More on desperation and comparisons

First of all, if anyone with the artistic abilities God saw fit to deny me ever wants to make something as cool as Kate’s drawings of Uglies characters (as created by Scott Westerfeld, who posted on my blog yesterday… pause for fangirl squealing) for Secret Society Girl books, have at it. The ones of David and Zane, especially, made me feel all nummy. I think Kate’s David has a sort of Huck Finn air, don’t you?

So the conversation two posts down has devolved into a sort of chat about writerly desperation, which is a topic I’ve covered here before, and one that Jo Leigh attacks brilliantly at today’s RTB column (as with the Kate link, above, it opens in a new window, for Gina’s — and Gina’s cat’s — reading ease).

The part I found most intersting about her column was this:

I hate to say it, but I think RWA fosters this mistaken belief. I’m not exactly sure how, but it has something to do with the competitiveness, with the rush to be published. It has less to do with a worthy apprenticeship than a race to a finish line that leaves people disheartened, depressed and/or sick with envy, none of which fosters creativity. Because the game is all about getting published now, then whoever can bestow this state is the savior. Not a partner.

Now, I’ve noticed this “race” Jo mentions. And not just in RWA. Whenever people freak out if someone mentions “average time it takes to get published” or spends time they should be using to work on their craft to comb the internet looking for absolutely meaningless statistics of acceptance rates, they are succumbing to this kind of desperation. (The statistics are an especially big pet peeve of mine. WTF, really? Here’s the only statistic you need to know about: if your book is really good, you have a good chance of getting it published. If your book is bad, you have a piss poor chance. After that, you can start applying lottery like stats.)

There is no publishing race. Or thre is, but it’s a race with as many courses, shortcuts, black holes, time warps, cheats, hacks, you name it, as the most in depth video game. Let’s present a hypothetical. Say there is a hypothetical unpublished author who has been trying with all of his or her might to get published. Say this hypothetical author has been writing manuscripts, working on her craft, etc. etc. etc., and just hasn’t gotten that lucky combo of timing whereby the right manuscript hits the right editor’s desk at just the right time. All around her, her friends are selling, and selling, and selling. Their books are coming out, books that she saw in infant stages, back when they were newbies to the publishing game, and she was their highly experienced mentor. Maybe she has an agent, even. Maybe she has dozens of contest wins. Maybe for the past few years, when she’s been at author’s booksignings, people have written, “You’re next!” inside the cover of their books.

Life is hard for this author. When is it going to be her turn? She’s been running just as hard as everyone else, and people are actually lapping her around the track! She’s lost the race, hasn’t she? There’s no way she can catch up.

Wrong. The only way she loses is if she stops running. Because one day, as this hypothetical author jogs along, watching people “lap” her, she gets a call from a publishing house that wants to strap a turbo charged rocket to her back. They want to publish her book. And not just her one book, but maybe a few more. And they want to publish it big. And they want to pay her a lot of money for it. And they want to know how fast she can write them, because they want to put them out every few months starting next year.

It doesn’t matter how far behind she was. She just got caught up. You can’t make this about a race, because not everyone is running the same course. You can’t make this about comparisons, because it’s not just apples and oranges, it’s apples, oranges, broccoli, chicken wings, and ice cream sundaes.

So strap on your blinders so you don’t see the other runners (including that one who just got taken down, beaten to a bloody pulp right there on the track, and had her books pulled from the shelves — oh wait, I’m sidestepping current issues, aren’t I?) and keep your eye on YOUR course.