Reading is Not Cool–Except When It is

Science fiction movies have taken over Hollywood. That’s a given. While there’s a lot of room still for other types of movies (and always will be, I hope), it’s the SF films that rake in the bucks. (Okay, it’s superhero films that rake in most of that, but they’re a subgenre,)

Now SF is taking over television. We really should have seen it coming: Fantasy has ruled commercials for as long as TV has been around. SF has always lurked around the edges, maybe one new show every season, but in the last few years it’s strutted into the spotlight, so much so that now there’s an entire network devoted to SF (which shows wrestling. But I guess that’s a form of fantasy. I just don’t want to know whose fantasy.). And again, the rising star is the superhero show. Must be the lousy economy. Everyone has power fantasies.

Okay, practically everybody goes to SF movies. And practically everybody watches SF on TV. (Twenty million people watch a show that’s about guys who watch SF movies and TV.) It’s not a big deal any more. You can cop to it. No one will look at you funny.

Unless you read the stuff. Then you’re a nerd.

I’ve noted before, Sheldon and Leonard and Howard and Raj are the biggest nerds on TV, and they hardly read any SF.* What is it about reading SF that makes “normal” people want to snicker and point at you behind their chai lattes?

I think it’s not what we’re reading, it’s that we’re reading. Reading has never been the #1 hobby for most Americans. And if you are caught reading in an airport or at the beach, it’s escapist stuff–but not SF. At least not the stuff found in the Science Fiction section of the bookstore, er, Amazon.com. It’s “safe” escapist lit, the kind other people also read, you know, NY Times bestsellers. Because if you’re going to read something “out there,” at least make sure it’s safe, i.e., vetted by the popular culture. If you read something nobody’s heard of, you’re a nerd.

And if it’s known, it’s no longer “that sci-fi stuff,” but literature. (With a small “L.”) If it’s Twilight or Dan Brown or anything that’s been made into a movie, really, it’s okay. You’re excused. You’re not a nerd. Why? Because lots of people read it, and they aren’t nerds, right? Same as the TV shows and movies. It can’t be weird if everyone does it. There’s safety in numbers. And you know why that is?

It gives you a place to hide. Right there, in plain sight. A popular book is a sign, a password that lets the rest of the world know you’re just like them. You can watch those movies and TV shows, just don’t read “that sci-fi stuff” if you want to fit in. People will know you’re different. They’ll avert their gazes and roll their eyes.

But you know what? You’ll be so immersed in your book you won’t even notice.

*They do read comic books voraciously. Classic stuff. I am highly envious of their collections. The writers know what they’re doing.

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Five Reasons Why Self-Publishing Will Ruin Everything

Self-publishing is spreading. And it’s a bad thing. Here’s why:

1. It doesn’t allow you to blame anyone else for your mistakes. Self-publishing (“self-pubbing”) requires you to be creator, editor, art director, publicist, accountant, and publisher, unlike regular publishing which only requires you to be creator, editor, publicist, accountant, and Chief Submissions Officer. So there’s, hmm, one more thing that you have to be responsible for. Still, it’s a lot, because you have to bemoan the responsibility of cover approval instead of bemoaning your lack of authority over cover approval.

2. It doesn’t allow you to blame anyone else if the book doesn’t sell. Writers have hard shells but fragile egos. Look at every article that tells you not to read reviews if you don’t believe me. We can handle rejection before a sale, but not after. If a traditionally-published (“trad-published”) book doesn’t sell, we blame the cover art, the marketing, the shelf placement. If a self-pubbed book doesn’t sell, well, you chose the art, you did the marketing, and there are no shelves. So you can feel rejected even without a review–or, ironically, if you don’t get any reviews.

3. It takes the job of reading out of the hands of professionals. A trad-published book in the store is the end result of slushers, editors, copy-writers, and salesmen all working together to make sure that your book is the book they want to sell (regardless of whether it’s the book you naively wanted to write). These professionals work long hours for inadequate pay to ensure that the reading public sees only the cream of the crop of all submitted novels (and Dan Brown and Nicholas Sparks, because they sell really well). Self-pubbing allows anyone to be a published author. How are you supposed to be able to read the best books if no one tells you what they are?

4. It overloads the reviewers. There are a lot of reviewers out there. In fact, the same Internet that allows self-pubbed authors also allows self-pubbed reviewers. But still there are not enough of these selfless and dedicated public servants to cover all the books that are published. This results in overworked reviewers, who then have no time to write their own books. Can you believe that there are reviewers out there who have never had the time to write a single book? And yet they bravely attempt to criticize others who have the time to do what they can only dream about accomplishing. I tell you, the word “hero” is tossed around pretty casually these days, but…

5. It threatens to create a permanent, mentally-skewed underclass. As I have repeatedly described, writers are insane. We are, in fact, completely nuts and should never be allowed around sharp objects like, say, pens, for example. (The only exceptions are those scribes who have recognized their affliction and attempt to minimize their own capacity for harm by submitting manuscripts in crayon. Editors should applaud these highly-disciplined individuals.) The only factor that has limited this plague of lunacy (or, if you will, this Confederacy of Dunces), is that getting published has been so difficult. Now that safety valve is gone. I fear for the future.

Given more time, I certainly could elaborate, but I hope this essay will serve a public service, much as the editors and reviewers have done until now, in educating the world as to the true costs of self-publishing. And if you, dear reader, need any further proof, I have three self-published books. Read them, and learn how dangerous it is to allow just anyone to express himself.

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It’s My Write

I was getting down thinking about my WIP (work-in-progress in writer-speak). I thought it was stalling creatively, that while all the scenes were necessary, I was really just filling in the time until I reach the next phase, which in this case is the final act, the last third of the book, which I had scheduled for 50,000 words, or about 6000 words from now. (Like drivers in LA who measure distances in the time it takes to get there, writers don’t measure time in minutes, they measure it in words.)

And then it hit me: Who was I creating this artificial milestone for? If the story was stalling out, then certainly it wasn’t for me, and if I do my job, this stuff is invisible to readers, so who?

The publisher. Who at this stage is completely hypothetical. But I knew that publishers like books to have a certain length to justify its cost. So when I was outlining, I had divided my book into roughly even chunks in order to block out the scenes, if you will. But now, with the scenes almost all blocked, and the big climax (with explosions, if you’ll pardon a spoiler), looming ever larger, my outlined structure had gone from being a frame to a cage.

Well, the heck with that. I’m not Dan Brown or George RR Martin. (I think their books are too big, anyway.) If you think my book’s too short, let me know. I’ll write a sequel. That’s my “write,” too.

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