Archive for July, 2010
In 2005, I asked the author of my then-favorite book series one simple question: “What do you like to read?”
“Oh, I don’t have to read anymore,” she told me. “There’s no time. I don’t read when I’m writing, and I’m always writing.”
I let the words sink in slowly, not sure what to make of them. Shock came first, then disappointment. And finally, confusion. A writer who doesn’t read? It didn’t make any sense.
One of the first bits of good advice I was ever given was to read everything. Read outside your genre. Read nonfiction. Read transcripts of television shows. Read the newspaper. Read the back of the cereal box in the morning. Read your shampoo bottle in the shower. Read. Read, read, read, read, read.
Read.
And yet, there she was, a pint-sized bestseller, laughing off my question as if it were the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. A writer who reads? Ha! What an amateur!
To be honest, I kind of feel sorry for this author. My mother forced me to take piano lessons when I was a kid, and I hated it. I hated practicing. I hated going for the lesson. I hated the recitals. I hated everything about it. Even when she started paying me per minute to practice and play, it did little to entice me to care. It wasn’t long before even the money wasn’t enough anymore, and I hate to think that this author is in that same place, going through the motions, just to collect a paycheck. What an unsatisfying career that must be. What an unsatisfying life that must be.
And how foolish she was to think her readers wouldn’t notice.
Trust me on this: readers notice. Readers notice everything.
Readers know what TV shows you watch. They know what music you listen to. They know your hopes, your fears, and sometimes even the brand of soap you use. They know if you’re happy, or if you’re sad, or if you’re rushing to make that deadline looming over the horizon. They know if you read only romance, or if you branch out a bit. They know if you have pets, and if you’re a dog person or a cat person, or both. They know if you believe the story you’re telling, if you feel it in your gut, or if you’re struggling to make sense of the whole thing. They know, because you tell them…in your writing.
Characters and stories aren’t plucked from thin air. They come from within. They’re experiences and emotions, personified. And if the only story you have inside you to tell is that reading books is a chore, then your book is going to be one helluva chore to read. No eight-figure advance nor outrageous marketing budget can change that.
Just something to think about.
After work last night, I stopped at the local Borders to pick up Suzanne Brockmann’s latest, Infamous. I used to stop in during my lunch but found that new releases usually were still being unpacked. After five, it’s pretty much a given that everything available is on display.
The bookstore had people in it, but wasn’t what you would call crowded. There wasn’t even a line at the register. Most people were browsing, and there were the annoying few who sit down and read the book. (This is one of my pet peeves. Yes, do browse a chapter to see if you like the author’s voice and, by all means, flip to the middle to see if the action is picking up, but don’t read the entire book in the bookstore so you don’t have to buy it.)
Anyway, I looked for Infamous. I checked the racks of new paperbacks, backtracked to the new hardcovers, and then went to the romance section and searched. No luck. The search computer was already in use. No one was at the information desk.
An older gentleman with a store nametag was wandering around straightening shelves so I asked him if it was available. First, he asked me if I had checked the new release section. A reasonable question, and I replied that I had looked there, as well as the other places I expected to find it, so could he check the computer for availability as the customer one was still in use.
He sighed as if I was asking the biggest favor in the world. By this time, I’m thinking, this is your job, pal but trying to be kind. Maybe he has a headache, or it’s been the day from hell. But hey, I am a customer and I didn’t ask for the moon. In fact, I even smiled while making my request and added ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.
He reluctantly checked the computer and confirmed that it was a new release and available in the store. “Great,” I said. “Where?”
He looked again and his lip curled. “It’s in romance,” he said, all but spitting out the word and wiping his mouth clean with the back of his hand.
I hate when people say ‘romance’ in that way. I also hate when they say or infer the following in various fashions: You actually read that crap? You waste your money on that junk? Shame on you. You should read real books. Stop wasting your time. Or best of all, OMG – you read PORN?
Come on, people. I could spout statistics about the financial success of romance fiction until your ears bleed. I could point out that there is nothing cheesy or dirty about the journey of two people falling in love and building a life together. Quite the opposite, in fact.
But this post isn’t about people’s skewed perceptions of the evil romance industry. This is about booksellers who don’t do their jobs.
We hear it everywhere: with this stinker of an economy, people are keeping a close grip on their wallets. People no longer have a lot of disposable income. They are careful about what they purchase and in a tight economy, luxuries are the first things to be jettisoned. Things have to be marketed carefully and you have to work for the sale.
After spitting ‘romance’ at me, Mr. Bookseller waved vaguely at the bookshelves off to the side and continued on his way. He didn’t lead me to the rack; he didn’t help me find the book. I did finally find it, in the horror section, which is right before the romance shelves, and, apparently, where new romances are shelved. Darn, why didn’t I think to look there first? There is a lot of romance in the appropriate section, so I guess this is where the overflow landed this week.
After Mr. Bad Bookseller, I should have left the store without making the purchase to prove the point, but I was tired and wanted to go home and read my book. So I go up front and notice that two registers are open for business. No lines, no waiting. Except … Mr. Bookseller is manning the open register.
It’s par for my course, really.
One day I’ll be technically competent and have apps on my phone to download coupons and everything else on a moment’s notice, but until then I’ll be printing out the Borders coupons and bringing them into the store. However, I find it annoying to make a purchase on a Tuesday and come home to find an email with a coupon was delivered to my inbox while I was at the store. (Borders, if you’re reading, please hook your coupons to my Borders card. I would be grateful.)
So I get up to the counter and ask, “Would you know if any coupons are available?” because the rest of the staff –if you are a regular customer- will use the store coupon if you don’t have yours. At this Borders, the staff is generally pretty darn good about taking care of the people buying books and music and everything else for sale.
Not this guy. His reply to my question: “I wouldn’t know” was delivered in the best scornful tone I ever heard. (My God, this loser is looking for a COUPON to buy her trashy novel! I’ve seen it all now.)
By this time, I’m thinking, Wow you are the worst salesperson I have ever seen. I can’t believe you work with the public!
He rang up my book –sadly, couponless– and handed it to me along with the receipt. At that moment, his entire demeanor changed. He flashed a smile and said, “There’s a survey on the receipt. Please fill it out and let us know how we’re doing.”
You’re kidding, right? Do you really want me to tell management about your behavior? No problem, Mr. Bookseller, I’d be happy to. In detail.
I took half of last week off and did NOTHING, and by the time Sunday rolled around, I was chomping at the bit for something to do.
I kind of like that feeling at first, but after a while it starts getting to me. Which is kind of what my cousin says about being pregnant.
Let met tell you a little bit about my cousin. She’s two years older than me, and the only one of nineteen grandchildren to inherit our grandmother’s red hair. She has three kids–all boys–whom she carried until she practically collapsed from the weight. The first time she was pregnant, she was sixteen, and three weeks after her due date she still hadn’t popped. I wanted to shoot her to put her out of her misery.
I’m pretty sure she would’ve gone along with it.
The last 20% of any writing project feels a lot like that last month of being pregnant. By that time, I’m usually sore and cranky and tired and there is absolutely no good in the world anymore, because if there were good in the world, I would just fucking GIVE BIRTH already. That’s when I look at my calendar and realize I’m a month (sometimes two) past my deadline, and I’m still at the same place I was three weeks ago. I start to question whether or not the damn thing will ever come out, and even if it does, probably there will be something really bad wrong with it, because there’s no way in hell it can stay in there THAT LONG without growing an extra appendage or two.
It’s a strange feeling when you’re pregnant with a book. I used to see it a lot when I wrote fan-fiction, all these people who obviously had no more room in their bellies for other peoples’ ideas still trying to cram them in there somewhere. They were afraid of moving on. Afraid of being forgotten. Afraid of trying and failing. Eventually, they would explode on everyone in a fit of rage. No award, nor review, was good enough anymore. None of it could make up for the fact that they were in their tenth month of being miserable, and they didn’t know what to do about it.
A few years ago, my friend Tara and I used to joke that in order to sell a book, you first had to publicly announce you were retiring from writing. That’s what it seemed like, anyway, because whenever we would troll the boards where our critique group met, there would always be someone there who had retired from writing and–whoops!–gotten a contract the very next day.
“I trashed all of my files, threw out all of my CDs, burned my rejection letters,” one woman wrote. “I took a temp job at Sears and the next day [some bigwig editor] called me up. Does anyone have a copy of [story she sold but then burnt at the stake]?”
If you pay attention, you’ll notice this isn’t an unusual story. I used to think it was because writers are a melodramatic lot, and everyone vows to quit writing after every book, anyway, so obviously it’s a skewed statistic. Now I wonder if maybe those people were just in their tenth month…four weeks, three days, nine hours, fifty-six minutes, and two seconds overdue from being where they want to be in their careers. So fucking pregnant that if that final push didn’t get that book out of them, they were going to chain a pair of tongs to a Chevy and put the pedal to the metal. And if THAT didn’t get it out of them, they were going to double back and run themselves over.
See what I mean about being a melodramatic bunch? But you so know you’ve been there. We’ve all been there.
And if you think about it, it’s not always a bad thing. It’s just your internal clock shifting gears is all. The other day, someone on Twitter asked me how I knew when a story was finished, and the answer was really quite simple:
I start reaching for the tongs…
