On Dreaming Small

I've always thought of myself as realistic. I had some "impossible" dreams when growing up, but I only ever halfheartedly attempted to accomplish them, because I knew they were impossible. Just my imagination running wild.

I ideally wanted to earn money from home, writing my own fiction—or from editing others' books, preferably fiction. I had some age goals that I missed, but I didn't try to hit them, either. I worked on my ability, only halfheartedly submitting my work anywhere. I assumed I was too young to be any good at it.

So I dreamed of making money writing and proofreading/copyediting from home, and thereby blundered into the joys of freelancing through happenstance I can only thank God for.

And I tumbled into that dream before I'd even left my teens. Then discovered from a local company that I was better at proofreading than folks who were older and had more credentials, the year I was old enough to legally drink alcohol.

So I developed another dream. I saw the possibilities in self-publishing (particularly e-books) years ago, and I kept an eye on POD and e-publishing. I dreamt of a day when self-publishing would be affordable.

That dream's now here, too.

And I'm currently editing fiction regularly as part of my day job—something I'd once never thought would happen, since I couldn't afford to take an internship at some press.

So here I am, coming up on my 25th year, and I've accomplished all my dreams but making a living from fiction writing.

And I wasn't even trying all that hard.

How much could I have gotten done if I'd tried? Even this past year, I spent entire weeks sick and unable to work, but I got so much done.

I don't want to look back on the latter half of my twenties and wonder what on earth I did, those years.

Lord willing, I have years ahead of me. I keep working at it, and I'll eventually earn money—even an income!—from writing fiction.

It's time to dream bigger.

But my habit of dreaming small is hindering me. A 6-figure income by age 30, or 3 concurrent titles on the NYT bestseller list, are dreams I develop, then wave away. They're too insane. (What would I do with all that money, anyway?)

I can't help but feel that it'll do me good to keep them in mind, though.

Even if the only dream I can bring myself to reach for is a dream of earning enough passive income from fiction by age 26 to comfortably pay my bills. ("Passive income" meaning "royalties".)

At least I'm reaching.

What are your dream accomplishments? (Remember, "dreams" are things you can't control.)

—Misti

Darkness Too Visible?

The Wall Street Journal created a bit of an uproar this past weekend with its article "Darkness Too Visible". The article presumably laments how "dark" graphic topics and language are prominent in modern young adult fiction, and how parents who protest are accused of "banning" the books. (I'll explain that "presumably" in a minute.)

Folks like Josin L. McQuein and Pam van Hylckama Vlieg have posted rebuttals. Josin says that yes, topics are dark, and they well should be—only by putting the darkness under the spotlight will we actually be able to drive it back. Pam says that she wishes she had such dark YA available when she was a young adult, because then she would've known she wasn't alone.

The #yasaves hashtag on Twitter is filled with people who agree that the "dark" fiction has benefits. People also point out that the WSJ article might be an intentional attention grab, because it ignores the many "light" YA titles that are widely available.

I find myself in my usual middleman position. I actually find myself agreeing with everyone, here.

How is this possible? Because the two sides are talking about two different things. The WSJ doesn't do a good job of making the actual crux of the issue obvious, burying it under extremist comments, which is what's produced the wildfire response.

The crux of the issue: Some people find "dark" fiction useful, and others don't want to read it or to have their kids scarred by it.

Sure, some kids can handle it. But some can't. (Yet.)

I don't care for graphic language or sexuality, but I like dark topics. But I've had a fairly "light" home life. When I was 12, I had less exposure to objectionable language and sex scenes than was contained some PG-13 movies. I'm a visual learner, particularly from typed monochromatic words, meaning what I read impacts my memory. Reading graphic YA fiction wasn't educational for me—it was scarring. I talk to myself, and one day I caught myself muttering a curse.

I don't curse. I had to go cold turkey on reading anything that looked like it would have objectionable language to get the word out of my head. Which leads to another complaint that was in the WSJ article: finding "clean" YA fiction is hard.

Oh, sure, there are titles to find. But how on earth do you find them? Books don't exactly come with advisories. More than once, I've read a book and been startled about halfway through when some foul-mouthed character enters the scene. It makes me feel cheated, because the first half of the book is false advertising for the rest.

These days, "dark" is what's chic, so "dark" is what's before our faces. People remember negatives better than they do positives, and "dark" is a negative for some people. That means they remember the "dark" books they see better than they do the "light" ones.

Yes, "dark" fiction is a good thing. Yes, "light" fiction is also a good thing. And yes, "light" fiction, though it exists, is a bit hard to find at the moment.

—Misti

• "Darkness Too Visible" - Wall Street Journal
• "Darkness Too Visible" - Josin L. McQuein
• "TMI – YA Saves" - Pam van Hylckama Vlieg
• #yasaves

Disinformation and Publishing

Yes, that's "Disinformation and Publishing", not or. First, let's define some terms in Carradee-speak, so we're on the same page.

disinformation: false information intended to mislead
propaganda: biased information intended to mislead
misinformation: false information

Name a topic, and you can find misinformation about it, which some people use as disinformation. In my opinion, someone who spreads misinformation is only spreading disinformation if they know full well that the information is false.

So. An author writes a novel and intentionally posits it as a memoir? Disinformation.

An author who thinks that their Amazon ranking of #500,000 refers to how many copies have sold? Misinformation. (For the record, I've not seen anyone claim this, but I've heard it happens.)

For a non-publishing example, at my most recent surgery, I told the surgeon point blank "Do not give me Lortab; I'm allergic to Lortab due to the Tylenol in it, but I'm fine with hydrocodone."—an attending nurse even reminded him when he wrote the order—and what did I get?

Lortab.

And after that ensued other screw-ups, like me being ignored when I pointed to my surgery cut and said "Doesn't this look infected?" (It was.) But I know another nurse who's worked with that surgeon, and according to her, he does a fantastic job in surgery. Do I think she's lying or even spreading disinformation when she says that? No. Maybe the guy's a whiz in surgery but absentminded otherwise. Maybe he was distracted because his mother was dying. (Not saying that his mother was dying—the point is, I don't know.)

But in publishing discussions, particularly of late, I've been seeing some folks be downright dismissive of those on the other side of the fence, saying they're unreliable, untrustworthy, spouting nonsense, etc.

That dismissive attitude worries me.

When you have a strong opinion, it's easy to think that anyone and everyone with the opposing opinion, spouting examples from their own experience that you've never yourself experienced, is spreading disinformation.

Yes, your experience might be vast, but does that really mean that someone else (who might also have a ton of experience in the industry) is unreliable because their experiences differ from yours?

When your experience is vast or long in an industry—or even a hobby—it's easy to get defensive. You don't realize things are changing, or implications of things you are seeing. You don't want to. You may not even be able to see what's happening, because that takes an ability to innovate, to see beyond the framework that currently defines your industry or hobby. (ETA: It's also easy to see changes and leap on them and go all doomsday.)

The last day job I had was for a few months in retail. I noticed that sales were remarkably slow. I wondered if sales were slower than usual—because from my extremely rough estimates of how much we were earning versus probable expenses, they couldn't afford to keep me. I noticed that a good week or two before I got laid off.

That isn't the first time I've noticed warning signs, either, though I usually can't tell you what, exactly, cued me in.

I don't think I'm particularly observant. Seriously, I tend to not notice that a bookcase is dusty unless I stop and think to check. But I'm willing to see things I don't want to acknowledge.

I have several in-person friends who read voraciously. None had heard of Amanda Hocking before I told them about her. Only two of them have ever read an e-book that I'm aware of (other than mine). None have e-readers. Yes, this is an entirely non-scientific sampling, but it's my experience. (It tells me that anybody who only e-publishes is missing out on a probably sizeable percent of the market.)

I've seen short story markets with contracts that end up taking more rights than a casual reader might realize. (Which makes me pay attention when certain bloggers give alerts about particular clauses they're finding in novel contracts—and I do mean more bloggers than Kristine Kathryn Rusch.)

I've seen the claims that a favorite author's novels aren't selling, when I've encountered many, many readers who tell me the books are exactly what they want to read—but they never knew about them because the publisher marketed the books as the wrong genre. (Which tells me that publishers' marketing methods don't suit certain types of stories.)

I've seen agents express confusion over how publishing clients' backlists for them with a 50/50 split could be a conflict of interest. (Which tells me those particular agents are either liars or not very business savvy, which gives me concern for the authors relying on those agents for business advice.)

Yes, I'm young. Yes, I'm a self-published author. I'm sure some readers will take those details as justifications to dismiss my point.

But I've been a freelancer for longer than you probably expect, if you know my age. I've been a proofreader/copyeditor for a newsletter company (which closed, by the way), which reinforced what I already knew about the workload publishers handle in editing, copyediting, proofreading, layout, graphics, customer satisfaction, etc.

I have my own experiences, just like the rest of you. My specific experiences differ from yours, and the conclusions I've drawn may differ from yours. My conclusions even draw on more experiences than my own. (Do you really need to personally see what would happen if you added cream to sweet tea with lemon, or can you trust my experience when I say the cream will curdle? …I'd forgotten I'd put lemon in the tea, okay?)

That difference in experience does not make either of our viewpoints disinformation. Propaganda, maybe, if we're claiming our experiences match everyone's, but not disinformation.

Can we stop the dismissive attitude, folks? Because if we keep the "So-and-so's experience is illegitimate" mindset, I have a feeling the real nastiness is yet to come.

—Misti

Negativity: Only Hurts You

Roni Lauren had a post today on writers judging other writers.

I once was one of those kids who complained about her little brother all the time. I decided as a teenager that, whenever I caught myself complaining, I'd force myself to say something good about him. I'd noticed even then that people notice and remember negatives better than positives.

It was hard. At first, I actually had to pause the conversation while I searched for something nice to say. I'd come up with things like "He can be helpful, sometimes, when he isn't more interested in teasing me." But the more I forced myself to practice this, the easier it became, and the more good things I noticed about my brother, and the less often I found myself complaining about him.

Over the years, other things have popped up that I've caught myself complaining about, though my friends are usually the ones who get those earfuls, and evidently I must be an interesting ranter or something because they actually encourage me and say I have reason for venting when I realize what I'm doing and apologize.

Negatives are easier to see than positives, unless you're biased towards a work (Ooo! UF w/ unreliable narrator!), in which case it can be easy to skip the negatives. My friends know that they'd better have time if they ask me about a story, because I often discuss a book or series for a half hour or more, naming specific good and bad things about them.

Take Stephenie Meyer. I actually respect her. Did I find her Twilight series incredibly melodramatic? Yep. But I read it through a veil of irony and thereby enjoyed it. After reading book 1 and the excerpt of book 2, I remember thinking: "Edward's personality so far would make him leave Bella to keep her safe, but that would make readers mad. I wonder what she'll do instead."

Upon reading book 2, I was actually shocked that she followed Edward's personality to the logical conclusion. Stephenie Meyer wrote precisely the story she wanted to tell, even when she knew some readers would be unhappy with her. (Breaking Dawn's anti-climactic climax, for example.)

Look, there are reasons for the bestseller lists. Okay, maybe author ABC is clichéd, and ZXY's sentence structure does resemble an academic paper [speaking of which, US or UK? Academic papers have different standards and appropriate writing styles between countries]. But instead of ranting and raving about why you can't get published when you have "perfect" grammar and sentence structure [yeah, 'cause that's possible], evaluate what those bestsellers are doing right.

Because they are doing something right. Otherwise, nobody would be wanting to read what they're selling.

Focus on those somethings. You might actually learn something that helps you write better.

Besides, do you really want to insult potential fans by dissing their favorite books?

What are your thoughts?

—Misti