“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. . .”
—Rudyard Kipling
Okay, two very disparate things to draw links between today (which linking is, of course, the basic act of all art):
MUGS
We had a quick chat one week recently about whether or not we need these:
The vote was yes, so my husband set it up so now you can get the mug on Zazzle. (The reviews rate these things very high for quality.)
PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
Then the next day I just happened to have the same conversation three times with three different clients who are all going through a sort of crisis of faith, struggling with the current publishing industry.
And the day after that I had to un-teach and re-teach plotting to another client, an innocent aspiring writer (quite a good writer) who’d just been to a plotting workshop taught by one of those published authors/Iowa Writers Workshop grads who are all over the place out there teaching workshops.
Now, the fact is that this workshop-leader is teaching complete nonsense through a sort of morphed generic ‘arc’ based on Freytag’s Triangle, without knowing that it’s based on Freytag’s Triangle. . .and certainly without knowing that Freytag based his triangle on analysis of the Shakespearean five-act play.
This is not the first time I’ve seen this happen.
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What the hell is going on at the Iowa Writers Workshop?
We don’t use five-act structure these days. We use three-act structure. It’s quicker, punchier, and it doesn’t include an entire final act to wrap up all the loose ends. Today’s readers expect the loose ends to be tied up in one single fast knock-out blow of a grand finale—without that old 20% of the story of whoever’s left behind cleaning up the wreckage.
In today’s world, the story ends when Romeo and Juliet die.
On the other side of the coin is what happens to an industry when you let people run around teaching its craft wrong to the new folks just entering it: the industry collapses (much like Romeo and Juliet).
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What the hell is going on in New York?
In a really big industry worth billions of dollars this kind of collapse can take years, and during those years the new folks are still struggling to cope with it just the way they’re being taught to by the workshop-teachers and agents (many of them brand-new to the industry themselves).
Aspiring writers are writing books, querying agents, sending out requested manuscripts, signing with agents, and then waiting for their novels to sell to publishers, pass editorial inspection, pass marketing inspection, and maybe even—um—be published.
And as much as this sounds like exactly the right way to do it, for far too many writers it’s turning out to be a secret nightmare.
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What’s going on on our end?
It’s because we’re in those collapse years right now, folks.
This is what’s going on on our end:
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Some of you have agents and published books
And you’re struggling to get your new books published, over obstacles that were not there before and actually make no sense to industry long-timers.
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Some of you have agents and unpublished books
And you’re struggling to supply your agents with the very best unpublished books you can, trapped against a stonewall that was not there before.
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Some of you have manuscripts out there right now with agents
And you’re struggling with long delays, close calls, and finally rejections letters that begin, “This is a great book, but in today’s market. . .” lost in a bottleneck that was not there before.
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Some of you are querying
You’re writing and re-writing those queries and synopses—and you’re struggling with blanket rejection (the “no response means no” rudeness that did not exist before) and conflicting advice from conference teachers and agents and sometimes downright ignorant stupidity from people who claim to be industry professionals.
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And some of you are still working on your books
You’re looking forward to the day you’ll be querying. You people, quite frankly, are the only ones not being driven insane right now. Because you’re still dealing purely with craft, and craft does not change (except for dropping the fifth act—that did).
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So I just want to say to all of you, to everyone I’ve talked with in the last four days and everyone else out there still struggling:
it’s not you.
It’s not even me.
It’s not us.
It’s the industry.
And we’re going to be okay.
We’re simply focusing upon our craft.
PS Now my husband is expanding his horizons. It turns out that you have your choice of not just a regular ole coffee or tea mug but also a travel-mug, a 16-ounce frosted glass, or a stein.
A beer stein, you guys.
I’m getting me one. I’m also getting a mousepad with my cat’s face on it.
He’s not going to know what hit him.
