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| It’s not supposed to be the way you want it; it’s art. And it’s mine. Photo by LaustDeleuran via Flickr |
I feel like I’ve written about this topic too much, too often, but it must still bother me. I keep seeing it, over and over again, this idea that it takes a village, or at the very least a really good content editor, in addition to the author to write a book.
I caught a tad bit of one of the Housewives shows a while back and there’s an author on it, apparently. She was at a party and there was a fight because one of the women said she’d heard that said author didn’t even really write the book. And the author’s response, to her friends, was that no author writes a book alone. “So many hands are on” each book that in the end, it’s a collaboration.
So, my response to the television was, “So, you admit that you didn’t write it.”
And more recently I was reading the comments in a blog on the publishing business, a blog specifically championing self or independent publishing, and someone pointed out the typical mantra that an author must at least have an editor point out his book’s weaknesses. Someone else mentioned that ridiculous, belittling notion that authors are too close to their work to see its flaws.
I’m so tired of it. And I used to wonder where on earth did we get this silly idea? I commented myself on that blog, wondering if artists sit around in critique groups asking their fellow painters if this or that brush stroke is suitable, and letting them say what would be better. Do artists send their canvasses off to art editors and let them change the hue or add a bird here or there?
Of course not! So, why do writers do it?
Naturally, the answer has been with me all along. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. And the reality of it epitomizes the human tendency to hang on to that which is familiar, even while taking bold steps into new frontiers.
How long has it been, now, that the publishing industry has controlled which books will see the light of day? A hundred years? More? Let’s just say that for a long, long time, the only real way to succeed at being an author meant being published by a publishing company. Sure, there were always the crazy people who had their books printed up and shipped to them in boxes to be stored in their garages while they did everything they could to sell them.
But let’s be honest, the only real way, was the publisher’s way.
So, you sent your creative work to an editor at a publishing house and if he liked it, he told you how to “fix” it. Why? Because everybody has an opinion. Everybody. And everybody thinks he could do better–well, everybody in the book business, no doubt. Add that to the fact that the editor was willing to pay you and publish your work and if he was going to take that chance on you, he felt his best interests lie in his knowledge of what made a book sell. So, you did what he asked.
After a long while, publishers got too big and rich to pay people to wade through the piles of manuscripts they received from hopefuls waiting to be recognized, to be validated, to be told how to make their book better, to be published! So editors decided to let the agents do all of that work. Let the agents deal with the riff-raff, er, authors.
So, you shopped agents. You understood that they don’t work for you, you work for them. If you wanted them to deign to represent you, you changed what they asked you to change, and rewrote your work to their specifications. And then, if you were lucky and they found an editor who liked it, you did it some more, because everybody has an opinion.
And after all, these were the people who knew all about the art of writing selling books. They knew what was best. And if you wanted to be published at all, then you did what you were told.
Did some authors argue? Sure. And some won. But many didn’t. Most authors were so happy to get an agent, and then to be published, they didn’t notice that what they’d written was often not what they’d intended. Sure, it wasn’t so bad. Most often, I’m sure, the changes weren’t too big. And the author came away grateful for the help! It was wonderful to have someone tell them where their work needed improvement.
Over time, the agents got tired of wading through the slush piles and started telling authors to hire editors before they even submitted to their agencies. Authors now sit in critique groups, honing each paragraph, making it sound just like it should–like every other paragraph you read in bestselling books. Then they hire professional editors to help them some more. Then the agent asks for more changes, and then the editor, and before you know it, what you have is the nurturing of authors.
And the disdain of authors–the idea that they only start the book, they provide the foundation from which the great editors and agents can beat out a really good book. Because goodness knows authors can’t do it alone.
And we’ve bought into that final idea and refuse to let it go. We’ve been beaten down for a long time–told we couldn’t do it on our own, we were too emotionally invested–that we’ve accepted it. Authors have come to believe that they can not write a book all by themselves.
The reality is that you probably can’t write a Random House book by yourself. Because Random House thinks it knows what sells better than you do and if you want them to publish your book, you’ll have to write the kind that they want. Still, once you got the hang of it, you’d think at some point you’d figure out what they want and be able to produce it without help.
Are we relying on editors and critique groups and agents too much? Yes. (Well, some of you are.)
What’s changing with this new world of publishing is that finally authors can produce the books they want to produce, written the way they want them written. But they’ve been told for so long that they’re not capable of doing it on their own that they are still trying to please other people and writing books based on other people’s opinions.
As time goes on, we can only hope authors come out of this delusion and start seeing that writing is a skill and an art and it’s theirs alone. No one can write the story the way you can. Will there be people who don’t like it? Yes. But there will be other people who do. Will there be people who will want to tell you how you could have done it better? Yes. But that’s just how they would have done it.
This can only be wonderful for readers! We’ll start getting (and we already are) books that are not meant to be carbon copies of “what sells” but are direct from the author’s imagination. Cross genres. Kill off characters. Add in characters for no other reason than that you want them there. Write the story you want to write the way you want it written. If you love it, someone else out there will love it, too.
I fervently believe that the only way to write deeply emotional and rewarding fiction is for authors to write what they want to write. I’m not disparaging writing to the market; that can be rewarding and fun. But I think that if you really want to connect to the greater world, you must write from that place inside you that begs to be heard and don’t edit that voice out of the story because someone else thinks you should.
Each author must listen to his own voice and let that voice be heard.
Write it your way.