Control Freak?

So, some of you may remember a few weeks ago, when your polite host got a little passionate about the topic of an author’s appearance. The comments trail stirred up quite the controversy apparently not lacking in heat, and just the other day, I exchanged emails with one of the participants, where the issue came up again (re: Ann Coulter, who I totally agree with the point about her being hot helping a lot with her career, but that’s non-fiction, and a whole different ballgame).

So what I managed to miss during all of this, what with me being out of town and all, was that Jami had actually blogged about it on her blog, Red Hot Romance. Oops, sorry, Jami. Her point seemed to be, since I said one of the reasons I don’t want to think about looks mattering is because, well, it’s something I can’t control whereas I can keep writing better etc., that maybe writing is not the best career for a control freak, since there are SO MANY aspects of the business that we don’t control.

(However, I think I retract the comment about it being a matter of control, because despite the insistence of the commenters that looks do matter, they failed to explain how all of the not exactly camera-friendly bestsellers — and you know who I’m talking about here — have been so hindered by their looks. Sorry folks; you can argue until you’re blue in the face on this point, and even bring up some anecdote about an erotica author not being highlighted on the Geraldo show because her publisher thought she wasn’t pretty enough, but I’ve met a hell of a lot of bestselling authors, and most of them aren’t about to win a beauty contest, and their readers couldn’t care less. COULD NOT CARE LESS. And I saw the Geraldo piece and could only remember one specific author on it, and that’s because I’ve had dinner with her. I thin kthe point of the story was that erotica was back, baby. and not about a particular author, so I don’t know if that girl’s sales were hurt at all by not appearing. her books will still get bought. And I’ve spoken in recent weeks to a whole bunch of editors and agents and publicists on this topic, and the prevailing opinion is that most successful writers are socially awkward, overweight shut ins with facial tics and the personality of a paper bag, but their stuff still won’t stay on shelves. So… there’s that. It’s just a matter of being inaccurate, wildly inaccurate, and some little fairy tale that authors like to tell themselves in order to, as Miss Snark says, not concentrate on the REAL issue — the writing.)

Now Jami herself did not actually use the phrase “control freak,” but some of the people commenting on the post, occasionally anonymously (which is always fun), did. (BTW: this blog should not be construed in any way, shape, or form as an attack against Jami. Nothing but love for the James-ster, who is, if not a control freak, an a capella freak. So there. 😉 )

So, allow me to make clear once and for all: My name is Diana, and I’m a control freak. Oh, completely. And, quite frankly, despite the sticky industry wickets I may get stuck on due to the characteristic, I think it’s actually the perfect personality type for a person whose job it is to create their own world, all it’s rules and places and people and be lord and mistress of every single word on several hundred pages of text. How can you be a writer if you aren’t interested making things bend to your will? We’re creators, dammit.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m unaware of the fact that I have absolutely no control over what is happening to my book right now. Buy-in, distribution, orders, print run, any kind of large scale publicity, what other books are out my month, what else is happening in the world that affects book-buying budgets, what reviewers say, blah blah blah — nope, I’ve got no control over that whatsoever. Wish I did, but I don’t. And I know that, and I’ve always known that because, as regular readers of the blog know (despite anonymous claims about my alleged naivete), I’m the kind of person who actually gathers up information about her chosen profession before leaping into it. You know why? Because knowledge is power. Knowing how the business works means I know what I can control and what I can’t. And in my research, I learned that I could control the following things:

1. The book I write.
2. The marketing of said book to publishers.
3. What kind of publishing offer I take.

That’s it, but that’s enough, and you’d be surprised how many of people haven’t even bothered to look into it that much. And yeah, it’s super hard to look an offer in the face and say, “this isn’t what I want,” but that’s your control switch, right there. That’s the part of the publishing business that you control. Everything else is pretty much you saying how high when they say jump. Hopefully, if you made the best choices during the you-in-charge part (i.e., picking agent, picking marketing strategy, picking publisher — or NOT) then you can roll with all of the stuff you have no control over.

Is it easy for me? Hell to the no. But despite how I might grit my teeth and clench my fists and fantasize about getting in there up to my elbows and mixing it up a little bit — you know, because I’m a control freak — I think I’ve got the better end of the deal. I know what it is that I can’t do anything about, and it’s irritating, but I signed up for it, I knew it was going to happen when I signed up, so I’m going to deal with it.

Much worse off than me is the opposite — the person who not only has no desire to control what’s happening to them, but doesn’t even know what it is they aren’t controlling because oh, you know, it’s beyond them. They’re not a control freak! Heavens!

That passive person is the one who lets themselves be taken in by scam agents and bad legitimate agents because, gee, they don’t know any better and shouldn’t they just let the agent handle it and not tell the writer where they are sending their stuff and who has rejected it and why? That passive person is the one who signs some horrific author-unfriendly deal, either with a vainity press or a big publisher who intends to screw them over, doesn’t read the contracts, doesn’t ask for clarification about certain terms, figures she has no control over it anyway and maybe she shouldn’t want to know what it all means, or, certainly, her agent caught it all, right? That person is so accepting of the fact that she has no control over how hard a publisher pushes her book that she does nothing to generate pre-pub buzz herself, or she has her head in the sand so much about how these things work that they get the most bizarre expectations of their book’s trajectory adn start, I don’t know, getting tummy tucks in preparation for a television appearance that’s never ever ever going to happen.

If these are my options, I’ll pick control freak. I’ll pick the person who knows exactly what she can and cannot affect about her career and studies how to handle those things.

At this point, I’m reminded of a sketch I have framed on my wall. It’s of a woman sitting in an umbrella and flying through the air, and the caption reads: “If you hold on, you have the illusion of control, but it’s easier to let the wind carry you.”

Maybe all of this is just the illusion of control. After all, if I was actually controlling any of those three things listed above, I’d be able to write Dan Brown meets JK Rowling meets Stephen King meets Nora Roberts, get an agent who would find me a publisher that would send liveried slave hunks to my house to feed me peeled grapes and Dom in order to induce me to sell the rights to them, and then buy my own continent, right?

Ah, but here, we are confusing control with perfection. What I don’t have any illusions about is the fact that my desire to control what I can and understand what I can’t is not attached to an expectation of perfection — from the stuff that is out of my hands, at least. (My control freak tendencies, sadly, go hand in hand with my perfectionism.) Of course it’s not going to be perfect. Some parts are going to be a walking dream. Others, a walking nightmare. It’s good to know that, going in so you can mentally, and often physically, prepare yourself — by having a back up plan, an escape clause, a way to work around the manner in which you may or may not being screwed.

Control freaks have the upper hand in this. Because of their desire for control, they are constantly analyzing the situation. They can see when the writing on the wall begins to take on that particularly funereal pallor that says, “change your name, dump your agent and write in a whole new genre, honey, because this baby’s a dud.” The control freak is the one who says, “Hmmm, my publisher’s publicist seem unaware that I exist. Perhaps it’s time to invest in some indie promo.” The control freak is the one that plans her own six-city tour, then asks the publisher if they’ll consider springing for a big sign for her to take with her on her travels. The control freak is the one that, realizing her cover sucks, decides to do some viral marketing to imprint the cadence of her rocking title on the reading public instead. They may not be able to control the covers or the marketing or the promotional push, but they are able to prepare for and control their own reactions to it. And that the most important part.

Is it the illusion of control to realize how much is beyond your control, and to take steps to work within those constrictions? I don’t think so.