You’re Not Special
You ARE special, actually, but those long-held dreams of becoming a *gasp* published author? That is not not not unique. In fact it’s common as dirt. I can say this clearer than most, because I’m not actually in the editing/agenting/publishing biz myself, and I therefore have the leeway to be more honest. I am, in short, one of you – one of the shuffling, slavering hordes.
Here is an article by Editorial Anonymous (a carefully anonymous editor, which is why this is the most honest article on this I’ve ever seen that wasn’t written by a purely novel-writing type). You really really should read the whole thing, but here’s some of the beginning (the “slush” or “slushpile” is the pile of books wannabe writers have sent to a publisher):
The fundamental lack of understanding about how much slush there is feeds many, many of the most commonly made mistakes writers make–mistakes that hurt their chances of getting published, and often hurt their morale. Some of those mistakes are below; but first, a visualization excercise:
Read the rest if ye seek wisdom. Also, it’s very funny.
And here’s a cat. Because if you understand – really understand – what that article means for YOUR novel, you’ll need a quiet sit down with something soothing.
A Confusion of Princes
I’m a huge fan of Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy. It may well be the best young adult fantasy trilogy ever written. So, as I pondered what to graciously accept as a mothers’ day gift (another book per year is totally worth the effort of giving birth), his latest book quickly won over the competition. The rest of this review is at Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
Swimmers
I wrote some months ago about the search for a swim top (a search which began in December, during which the best swim top I found was a shoulderless hot pink bikini number that made me look uncannily like a footballer in drag). I recently found a swim top in Vinnies that appeared to fit me – but the instant I got in the water the straps fell from their hooks and the material increased in size by a factor of three. That was. . . not really the look I was going for.
Finally, aware that most of the big bargain shops are no longer stocking swimmers at all, I visited a shop attached to the Belconnen pool. Not only do I finally have a swimsuit that can fit all of me inside, but the high waist and decorative outer skirt actually look nice. So nice that, despite still being five kilos over my greatest pre-pregnancy weight, I am here posting a pic of myself in swimmers on the interwebs.
In completely unrelated news, I read a vividly angry response on someone’s blog to the question, “My wife keeps calling me at work and interrupting me to tell me really boring things about her day at home with the baby. What should I do?”
I added my two cents in the comments, and thought I’d repeat it here:
For the record, I’m married to a guy that is actually interested in his own child. How shocking. And you know what? He deserves exactly zero points for that.
Right now he’s putting her to bed and she’s crying. He just gave her a bath, cut her fingernails, and read her a book – all after a full day at a stressful job. Still zero points. Just base-level fatherhood: joy and fear and pain and love. There’s everything and nothing special about that. And he loves getting SMSes from me along the lines of: “She ALMOST turned over!” “She just wet the very hem of my ankle-length skirt with a single head-height burst of vomit. Bring chocolate.” and “She just laughed at the cat.” Because she’s ours, and everything she does is interesting – in sharp contrast to the entirely pedestrian antics of all other babies.
This is what NORMAL fatherhood looks like.
What could possibly go wrong?
I have a vivid imagination, so thinking about safety issues literally terrifies me. Luckily, Louisette’s enormous enthusiasm for standing up is something I find very exciting, and safety and Louisette growing up are now intertwined in my mind. So I’ve absolutely thrived on thinking about some of the bizarre and inventive ways my little girl is going to attempt to destroy herself, and how to foil her plans.
She recently got the idea of crawling, and just lacks the coordination and arm strength to pull it off:
My parenting class had a Kidsafe representative speak for us, and a couple of the things they recommended were very clever – treating bath and sink plugs as a hazard, and putting them on a high shelf or locked cupboard (most home fatalities are from drowning), and being very careful with anything containing beans (the inedible filling kind – they don’t show up on scans but do kill young children).
We’ve installed a safety gate (which is a trip hazard, unfortunately – I’ll keep an eye out for one that doesn’t have a bottom rail mummy has to step over), moved the cat food onto high shelves (yet another reason keeping cats is easier than keeping dogs), and taken some of our heaviest, pointiest, most top-heavy objects off the top of our tallest and ricketiest bookshelves. Including these gentlemen:
Yep, that’s a sword. A metal one.
In other news, I may yet end up with three different playgroups (one big one that meets in my church building; one medium one that evolves from the early parenting classes; one small invitation- and baby-only one that meets at my house), which is just fine by me.
Here are some photos that explain one reason playgroups are the biz:
Make your own pizza
Making your own pizza – especially with a group of friends who all bring ingredients – is so much fun. Every so often I come across an awesomeness that is so easy, so cheap, and so good. Don’t forget to play along at home. One had mars bars on top:
Day Off
Today (at the time of writing) I’m having a day off: a writing day. CJ is taking Louisette to visit some interstate relatives she hasn’t met yet.
In the morning I fed and minded the baby for an hour and a half before having breakfast. I folded and put away one load of washing, and washed and hung out three others (shifting most of one load inside when it began to rain). I washed and sterilised bottles, did the dishes, and put the dishes away. I organised and cooked a healthy dinner for that night, and began social and organisational preparations for the following night’s dinner. I made a fuss over the cats. I cleaned the toilet and bath. I took out the recycling. I made baby food in two consistencies. I took out the potent contents of the nappy bin (three times) and the kitty litter (once), and wheeled the outside bin out to the curb to be collected the following day. And I was sick, too.
I think there’s some kind of moral to this story.
I also sent the steampunk book to an agent (after researching her recent sales and her likes and dislikes) and this contest; finished constructing the fourth version of my picture book and prepped it for its first publisher; and edited and sent the first book of my young adult fantasy trilogy (the one with pirates) to a UK publisher. And I wrote this blog entry. . .
In other news, Louisette is extremely enthusiastic about standing up – not bad for someone who’s just three and a half months old, and can’t roll over yet!
I want
This album is simply beautiful, packed with intricate and fascinating creations (and one slightly disturbing one involving body piercing).
This was the one that caught my eye:
I want this, too. It’s a USB drive made of brass, copper, glass and a quartz crystal that lights up in the window.
I disagree
I’ve written elsewhere how much I love the Australian blog Call My Agent! In fact I dreamed about meeting the blogger last night. But today I have some fightin’ instead of flatterin’ to do. Here’s a question Agent Sydney received, with the first bit of the answer:
There are publishers now who don’t give advances or royalties but share the book’s profits equally with the author. Do you think this would be a better deal for authors?
It’s a different deal for authors, and possibly a better one, but it’s really too early to tell. I think what’s good about some of these contracts is that the profit-sharing arrangement indicates more of a partnership between publisher and author. . .
The rest is here.
Here’s my answer:
No.
Well, okay. Perhaps once in a thousand times the author would benefit*. It’s a very simple equation: in today’s world, most publishers make a loss on most of the books they buy (and survive mainly because of bestsellers). Most books do not earn out their advance (which is based on projected sales from a publisher hoping for the next bestseller).
Therefore, it is not only safer but more profitable to get an advance. Yes, in the above scenario you get paid more per book – but books cost a lot to edit, proofread, print, and distribute. You still won’t get much of the purchase price.
Agent Sydney is not alone in steering wannabe writers towards smaller, less profitable publishers. They certainly have their place, and are not always a scam – usually, they’re just optimists. And writers are optimists. So they join hands and skip away towards the end of the rainbow, and are stunned to never find a pot of gold.
Writing is very rarely profitable at all. Make your choices wisely.
*usually, when people give something a “one in a thousand” chance, it is hyperbole. In this case, it is my actual estimate.
The Hunger Games: Book and Movie
You’ve probably heard SOMETHING about this book (if only that it’s been turned into a movie). I first heard about this book years ago, on a writing blog, when someone was using it as an example of good writing. So I always meant to read it. Then someone described the movie as “How Twilight should have been” – not in plot terms (Twilight is predominantly romance, and The Hunger Games is predominantly a story about war/reality TV) but in taking an introverted heroine with a distinctive voice and turning her into a film heroine.
The book review is at Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
The movie:
It was fascinating watching the movie, which has done a good job of sticking close to the book – but even scenes that are line-by-line identical feel quite different when the viewpoint isn’t from inside Katniss’ (understandably suspicious) head. Most of the sympathy for Katniss comes from the horrors of the world she lives in, rather than a closeness to her thoughts – which works VERY well. I really enjoyed watching the worldbuilding play out. It was actually more horrifying than the book (without changing any facts) – the very visual contrast of rich and poor, the pain on people’s faces, etc.
I still don’t particularly like the premise of a deadly reality show. It’s been done on Doctor Who and presumably other places. And surely everyone in the world already knows that reality shows are sick and wrong (I saw a few minutes of “Dancing with the stars” a couple of hours after seeing the movie, and it was truly terrifying). I also don’t like my stories as tragic as this one – but I know that’s a matter of taste.
The movie chose not to use voiceover, and I’m glad. They did open the movie with a little bit of intro simply written on the screen, and they used commentators on the Hunger Games TV show to explain in a rather obvious fashion what was going on in Katniss’ head. But most of the internal information was incorporated seamlessly into the script.
Book and movie share the same problems: Katniss is a rather defensive character, which is narratively weaker than the alternative (but it can’t be easily fixed, because then you’d have a heroine gleefully setting out to kill other children). One of the weakest scenes in both the book and the movie is her TV interview (much like a beauty pageant contestant), in which Katniss finds the strength within herself to finally. . . be just like all the other girls. She’s so scared before the interview, and readers/viewers expect a breakthrough that means a bit more than the ability to smile and twirl (although smiling and twirling is actually crucial to her survival, that sense of desperation doesn’t come across).
I really did like this movie. It’s smart, and involving, and thoughtful, and dark. Despite the darkness not being my cup of tea, I do want to see it again.
Carillon Open Day
The National Carillon is one of my favourite places in Canberra (for those who don’t know, it’s an instrument made of a whole lot of bells, housed in its own building on a purpose-built island). When I first visited it, I declared here that I’d see the inside some day.
So when I saw an ad for an open day, CJ and Louisette and I were THERE.
We were too late; all the tours were full. But I had a frozen yoghurt with riberry (I’ve never heard of it before), cinnamon, and cloves. It was just as subtle and intriguing as the yoghurt stand said. And we listened to some Duntroon Military Band members playing dixie tunes while Louisette attempted to slide off my lap. It really was quite marvellous.
Felicity Banks 