How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Editing

During ArmadilloCon I had the pleasure of talking with a woman who was in the enviable-but-frustrating position of having an agent, but her manuscripts were still being reviewed by publishers.  (Enviable because YOU HAVE AN AGENT, and that's awesome. Frustrating, especially at cons, because while you are on the path to success, you don't have that tangible commodity to show for it.  Talking up your agent-having alone just sounds strange.)  She was already worried about what might happen when an editor got a hold of it. What sort of crazy changes might be demanded?

Fortunately, I had just been through two editing processes, and I could reassure her that it wasn't likely to be as radical as the horror stories she had heard. 

In fact, I even wrote an article for Book Country on how my process was. 

Everyone's writing process and editing process are different, of course.  For example, I hear from a lot of writers that editing involves throwing a lot of words away and re-doing it.  I, personally, could never work that way... but at the same time, in my writing process, I cannot do the "just get it on the page and fix it later" method.  Not to say it's perfect when I first write it... not at all.  But if you were to compare the first draft of the first chapter of Murder of Mages to the one I submitted as a final version a few weeks ago, the fundamentals are more or less the same.  And almost all of my "major surgery" edits have been a matter of adding more to the manuscript, rather than throwing stuff away. 

Anyhow, being edited wasn't a scary process at all, thanks to having a fabulous, Hugo-nominated editor (fingers crossed for this year!)  Go and check out the article, and you can see the true finalized-cover of Thorn, including the DAW logo which identifies it as the 1681st book in their 30+ year history. 

Hugo Nominations: Best Short Story

As I am attending WorldCon in San Antonio this year, I'm entitled to vote on the Hugos.  As opposed to my qualms about nominating, I have no problem with voting, especially since I have the opportunity to review the nominees. 

So, let's start with the Best Short Story nominations.  There are only three nominees this year, due to a rule involving nominees needing to receive at least 5% of the nominating vote.*  The nominees are:

• “Immersion”, Aliette de Bodard ( Clarkesworld, June 2012)
• “Mantis Wives”, Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
• “Mono no Aware”, Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

"Immersion" follows two story tracks: a woman who has lost herself to life in an "immersion" suit  (essentially Google-glass with real-world avatar), and a young woman who works in a restaurant who knows how to use the immersion suits.  The first woman is essentially clinically depressed, and her use of the suit is a metaphor for putting on a fake-it-for-the-world face while feeling dead inside.  There is a certain degree of classism attached to the suits-- the use of the suit is uncommon amongst the restaurant family, and the young woman needs to get hers out and put it on to interact with the occasional customer who wears them, namely the couple with the depressed woman.  Now, why she needs to wear her suit to interact with them isn't clear-- they are engaged with the real world, just from inside their suits.  It seems mostly so the restaurant owners won't come off as a bunch of hicks to the besuited couple.  Not that the woman cares, she's barely aware of what's going on.  The two women have a moment of connection, but not much really comes from it.  It struck me that there's a lot more story here, condensed down to short-story length to the point where something crucial got lost.

"Mantis Wives", I was expecting to like more than I did, mostly because I really enjoyed Kij Johnson's "Spar", which was a wonderful use of economy of words.  Economy of words still applies here, but it's not a story.  It's more of a prose poem, a listing of sexual variants employed by Mantis Wives (who normally would practice sexual cannibalism) in order to avoid or prolong said sexual cannibalism.  It's a lovely gem of an idea, but doesn't do much with it.

"Mono no Aware" is an interesting tale of a one colony ship that escaped some unknown disaster on Earth, so they represent the last survivors of humanity.  The protagonist is the only Japanese native on the ship, thus the lone remainder of Japanese culture.  Something goes wrong with the ship, and he volunteers to repair the damage, which he ties to the Go lessons his father gave him as a child.  This one is dense with ideas, probably a bit too much for under 5000 words, but I definitely enjoyed it, and wanted to read a longer version of the story. 

So, my ranking order would be

1. "Mono No Aware"
2. "Immersion"
3. "Mantis Wives"

___In other news, there's an interview of me over at Book Country.  Go check it out.

___
*- Hugo voting math always strikes me as exceedingly complicated.  I'm sure it makes sense, but every time I've seen voting-results tables they've made my eyes cross.

The Latest in Self-Publishing Scandals, aka The World vs. BookCountry

"You remember when I said how I was gonna explain about life, buddy? Well the thing about life is, it gets weird. People are always talking ya about truth. Everybody always knows what the truth is, like it was toilet paper or somethin', and they got a supply in the closet. But what you learn, as you get older, is there ain't no truth. All there is is bullshit, pardon my vulgarity here. Layers of it. One layer of bullshit on top of another. And what you do in life like when you get older is, you pick the layer of bullshit that you prefer and that's your bullshit, so to speak."
                                               -Bernie LaPlante (Dustin Hoffman), Hero

Last week BookCountry launched from public beta to being fully open.  They also launched their self-publishing services.  This second aspect has gotten a lot of attention in the author blogospheres, especially from successful self/indie publishers.  Here and here are two prime examples.  There are plenty of others.  The main argument being made is that BookCountry's self-publishing services are charging MUCH TOO MUCH for what they offer, and therefore are a scam and a rip-off.

You know, that may be.

But so is every other self/indie-publishing service, to one degree or another.  The successful self/indie authors out there who are trying to get everyone to Join the Movement (or Cult, depending on your POV) might want to pretend otherwise, but that's the basic gist of it.  Every self/indie service wants to make money off of you selling your writing.  That may be with an upfront fee, or a percentage of sales, or both, but that's what they want to do.

And that is all right as well.  Of course all these services want to make a profit.  I don't begrudge them any of them for doing that.

Before I continue, some disclaimers.

1. I have been involved in BookCountry since early in its private beta, specifically in its primary function as a peer review site.  In that capacity, I think it's quite excellent and I recommend it.  
2. I have had several exchanges with Colleen Lindsay at BookCountry, including testing out their self-coding-for-ebook instructions.  My main purpose in doing this was helping them confirm that their instructions were clear and easy to follow.  My main take-away is that Colleen Lindsay is a good egg in this business who genuinely loves books and wants to help writers with tools to succeed.
3. I, personally, have little-to-no interest in self/indie publishing.  I currently have no intentions for doing it myself, nor do I begrudge anyone who decides that it's the best choice for them. 

What I find kind of fascinating is why some of the Indie Pub Pushers consider BC more of a scam than their Self-Pub methods of choice.  To which I say, eh.  I don't see Amazon or Smashwords operating on altruism. 

The premium package at BC (the one that gets their dander up the most) offers hand-coding of e-book/printed book layout and distributing it to various sellers.  Apparently, all you have to do is send the MS Word doc, and they do the rest.  The argument against, made by the Indie Pub Pushers, is that everything they are offering are things you COULD do by yourself with a minimal investment of time and money.

I can see their point, but on some level it's the Auto Mechanic argument.  Yes, I COULD save money by taking the time and effort to change my own oil and filters and rotate my tires.  But I don't want to do that.  I'd rather give it to a professional and pay him and not worry about that.  There are some that would say that's a bad attitude about car maintenance, and I should be more self-reliant.  But that's not for me.

Does BookCountry charge Too Much for it's particular form of Indie/Self Publishing?  Possibly.  But I find it kind of funny that the argument against is more or less, "Their rip-off is horrible.  You should use the rip-off I use.  It's much better."  Find the bullshit you like, and leave others to their own.