Category: Culture

It’s been a while since I did anything in the "About Writing" category in the lefthand margin, but I’m about to do a string of them over the next few days.

Today’s post deals with a really good way not to get published. If you want not to get published, this is definitely a way to accomplish your goal.

Here’s what you do: Start your literary career by writing a book. It can be fiction or non-fiction, but make sure it’s a full-sized book (at least 40,000 words long).

If you do this and you send your literary firstborn off to a normal, professional publisher, I guarantee that you will not get published.

Now what is that?

For the same reason that I shouldn’t begin my musical career by writing a symphony: I don’t know how. I don’t write music, but if I did then a really good way for me not to get my music published would be to start by writing a symphony

On the other hand, if I wanted to get my music published then the thing to do would be to start small, with a simple melody, then try to figure out how to be successful writing longer and longer pieces until I’d worked my way up to symphony-length works.

Same exact dynamic applies to writing and publishing text rather than music. People who want to get published need to start small and build up from there.

Unfortunately, book publishers receive countless manuscripts from people who have never published anything before. These manuscripts go into what is known in the industry as the "slush pile," which is so named because reading these things feels like wading through endless tracks of slush.

Consequently, the job of reading the slush pile is not a highly desirable task in the publishing industry. Therefore, if at all possible it gets inflicted uponassigned to assistant editors and even interns. If (and this is a HUGE "if") the slush pile reader finds something promising then he reports it to someone up the chain of command (such as the commissioning editor), who takes a second look at the manuscript to see if its worth pursuing further.

The vast majority of manuscripts in the slush pile are rejected. Sometimes the reader doesn’t even get as far as the manuscript itself before making the decision to reject. There are signals the amateur author can send off with the cover letter (like not having one) that signal that the author simply doesn’t know what he’s doing.

If the reader does get as far as reading the manuscript (and usually he does), he normally discerns–within the first two pages, often the first paragraph, and sometimes even the first sentence–the following things:

1. This author is an amateur who has never published anything before.
2. It would require a huge amount of editorial work for the publishing house to get this manuscript up to professional standards.
3. Our limited resources would be better spent on other manuscripts that require less work.
4. My boss would never approve this.
5. I would injure my career here by advancing this manuscript to the next level and thus calling my own judgment into question.

At this point the reader stops reading. He may flip around a little in the manuscript to double-check his judgment, but soon a rejection slip is winging its way toward the author, along with the returned (and mostly unread) copy of the manuscript–IF the author included a self-addressed, adequately-stamped envelope with the original submission. (Otherwise the manuscript goes into the round file.)

The way to avoid the slush pile or at least maximize your chance of getting your manuscript accepted is to start small and hone your skills on shorter published works–articles if you want to write a non-fiction book, short stories if you want to write a novel. Find a periodical that publishes stuff as much as possible like what the book you want to write and publish there. Publish in a sci-fi mag if you want to write sci-fi novels. Publish in a detective mag if you want to write detective novels. Publish in a popular science mag if you want to write popular science books. Publish in an apologetics mag if you want to publish apologetics books.

If the right kind of genre magazine doesn’t exist for the kind of book you want to write, at least start publishing somewhere so that you can start getting a sense of the rules that apply in the publishing industry.

Once you can consistently get your articles or stories published (i.e., you get very few rejection notices any more), you’re ready to try your hand at a book-length work. You also have a track record of prior publications that you can mention (briefly)  in your cover letter. Your short pieces may even attract the attention of a commissioning editor who thinks, "Hey, this kid’s pretty good. Wonder if he’s got a book in him? I’ll have to send him a query."

On the other hand, if your goal is not to get published then don’t do any of that. Go for the book first time out.

You’ll thank me.

Yesterday I posted a query asking why we should fill up our imaginations with fiction: visions of ways God didn’t make the world.

Earlier today I posted a note that Jesus himself used fictions, therefore they must (in at least some circumstances) be okay to use.

Having established that, I’d like to go into the speculative basis of why they are okay to use.

Because fiction is such a part of our lives, many folks might pass quickly over the question of why we should do fiction at all and not register the full force of the question. For that reason, I tried to phrase the question as strongly as I could, even using prejudicial language and talking about "filling up our imaginations" with how "God didn’t make the world."

The first of these phrases makes it sound as if we’re cramming our minds full of fiction so that there’s no room left for anything else. In some cases, that may be true. Some people live in fantasy worlds, either in the sense of spending an unhealthy amount of time on fiction (like the Star Trek fans satirized in William Shatner’s famous "Get A Life!" sketch on SNL) or in the sense of being literally unable to distinguish fantasy from reality (in which case the person is clinically psychotic).

Those conditions represent the abuse of the imagination (in the case of obsessive fandom) or an outright mental illness (as in the case of psychotics). But just because a faculty can be disordered doesn’t mean that the faculty itself should not be part of human life.

In point of fact, it seems that coming up with fiction is something that is part of human nature. If it wasn’t for Jesus’ use of fiction, one could always say "Well, that’s just because of the Fall," but the phenomenon of storytelling is a true human universal. Every society has fiction, and that’s a pretty good clue that it’s something built into human nature.

The ostensible opposition between our imaginations and how God didn’t make the world is also prejudicial language.

After all: What does one suppose our imaginations are for, anyway? The whole point of an imagination is being able to envision how the world might be but isn’t–at least at present.

It’s true that we can use our imaginations to try to reconstruct the way that the world was or the way it might be right now in areas out of our sight, but one of its principal functions–and very likely its main function–is to enable us to model how the future might go. This allows us to plan, to envision how we’d like the world to be and then determine what’s the best way to move the world in that direction.

What will happen if I ask my boss for a raise? What arguments will be most effective in getting me one? Will this girl agree to marry me? How can I increase my chances of getting her to say yes? How can I get the baby to stop screaming at the top of his lungs? How can I get Fr. to end this liturgical abuse? Etc., etc., etc.

All of these are questions that involve envisioning the world a way it isn’t now. We may be using our imaginations in these cases to figure out how to change the world, but the point is that our imagination is still bound up, part and parcel, with the idea of fiction. Trying out fictions of how the world might be is what the imagination is for.

A person without the ability to engage the faculty of fiction has a broken imagination, and that’s all there is to it.

That’s only one reason why fiction is important, though.

More to come.

Let me give you what I consider to be a knock-down blow for the hypothesis we considered earlier that we shouldn’t be filling up our imaginations with fiction–imaginings of the way the world ain’t. I’ll offer additional arguments tomorrow (and I’m sure others will or by the time you read this already have offered them in the comboxes), but this one I consider a clincher:

Jesus used fiction.

If you think about it, that’s what his parables are: They’re short fictions.

When he starts talking about a man who went away on a journey and entrusted his property to his servants, it would be a mistake for someone in his audience to yell out "What was his name?!"

Someone actually does do that in Monty Python’s The Life Of Brian when Brian tries to tell a parable, but it’s missing the point. It’s a mistake.

It would be even more of a mistake to try to find out when and where the guy lived in history. When Jesus says things like this, he doesn’t have particular historical individuals in mind (so far as we know).

As a result, his parables are fictions. They may teach truths about the world, but the contain elements that aren’t the way the world is (or was or will be).

And if Jesus can use fiction . . . then so can we.

Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.

Why?

Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.

"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.

While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.

I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.

From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.

If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.

That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.

I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.

After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?

I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.

It affected fiction itself.

There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.

That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . .  stories that aren’t true.

Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.

So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?

It’s a question worth considering.

There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?

Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.

Why?

Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.

"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.

While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.

I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.

From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.

If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.

That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.

I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.

After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?

I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.

It affected fiction itself.

There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.

That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . .  stories that aren’t true.

Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.

So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?

It’s a question worth considering.

There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?

I’ve decided to add a category to the left hand column devoted to the subject of writing. I already have categories on fiction, books, etc., but these are mostly taken up with particular works or series.

The new one will be devoted to blog posts about the craft of writing itself–both how to do it and what moral and theological questions it raises.

A couple of things started me thinking along these lines. The first was a request I had to help someone learn how to do apologetic-style writing. I’ve been doing this for a baker’s dozen of years now, and in that time I’ve grown a lot as a writer. (Of course, like everyone, I also have more growing to do.) There are certain tricks of the trade–both of writing in general and apologetic writing in particular–that I’ve learned, and I wanted to start writing them down in a place where they could benefit others.

The second thing was the recent dustup over what Pre-16 may have written in a thank you note regarding Harry Potter. This surfaced a number of moral/theological issues connected with that, while I didn’t have time to go into them at the moment, I still thought were worth exploring.

I’ve got less experience writing fiction than non-fiction. Frankly, I don’t have that much time for it. But I do have some experience, and many of the rules are ones it shares with non-fiction writing.

I also have the same experience as others of reading (or viewing or listening to) fiction and wrestling with the moral and theological isues it raises.

So. . . . Hope this’ll be of interest to folks!

To be continued. . . .