Stacia Kane

*except when it is. Which isn’t often.

Lemme ‘splain.

More and more lately I’ve been hearing this argument, or discussion, or comment. Self-publishing is just like punk rock! Because anyone can do it. Because self-published authors are taking the bull by the horns and doing it themselves! Fuck the Publishing Man! Rock on!

And it’s something I’ve wanted to write about for some time, but it was this Genreville blog post in PW that finally inspired me to do so.

Yes, there are a few similarities, or rather, there is one way in which they are alike. But for the most part they are vastly different, and this is what irritates me and makes me want to pull out my hair sometimes. Because the differences are vast and wide.

Before I start, let me give you a quick run-down of my credentials to even discuss this topic. I was heavily involved in the punk scene for, oh, ten years or so. With an ex-boyfriend of mine, who was in a band, I ran a tiny punk record label; we sold records for a dollar each. I helped book shows; I had bands stay at my house; I slept on floors; I did a little touring; I watched recording sessions; I sang one line in a song that ended up on a Lookout! records compilation; I went to drunken all-night parties; I never paid to get into shows because I always knew somebody in the band; I traveled across country with the ex (he wasn’t my ex at the time) and his band to attend a three-day punk festival in northern California; I can play a few Ramones and Sex Pistols songs on the guitar; I started my own band with a couple of other girls, and we were getting ready to try booking a show when our drummer quit; and a whole bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten. This was one of my favorite things about writing the Downside books, was being able to draw on those experiences and namecheck my favorite bands.

I say this just because I want to make it clear that I do in fact know what I’m talking about; it’s not to brag or say “Look how cool I am” or anything of that nature (I readily admit I am not cool. Perhaps I was at one point in my life, but now I sit around all day writing and pouring juice for my daughters).

The only self-publishing I can honestly and truly say is punk rock are zines. Zines are–at least they used to be–fully punk self-publishing. Handwritten pages (although now that we have computers it’s very possible they’re typeset or laid out using Pagemaker or whatever), usually full of personal essays, record reviews, jokes, show reviews, that sort of thing, photocopied and stapled together at Kinko’s or in your basement or whatever. Are you getting a sense here of what punk rock zines are about? Could it be, hmm, that they are about punk rock? (I haven’t seen a zine in a while, save some of my old copies of big ones like COMETBUS or SCAM. So forgive me if some of my zine info is a little out of date.)

The rest? Not so much.
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This article originally appeared, in a slightly different form, over at Emily Veinglory’s EREC blog. Then last summer it was published in the September issue of Lady Jaided, the Ellora’s Cave online magazine. But it occurred to me this evening that I’m quite proud of this little piece, and it should be on my site. So here it is.
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, here we are. My first blog post in my new home. I hope it works. Have you all seen StaciaKane.net? Staciakane.com should lead to it too (waiting for the nameservers to change over) as well as decemberquinn.com. I love the site; it’s better than I could possible have hoped. The fabulous Frauke at Croco Designs did it for me; she literally took my logo and my few vague thoughts (“I like skulls and black and white” is basically everything I gave her, no shit) and created the most gorgeous site ever. So go check it out. And yes, there are still some lurking typos; we’re working on it, I swear.

Sorry I wasn’t here yesterday. It was the hubs’ birthday, which of course I forgot when I did my Monday post, as we actually did most of our celebrating on Tuesday; dinner at Trader Vic’s downtown and a night at the Hilton (so we could both drink, y’see, and not have to drive home. And boy, did we drink. Mmm…tiki drinks.)

Anyway. So that deadline I had? Yes. I am very pleased to announce that DEMON POSSESSED, the third Megan Chase novel, was turned in at about 4:30 am Tuesday morning. Overall I’m pretty happy with it. I didn’t get as much editing as I would have liked, but my editor will be sending it back with her comments next week, I believe, so I can fix whatever little issues there may still be then. But I certainly think I’ve managed to up the stakes exponentially in this one, and the main conflict of the book came off pretty much exactly as I’d hoped and had been planning since I wrote the first one. So we’ll see.

This is the main problem, for me. When I start I’m all excited and think the book will be fantastic. It never lives up to what I had in mind. I can only hope it comes close. I could tinker with a book forever. FOREVER. At some point I have to force myself to stop–or well, now my editors force me to stop–and release it into the wild like an orphaned baby animal who can now hopefully fend for itself. And hope it gets a decent reception.

Oh! And this is exciting. UNHOLY GHOSTS is listed on the HarperVoyager website (UK) and they’ve added their own copy, which I will now share with you cuz I think it’s pretty fucking cool:

The first book in a compelling new urban fantasy series, The Downside Ghosts. Murderous spirits and ruthless drug dealers combine to create serious problems for fiercely independent heroine, Chess, in these fast-paced, sexy and addictive novels – fitting for a witch with a serious drug problem.

Cessaria – or ‘Chess’ – Putnam is a troubled young witch who hunts down and banishes angry spirits (there aren’t any other kind). Her tools are few: magical tattoos that alert her to their presence, an arcane powder or two, grave dirt and her devious imagination. Chess’ employer is the only powerful institution left in the world: the Church of Truth. After the dead rose, twenty-three years ago, to slake their thirst for blood, governments and religious institutions fell, and the Church of Truth took their place. They harnessed the supernatural and saved the remaining population. The Church has been training witches ever since. Chess lost her family during Haunted week and grew up in a succession of abusive childrens’ homes and foster families until the Church recognised her talent and took her in. But she’s still haunted by those memories, and has developed a ‘small’ drug problem in order to stifle them; a problem that could see her lose everything if it were uncovered, and one that frequently gets in her way. Not only is she caught between her addiction and Church rules, she is also exploited by her dealers, who see her as their own personal banisher; juggling her commitments has never been more difficult, especially when someone summons a Dream Thief: a dark force so powerful and malevolent that it even frightens the dead.

I notice they’re calling it the “Downside Ghosts” series, which is also pretty cool. I’ve been (as you know) calling it the Downside series; I’ve seen it referred to as the Chess Putnam series and assumed that was how Del Rey would refer to it. But whatever.

Anyway. Monday we start our Summer Series on critiques and critique partners. And I am going to try to figure out how to do lj-cuts at WordPress and start tagging all the old entries.

Ooooh…and this new coffee I just bought is delicious; Ghirardelli organic Cinnamon Chocolate Almond, especially when I add some French Vanilla creamer to it. Now, I take my coffee black a large percentage of the time–when I drink it, which isn’t a lot–so don’t jump all over me about my hideous oversweetened tastes. Sometimes I like to try something different, is all. And this stuff is seriously yum. I can happily drink this all day, oh yes.

And why am I drinking so much coffee?

Because work time is upon me.

Today is June 1st. I have thirty days to finish DEMON POSSESSED. So if I am rather scarce for the next month, you know why. I shall try not to be scarce, as I’ve been so scarce the last few months, but I can’t guarantee my presence. Deadlines are deadlines, and I have me one of them.

I’m having fun with it, though. Which is nice. Getting back into the Demons world after so long–it’s been almost two years since I’ve written these characters–was a bit of a challenge at first but once it clicked again, it clicked again, and I’m really enjoying myself. We’ve had some sweet moments and some funny moments and some sexy moments, and I’m about to start the lead-in into the Moments Which Might Make You Want To Kill Me. Um. Yes, some Bad Things happen in this one. But you must trust me.

Anyway. In the midst of plotting and giggling and worrying, copyedits for the second Downside book arrived; the one which used to be DOWNSIDE GHOSTS and is now UNHOLY MAGIC. Which, btw, is up on Amazon!!

No cover yet–you know I’ll share that with you guys as soon as I get it, and I’ll post the blurb then as well–but the listing is there, and I’m excited about it.

Especially since…well. I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about that book. It was my Problem Child before, for several reasons, which I will outline for you now:

* It followed UNHOLY GHOSTS, about which I was more excited than I’ve ever been about any book I’ve written

* It followed UNHOLY GHOSTS, which I considered, and still kind of do, to be the best book I’ve ever written

* It was written while UNHOLY GHOSTS was on submission, and I was terrified it wouldn’t sell, which made it hard to write the sequel

* It was the first book I’ve ever written that required extensive edits (more on that in a minute)

Second books are hard. When you write the first, you have the thrill of discovery; you’re creating a whole new world, and whole new people. It’s exciting as hell, seriously.

The second? Well. It’s still exciting, but that little extra oomph that comes from building a world from the ground up is gone. You’re playing in an already-created pond. You’re revisiting familiar characters. While that has its own rewards and thrills, they’re different. It’s awesome to expand the characters and take their stories further. It’s awesome to write “what comes next.” But it’s not as easy as writing the first, at least not for me.

UNHOLY MAGIC was hard to write. It was a second book. It was a second book in a series I wasn’t sure was going to sell–I believe I was around 2/3 done with it when we got the first offer–which made me wonder, as I wrote, if there was even a fricking point. And it was heartbreaking, because I was (and still am) so violently, deeply in love with the characters and the world that I couldn’t bear to think I might not get to introduce other people to them. I had an agent, and that was extra pressure; what would happen if the book didn’t sell? Could I produce something else he’d like as much? Nobody ever talks about how scary it can be to sign with an agent, in that suddenly someone else expects things of you, but it can be a little nerve-wracking.

You all know I’m a pantser, not a plotter. Well. All this stress and worry made UNHOLY MAGIC veer off into odd tangents. It took me something like 13 weeks to write, which is longer than any book has ever taken me. Eeep! It didn’t just flow! UNHOLY GHOSTS flowed; I wrote the first draft in seven weeks (well, eight weeks, but for a week of that time we were out of town or I was sick, so techinically it was seven weeks). So if UNHOLY GHOSTS flowed, and I love it so and think it’s great, then maybe the non-flowy book is…um, not great?

Things got worse when I got into edits. I ended up cutting over 30k words from that book; a gargantuan amount for someone who rarely cuts more than a few thousand here and there. Whole sections of the book were ripped out, rewritten, and restitched; it was kind of terrifying. I didn’t know what I’d written, I was too close to it. Trapped in it. All I could think of was that UNHOLY GHOSTS was good and easy to write, or rather, it came easily and was a deeply exciting challenge, whereas UNHOLY MAGIC was blood, sweat, and tears every step of the way, and not what I’d hoped it would be.

And that is the way I’ve felt all along. At least until I finished CITY OF GHOSTS, the third book, which true to form I now think is probably just not very good. But UNHOLY MAGIC was the real sticky one, the one I just could not warm up to.

Well. I finished the copyedits last night. It was the first time I’ve read the book all the way through since…geez, since line edits, seven months or so ago.

And you know what?

I liked it.

I did. The book doesn’t suck. It really doesn’t! It’s pretty good, I think. It held my interest. I didn’t want to stop reading it. I found some good lines in it, some writing I was really proud of. Some nice character moments. Some scary bits and sexy bits; I was surprised, actually, by how sexy the sexy bits were.

My point isn’t to brag about The Wonders Of Me or to convince you to preorder UNHOLY GHOSTS and UNHOLY MAGIC right now (although, of course, you could. Y’know, if you wanted to). It’s not to pat myself on the back. Really.

It’s to share a little bit about my editing process and thoughts. And to say that even though I generally hate my work, I do eventually find a place where…I don’t. So those of you who also hate your work? You too will probably eventually find a place where you don’t.

You are really not necessarily the best judge of your work. I’m not the best judge of mine. My agent, my editors, my cp pals, have been telling me UNHOLY MAGIC is a good book for months, while I frown and bitch and whine and envision readers coming after me with torches and sticks because they hate it so much and I’ve let them down so horribly.

I feel better about the book now. I think readers will like UNHOLY MAGIC. I think it’s a good sequel, it’s a good expansion of the story and world; similar enough to work, but different enough that it doesn’t feel like a carbon copy or like I’m working from a formula (I’m not, of course.)

So there you go. A full year after writing it, I finally like UNHOLY MAGIC.

CITY OF GHOSTS, on the other hand… Sigh.

Okay, lots of stuff to cover and get through and all of that.

First, the other day I cam across this cool blog/site called Best Fantasy Books.com. Another site had a link to this post about ARCs and reviews that I thought was really interesting.

Most of my thoughts on the subject are covered in my comment, which is the fifth comment down:

I think the disconnect comes from something I’ve seen a lot, which is the idea that reviews are written for the gratification of authors, or solely in order to provide them with pretty shiny quotes they can put on their websites and blogs. But they’re not. Reviews are for readers, plain and simple.

And more than that, reviews don’t sell books if the books aren’t readily avilable either. I might see an enthusiastic review somewhere. I might then jot down the title of the book and look for it on Amazon or next time I go to the bookstore. But when I do those things, I’m looking for something to read THEN. If the bookstore doesn’t have it I’ll grab something else. If Amazon or B&N.com or Borders or whatever is going to have to order it for me and I’ll have to wait three weeks or six weeks for it, I might very well not buy it then either, especially if I have the money in hand and don’t know if I will when the book ships and I’m charged for it. Or heck, I don’t know I’ll get the book at all.

A really, really stellar review for a book that speaks to a very specific interest of mine might inspire me to go the extra mile. But in general, if the book isn’t readily available, I’ll buy something else. Reviews are for readers, to help them choose books at the store. While it’s always fun to get a shiny quote, and it’s always nice to see small-press books get some attention and reviews, the fact remains that if the book isn’t available there’s little point.

See, here’s the thing. I’m pretty sure that the good reviews Personal Demons got contributed directly to the nice level of sales the book had; certainly it sold more than I’d expected it would. But that’s also because those reviews were backed up by the book being available in stores. The book had a professional (if small) publisher, with professional distribution that got it on the shelves. So when people read one of those nice reviews, they could go to the store and buy the book. In that sense the reviews were extremely helpful.

But they were also legitimate reviews. Well-written reviews, which stated what the reviewer liked or did not like. Those ego-stroke reviews you see vanity press authors giving each other in a big, sloppy, “This book is the most wonderful thing ever, it totally swept me away and I couldn’t put it down” circle-jerk? Useless. You think readers don’t see through those things? Of course they do. Readers by definition are not stupid; they read.

But I do seem to see more and more the attitude the Best Fantasy Books gentleman describes: entitlement. I sent you a free book, so you owe me a review. More than that, you owe me a good review. If you read any of the review blogs or websites you’ll see this more and more; reviewers being harrassed by authors, called names, yelled at, argued with, all because they either did not review or did not like the book in question.

This is an unprofessional attitude, frankly. Nobody owes you shit.

Which brings me to Agentfail.

Here’s what bugs me about things like Agentfail. It’s a great idea. It could be a really useful and informative discussion. Instead, it ends up becoming much like the last discussion the lovely BookEnds ladies (I really like them, and their blog; I had occasion to deal with Ms. Faust back when I was querying Personal Demons and was left with nothing but positive impressions); a gang of unagented writers complaining–raging–about the query process, with such viciousness it makes the stomach churn.

And in doing so they obscure the legitimate points that have been or might be made. The “No response=no” policy, for example. I don’t have a problem with it. I never have. I certainly don’t understand why it inspires such fury in people, or why they feel entitled to a response from people they don’t know. If I send JK Rowling a fan letter, I don’t expect that she’s going to respond to me. Just like if I send the guy who lives two streets over a letter asking if he’d like to meet for a drink, I don’t expect him to respond to me. Because neither of them owe me shit. Why would you not only expect that a total stranger go out of his or her way to speak to you, but then get angry because they don’t use your name and include a few lines about how special you are?

Yes, I know the agent/querier situation is different. It’s a potential business relationship. Okay, then. Here’s an example. When we were planning our wedding I bought a box of chocolates. The company who made the chocolates was a small company that apparently does custom work as well. I emailed them and asked if they would be interested in making chocolates for my wedding. They never replied.

Oh, well.

I didn’t feel the need to burn them at the stake. I didn’t feel the need to start spreading their name all over the internet because how dare they IGNORE me when I sent them an unsolicited email for a job which did not interest them.

Here’s the thing, guys, and I know it might be hard to believe but it’s true. When your project is sellable, agents will respond. It really is that simple, and I knew that two or three years ago, long before I started seriously querying. If you’re not getting replies, it’s because nobody’s interested, and while that’s tough to deal with it is the simple truth.

That isn’t to say I approve of “no reply=no” as a policy, or rather, I don’t have a problem with it but do think agents who have that policy should set up an auto-responder for their email so the querier knows the thing was received. It’s not hard and it saves everyone a lot of trouble.

But again, that reasonable request–have an auto-responder–gets lost under piles and piles of “You’re not giving me feedback/you’re not using my name/you’re not calling me up to say hello/how dare you ask me to write your name on the query and then send me a form reply,” comments, couched in combative and abusive language.

I realize I look at this from a different perspective now. Quite frankly, I want my agent reading the stuff I send him and working on deals for me, rather than spending extra time giving feedback to people he doesn’t represent. Every minute he spends on that is a minute during which he could be doing something for me. Sorry, but it’s true. I (and all his other clients) pay him 15% to work for me, to read my submissions and work on them, to vet my contracts, to use his connections on my behalf.

You, on the other hand, do not pay him a dime to query him. Which means, to put it bluntly, I’m paying his salary during the time in which he’s reading and responding to your queries.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind this. I don’t even think of it this way; I’m just using this as an example of how my view of it is different now, and why agents handle queries the way they do (because it’s first and foremost in their mind, as well, or at least it should be; clients should be the priority). I don’t begrudge the time it takes for him to handle his queries–or do things for his other clients–and I don’t know a single writer who does. But again, I never thought I was entitled to anything from an agent. I never thought I deserved feedback (although again, I agree that a personalized response on requested materials–at least on fulls requested after partials–would be nice).

My point isn’t that writers don’t have the right to complain or be upset or hate the way things work or be irritated or have opinions. My point is that when the opportunity comes up to discuss issues in which agents could handle things differently or better, the anger doesn’t do anyone any good. The sheer hatred permeating that thread, leaking from my laptop screen in a choking mist…does nothing to make the points expressed look better or more valid. It just makes it easier to dismiss all of the comments and complaints as the frustrated rantings of a mob of wannabes.

And it’s depressing.

Okay. Moving on. Yes, we leave here next week; the movers are coming on Monday. My Monday post will be a short one; I’m going to open the blog to book recommendations from all of you, and I’m hoping that you’ll all have a great discussion while I’m away, so please, link to the post, tell your pals, whatever you want to do. (Or don’t, in which case I’ll just feel unpopular and unloved because nobody’s commenting on my thread.)

I’m not sure what my internet access will be. I will try. Later today or tomorrow I’m going to try and download Twitberry (or Tweetberry, whichever it is; I have it written down somewhere) so I can Tweet from my phone. So if that works, you’ll still be able to follow me on Twitter.

I am able to update my Facebook page from the phone already, so if I don’t manage to stop in here, and you’re not on Twitter or whatever, you can check in there if you like.

(BTW, yes, I am fully aware that your lives will move on exactly as before while I’m away from the internet, and that it’s not like my absence–or at the very least, very sporadic presence–for the next month or so is going to cause a huge gaping hole in the internet from which no one will recover until I return. But A) it makes me feel better to list this stuff, as I then feel as if I have some control over the move and all the Big Scary Changes; and B) some of those who follow me or keep up with me in various places online are real-life friends or family members who might reasonably be expected to want to keep tabs on me and make sure I’m safe and sound.)

Turned in the final draft–or rather, my final draft–of the third Downside book yesterday. Final word count: 105,761. New title (yes, another one): GHOST BOUND.

We’re currently looking for a new title for the second book; we want to change the title structure up a bit with the second book rather than doing it suddenly with the third. Still want the word GHOST in there if possible. I know you guys don’t know much about the story or characters, and I’m not going to tell you because that would be a big old spoiler, but make some suggestions anyway, huh? Maybe it will spark something, who knows.

Goodness this is a long post! And I could have sworn I had something else to talk about too, but I don’t remember it.

Yes, I know. You’re all waiting with bated breath, right? Ha.

Okay. First, yes, I am messing about with the template. I attempted to download the new CSS template I’m using for my shiny! new! website!, but Blogger kept insisting something was wrong with that code. Nothing was wrong with the code; I’ve run it through three different programs to make sure. The problem, I guess, is that it’s a webpage code and not a blogpage code. I dunno. Anyway, it blows, because I love my shiny! new! website! template. (Above is a sneak preview of the header.)

Anyway. Feedback is appreciated. I can already see the sidebar fonts are too light; I will fix them over the weekend.

Second.

I hope the person in question doesn’t mind me posting this, but a friend said something to me earlier–and I said something in return–that I felt the need to repeat here publicly.

In a nutshell, my friend is getting ready to begin the query process. I sent her a list of names of fantasy agents I esteem–Jim McCarthy, Rachel Vater, Miriam Kriss, Kim Whalen at Trident, Katie Menick at Howard Morhaim, to name a few–to add to her list.

Of course, at the top of the list I put my own agent.

My friend thanked me for the suggestions but mentioned she probably wouldn’t query my agent because she didn’t think she had a chance at interesting an agent with such a prestigious agency (Look, this is what SHE said, okay. I’m not trying to brag or anything here, I’m really not, so I hope I don’t sound like one of these people who’s constantly running around talking about their agent and how their agent is the greatest agent who ever lived and how other writers would kill, yes, kill, to be repped by my agent because my agent gets a billion queries a minute and is clearly The Most Important Person In Publishing and the business would stop dead if this person were ever to leave it because they are so, so, so important and amazing and thus by extension so am I. So please don’t think I’m doing that.)(Although I do obviously think my agent is pretty fucking cool.)

Anyway.

She told me she didn’t have a chance with him, because she didn’t have any prior publication credits and she’s not writing in a “hot” subgenre, and this is what I said in return:

Don’t be ridiculous. Prior credits have nothing to do with it and you should know that. Chris signed {another cool writer} and I don’t think {writer} has any prior credits. I know my prior credits didn’t matter one bit to him.

Query him. Query him, unless you just don’t think you’re good enough to get a really good agent; in which case, why query anybody at all? Believe me, if I’m good enough for him–me, of all people–so is anybody else.

What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll waste under a minute cutting and pasting a query letter? You’ll get a polite rejection? Oooh, scary. :rolleyes

Yes, I’m being deliberately harsh here in an attempt to show you that you’re being silly. Query EVERYONE who can give you proper representation. EVERYONE. So they say no, so what? Chris isn’t some sort of beast; he’s not going to come to your house and throw poop at you if your query isn’t for him, or send out an email to every other agent in NY making fun of you for having the effrontery to think *he* might be interested in your work.

Either you believe you’re publishable or you don’t. (Yes, I use boldface a lot; so? You got a problem with that?) And if you do, you query everyone. Period.

Hugs, dear. I’m trusting that you know I’m really not trying to be a bitch here; I just don’t want you to limit yourself like that. Where would I be right now if I hadn’t decided to go ahead and query him? Maybe I’d be repped by somebody else, sure; I had five or six other fulls out when he offered. But you know, maybe not. Who knows?

Just send the fucking query. At worst you’ll get a form rejection. At best you’ll get a great agent.

And that goes for you too, readers. Don’t give me that shit about how The Big Guys aren’t going to be interested in you. Either you’re ready or you’re not. Either you think your work is publishable or you don’t. Why limit yourself at the query stage? If they say no, they say no; big damn deal. What if Bigtime Agent is the one, and you never find out because you’re too chicken?

There are LOTS of great agents out there. Try them all.

Thus ends your new year inspiration for the day.

Funnily enough, I started planning this post on Saturday, and yesterday I wandered over to Smart Bitches and saw they were wondering the same thing–as, apparently, was a writer at The Guardian.

I’m not sure I agree, though.

See, I read a bad book this weekend. A bad book (and no, I am not going to tell you what it was, so don’t even ask). A book I found almost no–no, make that no, period–redeeming features about. It was badly written and clunky. It was all tell, no show. There was some awful sex in it; really, really bad, complete with orgasms that sounded more like epileptic fits and terrible, unsexy word choices. I was informed characters were smart, when in fact the book showed them to be insipid ninnies; I’m surprised they were able to figure out how to work a faucet. The hero was an asshole, of the self-pitying crybaby type; the heroine was a hateful, childish moron.

Bad characters are one thing, but bad writing is insulting. And this was badly written, oh yes. I cringed. I gave so many snorts of incredulous laughter the hubs asked if I was coming down with a cold.

Now according to the Guardian writer, and the fabulous Bitches, this should be a positive experience, and make me better able to appreciate the really good books I’ve read. And I suppose to some degree that’s true.

But reading that dreck made me think. It made me think about a review I saw once on Amazon, in which the reviewer complained that a character’s backstory was not explained in the beginning of the book–in other words, she was upset there hadn’t been an infodump.

And it got me thinking. What sort of books did that reviewer normally read, that she expected the main character’s entire backstory to be explained right up front? You don’t generally find those as much in popular fiction (and by “popular” I mean NY-published books with large readerships.) Oh, sure, you see them on occasion, but I think most professional editors see infodumps for the marks of amateurism they are, and don’t buy novels with that sort of thing in them.

Which tells me that in large part, that reader was probably reading largely Bad Books.

I could be wrong, of course. It could simply be that she doesn’t read much (or he; I don’t remember the name of the reviewer or anything else about them.) Or it could be he or she does read good books and dislikes all of them for the same reason.

But I’m always amazed when I see books I’ve read and thought were just terrible on a technical level get great reviews. I don’t mean books where the writing wasn’t stellar but was serviceable, and the plot was good enough to keep me involved. I’m talking about really, truly awful books. The kind we’ve all read; the kind where, for example, historical characters use modern verbiage, or every other sentence ends with an exclamation point, or entire sentences fail to make any kind of sense despite several readings. (Here’s an example of what I mean, that I just made up:

She held a hat in her hands and walked along the river, before it falls and blew away into the night sky with the water flying everywhere and tears hit her shoes.

See what I mean?)

So I see those positive reviews, and I can only assume one of two things. Either the reviewer hasn’t actually read the book, or the reviewer is simply so well attuned to terrible prose that they don’t notice it anymore, in the same manner as someone living near a dump wll eventually no longer smell the garbage.

Now, I’m not claiming my own writing is so great, either. This isn’t about me being better than anyone else. Who knows, maybe the book I read this weekend is actually great, and I’m the dipshit who isn’t smart enough to get it (although the reviews of it I’ve seen elsewhere agree with me.)

But whether or not it’s a skill I truly possess, good writing is important to me. Words that snap and flow, images and metaphors that are poetic and clear. Characters who practically climb off the page, but not in a creepy The Ring kind of way. Plots that make sense, and fall neatly into place.

These things are important. Good writing should be both easy and difficult to read; it should resonate while challenging us. It should feel strange and familiar at once.

But once you grow accustomed to reading books where that challenge, that strangeness, that unique voice, isn’t present…perhaps good writing becomes harder to see? Harder to recognize? Isn’t it possible that, much as a person who only ever eats potato chips may have a hard time eating something more complex–indeed, may begin to hate something more complex, as it forces them to experience something new and different–reading nothing but bad prose may make good writing seem too hard? Too much of a challenge. Instead of wanting to watch a story unfold we begin to want everything up front; we don’t want to get to know the characters, we don’t want to spend time in the world. We don’t want to have to pay attention to what’s on the page, in other words.

I’m not saying every book we read has to be incredibly high quality, not at all. And again, I’m not saying I’m such a great writer, either.

I’m just wondering if perhaps bad writing, instead of teaching us to appreciate good writing, only breeds more bad writing. When a writer reads published books as part of their learning process, and those published books are lazy, lousy, and unclear…what does that say to them? What level of work will they shoot for, if they think the terrible book they’ve just read is where they need to be?

What do you guys think?