Gareth Lewis's Blog, page 2

Do Readers Really Hate Short Novels?

I’m not talking about novellas (17,500-40,000 words) here. Or even the dead zone between novellas and novels (40,000-50,000 – definitions vary by source, but these seem to be the general boundaries). I’m talking about anything under 70,000 words being considered too short by traditional publishers (some places say 80,000).

[These are all general numbers that I’ve found, and don’t cover younger readers’ novels, or even young adults stuff. Different genres have different ranges according to different sources, but I’m sticking to what seem to be the generally agreed upon numbers. The fact there aren’t definitive sources on novel length is an irritation for another rant. Mainly because it shouldn’t be a factor.]

As a cheap alternative to therapy for some of my mental health issues, I wrote a psychological thriller that touches on suicidal depression and social anxiety. Unfortunately, it’s only just over 50,000 words. I only know of one publisher that’ll consider that length of novel, and accept submissions, but they’ve rejected it, which leaves me with a problem (in under a fortnight though, because they always seem to have a fast turnaround time, which is a nice change for trad. publishing).

Not that I don’t have plenty of other stuff to get on with, with another novel undergoing submission, and another half dozen in various stages of revision or waiting. But now I’ve expelled the personal stuff, which wasn’t easy, I find I want to put it out there. Which may be dumb, and it could have been rejected because it’s just no good.

But to not be able to put it out there because there are no avenues for something of this length is irritating, especially when the lengths are based (to my understanding) primarily on printing economics. Novels shorter than 70,000 words would be uneconomical to consider unless from an established name who could guarantee a certain level of sales. So there’s no opportunity to really know whether readers don’t like novels that short.

E-books mitigate this, but of course the traditional publishers are on the whole painfully slow to adapt to digital publishing. There’s always self-publishing, but I’ve no reason to think it’ll sell any better than the other dozen plus novels I’ve self-published, so I’m sticking to the trying trad. publishing for a bit longer.

Which leaves me with a problem. Do I try and revise it to add 40% (or 60% to be safe)? While I have some vague ideas, they feel like they could slow the pace too much, without adding anywhere near the required amount of padding. It feels like there’s a danger of making the story less appealing by padding it out, but without padding it I’ve no chance of anyone looking at it.

Structurally, I’m not sure how much I can add. There are only two main characters – only one with a viewpoint – the supporting cast falling aside as we progress to build a sense of isolation and claustrophobia. I don’t see how it can support additional subplots without feeling forced.

It may be that there are markets out there that would accept it at this length, but I’m just unaware of them. I’ve spent time searching, but the few places I’ve found are either no longer active, or not taking submissions.

I could do with an agent who knows this stuff. But the last round of agent submissions for my longer novel are looking like a bust, and I assume this one will be too short for them to consider. If the market in general considers it too short, then would submitting it to an agent make me look uninformed? I expect I’d just get no response for my stupidity.

I’ve considered emailing a prospective agent and asking whether they consider short novels, but I’m worried this could negatively influence them against me in the future. Also, the social anxiety stuff I mentioned earlier.

It’d be nice if the getting published side of writing didn’t feel like some esoteric art form. But I suppose if everyone knew the rules to follow, traditional publishers may not have the stranglehold on the industry they’re trying so desperately to maintain hold of.

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The Automation of Responsibility

Which sounds more horrific: trapped as a victim of a bureaucratic system where some shadowy individual or cabal orchestrates it to move against you; or trapped as a victim of an automated bureaucracy, no one meaning you ill-intent, but the entire mechanism arrayed against you nonetheless, and no one in any position to do anything about it?

 

The world, and society, are far too complex for any one person to fully comprehend how things operate in totality. Laws and bureaucracy automate the running of society in the way we’ve chosen to live – a consensus compromise of what the majority of those who had a say can tolerate.

Automation of social systems can be egalitarian. It can remove personal biases from decisions – other than those built into the system. But when things go wrong, it could mean there’s no one who can step in and fix it.

If no one has direct responsibility for a decision, then anyone involved may avoid getting tarred with the responsibility in case they make the wrong choice. They instead trust that the system does what it’s supposed to do – maybe assuming someone is overseeing things. That the system is working correctly, because of course it is. It’s the law. As though the law is some immutable dogma, rather than a constantly tinkered-with framework.

The system works by removing human thought and judgement from the equation. It makes things both fairer and more efficient, but can never be free from error, if only because it’s implemented by humans – though not necessarily ones with any responsibility. The system is intended to take over this responsibility, functionally becoming a limited artificial intelligence that runs society.

Such a system is still open to exploitation. Individuals can always target the system in certain ways, so it views others as being in contravention of its dogma – whether they are or not. Though there’s more danger harm being caused by unintended consequences.

 

Example

An example would be the attempted deportation of those who’ve resided in the country since they were children, but the processes when they were welcomed half a century ago were less stringent about making things official.

Victims of decisions forced by the political climate, for a system too vast to avoid unintended consequences from even the most well-meaning decision. So petty decisions, based on ugly politics, would of course have innocent victims.

The decision was of course made at a high level, left to others lower down to implement. Yet do any of the individuals involved have responsibility? I’m not talking about blame, which is a political inevitability when things go wrong. Was the initial instruction too vague? Or was it poorly interpreted when implemented? Or is the fault purely due to their limited grasp of how the ruling will impact everyone touched by it?

Because the limits of human judgement can be influenced by so many factors, and like any automated system, society can only produce results based on what’s fed into it.

 

Human Oversight

The system isn’t without oversight, of course. Appeals may be made to attempt to find a human willing to take responsibility for the decision. Someone with the power to do so, ideally. Responsibility without control only makes scapegoats, so it’s hardly surprising that few without the power to effect certain changes would be inclined to intercede. And anyone with the power may be too far up to hear about such things, or to realise it comes under their purview.

Such oversight will be nowhere near as efficient as the automated system though, offering a different flavour of frustration as the process grinds on.

 

Bottleneck

Ultimately, bureaucratic automation is designed to minimise the impact upon the majority. Because manually maintaining a perfect system would require so much constant attention as to be counterproductive. Such problems may not be solvable. They’re simply a feature of a system designed to accommodate such a vastly overpopulated society.

But if the survival of the social engine is placed above the wellbeing of the individuals making up that society, then society becomes more important than people. It may be hard to see if you’re not currently a victim of it, but such systems operate on logic, and the simply logic is that if the system itself is more important than an individual, then it’s more important than any individual. And it’d be far too easy a step to see it as more important than every individual.

The system was created to make life easier for us, to enable us to live together. How much do we put the ease of the majority above the well-being of the individual?

 

Solutions? Anyone?

How can such automation of responsibility be countered? Not easily while maintaining the useful structure of society.

Decentralisation of the authority for such choices is one possibility, but then you revert to the problem of allowing biases in. Homogenisation of the wider culture blurs – to a limited degree – the lines of us and them. Allowing increased autonomy to subsections, while it may fight disenfranchisement, risks retrenching lines of demarcation between us and them, alienating the others. With such an increasingly mobile population, this risks even greater disenfranchisement.

Any process to reintegrate human judgement will likely reintroduce explicit biases. Group decisions on matters may alleviate the issue, but they also increase the bureaucracy and time taken. Slowing the procedures and enhancing the sense of alienation of those caught up in bureaucracy.

Are we stuck with a choice between the equality of being statistics in a system, or the sluggish, biased, human bureaucracy of a civilisation grinding to a halt under the weight of its own complexity?

Or are we stuck in the middle, with a system that seems to have the worst of both? With no one willing to take responsibility for this larger existential problem of society.

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March Update

This is mainly a proof of life post. I’m not dead yet.

The last few months have mainly been waiting for responses/rejections from submissions (still 2 agents from the last batch to hear from, and Angry Robot). During which time I’ve been doing revision passes on the other in-progress works.

Until my depression slowed that down into a useless exercise. It turned out the solution was writing another new novel, this time a psychological thriller about depression. Which at least got me writing, even if I do now have six novels in various stages of progress (and I’ve started on an outline for another).

I also wrote a short story for an anthology that put out a call. And if it’s rejected by that one, there’s another anthology I noticed with a call out whose theme it could fit.

 

My current list of novels in progress or just waiting are:

All Roads Lead to Hell – Finished, but too short for most traditional submission routes, so just hanging about.

Border Guards series:

The Border Guard – currently undergoing submission;
(unnamed book 2) – some revisions done, but waiting to see what happens with book 1 before going any further;
(unnamed book 3) – same here.

Broken – This is the psychological thriller I did last month. I’ve done some polishing, but I think it’s in reasonable condition. I’ll go back to it in another couple of weeks to see what else it needs.

Dwimmerfall (working title) – this has been in progress for a few years now. I’ve done it one section at a time, working out the next part of the story only after writing the previous one, and have three parts done. The fourth, and probably final, part is in outlining, but I still need to work out what actually happens. Also, I’m trying to work in ideas suggested by a panel at Bristolcon, but I’m having trouble integrating them.

Ghost Bullets series:

The Ghost Gun – it’s had a few rounds of revisions, and I’m not sure what else it needs done;
The Redacted Man – much the same state;
The Abyssal Box – I have a rough outline, but it needs more to it. I need more thinking time on this.

 

For the foreseeable future I’ll mainly be pottering with these while waiting for responses, and maybe hammering out the outlines to get the other stuff written. Then maybe trying to research more agents to submit. If I have no success with the traditional publishing route, I may just publish it all next year. If I can get Dwimmerfall done, the existing three parts are all over 50k words, so I may split them up into small novels. That way I could potentially publish a novel every month for the year.

Since they’re unlikely to do any better than any of my previous novels without some other factor in play, this isn’t the optimal approach. But if I can’t get anywhere with the trad pub route, then I’m currently at a loss for what else to try.

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2017 Review

Publications

Only two things published this year, and none planned for the foreseeable future.

Soul Food was out in January, and the novella, The Book of a Thousand and One Destinies was out the middle of the year.

The couple of days spent trying to solicit reviews for Soul Food has yet to prove fruitful. I emailed thirty reviewers/sites. I had six replies. Four declining – mainly due to overfull to-read lists – and two expressing interest. Eleven months later, and still only one review from my arc reader.

There’s no point paying for advertising until I have more reviews, and I see no way of getting them. Or any likelihood of publishing anything else with expectation of more success. So for the moment I have no intention of going through the extra effort of preparing them for publication.

I’ve begun trying the traditional publication route, and submitted one story to an agent in October. They declined yesterday. I’ll try a few more now, and Angry Robot have an open submission period that ends in a few days, so I guess I’ll go ahead and query them (I ‘m going through a period of not expecting positive responses from anything, if I receive any responses at all – in my experience, not common in the publishing industry).

 

Writing

Writing has gone fairly well this year. Six novels, and part three of a longer piece, though most in first draft form. 450k new words written. Most of those words will have to be rewritten before I’m happy with them, but I have something to work from.

First of all was the third part of Dwimmerfall (working title). Which looks like it may be four parts. I’ve been working on it for a few years though, and have only vague ideas of what happens next. And a panel at this year’s Bristolcon gave me ideas to add to what’s already done, so I need time to properly consider how to implement them. But part three is done.

All Roads Lead to Hell is a short crime novel. Potentially the first of a series, though since it’s probably too short for the market I doubt it’ll sell, so probably won’t get around to doing any more.

The Border Guard is a urban fantasy novel. This is the one currently trying the submission route. While that was submitted, I started working on the sequel for what will apparently be a trilogy. I wrote book two for NaNoWriMo, and finished by the 9th of November. I spent most of the rest of the month planning the third book, and started that by the end of the month. So I now have rough drafts of all the trilogy to work from, and have made a couple of minor adjustments to the first one already. Now I just need to find someone interested in it, which is always a problem.

I also did the first couple of books in a (possibly) open-ended urban fantasy/crime series, Ghost Bullets. It’s an attempt to make a series I can avoid getting bored with by centering it on the Ghost Gun the first book is named after, with the mortality rate of its wielders being high. The basic premise is that the titular gun fires ghost bullets which kill any target they hit, their soul held by the gun, and their ghosts haunting their killer. Technically, no part of that is actually true, yet it still makes an accurate précis of the idea. I have vague ideas of where the series could go, but want to tidy the first two stories up before pushing on any further.

 

Life in General

My depression continues in bouts, and a couple of times I’ve come close to breakdowns this year. I don’t see any change coming in that, and I’m worried it’ll interfere with my attempts to get published, since I am currently defeatist about it.

 

2018 Plans

Mainly revisions of the aforementioned, at least for the first part of the year. I need to try and finish Dwimmerfall at some point, since it has been in progress since 2015.

There are a couple of other long works I’ve been planning on doing for a few years now, but realistically I don’t see myself getting much done on them next year. Maybe some thinking, possibly even research, but most time I need to focus on clearing away my works in progress. Then I should probably look at sequels to them, where appropriate. Series are supposedly what the market seems to want, even though they don’t come naturally to me.

Not sure whether I’ll post here more often, but I tend to doubt it.

 

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End of Year Sales

Smashwords have an end of year sale on, running until the 1st of January. Most of my stuff is reduced in it, and Soul Food is available for free.

Seasons greetings to anyone so inclined.

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I Hereby Foreswear NaNoWriMo

I’ve finished NaNoWriMo for this year, and possibly for good. The 81,000 words were done in nine days. For the first five days I did 10,000 words a day, but was able to slow to a more relaxed 8,000 a day after passing the 50,000 word goal.

I think it’s the deadline that does it for me. There’s this urgent need to finish. I get it when doing a first draft anyway, but have forced myself to slow down a bit recently. Not that the urge ever completely vanishes.

I’ve wondered whether it’s a desperation to achieve something, given my lack of any kind of success so far. But I don’t feel anywhere near the same urgency during the revision process. There’s a desire to get through it, and eventually to be rid of the thing so I can get on to the new, but never the same fevered intensity.

Since I don’t really need NaNoWriMo to prompt me to write now, I think it may have offered me all it can. And the increased stress and anxiety I feel from it may just make the writing process less enjoyable (though much such enjoyment tends to be retrospective).

So I hereby swear off doing NaNoWriMo again.

 

Results

The book (sequel to The Border Guard, which is currently submitted to an agent – 1 initially, with a few more I’ve started researching next in line) is written, at least. It still needs a lot of work. Chapter 3 is way too sparse, so that needs something else. I need to insert a chapter so the POV character has actual interaction with another character before the first scene they get together here, in order for that to really work without relying on the reader having read and remembering their interactions in the first book.

I also realised one of the plot strands left in the first book doesn’t have any attention here, so I need to work out whether it will play a role, or whether to exorcise it from the first book.

More worryingly is that one of the overall themes (probably not the word I want) of the first book isn’t as prevalent here. I can’t tell if that’s a problem yet, and may need some distance to properly judge. Overall I’m relatively happy with some bits of the story, so I don’t want to have to do a complete rewrite.

So now I’m trying to decide whether to focus on working out what needs to change in this one (after some time away from it), or start outlining the third (and final) book, to get a proper overview of what things need to be. But will the outline fix the current structure of the second book in my head, or will it show me what it needs to be?

 

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SFerics 2017

I have a short story, Positive Falsehoods, in the SFerics 2017 collection, which is now out.

It was organised by Rosie Oliver, edited by Roz Clarke, with cover art by Andy Bigwood. So thanks to them, and the other contributors.

Here’s the description:

What will the future hold for us, our children and our grandchildren? How will developing technology change the way we live? Will we keep our humanity or become more like robots?

Six Stories – Six Possible Futures

An anthology developed from the BristolCon 2015 science fiction and fantasy convention workshop – about the future of the latest technologies coming onto the market.

Amazon

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Is Genre a Handicap for Writers?

[This is just preliminary ramblings, as my mind flits around the subject]

What’s the point of genre, from a writer’s perspective? Are they just a marketing thing, only relevant to bookshops and the publishing industry? Not if you’re an independent author, who has to consider such things. And if you’re writing for the market, it’s good to know the expectations of the genre you’ll be placed in, so that customers will be satisfied with your book.

Part of the problem for me is that genre seems to be a mashup of different factors from stories, all treated as being the same.

Breakdown

Fantasy, science fiction. These are mainly to do with Setting elements. There are certain types of story more commonly associated with them, but those titles alone don’t necessarily define what will happen in the story. Not until you get deeper into subcategorization, at least.

Detective story, romance. These are the Engines of the story, defining the shape of what events are likely to occur, and what can be expected of the ending (a detective story or mystery would have a reveal, a romance would have a happy ending). It’s possible to not deliver the expected ending, but you know you risk disappointing some readers.

Thriller, suspense. These are more to do with the Pacing. They don’t really suggest any type of ending other than in terms of it needing to live up to the build-up they provide. Maybe literary is also in this category, at the opposite end (nothing much happens, and it may not even have an actual ending).

So that’s Setting, Engine, and Pacing. Are there any other kind of categories they can be broken down into? Let’s look at some random genres.

Caper – This is an Engine. It suggests shape of the story, rather than anything to do with the Setting.

Comedy – This makes me think I should rename Setting as Flavour. Or just question why this is considered a genre.

Crime – Hard to be sure. I’d say the Engine, although crime covers a range of types of story. Then again, the Crime genre is generally interpreted as contemporary, so while a crime might be the Engine of a story, what we think of as the Crime genre is a combination of Setting and Engine, or even more weighted toward Setting.

Dystopian – Again I think what it’s come to mean is too specific. At heart it’s someone (usually a teen) stuck in a broken society, trying to survive, and/or fix the world. While generally associated with science fiction, the Engine of the story could be applied to other settings. But by now the word has such a specific meaning in terms of genre that we’d need another if talking about the underlying Engine.

Epic – While generally associated with fantasy – so epic fantasy has a particular meaning and set of tropes – I think Epic is more to do with Pacing. It also touches on scale and breadth of the story, so maybe Pacing isn’t the best term. It’s about the shape and structure of the story though, rather than the Setting or the Engine driving the plot forward.

Espionage – This feels like a wide Engine definition. There are certain elements of spy stories that could be attributed to Setting, and maybe some elements that could fit a different Engine. So I’m not sure it isn’t actually a Setting, with certain types of Espionage stories being the Engines.

 

There are also genre mashups to consider. I think overall a story can only have one Engine and Pacing pattern, but multiple Setting elements. (Maybe Flavour would be a better title. Or Ingredients. In which case Engine feels kind of wrong).

With that small selection I’ve decided I’ve misnamed two of the three categories I decided upon not far above. That’s some progress, isn’t it?

I probably need to think about it some more.

 

Should I Care? Can I?

Personally, I don’t pay much attention to genre. Even if I consider it, and realise a story isn’t going to easily fit in any, or won’t fit in a popular one, it isn’t likely to affect me. I write what tells me it wants to be written.

Which may be one of the many reasons I don’t sell much, but by this point I’m not sure there’s much chance of me changing.

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Revision Anxieties

I got The Border Guard back from the developmental editor. Some bits need clarifying, I removed the third chapter that’d been a late insert, and there was information that needed moving up. There were some other bits that needed work which I think I’ve done enough on, though I’ve reached the point where I just can’t tell. But the main problem remains that I don’t describe enough, or in enough detail.

Descriptions don’t come easily for me. Those are the bits I tend to skim over when reading. It’s simply how my mind works, focussing more on the abstract of plot and dialogue. So even if I do describe stuff, it may not be that interesting. Because it’s not what I want to be writing. I try to counter this, but since I have trouble even telling where I need to describe more, I could easily be missing places I should add more, or not doing enough in the places I do add stuff.

While it was more the details than the overall structure that needed work, I find myself questioning whether my writing instincts are all wrong. Given my lack of success so far, something in my instincts is probably lacking. And I hired an editor to help me get the manuscript into a state that the traditional publishing system prefer, so unless I disagree with something for a reason I’m clear on, I’ll go with her advice.

 

Infodumps

I had tried spreading the information out initially, to avoid slowing the opening (and without being too infodumpy). This involved introducing some ideas but not fully explaining them until later, which I can see is dumb. But rearranging stuff, I’m not sure whether I’ve slowed the early story down. I’ve done at least a handful of passes on the opening chapters to polish the inserts and pare them down to make minimal impact on the flow.

But I’m at the point where I can no longer tell. The point at which I’ve stared at it so closely that I find I can’t really step back to see the larger picture. It is the shape its going to be in my mind, and all I can do is tinker at the edges, polishing it.

I’m not even sure I’m explaining this well.

 

Submission Anxiety

While the edit was generally positive, I can’t help fretting over every detail.

Since this is the first things I’ve written in a while of a commercially acceptable length (90K) I’m going to try the traditional submission route, in hopes of finding somewhere that’ll do the promotion I’m useless at. Which I realise may be a forlorn hope, since all we hear about is publishers increasingly offloading that stuff onto authors. But there’s little traction on the dozen plus novels I’ve self-published, so trying one this way is hardly much of a gamble (he says envisioning a dozen ways in which this could make things worse).

So I’m starting with looking at agents. In the UK. For a fantasy novel. It’s a small pool. Especially since some of the stuff I write is more crime/thriller, so I’d also like someone who could represent a few genres. But I’ll go with fantasy primarily.

Since submissions are generally the first three chapters or 50 pages, those are the ones I’ve been focussing on, going over and over them, again and again. They’re also the ones that have had stuff moved up into them, making them seem more bloated to me than they probably are.

I’ve been switching, with increasing rapidity, between worrying they’re not good enough, to stupid levels of confidence that the genius therein will shine through regardless. Agents surely look for the potential within the work won’t they? Unless mine is the dozenth they’ve had to read that day, and they’re looking for any excuse to decline and move on to the next.

The pace of change of this manic-depressive cycle has gotten so fast that I now seem able to hold both viewpoints concurrently.

So I reached the point where I had to submit it and hope it isn’t as bad as I fear.

 

Anxieties will ultimately stop me ever putting anything out if I listen to them too long, so once I reach the point where it feels like I’m doing things by rote and not taking anything in, it’s time to step away from it. Either for a short while, or releasing it to wherever. I’m reasonably sure it’s in an overall good state, or as good as I can make it barring minor tweaking.

Or I was until I finished that sentence, and I’m again thinking I should have done more. But I’ll never escape that, even for books I released years ago. All I can do is move on to the next project, giving that my attention.

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Depression 7: The Misery of Hope

[WARNING: This is a self-indulgent series of posts in lieu of getting actual help. It’ll probably just be irritating to anyone else]

I thought finally losing my hope would make things easier. That the anguish of all these daydreams of the way things could go would stop. It turns out the absolute void of anything in my future but too many more years of existence before I finally get to rest is even worse.

Self-delusion may have been the only thing keeping my suicidal impulses to a promise of future release.

I still have my duties and obligations to force me to keep going. To drag me out of bed in the morning.

Life has no reason, no purpose, other than whatever we attribute to it. I don’t think I’m capable of doing so. And I have too little in life to distract me from this void.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been happy. I recall no true moments of joy. And I’m now sure I never will.

The only possibility I do see for any kind of joy, however false, is if I do succumb to the psychotic break that’s seemed imminent for a while. It’s always had this allure of finally allowing me to lose my inhibitions, of being alive. But it’d more likely be far more tortured than that, and I don’t want the risk of causing others pain. Because everyone else is more important than me. Everyone else has something to live for.

I’m not sure what I’d even do without my inhibitions anyway. I see nothing in life that seems that interesting. I don’t drink. I can’t dance. Many things people seem to take pleasure in just look so hollow. Are they all just distractions, and is everyone as broken as me on the inside?

A lifetime of living in here has taught me how to hide most of the things I have inside. Does everybody else do the same, and none of us want to talk about it or acknowledge it? Or is it just me?

 

I have this desperate need to break out of the soul-eroding routine, but get exhausted by anxiety whenever I do.

I almost feel another me, one I’d sooner be, straining to be free from inside of me. Giving me urges to do something stupid.

Maybe going to the conference was a good thing. Stirring up my anxieties. Maybe it’ll goad me into acting. And inevitably doing the wrong thing.

Though with no definite goal, I’m more likely to carry on along the same familiar groove.

 

All I have left is memories of a life unlived. And I’m too old and broken to start living it now. All I have to hold on to is the promise of oblivion thereafter.

I so wanted to be rid to the final niggling sliver of hope, with all its lies that only served to make the anguish worse when they never happened.

Now I’m left with nothing. Just a need to keep writing to hold the darkness at bay.

But I think I’m out of words.

 

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