Did I say back next Thursday? I meant back next Tuesday.

Today’s business is to wish a hearty Happy Birthday to my friend Marissa. Welcome to your second quarter-century, kiddo — it’s all sagging, mysterious weight gain, and other instances of decrepitude from here on out. Yes, decrepitude. I, for one, have discovered that on a good morning I can run a little over a mile before collapsing in a gasping, wheezing heap. For crying out loud, I was on the varsity soccer team.¹ This sucks.

But hey, here’s what sucks worse: somebody decided to give M’ris a a big flaming sack of poop for her birthday. See, Marissa had mused that while writing is a difficult profession, so are all the other professions out there — and that rather than overdramatizing our pain-as-writers, we should take care of business as best we can and move on. Just like nurses, carpenters, Marines, and so on. But no — along comes this gentleman, who insists that no, no no, my pain-as-a-writer is super-special after all. (Fortunately, M’ris can take care of herself just fine.)

This all begs the question — why are people so awfully sensitive about their own writing?

One theory might be that writers are necessarily sensitive, delicate souls who therefore wilt under the cruelties of rejection letters, bad editors, and mean family members.

The problem with this rather romantic theory is that most writers in the Real World aren’t like that at all; or if they are, they’ve learned to deal. In my experience most professional writers quickly develop a thick, crusty shell for protection. If a critique or edit is good, you think about it and incorporate it; if it’s crap, you ignore it (assuming business conditions permit). End of story.

Conversely, non-professionals are usually far more sensitive about their writing than professionals. Take it from me — when an engineer writes a tech paper or a specification, getting him or her to sit down and go over some edits is like pulling teeth. It happens over and over again. One minute, we’re cleaning up some API verbiage; the next minute, we’re in a symposium on the Soul of the Postmodern American Writer with our special guest, Jonathan Franzen.

After several years, I think I’m starting to understand this behavior. Writing is always an ego-intensive process; whether you’re writing fiction or an API specification,² there’s always a lot of you in there. It’s just that the main difference between professionals and non-professionals is that non-professionals don’t learn how to detach their ego when it needs to be detached.

For this reason, every writer and editor needs a bag of tricks for dealing with bruised egos. Here’s one trick I’ve learned: never edit with red ink. Red ink makes people angry and defensive. Maybe it reminds them of bad experiences in high school English… or maybe red is just an angry color. Either way, I recommend switching to green ink. It makes a world of difference.

However, I’m still up in the air about smiley faces. On the one hand, smileys have powerful ameliorative properties. Just think! — you can transform a proofreading mark that means “This whole paragraph sucks, and we’re dropping it,” to mean “This whole paragraph sucks, and we’re dropping it — but I mean that in the nicest of ways.”

On the other hand, I can’t bring myself to use smileys. Hey, I’m just not That Guy.

1. I didn’t play very much, but still.

2. In some organizations the difference between the two is not as large as you might think.

Do not adjust your monitor. We’re back to our regularly scheduled style sheet. Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, ’cause the Matrix-themed style sheet is going bye-bye… Sorry! Sorry. I can’t help myself.

Anywaay…

I just want to say for the record that working on two books at once is not easy. You go in to the office, crank away on manual #1 for eight hours. Then you return home, wolf down some food, and put about three more hours into manual #2.

Then you sit down and write a smashing journal entry. Or not, as the case may be.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Writing for eleven hours a day is draining, but it sure beats digging ditches for eleven hours a day. Don’t get me wrong, I like exercise and fresh air and all that. It’s just that I still don’t know how to swing a pickaxe or shovel dirt without doing bad things to my back, despite my father’s hours of patient instruction on proper pickaxe-swinging techniques.

This is why I’m glad I live in the world of today, rather than the world of my ancestors. I just don’t think I’d do very well in a world where my survival depends on coaxing potatoes out of the frozen Eastern European soil. Oh, sure — maybe I’d have been lucky and been born a rabbi’s son, in which case I would have spent my youth happily ensconced in shul with nary a potato to be seen. Also, let’s not forget that if you were the rabbi’s son, the chicks really dug you. (“Chava! Have I got a match for you!”) Nice work, if you can get it.

But more likely than not, I’d be forced to show off my potato-hoeing skills on a regular basis. This makes me very glad that I live in a society that values other skills also. Somehow I think drawing yourself up and proclaiming, “These are not the hands of a field worker! These are the hands of an artiste!” just wouldn’t cut it on the shtetl. It didn’t cut it in my Dad’s backyard, that’s for sure.

Anyway, we’ll see about being a little more regular about these here journal entries. Coming up next: the real, live, gritty, ripped-from-the-headlines, no-holds-barred story on how I’ve so far narrowly avoided becoming a lawyer. This year, anyway. Lawyering… now there’s another profession that wouldn’t have been so helpful on the shtetl. I mean, I’m sure the marauding troops of the Tsar would have wanted to read all those strongly worded briefs and injunctions and whatnot. But hey, when you’re galloping through the village with saber in hand… who really has the time?

Well, this is just sad. I’ve been running the Kenneth and Linda Lay
Emergency Relief Fund since the month began, and how much have we
received so far? One dollar. One stinking dollar. What’s the matter
with you people? Where’s the compassion? Where’s the love?

There’s a rather
stupid article on Stephen King’s retirement up at Salon.com. The article isn’t
quite as bad as the
“Lord of the Rings”
vs. “Star Wars” article that appeared last month, but it’s close.

Let’s give the author some credit: he is brave enough to admit that he likes
some of Stephen King’s work. True, he establishes right at the beginning
Stephen King is at best “unpolished”… and he feels he has to sprinkle a little reference to
Tom Wolfe here and a firsthand account of a New Yorker
awards ceremony there, just so we know his literary street cred is intact. But
at least he lays the groundwork for a real critique — you can’t reduce his article to,
“Stephen King sux!” So that’s something, at least.

Still, this sort of damning-with-faint-praise really gets under my skin. Why
is it each time a “literary” writer refers to a
science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, or mystery novelist, they have to play
footsies? “When I was a child I just loved Writer X — golly, she was
such rip-roaring fun!” God forbid you should come right out and say, “I like Terry
Brooks!” “Orson Scott Card is A-OK!”

(For the record: I’ve never been all that fond of Stephen King’s fiction,
and Terry Brooks was only rip-roaring fun when I was a child. There, now that
my street cred is preserved, let’s move on…)

Anyway, the really silly part comes on the second page, where the author tries
to portray King as estranged from his fans, hiding behind legal warnings:

Consider the series of questions and answers his Web site, StephenKing.com, provides
for fans. “Will he read my manuscript?” Nope. “To avoid any litigation problems, he
has been advised by his agents not to look at any manuscript that has not been accepted
by a publisher.” Does he accept story ideas? “To avoid any litigation problems, he has
been advised … ” Can he help find an agent? “There being some legal problems with this … ”
You get the picture. King has built a tall, spiked, wrought-iron fence around himself, and hung a
“Beware of (Rabid) Dog” sign on it.

Eh? I’m not aware of any published author who reads strangers’ manuscripts,
accepts strangers’ story ideas, or helps strangers find an agent. If you know
of one, let me know, because I sure could use someone to
hold my hand while I find an agent…

No, King is absolutely right about the legal problems, but let’s face it:
he’s being polite to use that as an excuse. I can’t imagine how many
submissions he would get from his millions of fans if he offered to read
manuscripts… but I know it would put poor,
overworked Tim to shame.

I dunno. Salon.com must really be in its death-throes, publishing obtuse
articles just to provoke a response. After all, these days they’re presenting
product press
releases as journalism. It’s all downhill from here.

That’s about it. Oh, except I bought a copy of Windows 2000 and did a clean install on
my PC. I thought that would solve certain issues once and for all, but it doesn’t
seem to have helped a bit. And here I was being good, not buying a cracked version of the OS.
I hate, hate, hate, Microsoft. That’s the last cent I pay them, ever.

Edit, April 2003: Hang in there, Evan-from-February-2002. Salvation is just around the corner…

Elmore
Leonard’s rules for writing:

1. Never open a book with weather.

   Sure. Nobody wants to be Edward Bulwer-Lytton, after all.

2. Avoid prologues.

   This is a pet peeve of mine, particularly when I read thick
   fantasy novels. If there’s a prologue, it’s almost always
   about Gods and Goddesses and Heros and Monsters and there’s
   a blizzard of names and places to wade through.
   And then the story starts. Bleahh.

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

   This goes a bit too far. Better to say, “don’t
   be afraid to use ‘said’ to carry dialogue”.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”.

   Well, avoid using adverbs, period.

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

   My high school English teacher told us that we could only use two
   exclamation points per year. She was kind of a dotty lady… but she was
   right about this one.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”.

   And whatever you do, don’t combine these words with a description of the
   weather: “Suddenly, on a dark and stormy night, all hell broke loose.”
   That’s like the Triple Crown of bad prose.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

   In the article, Leonard
   cites Annie Proulx, but I’m not sure if he’s complimenting her
   or criticizing her. (Unlike B. R. Myers, who is
   absolutely
   clear; he hates Proulx.)

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

   Or, “Show, don’t tell”. But you knew that. I knew that.
   We all knew that. A round of applause for us!
   Moving on…

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

   See Rule #8.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

    As Sam might put it: Fuckin’ A.

Winelog:

I think I’ve found a wine rating site that
shares my philosophy.
I do have to deduct a few points, though — these folks do have
enough vocabulary to say why they liked or disliked a
particular bottle. No, no, no. I’m looking for just the visceral reaction:
Yes! No! Maybe! That’s it. Anyway…

Fetzer, California, 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon: Not bad.

Sonoma Creek, Sonoma, 1999 Merlot: Not bad.

Black Mountain, California, 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon (FatCat): Yum

I found a cute little NYTimes op-ed piece, which argues that
these days, all
writing is screenwriting. Embedded in the middle of the article
is this paragraph:

At the moment, a tribe of 15,000 novel-readers on the Upper West Side
keep fiction alive in America. Other than that, fiction writers are
as archaic as fishmongers. If you wish to hide some human truth where
no one will find it, place it in the middle of your first novel.

New Yawkers really are a different breed aren’t they?
Sure, if I was a member of The Tribe of 15000,
I might believe that that it was only my efforts that kept the
sputtering flame of fiction alive. But I would never express
such thoughts to anyone other than my fellow tribesmen.
Certainly not in the NY Times, where benighted Californians, Britons,
or God help us, South Dakotans might stumble across it.

I’m not sure if this is an example of “the (New York) fish not noticing the water
in which he swims,” or something more. See, I’ve always heard
people argue that one should read fiction to expand one’s horizons and explore
different modes of thinking. But our essayist now unwittingly provides us with
the counterargument: that perhaps reading can have
the opposite effect. Maybe this whole readin’ and writin’ business isn’t all
it’s cracked up to be.

I had a number of responses to the simultaneous
submissions entry. A couple of them mentioned that it’s acceptable to
put an “expiration date” on a submitted manuscript. That is, in your cover
letter you can state that after X weeks, the story is automatically withdrawn
from consideration.

I admit that this method is a bit more efficient than having to manually
send the editor a withdrawal letter.
It probably has psychological benefits, too — it sets a hard limit, and
thus prevents you from dragging things out too long. “Well, I know what
I decided back in February, but maybe just a couple more weeks…”

As for the root of the problem:
Tim Cooper sent me an excellent
letter, which provided me with the only cogent
arguments I’ve seen so far for disallowing simultaneous submissions.

First, he points out that editors send out acceptances and rejections for a
magazine at roughly the same time:

Suppose I have stories in my slush that I like, from Writer A, Writer B, and
Writer C. I only have the ability to buy one of the stories. So, after much
agonizing, I accept Writer A’s story and reject Writer B’s and Writer C’s.
The next day, maybe I choose to buy a very short piece from Writer D because
it works well with Writer A’s story. The day after that, Writer A writes back
to me and says “Oh, wait, I already sold it to Editor X.” At this point, I can’t
recover the stories form Writer B and C, which could very well be better than
anything I’ll get in before the issue comes up. And I now have a short piece
I’ve committed to buy that doesn’t fit with anything in the issue at all…

Which is fair enough: perhaps given a busy magazine’s schedule, it isn’t practical
to hold off on rejecting Writers B and C until you have confirmation from
Writer A. (I don’t see how book publishers could use this excuse, though.)

Tim also mentions that the no-simultaneous-submissions rule serves as a barrier
that limits inappropriate submissions.

If someone can send a story to every market in the field at once, quite a few of
them are going to do it, regardless of how appropriate the story is for that
particular market. If sending
Stan
Schmidt a high fantasy story isn’t going to cost
the writer anything, a lot of them are going to say “why not?”

And then there are authors who send cover letters that say
things like “I have finished over 250 stories” — with no sales. As Tim puts it,
“I know that if simsubs were ok across the genre, the moment I opened for submissions
I would have gotten every one of those 250+ stories. I’m going to get all of them
eventually, anyway, it seems, but at least they’re coming at a speed I can handle.”

I sympathize with this. Barriers are necessary. After all, isn’t that
why so many publishers still require paper submissions?

However, I suppose that again
this explanation makes more sense for a magazine editor than a book editor.
First, unless our author writes with demonic speed, he or she will not have an
outrageous number of unsold novels. Second, while a book editor’s
slush pile might be large if you count pages, my guess is that it is
relatively small if you count manuscripts. This means that the burden
of rooting out the inappropriate submissions should be lower for book editors.
Finally, novels are expensive and time-consuming to print out and ship — so again,
fewer submissions.

Finally, Tim makes a very valid point (jeez, why didn’t I just print his
whole letter verbatim?) about the responsibilities of authors. If authors
could be trusted to track their submissions and inform editors when a
simultaneous submission is accepted somewhere else, the rule would be
unnecessary. I couldn’t agree more.

The flip side is that publishers
should at least be honest about why they do this. The non-explanation in the
SFWA FAQ just doesn’t cut it.

Today’s question about the SF publishing industry is:
Why do publishers disallow simultaneous submissions?

Any author or book on writing will say the same thing: don’t do it.
If you get caught doing it, you’re in trouble. But the question remains,
why?

Other than “we’re the publishers and we say so,” the only reason I’ve read
comes from SFWA, in their
FAQ for
Beginning Writers (scroll down to the middle of the page):

Q: What is wrong with simultaneous submissions? Why can’t I send out my manuscript
to all the markets at once, and save years of waiting time?

A: Some markets allow simultaneous submissions. The Literary Market Place and The
Writer’s Market tell you which markets these are. Other markets do not want
simultaneous submissions. Why? Because too many of them have been burned by authors
who, on being told that their story was accepted and had been put to press, informed
the editors that, “Oh, I sent that to another magazine and it paid more money so I let
them publish it first.” More than one magazine has found itself in the position of
having to redo its entire layout, at considerable expense, because of such a situation…

After reading this, I actually went back and studied the SFWA acronym.
“Science-Fiction-and-Fantasy-Writers-of-America”. Yup.
Still says “Writers”.
I keep rereading the explanation and it still baffles me. Hmmmm…
perhaps we can elicit the Truth by transforming the narrative…

               PREMATURE PUBLICATION:  A PLAY IN ONE ACT

Editor:    Tra-la-la-la-la… Say, what do we have here in the slush pile?

           (he fishes a manuscript out of the pile)  Why… it’s a story!

           I like this one!  Yes… it’s perfect for this month’s issue!

           Minions! (claps hands) Start the presses, post-haste!
Graphic

Designer:  Aye aye, sir!
Layout

Editor:    Full speed ahead!  
All three

together:  Huzzah!
Author:    (pokes head in the door)  Ummm… ‘scuse me… but I ah… ummm…

           actually, your competitor down the street secured the rights to my

           story over a month ago.  Terribly sorry about that.
Editor:    Whaaat!  Minions!  (claps hands)  Pelt this miscreant, this tramp,

           with crumpled Coke cans.  And blacklist her, post-haste!
Author:    Aie, curse my impatience!  I am undone!  (retreats under the barrage)
Editor:    Well, the only thing left to do now is to redo our entire layout,

           at considerable expense, because of this situation. 
           (All three burst into tears)
               THE END

Well, perhaps that didn’t help quite as much as I had hoped.

Anyway, the point is: how the heck
does a submission equate to signing a contract?
I mean it’s one thing if the editor secures publication rights and
then the author tries to renege “because they got a better offer”.
But that’s not what’s happening here. The author hasn’t agreed to
anything yet.

Frankly, the more I read the FAQ the angrier I get. The sad revelation
of all those poor editors getting burned has to be just outright false. What
idiot is going to lay out his magazine based on manuscripts that
he hasn’t bothered to acquire yet? The other possibility is that the poor editors
really were criminally stupid. Either way, the whole thing stinks.

One more thing: notice how the long lead times are a direct result of
the no simultaneous submissions rule. If simultaneous submissions were permitted,
then any magazine that could read its slush pile faster would have a significant
advantage, because they could snap up good stories from unknowns long before
their slower competitors. Competition would force lead times to shrink dramatically.

Competition? Publishing? Bah, I live in a dream-world.