And the same thing happened to Stephen King and those Bachman books. I don't think it ever works. Famous authors sell, even if they're famous for something other than writing. When they try to become anonymous again, they become subject to all the filters the rest of us deal with, so many of which have more to do with circumstance, trends, and whether or not the gatekeeper has a hangover rather than our writing skills.
And on the other side of the scale is the high-brow literature crowd who say that every novel worth its salt also has to fit certain (and quite different) criteria, mainly in how they treat theme. If a novel doesn't speak to the reader's soul and change how they perceive the world, it's not worth reading. Both the pennydreadful era and our current era have something in common: illiteracy is a big part of the social fabric. A notable difference is the amount of alternate entertainment that's available in one era or the other (and ignoring those situations often depicted in western movies where the local bad boys shoot at the feet of innocent citizens to make them dance). From ivory tower to the most wretched gutter, no matter the reading material, it has always taken a back seat to life... or been an adjunct to it, mostly in a very distracting way. No soldier in a foxhole has ever pulled out a novel to read while bullets were flying overhead, not unless he had a dead wish. And that may be an extreme case, but it proves the point. Writing is what it is and we may change the world from time to time, but for the most part, what we produce as authors is just the window dressing, the crumpled bits of coloured tissue that hide the manikin stand. It's always important to us, but the rest of the world would get by without us if we were all blotted out by more visual media.
I know what you mean. I picked up a new novel the other day (it was even in my genre) and after reading about ten pages, I put it aside. No plot, no characters to identify with and a whole lot of half-explained action dressed up in cutsie prose. I have a hard time understanding how it got published, to be honest. The book that originally inspired me to write when I was seventeen (even though I didn't get around to trying for several more years and even then, gave up almost immediately) was Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man. A year or so ago, I bought another copy and read part-way through... and couldn't understand what I'd found so inspiring. I suppose it's the literary equivalent of: you can never go home again.
It's nice to hear about authors finding success through self-publishing. However, I just Googled her and found that unless I include the word 'author' in my search, I get mostly hits for Angela White, Australia's biggest porn star. Not the kind of search engine competition I'd wanna deal with.
@Sack-a-Doo!, may I introduce you to the multi-quote feature? You're confusing a synopsis with a query letter. A synopsis MUST give away the ending, a query NEVER does.
Yeah. I guess what I meant wasn't that everybody should aim to be Shakespeare ...but that I mourn the fact that so many people see reading as something they'll only do when nothing else is available to do. I mean, James Michener made no pretensions about writing literary classics, but when I sat down with one of his huge tomes, I always felt really excited. I knew they'd absorb me for a long time. I feel a bit cheated when books are so fast-paced and/or short that they're over with in the blink of an eye. The Jacqueline Susanns and Wilbur Smiths of decades past weren't writing highbrow stuff, but they were writing for people who loved to read, not people who would rather be doing something else. Folks devoured those books, even though they were huge by present standards. They were bestselling authors. I think they'd struggle to get published today, and their heyday wasn't all that long ago. What has changed, I reckon, is the fact that there is so much more media out there now to fill up time that people used to spend reading. I mean, back then there was terrestrial TV (broadcast at a particular time of day ...if you missed it, you missed it...) and books. Not universal computers and games, or portable media. I do maintain we are writing to appeal to people who would rather be doing something else. In fact, many how-to books more or less say it out straight—you have to grab the reader's attention immediately or the reader will wander away. That wasn't always the case. Michener used to begin nearly every book with critters crawling out the primordial slime, then progress (slowly) to modern-day events in the same place. And he was wildly popular.
I don't know that they'd rather be doing something else, but I think we are competing with all of the other things that are out there trying to earn a few minutes of someone's time - games, streaming services, apps, etc. And people often have limited bits of time. Casual game apps are popular because you can play for fifteen minutes and then stop. In the same way, I think books you can read casually for 15 minutes at a time, because that's how much time you have, do better these days than something you really have to concentrate on.
^ That's my issue. I'm at work from 6:15am - 5:45pm. Then I have to eat, wind down, spend time with my husband, write, and anything else I need to do. My reading time is reduced to audiobooks on my commute and 20 minutes before bed. The other "problem" is I now have at least 20 books in my Kindle queue at any one time. If one doesn't grab me in my precious 20 minutes, it takes 20 seconds to delete it and open something else. My time really is precious, and I'm not wasting it giving a book endless chances to entertain me.
That's kind of my point. There are too many other things people would rather be doing. That's not a value judgement, but it does point to why books now need to appeal to people who would rather be doing something else. And probably why successful ones—even literary ones like The Life of Pi—get made into movies almost before the ink is dry on them. It's a different world. And it's not one that caters to folks who like nothing better at the end of the day than to curl up with a good book that will absorb them for many days to come.
For some of us it's not that we'd RATHER be doing something else, but that we HAVE to. People who don't read for hours on end don't necessary dislike reading, or prefer TV.
I do still read for hours at a time, on occasion. If I have a free evening I might read the whole time. Or play a video game. Or watch a bunch of episodes of something. Or write. But some weeks I don't have that much free time.
Hi, Best thing in the whole damned article? The rejection comment for Melville's work - "Does it have to be a whale?" I damn near fell off my seat laughing! Cheers, Greg.
To be honest, I don't really give a flying fuck about Rowling. Sorry, I just don't. Harry Potter isn't that well written, and the story is full of cliche and silliness. It's a good series, for children. But I'm not impressed by her as I grow into an adult now and I'm looking for intelligence and humanity and she doesn't have enough of that in her writing. So I don't care what she has to say.
Yeah. I can feel something slowly expiring inside of me as I read it to my son. Its pretty much everything I hate about fantasy fiction spread out over about 700 books. I am hoping he will lose interest in it.
I do reckon though it'd be about 20-50% better if it was about Snape, Dumbledore or Voldemort as MC though, because they're better characters than Harry who is too reactionary rather than a developed person in isolation, like many YA protagonists.
Yes, you're right. I'd like to think we can still write for an audience that actually goes out looking for what we offer, even if it's just so they can fill in the blanks after seeing the movie version. ’Tis a strange time for novelists.
And I think it was James Patterson who first caught onto this. I read a few of his books before I went completely off detective fiction and with their short chapters, they were perfect for those moments spent in the little room with great acoustics. One sitting, one chapter.
Wow. I haven't worked hours like that since I drove a taxi back in the 70s and early 80s. You're not including commute time in there either (judging from the rest of your post). Is this standard these days?
And that's why I decided to plot my novels as if they were movies as well as making them as visual as possible—while also trying to make them a good, fast read and all those other things we aspire to. It's yet another straw to weave into the basket, but if it works for this era...
I have far too much, which isn't any easier to deal with. The allure of the Internet is strong. It's like Luke and The Dark Side. Some days I find myself wishing I had the strength to just stare at a wall.
I wish the internet wasn't such a big distraction from books. I use to read more often. I feel depressed every time I think about it. (Self: Read more dammit!)
I've heard people mention her other works but all I can see is she's a fairly boring woman that wrote good children's books. If I am impressed by her other more adult things, I might develop more respect for her opinions. Until then, I retain my stance that her opinion is not important to me in the slightest.
Well, thank God (or whoever you thank) for that. I was beginning to wonder when you slept (but I suppose you can do that on the train or, if traffic is jammed up, behind the wheel ).
