Comments on Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent: Non-hypothetical Response to the Hypothetical Ques...

I blogged on this at http://californio.livejournal...

2008-07-16T10:53:54.443-07:00

I blogged on this at http://californio.livejournal.com/106805.html, but the guts of my response is the following:

Another answer to why not tell writers “you are no good,” would be because it will deeply hurt them, perhaps even beyond their writing career. An analogy: when a young woman sees a guy coming to the street, and it is clear what this guy is thinking and it’s out of the question, a well-bred young lady does not say “Sorry, you’re too short, not good-looking enough, you have a weird sense of humor, your taste in clothes is hopeless,” or whatever, she just says, “I’m busy,” “I already have a boyfriend,” “We’re moving to a foreign country,” “My father won’t let me date until I’m 30” or anything to avoid passing judgment on this guy as an individual. To do so would be cruel.

Can you imagine this girl telling the young man, “Not only am I not interested in dating you, but I’m confident no other woman would give you a chance either. I really think you should join a monastery.”

The best path in any tense situation is to be gracious, allow people to keep their dignity. Anything else builds bad karma. And, not to be too Californian about this, hurting others, in any way, hurts the world. I think politeness is an asset even in the 21st century.

At the risk of sending this in past the sell by da...

2008-07-15T09:03:04.563-07:00

At the risk of sending this in past the sell by date, I would like to refrase the question. Suppose there was a seeer who could tell you with absolute certainty wether or not you are going to be diagnosed with terminal cancer between the age of 57 and 60, would you like this seeer to tell you? Would you want to know?
NO. I would not. The joy of life is the blissful lack of knowledge about the outcome of our endeavours, the writer's job as well as the agent's job.
Would I like there to be such a seeer?
NO. I would not and thank god there isn't one.
What should we do if such a seeer appears and starts telling us our future?
Don't ask me, I am afraid my answer will not be kind.

I read once that Lucille Ball was told by an actin...

2008-07-14T09:05:35.571-07:00

I read once that Lucille Ball was told by an acting instructor that she'd never be any good at acting.

Apocryphal. No such thing is mentioned, or even implied, in either the memoirs of her acting teacher, John Murray Anderson ("Out Without My Rubbers"), or Ball's ("Love, Lucy.")

And one record company turned down the Beatles because they didn't think they'd sell and because "Guitar groups are on their way out, anyway."

Have you heard the Decca audition tapes? They performed badly. Note, too, that just one record company turned down the Beatles. One. Not every single company for whom they ever auditioned, or even dozens. Just one.

Ditto for J.K. Rowling.

Abe Lincoln lost every single election until he ran for president.

No he didn't. He was elected captain of his Black Hawk War militia company, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representative in 1834 (and reelected to that seat three times), and elected to the U.S. House in 1846.

I recall turning to my friend one Saturday afternoon in 1977 as we watched a preview of a movie before the real show, and telling her, "That one looks stupid. No one is going to pay to see that!" The name of that "stupid" movie? It was called Star Wars.

Are you a movie producer? Because, if not, that story is really pretty irrelevant, isn't it?

Ball, The Beatles, Lincoln, and Rowling all turned out to be hugely successful.

They did. And they all enjoyed early success, too, hitting the jackpot with their earliest efforts. Which is basically the opposite of your thesis.

"This all comes down to one basic fact about books...

2008-07-12T17:23:14.401-07:00

"This all comes down to one basic fact about books: there is no Delphi.

The secret to the Oracle at Dephi's success was ambiguity, never giving a clear-cut answer to a question. So in that sense this whole discussion is quite Delphic.

Anonymous, you just told a really great story. I'd...

2008-07-12T10:18:45.373-07:00

Anonymous, you just told a really great story. I'd like to read a medical thriller by you.

These posts have all been fascinating, but the wealth of thought is leaving me a little dizzy. I'm afraid to overthink my career choice, myself. I need all the mental energy I can muster to keep up my writing schedule.

However, I've always used Jane Hamilton as my role model. She started querying agents in the "A" section of Writer's Marketplace for "Map of the World," and didn't find one til she'd reached the alphabetical end. That agent, she has said in one interview, wrote back and said, "Who ARE you?" As we all know now, she was (and is) really someone. I'm so glad she didn't give up.

I am in the business of medicine. It's a tough fi...

2008-07-12T06:19:17.955-07:00

I am in the business of medicine. It's a tough field. The vast majority of people who set out to go to med school never get in. Highly competitive.

But there's talent in medicine as well as learning.

I had the misfortune to have worked with a doctor who had the highest scores on the medical boards EVAH. In the history of the boards. Perfect scores all three times.

But the guy couldn't diagnose his way out of a paper bag. He couldn't spot impending demise. He diagnosed a three-day-old with "viral syndrome." Well, yeah, herpes encephalitis is a virus. I saw the baby two hours after he did and Flight for Life was on their way.

I passed my boards, did upper echelon kind of scores. But what I have that genius doctor lacked is gut intelligence.

I can't tell you how many times I have looked at a patient across the room, and thought, "Oh, bad language, bad language, they're dying." No idea what was wrong, just bad mojo, impending demise.

Follow the steps, baby with encephalitis, massive heart attack, germs rampaging through the blood stream.

I'm not perfect, medicine is an art not science, but if I had to trade my gut smarts for a perfect score on the boards, I wouldn't do it. Gut smarts can't be taught. (I don't think.) It's innate.

Same with writers. If your grammar sucks, you could take classes. Heck, if I wanted to, I could probably learn grammar, punctuation, etc.

But to be a storyteller, to catch the imagination of people other than yourself, is innate, and in my opinion un-learnable.

"What I find interesting is how many people think ...

2008-07-11T21:08:53.613-07:00

"What I find interesting is how many people think the only reason to write is to be published, and that publication legitimizes ones efforts somehow. Is there any other endeavor that carries such a load of assumptions?"

It's not a matter of validation. I know I can write. It's a matter of the process being so out of my control (you can't have it both ways -- you can't tell us that it's in our control because if we write a good enough book we'll get published, and then in the next breath tell us it's all the marketplace and luck and expect us to believe only the first part, sorry).

If there was another way to quit practicing in front of the mirror, which is what writing for "the joy of it" (aka for myself and a few friends) is to me, I would jump at it with both feet. AAMOF, I would prefer another way if there was one.

No, putting it up on a website or having it printed and bound at Lulu.com is not going to do the job. Neither is just getting it onto Amazon. What's needed is the distribution, not the physical product.

If there was another way to get the distribution, then we'd be getting somewhere.

But that doesn't seem to exist.

The driver analogy is a good one, but take it a st...

2008-07-11T19:58:43.684-07:00

The driver analogy is a good one, but take it a step further. An experienced driver may seem talented, but put him or her in a race with race car drivers at the NASCAR or Indy or Formula One level and you'll see that there is also a talent for driving. And within the professional level, there are levels of talent. In fact, at the very highest level, it is often talent that is the only difference.

I think talent really is the factor that divides t...

2008-07-11T19:54:23.036-07:00

I think talent really is the factor that divides the great from the mediocre. Mozart had prodigious natural talent honed by years of ruthless practice. He could do things normal people, even great musicians with years of training and practice, simply couldn't do.

I actually met a guy like this when I was a teen. He had never had a music lesson in his life, but he could listen to a piece of music one time and then play it back perfectly. He was also able to pick up an unfamiliar instrument and just play it. I actually saw him do this with a violin - an instrument he had never touched before. The parents of another friend of mine were antique collectors and they had picked up a violin somewhere. This guy walks over, picks it up and starts playing. He had a natural talent that was frightful to behold. But it wasn't just parroting what he heard. He could riff and improvise and completely blow you away.

I often wonder what happened to him. He never became a famous guitar player, though at the age of 16, he was clearly on his way to being one of the greats.

I've also known wonderful storytellers who were functionally illiterate. Storytelling is an art. Writing is the craft of bringing stories to the printed page, because a well-told tale often doesn't translate well to the page. Writing can be learned. Storytelling cannot. At best, you can learn to fake it and become a technically proficient but mediocre writer.

To my mind, a story isn't truly finished until it's published.

The 'ear thing' equates to music nicely. There are...

2008-07-11T19:52:41.026-07:00

The 'ear thing' equates to music nicely. There are people who play by ear. Not necessarily even perfect pitch, but an affinity for the sounds that translates into their fingers. Are they musicians? Of course. Are they educated musicians? No. Can they explain to anyone how they do what they do? Probably not in a way that is transferable.

Now lets talk about driving. People can get behind the wheel of a car with little formal instruction and push the pedals and react to the environment. But does that make them the kind of driver you want on the road? No. But even experienced drivers, those with training plus driving experience [practice] drive 'by ear'. They get muscle and perceptive memory. If we had to think about driving at the level of a learner driver, there would be LOTS more accidents. We move to a level of 'expertise' where 'natural', dare I say a perception of 'talent', is exercised.

Writing as expressed by Wanda is somewhat like that. As we gain more and more awareness and practice, that is using those concepts in new ways, we add them to our 'natural' behaviour and even find it hard NOT to do them any more. That is called learning. In writing, it may be called 'voice'. I'm not sure.

Talk to any 'overnight success' and you will find out how long that 'night' really was.

I agree with the 'ear thing.'I think it's true of ...

2008-07-11T19:19:38.692-07:00

I agree with the 'ear thing.'

I think it's true of grammar, too. Undoubtedly, grammar can improve through study, but I think a writer should absorb a lot of rules through reading a lot.

The Ear ThingRe: "I'd say those "natural storytell...

2008-07-11T18:55:00.702-07:00

The Ear Thing

Re: "I'd say those "natural storytellers" are people who have read well, have come from backgrounds where stories are told, and have always played with stories, whether orally or in writing"

Have you ever seen LeBron James play basketball?

There is a character in the movie "Grand Canyon" (great movie by the way), who had played with some big-name basketball player when he was young. The character says: "He and I weren't playing the same game." There was "something there" that the average NBA player doesn't have. It's just not "skill." Or "skill deficit."

I mean, do you define imagination as a "skill?" Do people "learn" to be "imaginative?"

One of the most amazing things to me in getting my MFA in "creative writing," was how UN-creative the average MFA student was (and professor, if I may be so bold).

I taught one day in grad school, as a guest teacher in someone else's classroom. The students were told to come up with questions for me. One question was about meter, learning meter and all those technical aspects of writing poetry, and I answered: "I don't pay any attention to that."

And later the teacher who'd invited me to teach told me she felt like "jumping out of the window" when I said that, because she'd been holding me up to her class as an example of all the fantastic poetry you can write when you LEARN METER. She just assumed if I wrote the way I did, I MUST be studying very carefully my dithyrambs etc!

You don't need to LEARN it, or study it. Just use your "ear." That is, your innate natural talent. How do you develop "your ear?" You read and write.

I think this is true of fiction also. At least, I had a teacher who couldn't understand why I wasted my time writing poetry, when I was so "gifted" writing fiction. It's the "ear thing."

A separate issue from actually getting published, but I have to say something in defense of the "ear thing."

This all could be taken one step further, by askin...

2008-07-11T16:52:05.946-07:00

This all could be taken one step further, by asking if some people have no innate talent and will never get published no matter how hard they work to perfect their skills, then why do we see so many crash and burn novels being published these days? The crash and burn books are the ones where agent, editor and publisher thought they could pull it off, but didn't.

If innate talent were a standard fixture in publishing, we'd all be reading wonderful books, the heavens would open up and glorious angels would start singing.

Hi, Just wanted to mention that a friend of mine w...

2008-07-11T14:09:32.744-07:00

Hi, Just wanted to mention that a friend of mine with SIX unpublished novels of women's fiction just sold her latest at auction to a big-name publisher via a very well-known agent. I think it's the kind of novel that you would have rejected, Nathan. Not that there's anything wrong with that--your taste is your taste--but you would have rejected her other work, too. There has been a vast improvement in her writing over the years. The book comes out next year. Should she have quit? Should she have read the tea-leaves as "give it up, you'll never get published?"

I thought so a few times, but I'm glad she didn't.

So how can you call that? Also, many editors did turn the novel down. It was a small auction (two editors really going at it/and then one who made a single offer).

Go figure.

Nathan, I'd say those "natural storytellers" are p...

2008-07-11T12:46:48.873-07:00

Nathan, I'd say those "natural storytellers" are people who have read well, have come from backgrounds where stories are told, and have always played with stories, whether orally or in writing -- in other words, that there are more ways to learn than through formal education.

Writing is a complex skill, and as a result it's hard to identify what makes some people apparent naturals. So we create a black box and call it "talent," which removes the complexity.

Anyway, this is beside the point. We don't really mean the same thing by "talent." I will grant you that some people are unlikely ever to become good writers. Whether we call that a lack of talent or a hopeless and multifaceted skill deficit is moot.

andrew-I really disagree, first, on the NBA thing....

2008-07-11T12:20:32.520-07:00

andrew-

I really disagree, first, on the NBA thing. There are players who have all the physical gifts in the world, but then there are players like LeBron James and Jason Kidd who have an innate feel for the game that goes way beyond just being tall and jumping high. Being a high level basketball player is part physical part mental.

And I also think the analogy fits with writing -- "Storytelling" is a talent. It's innate. Trust me, I've seen natural storytellers who have zero teaching and who are far better than people who have spent years practicing and who have MFAs and who have spent so much time honing their craft. Some people just have a tremendous natural gift that trumps practice.

I also feel that writing something that really flows and captures someone's imagination (like Malcolm Gladwell, for instance, on the nonfiction side) is also a gift. No one can practice their way to becoming Malcolm Gladwell. It's an innate gift that he has honed just as any NBA player who started with the physical gifts and then practiced their entire lives.

Writing well is an incredibly complex trait that involves perception, empathy, knowledge.. it's so hard to put your finger on. But good storytellers just know what makes a good story. It's not something you just learn, even if practice is an important part of it.

Getting to the NBA is a false analogy here.Getting...

2008-07-11T12:12:47.759-07:00

Getting to the NBA is a false analogy here.

Getting to a professional level in sports requires certain innate abilities. There is no "talent" for playing basketball, per se, but you can't play at a high level unless you have the right physical attributes. You also have to start young -- your body has a best before date.

The only innate attribute I can think of that affects writing is intelligence. Can anyone name one other innate trait that creates writing talent?

Grammar ain't it. That's a learned skill. Vocabulary, similarly, is learned.

Writing is entirely learned -- unlike jumping or throwing a ball, nothing about it is natural.

Granted, from time to time you will see writing so bad that you just can't believe the author will ever learn to write. But this isn't because they lack "talent"; it's because they've wasted their lives reading crap, because they take writing for granted, because they're not serious enough to know how bad they are.

Okay, maybe this is a lack of "talent." But that's just a polite way of saying that these people are unintelligent, which in turn is a polite way of saying that they're dumb as stumps. These people should give up.

The last thing we need is more Simon Cowells. Cowell is not a seer; he's an egomaniacal dunce. Bob Dylan would never have got past Cowell, for example. Sure, some people feel Dylan can't sing, but you can't argue that he hasn't been successful at what he does.

Nathan, Richard Ford is dyslexic. That's as clear a sign of lack of writing "talent" as any -- he's got an innate disability that affects his ability to form words.

I'll bet you'd like to represent him, though. :)

Anon who wrote:"If I found out that my writing is ...

2008-07-11T11:47:09.749-07:00

Anon who wrote:

"If I found out that my writing is not good enough, I'd know there were major changes I needed to make in the way I write."

I don't think you can do that. I think our writing is an expression of who we are. I have a friend who writes prolifically but his writing is not perfect. I don't think he can change it though and every time I read something he's written, I am hearing who he is. I wouldn't want his writing to change.

Unless you mean about polishing and grammar and things. Those you could change. But if someone really told you that, where would you even begin? And doesn't that suck all the fun out of writing if you have to change the way you write to conform?

So, I'm a published author (major house) and here'...

2008-07-11T11:02:38.540-07:00

So, I'm a published author (major house) and here's how I see it:

1. Nathan is dead on the money on all his comments.

2. People in this string who are frustrated by that, and who want to be *published* writers, need to get some thick skin, focus on the work, their dreams and just keep going. Or, give up on it and do something else. Or, you can be satisifed by loving what you're doing and don't worry about getting published. Harsh maybe, but if you don't have the chops to *persevere* in this "business" then you're already toast.

3. I read somewhere that only 2% of people who submit *fiction* ms's in any given year ever get published. That didn't discourage me - it just made me dig my heels in and get busy; but then, I'm stubborn.

4. I vehemently disagree with anon 2:51. Any art *is* a gift, a talent - whatever you want to call it. If a person doesn't have a particular gift or talent, they can take lessons and they can learn to be better at that art than they were, but can *never* get to the level of someone who has the talent. The talent isn't just the inate ability - it's the drive, the dreaming, the desire and the vision to see what something can be. That can't be taught.

5. Writing is art. Getting published IS NOT validation that your art is good. THERE IS NO SUCH THING. I love Van Gogh, but you may not. That DOES NOT mean that Van Gogh is no good. It just means I love him and you don't.

6. Robert Crais says that a book is an incomplete work of art until someone reads it. He says reading it completes the work. He doesn't say it's an incomplete work of art until someone *likes* it. I happen to agree with Crais's philosophy. So, if/when you get published and someone reads your stuff (or even if you don't get published and someone reads your stuff), the work is complete - doesn't matter if they liked it or not - doesn't matter if you sold 1 copy or 100,000. Doesn't even matter if it was just your mother who read it. I think it's about sharing dreams and art. No one's work is loved by everyone.

7. Don't look for validation in whether or not someone likes your work. Love the work for what it is.

8. The work should be giving you all the *juice* you need. If you're not getting some major charge out of just crafting stories, then *please* stop.

9. Dare to dream and don't give up, because that's all this is really about. If you're afraid to even dream all the way, then stop writing now, because your heart isn't in it and you're wasting your own time.

10. Finally, I worked on seriously pursuing a writing career 15 years before I finally got an agent, 16 years before I got a publishing deal. I wasn't submitting to agents all that time - I was honing my art and craft. I only submitted work for about 8 years before - and not steadily submitting - going back and writing new stuff and then trying again (and again). Like I said, you gotta have "chops" to stick it out in this "business".

This is about love. It's all about love of the art, love of the craft, love of a life spent writing, and sharing stories. Even if you never get published, you can still have that love and keep writing (and you should).

J.F.

P.S. Paint by numbers isn't painting. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do paint by numbers, it just means it's not painting. :)

This reminds me a talk I heard from an author who ...

2008-07-11T11:01:23.044-07:00

This reminds me a talk I heard from an author who was shopping around a story with an evil clown in it. The first editor hated it; it was too much like Stephen King's It. The second editor loved it; it was just like Stephen King's It!

Nobody does know and I find that hopeful. Ray Bradbury claims to have received 3,000 rejections. Dune by Frank Herbert was rejected over 20 times before it sold and now it's an SF classic. On and on. I believe as long as I'm open to learning as much about my craft as possible at some point the magic will happen for me. I believe I can always make it better, if not this story then the next one. And the next.

Snork... Spencer Pratt. Oh how I love dumb "realit...

2008-07-11T11:01:14.325-07:00

Snork... Spencer Pratt. Oh how I love dumb "reality" TV.

I read everyone's comments, and I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed. I really hope that most people write to write, because they love it. Because if you don't love it, you shouldn't be doing it. You're influencing people's lives. I just left teaching to pursue a career as a writer and I feel that the two paths are very similar. There are a lot of teachers who teach because it's what they've been doing or because they're looking forward to a good retirement package. There are teachers who teach just because they want the same schedule as their kids, or they like the summers off. Most of the people who teach for those reasons are terrible teachers. You have to love teaching to be a good teacher and you have to love writing to be a good writer. If you aren't doing it because you love it, if you wouldn't be doing it even if you never in a million years get published or paid, if you aren't doing it because it makes your heart sing... then you shouldn't be doing it at all. Life is far too short.
I like to think of myself as a "talented" writer. I have some natural talent, and I've worked hard at honing my craft. I'd like to think that I'll be published someday. I'd like to think that I'll be sitting on Oprah's set in a year with her raving about her newest book club selection, my book. But you know what... if that never happened, I'd still write. And I think that's what makes the best writers of all, that passion.

I write because I love to write, but if I didn't a...

2008-07-11T10:59:11.194-07:00

I write because I love to write, but if I didn't also want to be published, I wouldn't be here, would I.

Fiction is a unique art form in that, unlike music or painting or scuplture, what I write is not the finished product. If scuplture were like writing, you wouldn't actually sculpt, you would just draw what the scuplture will eventually look like. The printed page is the final form of the art.

Neither can fiction writers truly perform their art, or take a copy of their novel and hang it up in a bar for people to read. Well, actually, you can do that, with the internet, but it isn't the same as being published by a publisher.

To my mind, writing is only half the point of this exercise. The other half is to be read. If I'm not being read, my motivation to write isn't as great. I still write because the creative urge never goes away, but I find other ways to express and share it. That's why I write it down - to share it with others.

I think it's a bit more complicated. Let's imagine...

2008-07-11T10:56:22.506-07:00

I think it's a bit more complicated. Let's imagine that I have a talent comparable to that of Jane Austen or Herman Melville. I write a book. I'd like to have time to write more, so it would be nice to have money from the one I've written. But a while back someone submitted Pride and Prejudice, thinly disguised, to various publishers, and only one rejected it as an obvious plagiarism. After the fact, the consensus in the industry was, Jane Austen's books are popular because they have been established as classics; they could not be sold as new books because they don't fit modern taste. An agent the other day said she would not bother to submit Moby Dick to publishers if sent in, because she thought it was not suitable for modern taste.

So the thing is, I might write my book and show it to friends who like, as it might be, Austen or Melville, and they might think it was brilliant, and it might actually (against all the odds) be in the same class as a book by Austen or Melville. But that still wouldn't tell me whether it was publishable. If agents who knew the industry thought it was not publishable, it might still make sense to go on writing. I might think: we only have a handful of books by Austen, but I LOVE Austen, I'd like to have more, I'll write them myself. I might think: Why aren't there more books like Moby Dick? I LOVE Moby Dick. I go into Barnes and Noble and the only book like Moby Dick is Moby Dick. I have NOTHING TO READ except Moby Dick. I know! I'll write the books myself. Ha HA! But I would presumably spend a lot less time on submissions.

I confess I love art, originality, unique voice.Bu...

2008-07-11T10:56:13.884-07:00

I confess I love art, originality, unique voice.

But I also love being able to pay the bills, own a house, go out to dinner, take a vacation, participate in the world.

Somewhere between high art and low brow lies the mainstream. Probably all of them are needed.

I adore the agents and publishers of high original work. I cherish them. I also appreciate and don't blame the publishers trying to sell a product that's still good, but more marketable.

And the low brow? Well, where would we be, partner, without those cowboy novels?

I have two experimental novels in a drawer. I have...

2008-07-11T10:51:28.150-07:00

I have two experimental novels in a drawer. I have not tried sending them out at this point.

I have a really fun yarn going in the third novel that I am working on. I can't wait to send it out.

Maybe someday the experimental pieces will come out of the drawer. Maybe not. I am still glad I wrote them.

It feels so different, though, writing something that (and I am NOT talking dimmed down, just more mainstream) I feel is more easy to connect to the world with.