(no subject)

[alg]

Today. Today I ate lunch at my favorite Italian restaurant, Novita. I have been going there for years, seriously years already, and I always order the same thing, which is pasta with red sauce and a glass of white wine. I know, I know, sacrilege. Don't tell my Italian grandma. The best part about ordering the same thing every time is that I always get the extra fresh basil on my pasta without having to ask for it, and my white wine is always pinot grigio, and the waiter always smiles extra big at me.

Also, I tip really really well.

Today. Today my author Kassandra Sims told me a bunch of funny stories about staying with her mom in Ohio, and then posted a journal entry in which she said:

I have no great insight into my own "creative process". I MAKE THINGS UP. That's pretty much the whole process right there. I make things up, and sometimes the result is good, and sometimes it's self-indulgent crap. Hopefully those two sides even out.

Today. Today I am wearing all my Slytherin stuff: green eyeshadow, green jewelry. Green beaded bracelets and a green Monet necklace from the Met. If anyone feels like buying me a gift, feel free to hook me up with this totally Slytherin necklace that I desperately want. I also want this watch. I am greedy and I love the Met store.

Oh, and hey! I will answer a question:

burger_eater said: During his "Longshot" talk [at Writer's Weekend '05], Jim Butcher said that publishers keep one or two slots open every year specifically for new authors. Aspiring writers don't have to be better than Tim Powers, they just have to be better than all the other unpublished writers out there. He said. I'd never heard that before, so I'm looking for confirmation or refutation. Miss Snark was stumped on this one. Does Tor have spaces in their schedules specifically for new writers?

The quick answer to this is no, we don't keep slots open specifically for new writers. The quick answer is also that new writers should absolutely be better than Tim Powers and Neil Gaiman, or Laurell Hamilton, or Nora Roberts, or whoever your benchmark is.

The longer, more accurate, answer is that publishers and editors understand the reality that some books do better than others. Some books are going to sell lots of copies and some aren't. What we do have are slots for books that we don't expect to be bestsellers, or even in the upper midlist. They're not static -- these are dynamic slots, and they move around, and they aren't there for specific editors or specific books, and they are not even there specifically for authors who are brand new! Lots of really good authors who win awards get out lower numbers, even though they've been writing for years. So we have slots for them.

We have slots for building new authors, and slots for prestigious books that won't sell a lot of copies but will rain accolades upon our house.

Et cetera.

YMMV at other houses.

ETN: pnh goes into more detail.

The second part of burger_eater's question was: You said that listing publications on a query was a good idea, unless the publication was from a really small market which would make the writer seem small potatoes. Now, I'm not going to ask you for specifics (unless you want to slam some short fiction markets--in that case, go ahead) but where's the cutoff line for past publications that are more regrettable than commendable? Is it the SFWA criteria for pro markets? Half-penny a word and below? Never published a story that was later chosen for a best-of-the- year anthology?

The best answer I can give you is to say what I always say -- which is that you should use your common sense. Writing for a true confessions magazine doesn't help you sell a book. Having two short stories published in a magazine that lasted for six months isn't going to help you sell a book.

If you have done your appropriate research, you know which short fiction markets are ridiculous and which we take seriously. You know that coming to us with a publication under your belt in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet is going to mean something more than a publication in My Uncle Bob's Guide to Campfire Horror or whatever.

You want to watch yourself with the number of short fiction credits you use, too -- the more short fiction credits you have, the more suspicious we (or, at least, I) will be about your long fiction. 300 short fiction credits are great -- but what does that mean about your novel?

Anyway, the point is that in your cover letter, you should talk about things that are pertinent to your novel. If it's about a doctor and you're a doctor, mention that. If it spins off a world you created in a short story that won a Hugo award, mention that. Use your best judgement.

Remember: the worst that can happen is a form rejection.

If you have a specific question about stuff that I talk about in this entry, feel free to ask it! If you have a question that's unrelated, please go to this entry and ask your question there.

Comments

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Thanks for answering my questions!

I must admit, when I say my lj handle there in your post, I though "Oh, shit, what did I do now?" I'm relieved that it's only "learned something."

[alg.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

I always have a split second of that "Uh-oh" when I hear my full name or see my LJ username in someone's post.

Hopefully my answers were somewhat helpful. I realize "Use your best judgement" isn't exactly the answer you were looking for -- but it's the best one I have!

[elizabethcbunce.livejournal.com]

You gotta love an editor who asks for gifts in her blog. I *wholeheartedly* applaud this.

Hmm... I wonder what authors can ask for... off to scrounge catalogues....

[alg.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's mostly tongue in cheek. I don't expect anyone to buy me gifts! It's just that if George Clooney happens to stumble across my blog and want to buy me a gift, I'd like that snake pendant. *g*

[j-lovescoffee.livejournal.com]

Ooh, don't say that! Keep the impression that you need gifts! In a past life I did technology implementation and training, and would always state (*always*) at the beginning of the first class that I accepted bribes in the form of Godiva chocolate or red wine. For years I said this, and everyone (rightly so) thought I was joking.

Till the guy that brought me a big honkin' box of Godiva chocolates. And, it must be said, proved that I am easily bribed, because he got all the extra help (even after I was long gone from that project) that he wanted. Now I try to tell my clients that I require bribes, but since they're both sixteen months old I'm not holding my breath for Godiva.

[devilwrites.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous necklace!

[alg.livejournal.com]

I know!

*lusts for it*

[j-lovescoffee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but now you've got *me* lusting for it too.

[jennlt.livejournal.com]

It really is a beautiful necklace! As if I didn't have enough to lust after already.

[elizawrites.livejournal.com]

So, um, if I have a list in the McSweeneys humor book (that I did not know was even in print until a friend told me about it) that probably wouldn't be something I wanted to talk about, right? Because it's nine lines long and nothing to do with anything.

[alg.livejournal.com]

Right.

[alg.livejournal.com]

(Except that's kind of entertaining, and you could always say exactly that in your cover letter:

My only previous publication is a list in a McSweeney's book, and it's got nothing to do with anything.

Hee.)

[stevethorn.livejournal.com]

"Remember: the worst that can happen is a form rejection."

I love that!

Of course, you can always receive two, from the same magazine, for the same story, from two different editors.. two days apart...

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

And not because you sent the story to it twice right?

Making stuff up

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I had a Creative Writing Professor that was already hippie drippy throughout the quarter (making us clap for every writer, not letting us be too critical of anything even the worst of the worst) and he had us do an anthology at the end - a Kinko's produced spiral bound one and somewhere along the line he had the brilliant idea of telling us to all write a short blurb about writing.

I said that I was inspired by Norman Mailer fucking Marilyn Monroe.

[deza.livejournal.com]

Since you're a Slytherin, you'd probably appreciate that I'm in the final stages of making this (http://www.freewebs.com/theloveplant/knitting/darkmarkbag.html), only I used a much more lurid green. All I have left to do is the blocking and sewing.

Thank you for making me feel better about not including two short fiction sales 17 years ago on my covers. ;)

Wow

[(Anonymous)]

Nice bag Deza! Though I'm not a slytherin fan (i'm not into dark magic, more of a griffindor kind of girl) i LOVE this bag. It makes me wish I could make this! Hmm, too bad i can't knit, sew or anything of the sort.

Re: Wow

[deza.livejournal.com]

Knitting is surprisingly easy once you get past the basic stage of "what do I do with the sticks?" ;) I highly recommend Debbie Stoller's book Stitch n'Bitch as an introduction to knitting. I've only been knitting for about *counts on fingers* four months now, and the bag is the first piece of intarsia I've tried. I'm trying my first set of socks at the moment.

[alg.livejournal.com]

Um, that is possibly the awesomest bag EVER. Clearly I will now have to make a fool of myself attempting to make one.

[deza.livejournal.com]

The thought did cross my mind to send it to you with a manuscript inside, but I figured that really wouldn't be playing fair. If you'd like I can put making another one on my list of projects--it would probably get to you around Yule.

[alg.livejournal.com]

No matter what you tried to bribe me with, it wouldn't work. *g* Sorry!

I am actually a pretty accomplished (in my own mind) knitter, so I'm going to make one myself! It should be fun.

[deza.livejournal.com]

I can understand that--there's one person in my writer's group that could wrap manuscripts in Godiva chocolate and not change the fact that the material is just not well-written on a technical level. I've been suggesting this person take a continuing education course at the local community college, but the idea has been met with some resistance.

Have fun with the knitting! I did it in a garter stitch on my first try, but I think the next time I try it I'm going to stockingette stitch the black, with the green done in a relief on that. it's a pretty quick knit, too. :)

[pnh.livejournal.com]

I think talking about "slots" is confusing unless you specifically mean mass market paperbacks.

Mass market lists, which are organized by month, really do have "slots" which represent anticipated distribution levels, particularly on the non-bookstore side of the market. No matter what, every month Tor is going to have a science fiction lead, a fantasy lead, a Tor Mainstream lead, and a Forge lead. In addition we'll have "twos" in each of those lists and possibly "threes" in one or two of them. We have some other "slots" which sometimes appear and sometimes don't, like "super leads" (think Jordan, or a new Ender book from OSC), or books in our "Women in Fantasy" program, which was specifically contrived as a way of getting an additional fantasy "slot", but that's basically the structure of things.

Hardcover and trade paperback publishing, on the other hand, don't have "slots" in the same sense. Some months the Tor hardcover list has a dozen new SF and fantasy titles; some months it's as low as six. Some months we may have four quest fantasies, one literary SF novel, and one YA fantasy; other months we may have three hard SF novels, a humorous fantasy, and two anthologies. We try to avoid too much clumping up of excessively similar material, and certainly we try to schedule things so that our high-earning books get spread around as much as possible (you really don't want to be shipping a new Dune prequel in the same month as the new Terry Goodkind, dissimilar though they are), but there's nothing like the imperative enforced by the mass-market system of "slots". Trade publishing is much less slot-driven.

And no, we don't have literal "slots" for hitherto-unpublished writers; we just have the fact that we keep finding them and that, risky though first novels are, there's very little that's more fun than finding a really good new writer and getting them successfully launched.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for your answer.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Remember: the worst that can happen is a form rejection.

No, it's not. It's not as bad as lots of other things that can happen. Oh, right, as a result of a manuscript submission . . . maybe so.

[laast.livejournal.com]

Anna,

I am trying to convince myself that sending along that necklace to you with my submission is a bad bad bad idea hahah.. but so so so tempting. It really is pretty, and someone should def. buy it for you.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Hello, I was reading your post on fanfic. I write it sometimes(Tolkien, so no hurt feelings possible), but I'm not a professional writer and have no plans to be, and find your LJ really interesting. May I friend?

[(Anonymous)]

Hello Anna. . . Long time reader, first time writer. Luv yer show.

I don't understand why using too many short fiction credits can hurt my chances. I always figured that it was an easy way to demonstrate that I'm publishable. Getting the endorsement of a wide variety of editors, each with their own personalities and pitfalls, seemed like a good way to convey overall competence.

Can you elaborate a little more on why this has a downside? Thanks so much!

[huntergal.livejournal.com]

Well, it shows you can string words together, meet a deadline and complete edits. But, the difference between short and long fiction is wide and deep! Not every novelist can write short and not every short story writer can sustain a plot arc over a full novel. What I've seen happen is that there's not enough deep characterization and the plot tends to "end" in the middle--about the length of a novella, rather than being intriguing and page-turning to 100K words.

Novelists tend to drag out a short story too much and not keep up the action, or it ends abruptly without actually completing the much shorter plot arc.

To me, a short story is the crisis of the moment, as simple as making it to work on time, or as life-altering as defusing the bomb that will end the world. A novel is the crisis of a week (or a life). Different goals with different methods.

JMHO... :)

[jennlt.livejournal.com]

I think I'm one of those that can't write short. Every idea I have for a short story ends up being spun into a much longer story! Then again, I don't really *like* short stories - I prefer to more fully immersed in the characters and the world. So, good to know that not having short story credits won't kill my chances.

writing short

[(Anonymous)]

I'm the same way. Every time I think I'm writing a short story it grows on me. My current WIP (a scifi paranormal) was intended to be part of a collection but has gotten bigger to the point of being its own book. I've written three short pieces that had word lengths specified so I had a target to aim for. And they tend to be comic.

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

That is a beautiful necklace. I've been on a bit of a snake binge myself, and bought two snake pendants recently. They're nowhere near as nice, but they are slithery. And pretty.