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Jul. 15th, 2010 06:09 pmThe tiresome thing about being tiresome? Is when you know how tiresome you are.
Every time the conversation turns towards the writing life, be it in panels or in pubs or anywheres in between, I find myself coming over all veteran old-timer, how I'm the last of my generation, a bridge between then and now, etc etc. "Typewriters!" I mutter into my grizzled beard. "Anyone remember typewriters? Carbon paper? Getting a wordcount by, y'know, counting the words...?"
I confess, I wouldn't do this if I didn't enjoy it. Curmudgeonly is fun. 'Specially as I can run a riff about Linux WPs in the sidebar.
But it is also true. The job and the industry were very very different when I started. As witness: until very recently, it was still not at all unusual for a novelist to have had one agent, one editor and one publisher throughout their productive career. You found people you trusted and could work with, they trusted and could work with you, and that was that.
No longer. These days, everyone is motile. Even publishing houses move, from one conglomerate to another. I've suffered under that particular shift, more than once.
Indeed, I've suffered under every variation of this new dispensation. There must be some authors for whom it works out well to see their agent depart or their editor change houses or their list be bought and sold; but they are not me. And even in this new world, I think I have suffered disproportionately. Maybe I'm wrong - but hands up, how many of you have been through four editors in the span of a trilogy? For this is where I find myself today, saying goodbye to #3 and hullo to #4, before the third book is even in production. Le sigh.
Not that this is any kind of record, mind. I once went through five editors on a single book. Which was kind of the book that ruined my career, actually, and I don't think that's any coincidence at all.
But still. Are we downhearted? Nah. Not yet. We're still trying to decide whether we ought to be or not. The matter at issue is whether I should've been swifter to pitch my next proposal, so that I'd have been pitching it at someone with whom I had an established relationship; or whether it's better that I am so damn' slow to get things together, because at least I won't be doing that thing of selling a series to a particular editor and then watching them depart instanter for climates new, handing the project on to someone whose baby it will never ever be...
Every time the conversation turns towards the writing life, be it in panels or in pubs or anywheres in between, I find myself coming over all veteran old-timer, how I'm the last of my generation, a bridge between then and now, etc etc. "Typewriters!" I mutter into my grizzled beard. "Anyone remember typewriters? Carbon paper? Getting a wordcount by, y'know, counting the words...?"
I confess, I wouldn't do this if I didn't enjoy it. Curmudgeonly is fun. 'Specially as I can run a riff about Linux WPs in the sidebar.
But it is also true. The job and the industry were very very different when I started. As witness: until very recently, it was still not at all unusual for a novelist to have had one agent, one editor and one publisher throughout their productive career. You found people you trusted and could work with, they trusted and could work with you, and that was that.
No longer. These days, everyone is motile. Even publishing houses move, from one conglomerate to another. I've suffered under that particular shift, more than once.
Indeed, I've suffered under every variation of this new dispensation. There must be some authors for whom it works out well to see their agent depart or their editor change houses or their list be bought and sold; but they are not me. And even in this new world, I think I have suffered disproportionately. Maybe I'm wrong - but hands up, how many of you have been through four editors in the span of a trilogy? For this is where I find myself today, saying goodbye to #3 and hullo to #4, before the third book is even in production. Le sigh.
Not that this is any kind of record, mind. I once went through five editors on a single book. Which was kind of the book that ruined my career, actually, and I don't think that's any coincidence at all.
But still. Are we downhearted? Nah. Not yet. We're still trying to decide whether we ought to be or not. The matter at issue is whether I should've been swifter to pitch my next proposal, so that I'd have been pitching it at someone with whom I had an established relationship; or whether it's better that I am so damn' slow to get things together, because at least I won't be doing that thing of selling a series to a particular editor and then watching them depart instanter for climates new, handing the project on to someone whose baby it will never ever be...