http://www.quantummuse.com/editorial_feb02.html
Who Dares, Wins
or
Less Bon Jovi, More Springsteen
by Michael Gallant
As an editor, the question I am most often asked is -- well, ok the question I am most often asked is "Do you think you can get up and leave under your own power, or does Vito have to help you out?"-- but a close second is "What kind of stories are you looking for?"
At one time, when I was young and naive, I might have thought that our submission guidelines and FAQ pages would be sufficient to answer these questions. As I became more jaded and cynical, I would answer these little queries with snide email replies directing the questioner to these pages.
To my horror, I realized after a few months that the closer a story followed the guidelines, the more likely it was to be bland, lifeless and just plain awful. The stories that people sent in using attachments we asked them not to in formats we couldn't open and with word counts that we strictly forbid, were usually the only ones worth reading.
Now, I'm all liquored up and I nailed the door shut, so nobody can stop me, so I'm gonna tell you the truth.
Don't read the guidelines, don't query the editors, don't buy Writers' Digest, or How to Write for Publication or take advanced classes. These will make you weak. They will make you just another sheep in the vast herd of unpublished never were's.
The first and most important thing you can do is find your Muse.
Reach down, dig deep and grab onto something. Then write a story that doesn't suck.
I'm not saying you can't learn from others. An understanding of the rules of style and grammar will help you, exposure to great literature will broaden your horizons and practice will hone your skills.
But, your technical competence with words won't help if you have nothing to say.
This brings me to my title. I'll begin with the second part, as I refuse to be confined by abstract sequential concepts. That and I forget the tie in for the first bit right now. Maybe it'll come back by the time I wind down this chunk.
For those readers unfamiliar with American rock music, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi both grew up in New Jersey, and fronted bands whose songs were aimed at the frustrated youth of the working class, stuck in life's suffocating mediocrity. The primary difference between them is that one is a brilliant composer, a poet laureate for a new generation and the other one just a pretty boy suck-fest with too much hairspray.
By industry standards, Bruce Springsteen's voice is unpolished and occasionally hard to understand. The songs are too long. They often contain tempo changes. He makes extensive use of the saxophone, which is a bold move in this genre. The band is too big. None of them are very pretty. In Thunder Road he had the audacity to include the line "You ain't a beauty but hey, you're alright...", not something I'd recommend when serenading your beloved.
By the cold, calculating standards of the music machine, this should not be a formula for success. The reason that it has been successful is that it hits you in the gut. If you have a soul at all, you cannot remain unmoved by his lyrics.
Bon Jovi, on the other hand, has all of the industry friendly features. Slick videos, Tiger Beat good looks, fans of the perfect marketing demographic for CD purchases and percentage of disposable income, everything pretty, packaged and polished. But anything of interest has been polished off. Once the song ends, it vanishes from the subconscious. It's like when you take a sip of light beer and the only way you can be sure you actually had a drink is to check the level in the bottle.
This is why Bruce is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Jon is playing Ally McBeal's new love interest. (OK, so I was home sick for a few days and saw some TV. Maybe that's why I'm so cranky.)
The point of this unnecessarily long example is that all the polish in the world can't help what is essentially an empty message. And something unique and good that rings true and speaks to the heart of the listener, or the reader in our case, can still be a success even if it is a bit rough around the edges.
Ah, there it is! The first part of the title. I admit to stealing the motto of the British SAS commando regiment. Only seems fair, they stole my ancestors' country.
This rings as true in writing as in war. The soldier who shuffles along, follows the forms, and always plays it safe will never achieve a brilliant victory. Likewise, the writer who attends every workshop, reads every publication on the industry, takes every course, and loses his or her own voice in the shuffle will never see a Pulitzer. The only way to make a big impression is to be unique, and no class can teach uniqueness. I will reveal that QM receives many submission from Creative Writing professors and rejects almost all of them because they are inexcusably awful. Nice grammar, but still awful. The thought of the hours I spent reading those stories that I will never get back drives me to despair.
Before trusting your creation to the advice of Industry insiders, remember that many of the best selling books of all time were deemed unpublishable by one house or another. This is particularly true in the fantasy genre. Allan & Unwin expected to lose thousands publishing Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter was written by an unemployed mother with a scant literary background. Both works succeeded because both authors Dared.
My other motivation for stealing the motto from the commandos rather than another unit is that, like them, our work is often done alone, in the dead of night, without support, against the odds and without much hope of recognition. Of course, unless you're Hunter Thompson, the similarity ends there.
You need to ask yourself why you write. If you think it's for money or fame, stop now. All the big money in literature is divided evenly among the top ten best sellers. Everybody else makes less than a trash collector. I know the ten dollars we pay isn't minimum wage for any of you when you figure your time in writing, submitting, and reminding me to pay you. And we're not the cheapest market. The only excuse for writing is that you have something vital to say, and your need to say it is greater than your need for steady income.
So, the first thing you need to do is take a good hard look at yourself and decide if you have something worth saying. Then write it. Without regard to the market, or the needs of the publisher or what Writers' Digest told you. Just write it. If you must listen to someone, listen to Shakespeare, a writer, not a critic or publisher: To thine own self be true.
Then, maybe take a look at the submission guidelines so you send the story to the right address.
(The QM staff would like it to be known that Mike has been mixing prescription cold medicine with single malt and his views do not necessarily represent those of the ezine. Except that we do agree Bon Jovi sucks.-The Management)
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How can people be so blind? The funny thing is he probably believes he is a smart and well-educated person. In my eyes he is extremely one-dimesional, cannot see past his nose and likes elaborating on things he is really clueless about. And he dares tell me what to do!!! May be he should start reading some Dostoevsky in addition to Shakespeare. That should shake his world a little bit. Sorry for this outburst. I absolutely despise people like him. And thank God Bon Jovi fan base doesn't include this sort of people. Bruce's fan base on the other hand got plenty of them. That should tell us something, shouldn't it?[/url]
10-03-2003, 11:52 PM
