I was watching television this evening and there was a commercial for a car of some sort. In the ad a giant claw descends with a crash and lifts an old junker up into the air. From underneath the crappy car a shiny new car drops.
At the bottom of the screen, in fine print: Do Not Attempt.
Yeah, Bing. The Google-killer. The Decision Engine. $100 million marketing budget.
Bing.
Advice needed!
Well, it’s official; I’ve paid my money and everything. I’m going to this year’s World Fantasy convention, and I’m not at all sure how to prepare. It’s the sort of event I should have been attending for years now, and being able to do stuff like this is a fortunate side-effect of living in North America.
On that subject, aren’t these things supposed to have wacky names that end in ‘con’?
So what is this convention? As far as I can tell, it’s an event where boatloads of writers and publishers and agents and other industry folk gather for three days of… stuff. Elbow-rubbing. Looking for deals. Writers trying to get published, publishers trying to find writers that don’t suck. Panel discussions and whatnot. A few key people who are paid to come and encourage the masses. Others who have come simply for the love of the genre.
If all that sounds pretty vague, it’s because I’ve never been part of one of these things before. It’s an important part of my chosen profession, however, and contacts I make at this thing could turn my career. Or not. Or maybe I’ll make an impression with someone that pays off years from now. You never know.
I do know it pays to be prepared. To have things to hand to publishers and agents that they will love, things that at a glance will tell them that they are just dying to read my novel. “Stop the presses!” they will shout into mobile phones, “we have to rearrange the 2010 catalog!”
Another opportunity I have is to impress people in person in ways that anonymous submissions never can. I can talk to important people and leave them thinking “That guy’s an intelligent, articulate guy with a refreshing vision of the fantasy novel.” This will simultaneously be the easiest and most difficult thing for me to do. Once I get into a conversation with the right people, I’m sure I’ll do well. (I’ve been lying awake at night devising my elevator pitch.) The thing is, I’m really, really bad at getting into those conversations in the first place. I’ve been to other industry conventions and utterly bombed at networking (even at the conference about networks).
So, anyone out there have any suggestions? Both for specifics that I should take with me and for the more general hob-bobbing? Any help will be greatly appreciated!
I’ve been watching more bootleg American sports broadcasts, and once again I heard a claim that went “The best qualifier qualifier qualifier qualifier car in the world!” Many cars claim to be the “best qualifier qualifier in their class!” which makes me think that the advertising guys just aren’t trying hard enough. All those adjectives to only stand out in a field of ten or less? What’s the point? If a car’s not the best in the world, I don’t want to waste my time with it.
But hey, life isn’t just about cars. One hears about the “best blah blah blah blah beer in the world,” and “the best yadda yadda yadda cutlery in the world.” Given the right qualifiers, anything can be the best in the world.
Or anyone. It is time for all of us to embrace our limiters and be the best in the world. In fact, why stop at world? Just add the qualifier “terrestrial” or “human” and you can be the best in the Universe! I haven’t got my description quite worked out yet — it’s tougher than it sounds — but here’s my start: I am indisputably the best terrestrial introspective traveling blogger and science fiction writer with his own word processor in the Universe!
I’ll probably work on that a bit. It’s a little humbling adding enough things to guarantee that the description is unique. Good thing I have that word processor. I’d love to hear what you guys are the best of.
Putting your own name on otherwise ordinary clothing is not design. Yes, Tommy Hilfiger, I’m talking to you, and a host of other narcissistic fashion hacks who wish they were you.
Remember the station wagon? For a long time it was the perfect familymobile, with room for the kids and space in back for the new barbecue. It was the perfect icon of the American suburbs, but served faithfully on Route 66. The station wagon was America.
Over the years things changed, technology advanced, and the minivan rose to replace the station wagon. That made sense; the minivan performed the same functions and did a better job doing it. But America was getting richer and people wanted sport as well as utility. The auto manufacturers were happy to supply the illusion of sport to the power-hungry yuppies. Take a minivan, add larger tires and an engine that produces more power than you will ever need, and you have an SUV. (At the time, SUV meant ‘minivan with bad mileage’.) In fact, more power was not a requirement. All that was necessary was larger, more expensive and less efficient tires. Suddenly, you’re cool.
Let me deflect some folks by pointing out that some SUV’s aren’t macho minivans but rather relabled trucks. Why? They are trucks and they do a truck’s job. All utility.
Gradually, the SUV market has gone two directions. One we will call the Hummer Vector. Vehicles so impractical that people buy them just to prove that they are too damn wealthy to be encumbered by issues like precticality. The other direction I will dub the Station Wagon Vector. It’s been going on a long time, and apparently now the vehicles on this path have ditched the stigma of being SUV’s in favor of being ‘crossovers’.
We will ignore that Sport/Utility was itself a crossover…
No we won’t. Crossover from what? And to what? Utility/Sport-Utility? What is being crossed over?
Here’s my challenge to the marketing boys in the auto companies. Embrace the station wagon. Those guys buying cars, they’ve forgotten how much they hated sharing the back seat with thier sisters, and the road has regained a romantic aura. Those great road trips of their childhoods were in station wagons. The car that tamed the west.
I personally guarantee that if Ford or Chevy came out with a really good station wagon, with somewhat retro styling and the same name they used in the sixties, it would sell like hotcakes. Call it a station wagon, and use the power of nostalgia to sell it. Before too long, people will realize that the car makes sense on its own terms, and our dalliance with silly cars not well-suited for any practical use will come to an end.
Then in a few years you can reestablish the minivan as all retro and cool.
So I’m watching a little bit of illegal television right now, consuming the NFL’s product and watching their ads despite their best efforts. One of the ads that the NFL does not want me to see is for Nissan. Apparently they now have “The Best New Small Crossover of 2008.” (Apparently “crossover” is the new word for “station wagon”. At least they’ve stopped pretending that they’re sport utility vehicles.)
Just how many new small crossovers were there this year? More than one?
A while back, while on a road trip, I wrote a message to the boys at Gatorade. In a nutshell, I told them that all the flavors were silly, and many of the names of the flavors were downright stupid. To that I have this to add:
Lemon-lime and strawberry mixed together are awful. Making the result the same color as regular lemon-lime is criminal.
If private industry could sponsor NASA projects for the naming rights, I bet the space boys could make some pretty good money. Candy companies would make particularly good candidates for sponsorship, what with Mars and Milky Way and so forth. The one I want to see? That’s right, you guessed it… the Double Bubble Hubble Space Telescope.
There was a quality issue with some of the crap I sell through Café Press. Today I finally got around to doing something about it. Here is the (almost) exact text of the final message I sent to Jennifer, my support representative (one rather awful writing mistake fixed):
Hey, Jennifer,
I just want to waste a little more of your time to say that I am quite impressed with your swift and friendly service. Please forward the following message to your boss:
Dear Jennifer’s boss,
You’ve got a keeper there. I know you can’t give her a raise just on my say-so, but maybe next Friday you can let her off a little early. I think she’s earned it.
Yours in commerce,
Jerry Seeger
I’ve been concentrating the last few days on sales and marketing, trying to connect my words with people who may actually want to pay me for them. Short stories are (relatively) simple — a potential publisher (or overworked minion) reads the story and decides if it’s worthwhile. So, for that effort I need only a simple cover letter with a one or two sentence blurb about the story, a bit of biographical data, and the story does the rest, living or dying on its own merits.
A novel is a more difficult sell. Nobody has time to read all the crappy writing that comes over the threshold every day, so the evaluation process has been streamlined. This makes things more difficult for the deserving writer, but it makes things possible for the agents and editors (and their minions) who have better things to do than read bad fiction. (Better things like, for instance, reading my fiction.)
The chaff is separated from the wheat based on a few criteria; the initial submission to an agent is the minimum amount of material required to prove that the writing is not so badly flawed that it’s not worth any further consideration. The reader has a giant ‘NO’ stamp hovering over the page during the entire evaluation. An agent wants to know a few key facts: 1) Can this guy write? Does he have command of the language, with coherent paragraphs and facile use of imagery? 2) Can he put together a coherent narrative — an actual story with a beginning, a middle, and an end? 3) Are there interesting people who grow or change? 4) (bonus) Is the writer a pro who will be reasonable to work with?
Question 1 is answered with a sample of of the actual work. This is often (but not always) the first three chapters of the story. The bonus question 4 is answered with a polite, informative, and coherent cover letter. That leaves two questions which much be answered by a separate piece of writing, a marketing piece drafted solely for this purpose, called the ‘brief synopsis’. I have been wrestling with this beast off an on for more than a year, now. It is not a simple exercise. How do you distill a whole damn novel into a few paragraphs, give some idea of characters and events, and somehow retain the drama you just used tens of thousands of words to build?
I had a synopsis I was satisfied with, but increasingly I discovered that the definition of ‘brief’ that my first effort was based on was by no means typical. Back in I went with the text machete, but when I chopped out a bunch, the remainder wasn’t compelling. I started from scratch. Somewhere back in time on this blog you can read about my pleasure with the result. I managed to maintain this happy feeling for quite some time by avoiding rereading it. Now I’m pretty sure that although it sucks less than the first attempt, it still sucks.
Quite by accident I stumbled across a description of a synopsis that carried one helpful bit of information that none of the others ever did: Start with a paragraph that describes the structure of your story. The Monster Within takes place in four parts that are defined by the progression of the main character through four stages of personal change. By starting with that simple fact, then by describing the four stages, the synopsis is much more coherent and focuses attention on the character-driven nature of the story.
That synopsis advice runs counter to other help articles I’ve read, but hit me as such an obvious and practical tip that I wonder why I never did that before. Perhaps I even did, but then read too many “how to write a synopsis” pieces that focussed on simply condensing the story. (Actually, I still haven’t gone back to read my current synopsis. Maybe I snuck the structural information in there anyway. I’ll check after I finish the first draft of the new one.)
Once more must I muster all my skill to write a nonfiction article about a work of fiction, that somehow is a faithful representation as well as a compelling read in its own right. This time I’m ignoring the advice of all those helpful ‘how-to’ articles, and just trying to be natural. It’s been going pretty well, although I haven’t checked the length yet. That could come as an ugly surprise.
I should say it was going pretty well, right up until I got to the end. I left out so many plot points through the course of the synopsis that I’m stumped about how to make the ending make sense. Instead, I am sitting here writing about writing about my novel. (I suppose I’ll have to leave a comment about writing this episode.)
It just occurred to me that I could write a completely different ending that works for the synopsis. Once someone bothers to read the whole novel, the mismatch won’t matter… right?
Now that Jer’s Novel Writer is selling just a little more briskly than I had hoped, which sure is nice (my warm gratitude to all those folks who have purchased a key… you guys rock!), I can breathe a little easier about the whole eating-and-paying-rent thing. It will be longer before the money runs out.
You want one. You know you do.
And now, today, a whole new revenue stream opened up! Yowza! Yes, the laws of statistics dictated that sooner or later it would happen. With billions of people bouncing around on the Internet, and some percentage of those people either intoxicated or otherwise mentally challenged, it was only a matter of time before factors converged and someone clicked the fateful button.
Someone bought a Suicide Squirrel Alert Coffee Mug.
I’m not sure how long I’ve had the link over there in the sidebar, but it’s easily been more than two years. Piker Press will put a link to Jer’s Junk up when I have something in the current issue (thanks guys!) so it’s quite possible that this sale was related to my Peek of the Week over there this week.
Yep, 2 1/2 years, one mug sold. It doesn’t sound terribly impressive, but when you consider it in terms of percentage growth, this year has been explosive! And don’t worry, you can still be the first on your planet to sport a Suicide Squirrel t-shirt!
I think I’ll spend some time today on the Muddled University merchandise.
Finally, thanks to those folks who start their Amazon shopping adventure by clicking the link over there in the sidebar.
There comes a time in any geek’s life when he (usually it’s a he) wants to say, “make these two folders the same.” Of course it’s not quite that simple, but it’s not terribly complex.
Not until you look at the software available for the task these days, anyway, and this isn’t just a Mac thing. Oh, there are utilities out there, all right, but they all have two things in common: they do too much and they cost too much. I didn’t want to pay thirty dollars, not when I could spend two days of my life instead. That’s what my life is worth, these days.
So, over the last couple of days I made a folder merge utility. It came out pretty nice. I thought I’d put it up at the Hut as freeware, sort of a promotional thing.
But…
It deletes files. Of course it does; when you synchronize folders and files don’t match something’s going to get deleted. It’s in the nature of the program to delete files. (The fancier programs allow you to reconcile the differences between files. That’s why they cost money.)
But…
Someone’s going to delete the wrong files. With this sort of software that’s a dead certainty. I show in living color when a newer file will be replaced by an older one, but in this day and age is that enough? The software itself is pretty solid now. It does exactly what it says it does. I don’t think that’s enough.
Tonight I was watching the Finns skate against the Czechs. It was a decent contest, but Finns had my boys pretty much outclassed. My Bili Tigri goaltender gave up three, but that doesn’t reflect the chances the Finns had. None of that matters.
I have noticed in a few international matches that Garnier Fructis, the shampoo, is a major sponsor. At first this struck me as odd. In general, hockey fans are not the crowd I’d be selling fancy shampoo to.
Unless…
Fructis Mullet formula.
Pay dirt, baby.
I’ve been trying to think of ways to sell the sort of writing I do here in the blog (only more polished, of course). I’m not coming up with much. Travel mags in general want articles about fun places, not someone’s experiences in them. They are not looking for what goes by the name “narrative nonfiction”; instead they want descriptions (and photos) of local landmarks and tourist attractions. They don’t care about the pretty bartender in some back alley pub, or my musings on a conversation overheard, or about a man with no nose.
I suppose I could write in a more traditional travel style, but there are lots of people gunning for those gigs (“Paid to travel? Cool!”), and while few of them are very good, that still leaves more than enough to fill the void, people whose style is naturally more matter-of-fact than mine. Articles for those who actually go to the attractions when they visit a place are best written by people who travel the same way, rather than some guy who prefers to hang out in dark and quiet bars and watch the locals.
Magazines and Newspapers often have columnists who are more or less free to ramble, as long as they keep the focus relevant to the readers, which generally means “local”. The only place I’d be able to contribute something like that would be a rag catering to ex-pats in Prague, but in general my “local” is much different than theirs, and when I write about how annoying ex-pats can be, it may not go over very well. Still, it’s something I should look into. Maybe someone’s looking for an irascible voice that will piss people off. The other tricky part about that is that I would have to lead a more interesting life, and write about it with fewer words.
Gonzo Travel Magazine, that’s what I need. Maybe Letters From a Bowling Alley, or perhaps Rock Stacking World. That would be a sweet gig, traveling the world on assignment, hanging out in rocky places, meeting other stackers, and just generally screwing around. Remind me to search Writer’s Market for rock stacking.
Any of you guys have any ideas? Do you know any magazines or newspapers that actually exist that might like this sort of thing?
Meanwhile, one of the waiters here at the Bowling alley is blindfolded. I bet there’s a story there.
For your protection, Science has established the above threat level. Adjust your duct tape supplies accordingly.
Observations
Writing
Idle Chit-Chat
Rumblings from the Secret Labs
Get-Poor-Quick Schemes
