101 Reasons to Stop Writing

Things I Missed Last Week

• Nathan Bransford ran a contest called the Largely Indispensable First Paragraph Challenge. Like the Crapometer contests Miss Snark used to run before she retired (surprise!), he was deluged with entries. Next week, I’m running a Take A Crap On My Front Lawn competition, and I can only hope I get the same standard of entries.

Striking Writers: Less Funny Than You’d Think

If you’ve heard nothing about the Writer’s Guild strike in Hollywood, that means two things: you’re not a TV writer, and you never will be. As of now, the strike is on, and its most immediate, most pernicious effect is that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are on hiatus. (You American bastards won’t appreciate this, but these two shows debuted on Australian pay TV this year.)

Last time this happened, back in 1988 (I was in high school; some of you probably weren’t born), the strike lasted six months, but the industry took longer to recover. Stephen J. Cannell, who was King of the Cop Show back then, reckoned he could get new shows on the air in one month: one week to write, one to prep, one to shoot and one to edit. Most shows couldn’t ramp up that quickly, so it was months before TV schedules went back to whatever normal was at that time. Back then, what we got was repeats. This time around, there are apparently a lot of reality shows being rushed into production. No writers, no actors, just Joe Public and a camera crew. Who knows, maybe Book Millionaire will be greenlit.

WritersWrite.com has some background and commentary on the week leading up to the strike. Dead Things on Sticks has a terrific article on the issues driving the strike, and the situation for TV writers in Canada (who are like serfs, compared to their American counterparts).

News to Know, to Keep Up with the Conversation

• The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media, the essential handbook to climbing to the next rung in your shitty career at the periphery of the entertainment biz, sold less than 250 copies in its first month, according to Mixed Media @ Portfolio. Yeah, but those select few are going to ride the advice like a meteorite to the top of their game, and start a group on FaceBook that’ll be the 21st Century equivalent of the Freemasons. The book fell victim to the (in hindsight) classic website-to-book quandary: if you don’t read Gawker, why would you buy it, and if you read Gawker, why would you buy it? (Via Bloggers Blog.)
• The PFD literary agency debacle continues (see previous coverage), with the parent company firing several agents who had already resigned.

Harry Potter: Still More Famous Than You

• J.K. Rowling is suing the publisher of a forthcoming unofficial Harry Potter encyclopedia, which is based on the collected information at a fan website Rowling has previously endorsed. The usual quagmire of grassroots fanbase support vs copyright infringement gets played out, again. Some people have a hard time understanding that the goodwill, appreciation, support and patience that some authors have for their fans ends when someone tries to make a buck off it. Fairly simple rule. (Via Ron Hogan of GalleyCat, who’s firmly in the Give the Fanboys a Chance camp.)
• Edward Rothstein argues in the New York Times that Dumbledore doesn’t have to be gay. He claims that in the context of the novels, the character’s sexuality doesn’t matter, and cites the tradition of fantasy wizards who are (in his opinion) "above" sexuality — but the intensity of his argument comes across as, well, homophobic. Two great excerpts:
  

  Ms. Rowling quite consciously makes Dumbledore a flawed, more human wizard than these models, but now goes too far. There is something alien about the idea of a mature Dumbledore being called gay or, for that matter, being in love at all. He may have his earthly difficulties and desires, but in most ways he remains the genre wizard, superior to the world around him.

  It’s as if Rothstein thinks that Rowling is saying that Gandalf must be gay too. And the best:
  

  It is possible that Ms. Rowling may be mistaken about her own character.

  That has to be one of the most ridiculous sentences in the history of literary criticism. John Scalzi has a more detailed critique of Rothstein’s point of view, even quoting Neil Gaiman, if you’re not inclined to believe me.

From the Blogosphere

• Big Bad Book Blog has a denial-friendly article on how and why books get remaindered, for people too chickenshit to face the truth.
• The Rejecter talks up the job ladder at a literary agency, perhaps the only employer in this crazy thing we call the entertainment industry where the word "job" isn’t preceded by hand- or rim-.
• Write Stuff argues that people are still scared by the bad words. The words in question are not mentioned, so you have to guess exactly which bad words they mean, which is more fun than it ought to be (Hint: F, and C). Begs the question: if you assume that people know which bad words you’re talking about, why avoid saying them?
• Tod Goldberg writes an open letter to someone who wants literature turned back to 1953.
• John Rickards says, effectively, that the vast majority of crime writers should "quit writing and get another job."
• Reading Under the Covers has a series of book publicity horror stories. My faves are #3, #4, and #6 (Train Wreck!).

Problems You Will Never Have

• Jessica Faust explains what it’s like for an agent, waiting to hear back from an author after offering representation.
• Jonathan Lyons explains what actually happens in a book auction. Sadly, there’s no gavel, no auctioneer speaking three times as fast as the human ear can process, and no easy way for the author to pose as an editor and bid up the price.

You Will Never Be This Good

• Harper Lee receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her only novel is one of the bestselling books of all time. You’re not even sure the agents read your book before they rejected it.

Stop Writing if You Need This Advice

• The Rejecter explains that a partial request doesn’t mean they like you, they just don’t hate you. Yet.
• Janet Reid explains why "not right for me" is the standard rejection boilerplate:
  

  Once I’ve decided something isn’t for me, and I’m not going to ask for other material, every second I spend composing a nice letter with three nice things to couch the bad news is a half hour I could have spent reading the next thing in line.

  Seriously, if you needed this explained to you, stop writing.

There are still nearly 900 items from last week in my feed reader, but it’s now Saturday, and enough is enough. This week’s Update will also be late.