On Premature Self-Publishers: A Rant
“Many writers who want to be writers don’t really want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print.” - James Michener
Disclaimer: This blog isn’t a complaint about young or beginning writers just starting out who are in the process of developing into fine writers. Most writers’ early work won’t match their later work stylistically or structurally. Though they’re less masterly, early books still contain the potential and much of the passion that will mark an author’s later writing efforts. I actually enjoy reading the early work of many writers. Nor is this blog about writers who publish a limited body of work for friends or family, without plans to market to general readers. This blog is about writers who seek fame and fortune as authors without caring a whit for the art, the readers, or the industry when they publish their unpolished, self-indulgent slop and then promote the hell out of it through less-than-honest marketing strategies.
This is dedicated to all the indie writers who are perfecting their craft and building a readership based on merit.
Me. I’m very choosy about whose words I take to bed.
Why People Write
Writing for oneself can be a pleasurable, creative, even therapeutic act. Emotions and ideas germinate and ferment in our minds until we are restless and malcontent. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are feeling or thinking until we put words to paper, until we let them explode in a big messy splatter, releasing our tension and leaving us sated and relaxed.
People have kept journals and diaries for centuries for the sole purpose of experiencing the simple joy found in the act of personal self-expression. As a means of self-discovery, few experiences are more satisfying than writing out one’s thoughts and emotions in a private book. Writing about a painful experience helps the mind process and heal. Writing poetry or fiction strengthens the imagination and stimulates the intellect. Writing down life dreams helps focus the mind, motivating an individual to make the necessary behavioral changes to achieve those dreams.
When an individual engages in this kind of private, masturbatory writing, attention to grammar and punctuation is unnecessary, even irrelevant. The writer isn’t attempting to communicate ideas to anyone other than him or herself. In fact, it often isn’t even about sharing or communication; its focus and productivity is found in the single act of expression. And, unless the writer returns to the writing later to reread and reprocess the information, it doesn’t even need to make sense. Ideas and images can ramble and cavort across pages without transitions or logical connections. No one else is going to be expending precious time and energy trying to make sense of it (unless the writer turns out to be a sociopath who commits a crime, in which case, law enforcement might need to interpret those crazy scribblings). So basically, anyone can write privately without feeling any obligation or responsibility to write well.
But when a writer writes with the intention to share his or her work with a general audience—then all the rules and reasons for writing change. Or at least, they should. There exists a vast chasm between writing for oneself and writing for an audience. (Just like there is a difference between quick masturbation and an extended session of making love with a partner.)
Making the Private Public
Writing for one’s self is a private act. The writer might go as far as show a poem or story to family members or friends, but no further. During the era of traditional print publishing, most private writers never thought to send their writing off to be considered by a publisher because they knew that they had not invested the time and energy into the work to warrant professional publishing, a laborious and time-consuming process of editing, revising, copy-editing, printing, binding and distributing. The only famous writer I can think of offhand who wrote and polished her work as a private act but didn’t send it out to the world for publication during her life was the amazing poet Emily Dickinson. (She didn’t submit her work for publication in part because she refused to let editors change it.) Most people writing privately understand that their quickly drafted thoughts and ideas are unpolished and imperfect and not ready for a broad audience. And if they lack an understanding of this concept, the publishers have been quick to educate them with swift rejection letters.
In general, indie e-publishing has been a boon to a stagnant book industry. E-publishing and digital book sellers have allowed writers to present their work to a public audience without enduring years of submissions and rejections, expensive book binding and distribution, and long publishing cycles. The gatekeepers who once determined what gets published when no longer block writers from publishing work that might be controversial, or that fails to pigeon hole itself into a specific genre, or that competes with other books, or that is just plain awful.
A writer can pen a book, revise it, edit it, design a cover and upload it to large digital book distributors like Smashwords and Amazon in a matter of weeks or months. While many writers actually take longer than a few weeks or months to write a book, others are prolific and practiced at their craft, and are adept at writing fast entertainment fast. Anyone who argues that a quickly written book is a poorly written book, has never read one of my favorite novels, the great American writer William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which he reportedly wrote in six weeks.
If Faulkner can write a good book in a few weeks, why can’t anyone? Well…Faulkner was a serious, full-time writer who read, studied, honed his craft into art every single day. He spent years developing his talent as a writer until he became a master of the form. When a master writer sits down to produce a poem, a novel, a short story, or a play, he or she doesn’t have to think constantly about craft. The master fiction writer’s brain already often thinks in beautiful sentences, in just the right words, in foreshadowing, in plot twists, in witty dialogue. The master writer writes (relatively) fast because he or she has already written hundreds of thousands of sentences over many years in which he or she invested time and energy struggling with phrasing, with word choice, with plotting, with punctuation options.
Professional basketball players don’t have to think about proper dribbling and running while they move down the court, but beginning players do. Likewise, experienced writers don’t have to think about how or when to use a semi-colon or a comma, or how to avoid writing a dangling modifier, whereas inexperienced writers won’t even recognize a dangling modifier. Experienced writers simply adjust unconsciously to construct the best sentence with the best words to say what they mean. And if it doesn’t come out right the first time, they are knowledgeable enough to see it and fix it. Dedicated writers don’t balk at revising sentences five, six, twenty times. They understand that they are writing for a reader, and they have a responsibility to make sense.
For readers, the indie e-publishing boon has been a mixed blessing. Favorite writers have increased their output. Genres have morphed, stretched boundaries and found new readers. The cost of books has become more affordable. Readers are buying and reading more books. Writers are earning a greater share of the profits. And, perhaps most exciting of all, new, previously unpublished authors are breaching the golden gates of publishing earlier in their careers to distribute their work directly to the readers.
It all sounds great (unless one is a publisher or an agent), except for one teeny tiny (well, actually super huge) annoying thing: some newly published writers aren’t writing books that are ready for the reader. These writers are publishing because they can, not because they have refined their work in preparation for publication. Many of these writers are what I call premature self-publishers. They are publishing work that has not been well-crafted, erroneously believing it is worthy of the reader’s time. They think being able to write any book is the same thing as being able to write a good book.
Mainly, it irks this reader/writer that premature self-publishing writers don’t acknowledge the nature of the unspoken contract that exists between a writer and a reader. They probably don’t even realize that such a pact exists (because they themselves are not readers). They are those disappointing lovers who assume their partners will simply take care of their own orgasms after they fall asleep. They write solely to please themselves, rather than to please the reader. They don’t understand who their audience is, or even how stories need a beginning (seduction), middle (love-making) and an end (orgasm). While it’s one thing to write one’s family history and upload it to CreateSpace for family members, it’s quite another to publish the book on Amazon, then try to climb the charts, promoting and selling to general readers through intense promotional efforts. I suspect these premature self-publishers invest far more time learning the marketing end of the business than the writing end of it.
“What unspoken pact between the author and the reader?” asks the premature self-publisher. As an avid reader and a writer, and more recently, an indie e-book author, I have some ideas about it.
Why People Read, or The Promise of Pleasure
First and foremost, the author promises to do his or her best to communicate ideas clearly. This expectation means that the author has edited the work for continuity, comprehension and basic grammar and punctuation correctness. Nothing is more frustrating for a reader than struggling to make sense of bad sentences, confusing plots, or fickle characters. It’s like being in bed with an inept lover. Despite the ease with which people communicate ideas verbally to each other, few can do so eloquently in writing, a significantly more sophisticated skill than talking. Language is slippery, unreliable, messy, unruly. Sentences love to wiggle meaning off into new directions, away from a writer’s intentions. Words hold hidden land mines of meaning for the reader; careless use of language can lead to misinterpretations which destroy meaning. Only practiced writers can wield the millions of word and sentence possibilities into a shape that consistently produces its intended meaning to a wide, varied audience. Writers need to master their sense of audience in order to make the appropriate writing choices required to convey specific concepts.
Second, the author promises to do his or her best not to bore the reader. The narrative should be cohesive, well-plotted, the characters interesting, worth investing in, and the style comprehensible, possibly even elegant. The work should desire a reader. It should be a story that wants to be told, that wants to be read. The easiest way to determine whether this is the kind of story one is writing, is to be its primary reader and its ideal audience. If a writer is in love with her own story, then there is at least one reader who will appreciate it. Well, you ask, don’t premature self-publishers love their own stories? Sometimes yes, but sometimes I suspect, the answer is no. They are just going through the motions. Like the whore who sucks off her john for an easy twenty bucks. It’s these writers who aren’t even in love with their own work that I resent—yes, resent, because I have just wasted my bloody time reading their limp-dicked book when I could have been reading something so much better written by a writer who cared about my experience. I really wish the premature self-publishing writer hadn’t released his book and then asked other people to read it. I wish he’d just kept it hidden, tucked away in his trousers.
So, what identifies an author as one of these dreaded premature ejaculate-self-publishers?
1. The premature self-publisher can’t be bothered to master basic punctuation.
I remember enrolling in a poetry writing class when I was at university. Every week, students brought in a poem to workshop. We formed small groups to share and respond to our work. During one session, I commented on a poet’s confusing use of weirdly placed commas and periods. Rather than thank me for pointing out a problematic aspect of her poem, the writer defended her punctuation choices, saying that punctuation doesn’t matter. By now, we’ve all seen witty postings on the web about how a misplaced comma can change meaning. It’s not the same thing to say Woman, without her, man is nothing as it is to say Woman, without her man, is nothing; and Let’s eat Grandma is not the same as Let’s eat, Grandma. Punctuation matters.
I tell my writing students that sentences are like roads, and punctuation marks are the road signs. They tell us when to yield, when to turn, when a road is curving, when to slow down, what speed to travel, when to continue on, and when to stop. Without good road signs, we’d have a lot more serious car accidents. Without good punctuation, readers get lost in the sea of words. How many people have actually read the entirety of James Joyce’s sans punctuation Finnegan’s Wake? I’ve read everything else Joyce published. I can read stream-of-consciousness like a professional surfer rides an epic wave, but I can’t be bothered to sort out one meaningful string of words from another without punctuation to guide me, especially for the length of an entire novel. And if I’m not willing to read a book by Joyce, then I certainly don’t want to trudge through some premature self-publisher’s book with badly chosen and/or missing punctuation.
2. The premature self-publisher can’t be bothered to master grammar.
Not everyone is a renowned stylist like Henry James. Lots of writers, especially those writing in the popular genres of mystery, fantasy, horror and romance, tone down fancy syntax and glittery diction in order to facilitate the reader’s speed and ease of reading. Long, loose or periodic sentences that run a full page, and words that need footnoted definitions slow down the reading experience. When I write for the popular market, I pare down my sentences (unlike in this blog post). I make a concerted effort to edit out excess adjectives and adverbs, and I especially prune my personal love for polysyndeton (repetition of conjunctions). I understand that reading for the pleasure of plot is not the same as reading for the pleasure of a fine sentence. I write for the reader, not for myself.
I am not trying to write poetry or philosophy when I write popular fiction; I’m trying to write a quick, happy-ever-after narrative. I am trying to provide my reader with a beginning-to-end experience that ideally outperforms the latest Hollywood romcom. If my romance manages to entertain the reader, then I am satisfied. That said, I still write complete, well-crafted sentences. I do my best to avoid dangling modifiers, awkward phrasing, subject-verb disagreements, discontinuous verb tense shifts, lost pronoun references, passive construction and the whole lot of other sentence flaws that confuse meaning for readers. Unfortunately, premature self-publishers disinterested in mastering the basics are generally careless, if not completely ignorant, about these writerly concerns. They are too busy expressing themselves to reread their own work or to be concerned about the reader’s potential confusion.
3. The premature self-publisher depends too much on outside editors to clean up their writing.
It’s near-to impossible to personally edit one’s own novel-length work to perfection. All writers need competent beta readers or editors to provide feedback about missing information, dropped plot points, character irregularities, and grammatical errors and typos. Writers hold a lot of information in their heads that doesn’t actually end up in the book: back story, character motivation, secrets to be fully revealed in another book (of a series). So when writers reread their own work-in-progress, if something essential is missing from the page, they may not notice it. In traditional publishing, the publishing company’s editors are supposed to serve this function. Therefore, most editors have earned at least a bachelor’s degree in English. They need to be experts.
Today, with the indie e-book self-publishing boom, lots of independent editors hang out their virtual signs selling their services. Some of these so-called editors are simply people looking for free ARCs to read. I don’t question their enthusiasm; I question their expertise. On a recent post in a writing thread I follow, a wannabe freelance editor posted three times that she loved to edit alot, yes ALOT (in caps). So…she is unaware that a lot is two words but she wants to take money off writers by editing their work? ALOT. Frankly, most e-books will never sell enough copies to cover the cost of a good editor. And editing for typos and misspellings is not the same as editing for content issues or clear sentences.
An acquaintance of mine recently published his book. He paid for professional editing. Still, the first chapter is rife with dangling modifiers and awkward sentences. There is no clear sense of who the intended audience is. It’s even hard to pinpoint under what, if any, genre, the story might fall. But all the words are spelled correctly, and all the sentences are properly punctuated. It remains unreadable. The problem for serious editors is that premature self-publishers might pay them for professional advice, but never implement it, either because they are too impatient and/or disinterested in producing a well-written book, or they arrogantly believe that the suggested edits are merely an issue of artistic license.
4. The premature self-publisher doesn’t read.
Imagine wanting to be a professional athlete because you know the basic rules of the game, but have never played seriously and never even practice. Major disconnect between fantasy and reality, right? Now, imagine thinking that you want to be a best-selling author, but you have no interest in being a reader, or studying and practicing the craft of writing. Why do people suddenly decide they can write, when they would never suddenly think they can paint masterpieces, or dance ballet, or play professional sports? A survey that came out about ten years ago reported that “81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them—and that they should write it.” I know such writers who are self-publishing. I’ve lost count of the wannabe poets and fiction writers who’ve passed through my classrooms with no interest in reading poetry or fiction themselves, but who regularly “publish” their work online.
When students discover that I am a writer as well as an English teacher, they often come to me with their poems and stories for feedback. As a teacher, I am encouraging. It’s my job. As a reader, I’m privately groaning. Why? Because generally, when I ask these writers who their favorite authors or poets are, they look at me with blank faces. They don’t have any because they don’t actually read themselves! No one can develop into a good writer if he or she doesn’t read. These young individuals want the fame (such as it is) or the money (now I’m laughing) that they think comes with being an author. They want other people to recognize that they are special. Big news flash. We all want that, kid.
Ironically, writing is one of the riskiest ways to seek external approval. The printed word (especially in its viral digital form) is an unforgiving art that often reveals more than it conceals about a person. With publication, come the critics, eagerly lining up to identify all the ways that the author and her work fails. Premature self-publishers usually have more problems in their work than simple editing issues; they often demonstrate a blatant ignorance of genre and storytelling. They don’t know the tropes, the elements, the readers’ expectations for the work. As a result, they often produce a muddled mix of fragments and details they think belong in their story, with little understanding of why those things are there.
And even more significantly, they don’t understand how a piece of published writing can strip a writer’s public persona away to reveal his or her deepest psychological desires, needs and prejudices until he or she is flayed like raw fish for public grilling. Generally, it ain’t a pretty sight. Premature self-publishers, in seeking validation, may find themselves, instead, profoundly humiliated. Sort of the way a guy might feel if he came in his pants, before he even got the girl he desires into bed.
5. The premature self-publisher doesn’t love words, language, or story.
If beginning writers love poetry or stories, and they are persistent in mastering the art through reading and writing practice, they will become competent, possibly even exemplary, writers. I suppose there is a thing called talent, but I doubt it does more than intensify a person’s interest in something early on, which leads to years of self-driven, dedicated study and practice in a chosen skill, which in turn leads to mastery.
When I was a kid, I took visual art classes in which I demonstrated slightly more so-called talent than other students in the class. Beyond situations in which we did quick sketches, however, I never outperformed anybody. In fact, the third day we showed up to class to draw yet again a pile of shoes, I was bored out of my mind. I didn’t love line. I didn’t love color. I didn’t love curves, shadows, perspective. I appreciated them. I enjoyed dabbling with them. But I didn’t have the patience or fascination with form to draw a line over and over again until it was just right. Hence, I never became a visual artist. I showed early promise, but never had the stick-to-it-iveness to become even remotely competent.
But ask me to write something and I will rework a sentence a hundred different ways, search out my library of dictionaries and thesauri for the right word, revise tirelessly for the perfect way to express a specific idea. When I am mired neck deep in the process of writing, revising and crafting language, I’m in my Zone. Frankly, if a writer doesn’t love the work, cherish the art, crave the process, he or she will never master it, and, their writing will never be worth my precious time as a reader.
Unlike dedicated writers, premature self-publishers write a book and then seem to spend most of their time and effort promoting it, believing that if enough people read it, it will be considered good. They rarely write more than one or two books, because, in the end, writing is rarely a means of becoming famous or rich. Of course, some writers do become famous for their writing, and some even become rich. They don’t do it with one or two books (except possibly Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird), and most of those writers didn’t “make it” with their first or second book either. Premature self-publishers don’t start writing because they love language and story, therefore they never keep writing long enough to become any good at it.
Unless a writer loves language and story, reads avidly and widely, and is in the trenches for the long haul (Philip Roth recently retired at 80!), I really wish they wouldn’t publish their introductory “masterpiece” at all. Because then I wouldn’t have wasted my lovely Sunday afternoon mucking through an untutored, pointless, self-indulgent, insipid story that the author seems to think is the next great American novel—the novel that he published just because he could.
FYI Premature Self-Publisher: This reader has been left so unsatisfied.
Disclaimer: This blog isn’t a complaint about young or beginning writers just starting out who are in the process of developing into fine writers. Most writers’ early work won’t match their later work stylistically or structurally. Though they’re less masterly, early books still contain the potential and much of the passion that will mark an author’s later writing efforts. I actually enjoy reading the early work of many writers. Nor is this blog about writers who publish a limited body of work for friends or family, without plans to market to general readers. This blog is about writers who seek fame and fortune as authors without caring a whit for the art, the readers, or the industry when they publish their unpolished, self-indulgent slop and then promote the hell out of it through less-than-honest marketing strategies.
This is dedicated to all the indie writers who are perfecting their craft and building a readership based on merit.
Me. I’m very choosy about whose words I take to bed.
Why People Write
Writing for oneself can be a pleasurable, creative, even therapeutic act. Emotions and ideas germinate and ferment in our minds until we are restless and malcontent. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are feeling or thinking until we put words to paper, until we let them explode in a big messy splatter, releasing our tension and leaving us sated and relaxed.
People have kept journals and diaries for centuries for the sole purpose of experiencing the simple joy found in the act of personal self-expression. As a means of self-discovery, few experiences are more satisfying than writing out one’s thoughts and emotions in a private book. Writing about a painful experience helps the mind process and heal. Writing poetry or fiction strengthens the imagination and stimulates the intellect. Writing down life dreams helps focus the mind, motivating an individual to make the necessary behavioral changes to achieve those dreams.
When an individual engages in this kind of private, masturbatory writing, attention to grammar and punctuation is unnecessary, even irrelevant. The writer isn’t attempting to communicate ideas to anyone other than him or herself. In fact, it often isn’t even about sharing or communication; its focus and productivity is found in the single act of expression. And, unless the writer returns to the writing later to reread and reprocess the information, it doesn’t even need to make sense. Ideas and images can ramble and cavort across pages without transitions or logical connections. No one else is going to be expending precious time and energy trying to make sense of it (unless the writer turns out to be a sociopath who commits a crime, in which case, law enforcement might need to interpret those crazy scribblings). So basically, anyone can write privately without feeling any obligation or responsibility to write well.
But when a writer writes with the intention to share his or her work with a general audience—then all the rules and reasons for writing change. Or at least, they should. There exists a vast chasm between writing for oneself and writing for an audience. (Just like there is a difference between quick masturbation and an extended session of making love with a partner.)
Making the Private Public
Writing for one’s self is a private act. The writer might go as far as show a poem or story to family members or friends, but no further. During the era of traditional print publishing, most private writers never thought to send their writing off to be considered by a publisher because they knew that they had not invested the time and energy into the work to warrant professional publishing, a laborious and time-consuming process of editing, revising, copy-editing, printing, binding and distributing. The only famous writer I can think of offhand who wrote and polished her work as a private act but didn’t send it out to the world for publication during her life was the amazing poet Emily Dickinson. (She didn’t submit her work for publication in part because she refused to let editors change it.) Most people writing privately understand that their quickly drafted thoughts and ideas are unpolished and imperfect and not ready for a broad audience. And if they lack an understanding of this concept, the publishers have been quick to educate them with swift rejection letters.
In general, indie e-publishing has been a boon to a stagnant book industry. E-publishing and digital book sellers have allowed writers to present their work to a public audience without enduring years of submissions and rejections, expensive book binding and distribution, and long publishing cycles. The gatekeepers who once determined what gets published when no longer block writers from publishing work that might be controversial, or that fails to pigeon hole itself into a specific genre, or that competes with other books, or that is just plain awful.
A writer can pen a book, revise it, edit it, design a cover and upload it to large digital book distributors like Smashwords and Amazon in a matter of weeks or months. While many writers actually take longer than a few weeks or months to write a book, others are prolific and practiced at their craft, and are adept at writing fast entertainment fast. Anyone who argues that a quickly written book is a poorly written book, has never read one of my favorite novels, the great American writer William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which he reportedly wrote in six weeks.
If Faulkner can write a good book in a few weeks, why can’t anyone? Well…Faulkner was a serious, full-time writer who read, studied, honed his craft into art every single day. He spent years developing his talent as a writer until he became a master of the form. When a master writer sits down to produce a poem, a novel, a short story, or a play, he or she doesn’t have to think constantly about craft. The master fiction writer’s brain already often thinks in beautiful sentences, in just the right words, in foreshadowing, in plot twists, in witty dialogue. The master writer writes (relatively) fast because he or she has already written hundreds of thousands of sentences over many years in which he or she invested time and energy struggling with phrasing, with word choice, with plotting, with punctuation options.
Professional basketball players don’t have to think about proper dribbling and running while they move down the court, but beginning players do. Likewise, experienced writers don’t have to think about how or when to use a semi-colon or a comma, or how to avoid writing a dangling modifier, whereas inexperienced writers won’t even recognize a dangling modifier. Experienced writers simply adjust unconsciously to construct the best sentence with the best words to say what they mean. And if it doesn’t come out right the first time, they are knowledgeable enough to see it and fix it. Dedicated writers don’t balk at revising sentences five, six, twenty times. They understand that they are writing for a reader, and they have a responsibility to make sense.
For readers, the indie e-publishing boon has been a mixed blessing. Favorite writers have increased their output. Genres have morphed, stretched boundaries and found new readers. The cost of books has become more affordable. Readers are buying and reading more books. Writers are earning a greater share of the profits. And, perhaps most exciting of all, new, previously unpublished authors are breaching the golden gates of publishing earlier in their careers to distribute their work directly to the readers.
It all sounds great (unless one is a publisher or an agent), except for one teeny tiny (well, actually super huge) annoying thing: some newly published writers aren’t writing books that are ready for the reader. These writers are publishing because they can, not because they have refined their work in preparation for publication. Many of these writers are what I call premature self-publishers. They are publishing work that has not been well-crafted, erroneously believing it is worthy of the reader’s time. They think being able to write any book is the same thing as being able to write a good book.
Mainly, it irks this reader/writer that premature self-publishing writers don’t acknowledge the nature of the unspoken contract that exists between a writer and a reader. They probably don’t even realize that such a pact exists (because they themselves are not readers). They are those disappointing lovers who assume their partners will simply take care of their own orgasms after they fall asleep. They write solely to please themselves, rather than to please the reader. They don’t understand who their audience is, or even how stories need a beginning (seduction), middle (love-making) and an end (orgasm). While it’s one thing to write one’s family history and upload it to CreateSpace for family members, it’s quite another to publish the book on Amazon, then try to climb the charts, promoting and selling to general readers through intense promotional efforts. I suspect these premature self-publishers invest far more time learning the marketing end of the business than the writing end of it.
“What unspoken pact between the author and the reader?” asks the premature self-publisher. As an avid reader and a writer, and more recently, an indie e-book author, I have some ideas about it.
Why People Read, or The Promise of Pleasure
First and foremost, the author promises to do his or her best to communicate ideas clearly. This expectation means that the author has edited the work for continuity, comprehension and basic grammar and punctuation correctness. Nothing is more frustrating for a reader than struggling to make sense of bad sentences, confusing plots, or fickle characters. It’s like being in bed with an inept lover. Despite the ease with which people communicate ideas verbally to each other, few can do so eloquently in writing, a significantly more sophisticated skill than talking. Language is slippery, unreliable, messy, unruly. Sentences love to wiggle meaning off into new directions, away from a writer’s intentions. Words hold hidden land mines of meaning for the reader; careless use of language can lead to misinterpretations which destroy meaning. Only practiced writers can wield the millions of word and sentence possibilities into a shape that consistently produces its intended meaning to a wide, varied audience. Writers need to master their sense of audience in order to make the appropriate writing choices required to convey specific concepts.
Second, the author promises to do his or her best not to bore the reader. The narrative should be cohesive, well-plotted, the characters interesting, worth investing in, and the style comprehensible, possibly even elegant. The work should desire a reader. It should be a story that wants to be told, that wants to be read. The easiest way to determine whether this is the kind of story one is writing, is to be its primary reader and its ideal audience. If a writer is in love with her own story, then there is at least one reader who will appreciate it. Well, you ask, don’t premature self-publishers love their own stories? Sometimes yes, but sometimes I suspect, the answer is no. They are just going through the motions. Like the whore who sucks off her john for an easy twenty bucks. It’s these writers who aren’t even in love with their own work that I resent—yes, resent, because I have just wasted my bloody time reading their limp-dicked book when I could have been reading something so much better written by a writer who cared about my experience. I really wish the premature self-publishing writer hadn’t released his book and then asked other people to read it. I wish he’d just kept it hidden, tucked away in his trousers.
So, what identifies an author as one of these dreaded premature ejaculate-self-publishers?
1. The premature self-publisher can’t be bothered to master basic punctuation.
I remember enrolling in a poetry writing class when I was at university. Every week, students brought in a poem to workshop. We formed small groups to share and respond to our work. During one session, I commented on a poet’s confusing use of weirdly placed commas and periods. Rather than thank me for pointing out a problematic aspect of her poem, the writer defended her punctuation choices, saying that punctuation doesn’t matter. By now, we’ve all seen witty postings on the web about how a misplaced comma can change meaning. It’s not the same thing to say Woman, without her, man is nothing as it is to say Woman, without her man, is nothing; and Let’s eat Grandma is not the same as Let’s eat, Grandma. Punctuation matters.
I tell my writing students that sentences are like roads, and punctuation marks are the road signs. They tell us when to yield, when to turn, when a road is curving, when to slow down, what speed to travel, when to continue on, and when to stop. Without good road signs, we’d have a lot more serious car accidents. Without good punctuation, readers get lost in the sea of words. How many people have actually read the entirety of James Joyce’s sans punctuation Finnegan’s Wake? I’ve read everything else Joyce published. I can read stream-of-consciousness like a professional surfer rides an epic wave, but I can’t be bothered to sort out one meaningful string of words from another without punctuation to guide me, especially for the length of an entire novel. And if I’m not willing to read a book by Joyce, then I certainly don’t want to trudge through some premature self-publisher’s book with badly chosen and/or missing punctuation.
2. The premature self-publisher can’t be bothered to master grammar.
Not everyone is a renowned stylist like Henry James. Lots of writers, especially those writing in the popular genres of mystery, fantasy, horror and romance, tone down fancy syntax and glittery diction in order to facilitate the reader’s speed and ease of reading. Long, loose or periodic sentences that run a full page, and words that need footnoted definitions slow down the reading experience. When I write for the popular market, I pare down my sentences (unlike in this blog post). I make a concerted effort to edit out excess adjectives and adverbs, and I especially prune my personal love for polysyndeton (repetition of conjunctions). I understand that reading for the pleasure of plot is not the same as reading for the pleasure of a fine sentence. I write for the reader, not for myself.
I am not trying to write poetry or philosophy when I write popular fiction; I’m trying to write a quick, happy-ever-after narrative. I am trying to provide my reader with a beginning-to-end experience that ideally outperforms the latest Hollywood romcom. If my romance manages to entertain the reader, then I am satisfied. That said, I still write complete, well-crafted sentences. I do my best to avoid dangling modifiers, awkward phrasing, subject-verb disagreements, discontinuous verb tense shifts, lost pronoun references, passive construction and the whole lot of other sentence flaws that confuse meaning for readers. Unfortunately, premature self-publishers disinterested in mastering the basics are generally careless, if not completely ignorant, about these writerly concerns. They are too busy expressing themselves to reread their own work or to be concerned about the reader’s potential confusion.
3. The premature self-publisher depends too much on outside editors to clean up their writing.
It’s near-to impossible to personally edit one’s own novel-length work to perfection. All writers need competent beta readers or editors to provide feedback about missing information, dropped plot points, character irregularities, and grammatical errors and typos. Writers hold a lot of information in their heads that doesn’t actually end up in the book: back story, character motivation, secrets to be fully revealed in another book (of a series). So when writers reread their own work-in-progress, if something essential is missing from the page, they may not notice it. In traditional publishing, the publishing company’s editors are supposed to serve this function. Therefore, most editors have earned at least a bachelor’s degree in English. They need to be experts.
Today, with the indie e-book self-publishing boom, lots of independent editors hang out their virtual signs selling their services. Some of these so-called editors are simply people looking for free ARCs to read. I don’t question their enthusiasm; I question their expertise. On a recent post in a writing thread I follow, a wannabe freelance editor posted three times that she loved to edit alot, yes ALOT (in caps). So…she is unaware that a lot is two words but she wants to take money off writers by editing their work? ALOT. Frankly, most e-books will never sell enough copies to cover the cost of a good editor. And editing for typos and misspellings is not the same as editing for content issues or clear sentences.
An acquaintance of mine recently published his book. He paid for professional editing. Still, the first chapter is rife with dangling modifiers and awkward sentences. There is no clear sense of who the intended audience is. It’s even hard to pinpoint under what, if any, genre, the story might fall. But all the words are spelled correctly, and all the sentences are properly punctuated. It remains unreadable. The problem for serious editors is that premature self-publishers might pay them for professional advice, but never implement it, either because they are too impatient and/or disinterested in producing a well-written book, or they arrogantly believe that the suggested edits are merely an issue of artistic license.
4. The premature self-publisher doesn’t read.
Imagine wanting to be a professional athlete because you know the basic rules of the game, but have never played seriously and never even practice. Major disconnect between fantasy and reality, right? Now, imagine thinking that you want to be a best-selling author, but you have no interest in being a reader, or studying and practicing the craft of writing. Why do people suddenly decide they can write, when they would never suddenly think they can paint masterpieces, or dance ballet, or play professional sports? A survey that came out about ten years ago reported that “81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them—and that they should write it.” I know such writers who are self-publishing. I’ve lost count of the wannabe poets and fiction writers who’ve passed through my classrooms with no interest in reading poetry or fiction themselves, but who regularly “publish” their work online.
When students discover that I am a writer as well as an English teacher, they often come to me with their poems and stories for feedback. As a teacher, I am encouraging. It’s my job. As a reader, I’m privately groaning. Why? Because generally, when I ask these writers who their favorite authors or poets are, they look at me with blank faces. They don’t have any because they don’t actually read themselves! No one can develop into a good writer if he or she doesn’t read. These young individuals want the fame (such as it is) or the money (now I’m laughing) that they think comes with being an author. They want other people to recognize that they are special. Big news flash. We all want that, kid.
Ironically, writing is one of the riskiest ways to seek external approval. The printed word (especially in its viral digital form) is an unforgiving art that often reveals more than it conceals about a person. With publication, come the critics, eagerly lining up to identify all the ways that the author and her work fails. Premature self-publishers usually have more problems in their work than simple editing issues; they often demonstrate a blatant ignorance of genre and storytelling. They don’t know the tropes, the elements, the readers’ expectations for the work. As a result, they often produce a muddled mix of fragments and details they think belong in their story, with little understanding of why those things are there.
And even more significantly, they don’t understand how a piece of published writing can strip a writer’s public persona away to reveal his or her deepest psychological desires, needs and prejudices until he or she is flayed like raw fish for public grilling. Generally, it ain’t a pretty sight. Premature self-publishers, in seeking validation, may find themselves, instead, profoundly humiliated. Sort of the way a guy might feel if he came in his pants, before he even got the girl he desires into bed.
5. The premature self-publisher doesn’t love words, language, or story.
If beginning writers love poetry or stories, and they are persistent in mastering the art through reading and writing practice, they will become competent, possibly even exemplary, writers. I suppose there is a thing called talent, but I doubt it does more than intensify a person’s interest in something early on, which leads to years of self-driven, dedicated study and practice in a chosen skill, which in turn leads to mastery.
When I was a kid, I took visual art classes in which I demonstrated slightly more so-called talent than other students in the class. Beyond situations in which we did quick sketches, however, I never outperformed anybody. In fact, the third day we showed up to class to draw yet again a pile of shoes, I was bored out of my mind. I didn’t love line. I didn’t love color. I didn’t love curves, shadows, perspective. I appreciated them. I enjoyed dabbling with them. But I didn’t have the patience or fascination with form to draw a line over and over again until it was just right. Hence, I never became a visual artist. I showed early promise, but never had the stick-to-it-iveness to become even remotely competent.
But ask me to write something and I will rework a sentence a hundred different ways, search out my library of dictionaries and thesauri for the right word, revise tirelessly for the perfect way to express a specific idea. When I am mired neck deep in the process of writing, revising and crafting language, I’m in my Zone. Frankly, if a writer doesn’t love the work, cherish the art, crave the process, he or she will never master it, and, their writing will never be worth my precious time as a reader.
Unlike dedicated writers, premature self-publishers write a book and then seem to spend most of their time and effort promoting it, believing that if enough people read it, it will be considered good. They rarely write more than one or two books, because, in the end, writing is rarely a means of becoming famous or rich. Of course, some writers do become famous for their writing, and some even become rich. They don’t do it with one or two books (except possibly Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird), and most of those writers didn’t “make it” with their first or second book either. Premature self-publishers don’t start writing because they love language and story, therefore they never keep writing long enough to become any good at it.
Unless a writer loves language and story, reads avidly and widely, and is in the trenches for the long haul (Philip Roth recently retired at 80!), I really wish they wouldn’t publish their introductory “masterpiece” at all. Because then I wouldn’t have wasted my lovely Sunday afternoon mucking through an untutored, pointless, self-indulgent, insipid story that the author seems to think is the next great American novel—the novel that he published just because he could.
FYI Premature Self-Publisher: This reader has been left so unsatisfied.
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