated with all the hype, is that very few of the YA books I’ve read have been good.  Good like Gone Girl good.  Good like it hits you between the eyes and doesn’t let you off the floor for several days good.  And I like to read good stories.  It doesn’t bother me if what I’m reading is hard core SF aimed at astro-physics nerds, or romance novels aimed at bored housewives, or YA contempts aimed at teenage girls.  What I look for is a book that stays with me after I read it.  That gives me something to think about after I’ve turned the final page.  That worms its way into my consciousness, coming up at odd moments.

Very few of the YA books I’ve read recently have done this.  I remember reading Madeline L’Engle’s Arm of the Starfish and House Like a Lotus as a teenager.  I went back to those books again and again, each time finding another layer of meaning.  I bought Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising (although arguably more MG than YA) a few years ago, and was delightfully surprised to find that it held up.  By contrast, what’s being published today seems more like candy.  It’s deliciously sweet, easily consumed, and has very little substance.*  Even the dystopian novels all seem to have (relatively) happy endings.

This worries me.  What does it say that the books written for the “me” generation are, for the most part, easily digestible bits of fancy that avoid the hard questions?  Is it that kids these days aren’t willing to put any work into reading?  Or is it that the industry has decided to keep throwing softballs on the grounds that any reading is better than no reading?

I write adult fiction.  I write about hard questions, and choices where there is no right answer, and the intersections between love and selfishness.  I write flawed characters who make poor choices and don’t always learn from their mistakes.  It’s going to cause difficulties for me down the line, once I get past the writing into the selling.  And I’m okay with that.  But a part of me has to wonder whether, in writing about the dark and the gritty and the adult, I’ve closed myself off from the audiences who’ve grown up reading today’s YA.

_______

* I’m not saying that this is true of all YA books, not by a long shot.  And I’d welcome suggestions for YA books left you sitting on the couch, stunned, when you finished them.  For that matter, I’m open to suggestions for good books, period.