In an interesting article on Christian fantasy writing (which I never read for the same reason the author doesn’t read much of it, though he writes it), Lars Walker says two things about writing useful for writers of all sorts to know. First,
Writing is a craft, like shoemaking. I don’t care how sincerely the guy who made my shoes loves shoes. The main thing I want from him is expertise, the practiced knowledge of how to put together a shoe that fits, won’t give me blisters, and lasts a while. Your sincerity may please God, but He also says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men” (Colossians 3:23, NIV). It’s possible you may be a prodigy, a literary Mozart capable of amazing the world right out of the gate. But probably not.
I’d add to this that the writer has to want to perfect his craft and he ought to want to do that not only as for the Lord but because he’s driven to do the thing he’s been given to do as well as he possibly can. People who do things for others, even God, eventually decide they’ve done well enough — the readers and God’ll understand, they think, when the work gets too wearing — while the person driven to perfect his craft will never stop working at it.
And second:
I’m kind of sad for young writers today. You have much less opportunity to enjoy a benefit we old-timers had in abundance—rejection. Oh, we hated those editors who sent us their mimeographed rejection slips—“We’re sorry, but your work does not meet our present needs.” We railed at them as Philistines who hated and feared new ideas, guarding the gates of the Inner Chamber for the benefit of their rich, famous cronies.
But oh, what a joy it was to get that first acceptance letter! It didn’t come easy, that letter. One story at a time, rejection after rejection, we learned to prune and tighten our prose, and that first acceptance was a sign that we’d finally earned our way inside the Gates (only, finally, to look down with pitying contempt on those amateurs who cluttered the desks of “our” editors with their puerile, formless scribblings).
Such editors hardly exist anymore. Today’s writers, so often self-published (I’m not speaking in contempt; I’m self-publishing now myself), lack that thick wall to chop through, that sparring partner to toughen them up. I read so many self-published books now that leave me saying, “This writer has a good story and interesting characters. All he needs is a real editor to tell him to cut out the dead wood.”
The editor will also tell the reader where to put the good wood, where he needs to add more, how he needs to trim and paint the wood, etc. But the writer has to realize that he’s being helped.
Anyway, good advice from Walker, as well as interesting insights into writing fantasy books.
Update: By “wearing” I meant that point where the effort required produces smaller and smaller gains and you really don’t want to go through the thing yet again, but know that doing so will bring it closer to what it ought to be. It is almost always true, as Auden is supposed to have said, that a poem (or any kind of writing) is never finished, only abandoned, but the real writer will only abandon it when he has to, not when he wants to, which is usually several revisions before he has to.
March 21st, 2013 | 12:30 pm
Not long before he died, Daniel Schorr participated in a radio discussion of journalism and reporting in the age of the Internet. The other participants were fellow news professionals who were more experienced in and enthusiastic about new media. Schorr said he had reservations about the enterprise, because no one had mentioned the role of editors. He thought that too many reporters could skip the editorial process, and that the rapid news cycle did not leave much time for the editors who were still around. He worried about the consequent quality of writing, but more importantly, he wondered what that would mean as to balance and bias, truth, accuracy, depth, insight, the big picture, etc.
I think he had a good point.
March 21st, 2013 | 12:49 pm
Excellent. As a teacher of writing, I worry over the lack of “rejection” — in the form of low grades — experienced by most of my students. They come into my college classroom not ready to learn and grow, but annoyed (at best) that anyone would think they still need to learn and grow. And those who are in the creative writing program can be the worst; they have “published” their stories and poems and novels in various Internet venues, and so who are we to tell them there is more to learn? (I want to ask them why they are taking classes, then; go make your million bucks if you know so much already.)
David, thank you for being one of the best editors I’ve ever had. I learned so much from you, and I am grateful for your making it almost painless!
March 21st, 2013 | 12:56 pm
I can’t tell you how angry I was with the first editor who told me, “this might work, but you need to change this, and this, and this, ….” (It wasn’t you David. I think you were the second.) The list of “this-es” was long. She wanted me to totally chop out one illustration of a point, which happened to be (and still is) one of my all-time favorites.
I had to put her email aside for a full two days to calm down. “Who does she think she is?!”
Finally my head cleared, thankfully. I thought, “I could pay a couple hundred dollars for professional advice like that, or I could listen to someone who is offering it for free.” It took us probably five or six go-rounds to arrive at a product she would accept. I was gritting my teeth the whole time.
In the end I was persuaded my beloved illustration didn’t help — it only really worked for those who knew a certain musical — and that other changes would broaden the article’s range of audience. The magazine published it with those painful changes. They were good changes. So were some others where she had caught me in clumsy writing.
It is a rough thing to subject oneself to criticism in that way. It can be even harder when it means admitting the other person is right.
March 21st, 2013 | 1:23 pm
The problem is that the Christian market doesn’t really need or want fantasy. They are more concerned with maximizing profits by targeting women and releasing romantic novels, romantic suspense, and woman-centered mystery. Only a few crack the market, and those ones have to deal with a very strict code of content which leads to formulaic works.
There are some wonderful small presses out there, like Marcher Lord Press and Splashdown books, but its tough. To try and get editorial rejections is more likely than not condemning a Christian spec fic writer to be unpublished. Mike Duran has an insightful blog on the problems of Christian fantasy too.
March 22nd, 2013 | 8:03 am
This is one reason why I like Amazon: It offers you the chance to sample the first chapter or so of e-books (and I mostly only read on Kindle or Ipad, anymore). And the reader reviews can be insightful, provided one follows a simple rule: ALWAYS read the bad reviews first. Many a mediocre book could have been saved by the editors that seem to have mostly disappeared from book publishing, but savvy readers can at least help you avoid the mediocre products that are left.
March 22nd, 2013 | 2:09 pm
And some would-be writers simply give up. I’ve been rejected, including once by Mr. Mills in his previous gig at Touchstone, and once by his predecessor here. After that I figured that my ideas weren’t very important to try to put into words. I have other things to do, and the world will go its merry way anyway.
March 23rd, 2013 | 8:05 am
Rejection per se is not especially useful, but the experience Tom Gilson describes is–a rejection that includes specific comments explaining why the editor is saying no. The printed form with no hint at why something is unacceptable is not useful, so “rejection” by itself isn’t, either.
About the young: when I taught university students in intro creative writing sections, it always amazed me how many of them failed to see why writing could not be separated from reading. I eventually did all I could to avoid teaching these courses.
March 23rd, 2013 | 2:33 pm
The last lines are dead on. Well played.
March 25th, 2013 | 4:40 pm
“I’m kind of sad for young writers today. You have much less opportunity to enjoy a benefit we old-timers had in abundance—rejection.”
Hogwash. They have plenty of opportunity for rejection. They have more markets to which to submit (both large and small), and a greater ability to make frequent submission (due to the lower cost and greater ease of electronic submissions), and therefore they actually have MORE opportunity for rejection than older writers did. I’ve racked up at least forty form rejections on my latest novel in the past six months alone. In the process, I’ve learned that getting published is about 20% talent, 30% who you know, and 50% perseverance.
March 26th, 2013 | 12:40 am
I’ve always had this question – are editors good writers themselves or are they just good at editing. That’s not meant as a comeback of any sort. I have truly wondered about this.
I agree that what has been lost in transitioning to the internet is the art of editing. Today if a website has an editor it’s usually just a person who corrects spelling and punctuation. It’s frustrating to work with techie types because this is kind of how they define editing. They don’t have a full appreciation for tone, style, and the true work that an editor does. I am not an editor but I am appalled at some of the things we publish. Surely, they could stand another pair of discerning eyes.
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