You've mentioned self-publishing a couple of times which is interesting. As a multiple published author you don't think there's still the stigma attached to "vanity publishing" that was around a few years ago?
I'm not sure if I saved the outline. I tend to destroy all the evidence once the ms.'s finished. Also, since it's not my copyright, it may not be entirely kosher for me to post it online. However, I might be able to distill a paragraph or two just to give you an idea. Gimme a day or two to see if I've got it on a disk somewhere. As I recall, it wasn't that long, maybe 6-7 pages, single-spaced (most writers, I gather, double-space their outlines; I tend to like to do mine in nice discrete paragraphs), probably around 2,500 words. Which actually is rather short, because... The Star Trek universe is already a given. That shorthands a lot of things - like not having to describe the original characters or the ships or established aliens, not having to explain warp drive or the Prime Directive or transporters, etc. With an original story, you'd need more detail, because you've got to set a prospective agent/editor down in your world and put hir inside your protagonist's head. After you've established time, place and personnel in a paragraph or three, a basic parameter for outlining the plot would be one paragraph of outline = one chapter of book. So if as an unpublished writer you write the novel first, you'd distill each chapter down into a single paragraph of outline. Then when you've sold a book and you're ready to pitch your next, you figure out how to describe in a paragraph what you intend to expand into 10-25 pages of manuscript. Obviously if the word count of your outline runs to more than, say 10,000 words, you're probably saying too much. Unless, of course, you're writing something the size of Shogun. Which would be a tough sell for a first novel.
It seems to me that the lines are blurring. Those Vantage Press ads that have run in the backs of magazines for decades still represent a sleazy backwater of publishing, and the rule used to be "If a publisher ask you for money, steer away from them." However, the Internet is making it possible for publishing itself to be decentralized, and NYC is no longer the center of the universe as far as getting a book published in the States. This makes it possible for smaller presses to flourish in other cities, for agents to work in their own communities and, ultimately, I believe it will lead to a freeing up of the industry. There'll be some fits and starts along the way and, the more I think of it, this is really a big enough topic for a separate thread. But there's something else I want to dig up - a study done for the Authors Guild a few years ago - that relates to the history of the publishing industry in the U.S. and which I think would be very helpful to the discussion. Maybe I'll start that thread after the holiday weekend.
^ Cool. Blogging - a form of "vanity" publishing - of course has become a journalistic phenomenom and is rapidly gaining in respectability and import. It'd be interesting to see if a similar trend exists in other publishing genres.
Garamet what do you think Frank Herbert's contributions to the industry are. He was originally pretty much turned down by everyone when it came to the first dune book.
^Given the size of the thing, I imagine most editors were too lazy to read it. Most writers' early careers are spent sending stuff out, amassing rejection slips, sending more stuff out. Herbert is one of the luckier ones in that he not only was able to sell a series of Dune books, but got screen rights as well. Don't ask me where he stands as an icon of the genre, though. Think I've mentioned I don't read a lot of s/f.
Why were so many of the great writers on acid and or smack? And howcome when my aspiring writer ex-friend got into the acid, he was still a pretentious pose-ridden amatuer? Was it cuz he left out the smack? Is it the smack, or does it HAVE to be the acid/smack combo? There, I out-dummed your question, Baba.
Oh, and how many chapters on whaling should I toss into a book to class it up? Just the one, or has it gone up with inflation?
Only if I got a very large advance, the tribe spoke English, and I could bring my sunblock and a big floppy hat.
Since I don't do either (and I only enjoy a little alcohol when I'm *not* writing), I couldn't say for sure. Though I do think a lot of writers who rely on controlled substances do so not to improve the flow of words, but to shut off the voices in their heads. There are times when the characters will not sit quietly on the page, but prefer to dance around the room when you're trying to sleep. Surely you've experienced that phenomenon? As for the whales...gosh. Maybe that explains my lack of six-figure success. Except for Music of the Spheres, I never used whales. How many chapters does Crichton devote to whales? Because what worked in Melville's time may no longer be pertinent in ours. Maybe velociraptors have replaced whales. Ever think of that?
Garamet as a writer and resident in the literary world, have you ever read the best book ever Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, published in 1996?
Garamet what do you think of Robert Jordan when it comes to him writing cultures and female characters? Also, you see his point on using pseudonames for different books?
Garamet- What are you reading these days for fun? What books would you recommend to aspiring novelists? If someone wanted to write a Trek novel with no previous experience, what would you recommend? (Beyond getting an agent)?
Here's one, sparked by a recent rereading ... In the book-within-a-book from Strangers from the Sky, what is the significance of the second half of the name Garamet Jen-Saunor?
Believe it or not, Infinite Jest is on my to-read list. Haven't gotten around to it yet. Being a proofreader, I have to spend so much time wading through turgid stuff for pay that I get less time to read what I like.
Baba, you've got to stop assuming I've read everything you've read. I wouldn't expect you to have read the same things I have, y'know. Maybe you could start by telling me what *you* think of Jordan's characters and cultures. As for writing under pseudonyms, why does he do that? Is it at the suggestion of his editor, who doesn't want the market flooded with a lot of books under the same name, or is it him trying out different voices? Give me something to go on here.
Let me answer those backwards. The easiest (which is not to say easy) way to break into professional Trek writing these days is the Strange New Worlds contest Pocket hosts every year. You don't need an agent to submit a short story and, if your story is chosen for one of the annual anthologies, it's your toe in the door to submit outlines for novels. The specifics are somewhere on the Simon & Schuster site. The best advice anyone can give an aspiring novelist is to NOT read a lot of work in the genre they're aspiring to. I.e., if you want to write s/f, don't read a lot of s/f because it narrows your perspective and you may start mimicking other writers, which is not what you want to do - you want to find your own voice. (Also, reading what's already "out there" can be very discouraging. You can easily come to the conclusion that it's all been done before and nobody wants to hear what you have to say, which can nip a writing career in the bud.) Other than that, I'd say read EVERYTHING. Some of my best ideas have come from National Geographic. If you have favorite genres, try to read outside of them - if you're a mystery buff, try an Edwardian romance (yeah, I know - yuck! - but you might find a character or an idea you can use in a different setting). Read the Giants (no, not Robbins and Susann, but Dickens and Faulkner and those guys). Also, think about what makes your favorite movies work for you and try to structure the plot of a novel the same way. One of my non-Trek novels is built around the same concept of a puzzle story as my favorite film, The Stunt Man. I've got a subplot in another that's a shameless ripoff of Crimson Tide. Keep in mind that there are no original ideas - only your unique execution of an idea. As for what I'm reading for pleasure, there are certain authors I reread periodically just because they do it so well. Right now I'm rereading Red Square, the third novel in the Gorky Park trilogy by Martin Cruz Smith, my favorite American novelist. The true test of a novel is that you can read it multiple times and still enjoy it. Good questions, Raoul - thank you!
Ah, you've discovered my Secret Identity. The name Jen-Saunor was a combination of three syllables from three friends' last names - Jennings, Saunders and Nordurft. Also, Garamet had been married to a Vulcan named Saunor and had a half-Vulcan son, so the implication of the "Jen" was sort of like John M. Ford's construct of Klingon names in The Final Reflection (e.g. Klaad zintai K'Tarra).
Garamet, describe how you work when writing. Do you hide away in a special room, door locked to keep out distraction? Do you have music playing? Television? A kittycat curled in your lap? Or do you sit amidst chaos, laptop balanced precariously on your knees as you bang away at the keyboard?
^Dunno. Never tried it. All of the above, in reverse order. When my kids were small, my writing time began as soon as they were in bed. The house was fairly small, and my then-husband would usually have the TV on in the living room, so I'd write first (in long-hand) either at the kitchen table or, after a while, at a desk I set up in the basement. Typed intermediate and final drafts on an old Smith-Corona manual. When we moved to a bigger house, there was a sun porch that I furnished as an office. By then I'd graduated to an electric typewriter. Then my writing time was whenever the kids were in school. Which meant I rarely got much work done on weekends or during the summer. I sought little pockets of quiet in and around the neighbors' lawn mowers, ringing doorbells, and yelling at somebody else's kid to quit tearing the siding off the garage. Somewhere in there I had the Secretarial Job from Hell - 3.5 years in a windowless room typing correspondence for the senior VP of a reinsurance corporation. But, hey, there was a nice new Selectric at my elbow, and free access to the copy machine when everyone else went out to lunch. Had to stop writing every few minutes to answer the freakin' phone, but my output in those years was fantastic. As the Recession of '82 became an ugly memory and I'd made the transition from mainstream to s/f, I was able to quit that job, so back to the home office. For a while there was a Siamese cat on my lap, but she grumbled so much whenever I shifted in the chair that I persuaded her to go elsewhere. Later there was a mini-dachshund who would curl up with a contented sigh and not move for an hour (unless the mailman happened by, in which case she went into Rottweiler mode). If she did wake up, though, she'd give me one of those cute doxy looks and hit the space bar with her nose accidentally on purpose. Okay, kids grew up and went to college, several moves later and, while working on Saturn's Child with Nichelle Nichols, I finally abandoned the first-drafts-in-longhand because I just didn't have time. By now I had a lovely little office with a window and some plants. Apartment-dwelling now, no-pets clauses. Also bought my first computer in '99. Compaq, desktop, gets the job done. Writing Music of the Spheres was the first time I used background music - Beethoven's Seventh, over and over and over again. I can't read music, but I swear I could conduct that symphony by ear. Several other mss. have allowed for music - always classical - but most prefer silence. These days the kids are off on their own and my "pets" are bonsai, and the change of venue from East Coast to West Coast makes for a whole different ambience. I also don't need to set aside a specific time to write, so sometimes I'll start first thing in the morning, other times I'll get the Day Job out of the way first and write late at night, still other times I'll take breaks around the Day Jobs and write in between. The writing's done on a laptop these days, usually sitting on the livingroom couch with my feet up on the coffee table. Laptop goes with me when I travel, though I usually just end up playing Tetris in airports and such. In sum, I've kind of gone from chaos to quiet. I think I like quiet better.
I did. Read the first line of my reply to Lanzman, just above where I quoted him. And there's a "w" in "answer."
Okay, I must have missed those last two. *sigh* Baba, why don't you PM -Jeriko and ask him that question and get back to me with his answer? That is, if you can still write past the ringing in your ears.
In other media we've seen an erosion in the role of the writer. In film and television the writer is essentially a "hired gun" to be replaced at the producers' and director's whim. There might be as many as a dozen writers assigne to a movie before it makes it onto the screen. In comics (especially Marvel) it is the editor who can be largely responsible for the creative vision, dictating plot and character arcs. Even in media-tie in fiction we're seeing "based on a concept by <editor name>" appearing more often on the covers of books. Would you say that the editor is becoming a more powerful creative controlling force in fiction writing generally? If so, how do you feel about this?
