101 Reasons to Stop Writing

ST PATRICK’S DAY
The best Irish writers were usually drunk.
Doesn’t seem to be working out for you, though.

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Photo by Tim Hansen, of MorgueFile.

ALLEGORY
What you say your story really means,
after someone else tells you what they think it really means.

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Photo by Clara Natoli, of MorgueFile.

March 6 is a special anniversary for myself and Ms Reasons. Not too many people can say that they were already in love on the day they met their partner, but on March 6, 1999 I stepped off an interstate bus after a 57-hour journey, with everything I owned in two bags, and saw for the first time the woman I would spend the rest of my life with. It was a sweet ending to the romantic short story of how we met, and the first page of a romantic epic that now spans nine years, six houses, two continents, and four children, and may be about to enter its second act. I won’t tell you that story, because you won’t believe it.

(BTW, I know I’m a day late. I’m also a dollar short.)

Last year, I marked the anniversary on this blog with an open thread, where just-for-the-heck-of-it I invited readers to say hello, and where they’re from. Some 65 people responded (and hundreds didn’t, the slackers), letting me know I have readers from all over the US, Canada, Australia, and readers from the UK, France, Spain and even Libya and Mozambique. Logorrhea is truly a global phenomenon.

Let’s do it again this year. Whether you’re a regular reader or you’ve just found this site after searching for "bad sci-fi writing cliche", take a minute to leave a comment.

Some suggested topics:

• the worst book you ever read (and why you read it)
• the thing that annoys you most about other writers
• what you hate most about this site

If you commented on last years’ thread, now’s the time to gloat about how you were reading the blog before the New York Times told you to.

Today 101 Reasons is launching what I hope will be a regular, weekly series of interviews. Through these in-depth, hard-hitting sessions with successful writers, publishing professionals and delusional amateurs, we will explore in greater depth what it means to be a writer, to work in the publishing industry, and to love literature enough to want to procreate with it. These won’t be your typical suck-up advertorials, with softball questions about how to break into the business, and what pen to use. If you learn anything from these interviews, it’ll be how much you suck by comparison.

Evermore, the most recent product from the Lynn Viehl novel factory.

This week we’re talking with Lynn Viehl, author of, well, a whole lot of books. If you’re not familiar with Viehl, that may be because she’s a chameleon, constantly changing her byline to suit the market. She spent ten years writing before her big break, producing twenty-two manuscripts and collecting over one thousand rejections. Since selling her first novel some eight years ago, she’s sold at least 38 novels in five genres, most of which end in “… Romance”. (I say ‘at least’ because she’s probably sold more since this interview.)

38 novels, in less than nine years. Just think about that. She makes Stephen King look like J.D. Salinger (yes, there are two ways to take that). If there were ten, maybe twenty more novelists like her, they’d own the midlist.

Lynn Viehl is to the writing community what India is to the IT industry, the kind of hyper-efficient word machine that makes reviewers scoff, tenured literary authors sneer, and part-time amateur writers burn with raw envy, poorly disguised as derision. She publishes under at least six pseudonyms, because Barnes & Noble refuses to name an entire bookshelf after her. She also finds time to run her blog Paperback Writer, regularly posting advice and information about writing to help you maintain the delusion that you could ever be as successful as her.

Despite representing everything this blog stands against, I have to admit I’m kind of crushing on her right now — because as you’ll see below, she rocks this interview like it was a pandering plug piece on The View. She came to this knife fight wearing plate armour. She took my vitriol and made a martini out of it. No wonder she makes the medium bucks.

If you’re expecting this interview to delve into Viehl’s writing schedule, where she finds inspiration, how she balances writing with raising children, where she thinks the industry is going, etc., you are so on the wrong blog.

You’ve published novels under the names Sheila Kelly, Rebecca Kelly, Lynn Viehl, S.L. Viehl, Gena Hale and Jessica Hall. Which one am I speaking to right now?

Oh, just call me Legion. All the guys in Perdition do.

Does using so many identities reduce your tax burden? If one of your pseudonyms commits a felony, can you still publish under the others?

What tax burden? Right, you probably didn’t get the press release about my ordination. I’ve incorporated as the leader of a chicklit evangelist movement: The Fashion-Driven Life. You can read about it in my upcoming bestseller, “What Shoes Would Jesus Wear With That?” As for the felony question, if Stephen King can still publish under his own name after writing “Lisey’s Story” and calling it a romance, I think we’re all safe.

You’ve published 38 novels to date, across 5 genres, in a professional career spanning less than nine years. How do you define the term ‘hack’?

Let me check Webster’s. Oh, look, what a nice picture of James Patterson. Seriously, a hack is someone who writes slower than me. Which is everyone.

What do you say to the 37 unpublished writers who’ve missed their chance at a debut novel because of you?

I’m getting ready to pitch my next series, so don’t give up your day job.

You started writing seriously in 1989, and you wrote some 22 unpublished novels in the decade before your big break. Have you since recycled some of that trash into something publishable?

I’ll let you in on a secret: I’ve not written a single new word in the last nine years. Whenever my editor wants a book, I just open the trunk, dust off one of the old rejects, and send it in. Once you’ve hit the bestseller list, you can pretty much publish your grocery list. Speaking of bestsellers, do you want an advanced reading copy of my next novel, “Bread, Eggs and Milk”?

With sixty novels under your belt, when do you think you’ll be ready to write a good one?

I’m waiting until Updike croaks. I figure the field will be clear then, and I can stun the publishing world with my long-hidden genius. Or when I empty out the trunk, whichever comes first.

You primarily write romance fiction, but you also write science fiction, dark fantasy and inspirational Christian fiction. Which fans make the better lovers?

Hard to say. See, the romance fans always bring you candy and flowers, but the SF fans are great to have around whenever the computer crashes. The dark fantasy fans never run out of whips and chains. I will say that all that praying for forgiveness the inspirational fans do in bed can be mildly annoying at times. I mean, you’re already going to hell for your internet porn addiction, how’s a little illicit sex with an author going to make things worse?

Are you writing Christian fiction as penance for your dark fantasy novels? How many ChristFic books does it take to keep a dark fantasy author out of Hell?

I write Christian fiction to fool my mom; she thinks I’ve only published ten books. Last time I checked with Satan (research for the next dark fantasy) he was clearing out a whole new level for inspirational authors. Apparently royalties are way up. Anyway, when I die I get to run the eternal torment section. All I have to do is breathe.

For the last few years you’ve been using voice recognition software to write, to reduce arthritis pain, and you now wear trifocal glasses to read. Is your body trying to tell you something?

Yeah, donate a lot to that brain transplant research foundation.

What are your failure criteria for writing? Under what circumstances would you stop?

Anyone who quits before I do, fails. I’ll probably have to stop when I die. Unless that brain transplant thing works out.

Who do you think should stop writing?

Besides you? Annie Proulx. I mean, once you’ve done the secret gay cowboy story, and gotten stiffed for Best Picture on the movie version, and throw a tantrum in print about how it’s just a conspiracy by the homophobes at the academy to keep you from your much-deserved fourth Oscar, it’s all downhill from there.

It’s a good thing that writing dozens of romance-themed novels hasn’t left Viehl bitter or jaded. Feel free to discuss in the comments how inadequate she makes you feel. And check out her blog Paperback Writer, where she’s much less funny.

Tune in next week, when we talk to … someone else.

Hollywood, CA — the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) today announced that under the terms of their new agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), screenwriters will strike during the month of November each year, to coincide with National No Writing Month.

During the strike, writers downed their signs in protest against the WGA’s controversial "no donuts on the picket line" policy – Photo by Here in Van Nuys / Flickr

"We’re very proud to announce that starting in 2008, all WGA guild members will go on strike for thirty days, every year," said WGA West president Patric Verrone. "This will give our members a break from the pressures of the the screenwriting occupation, which as many as half our members are employed in at any one time. And it will remind the Hollywood powerbrokers that they can’t just push us around, at least not during November. We feel the screenwriters of America should respect National No Writing Month, and this new agreement guarantees our commitment."

The agreement brought to an end the three-month strike by WGA members which forced the US entertainment industry to a virtual standstill, costing the industry an estimated $380 million to $2.5 billion (depending on whether the calculation is based on Hollywood accounting). The late addition of the so-called ‘NaNoWriMo clause’ was a sticking point in the negotiations, delaying resolution for several weeks.

"Initially the strike was about securing a satisfactory payment scheme for new media distribution, but also fundamentally about the way the industry treats its creative talent as factory workers rather than partners," said WGA West executive director and chief negotiator David Young. "We went on strike because the AMPTP refused to negotiate a fair deal — they wanted to pay writers even less, and make us flush their toilets too. So we struck, and picketed the shit out of them. I didn’t mean that as a pun — I’m a lawyer, not a writer. Anyway, it was entirely a coincidence that the strike began in the first week of National No Writing Month, but very quickly, the excitement of not writing at all overshadowed the petty concerns of getting paid equitably."

"People think that being a Hollywood screenwriter is all coke parties and nubile starlets," said writer-turned-director J.J. Abrams, "but really that’s only a part of it. There’s also a lot of writing involved. It’s a long, tiring job, sometimes up to eight hours a day, and often in an environment with a distinct lack of nubility. And the pressure to produce passable material on a regular basis really goes against the spirit of easy money that attracted most of us to the screenwriting business in the first place. The strike gave all of us a chance to remember that we have other choices, like skiing or doing odd jobs around the house. I’m looking forward to the next strike, so I can finish building my gazebo."

Robert Towne, legendary screenwriter of Chinatown and Tequila Sunrise, agreed. "Writers have been fighting for a fair slice of the entertainment pie for decades, but the producers would rather spend that money on accountants and lawyers to figure out ways to not pay us. I should’ve made enough money from Chinatown alone to buy a town in China, but I’m still scraping by, picking up a handful of script polish jobs a year, a measly quarter million dollars for a few weeks’ hard work. After spending some time on the picket lines, I’m thinking about packing in my typewriter and running some screenwriting workshops, because those young guns want what they think I know, and they’ll pay up front."

Hastily-erected security fences around famed restaurant Spago thwarted writers’ attempts to disrupt the power lunches within. – Photo by Lee Goldberg

"There was electricity in the air as we pounded the pavement and held our placards high," said screenwriter Lee Goldberg, about the picket lines in front of major studios and expensive restaurants where producers were known to gather. "We held fast to our belief that it was darkest before the dawn, and that we happy few, we band of brothers, would seize the day and emerge victorious. We had to resort to speaking only in clichés, as no-one was allowed to write anything original, but for most of us that wasn’t difficult.

"The first two weeks were the worst, because most of us writers haven’t seen sunlight or walked more than fifty yards at a time in years. But after that, a change came over us. We started to relax. We exhausted every possible conversation topic, every anecdote and opinion we had about Hollywood, and started talking about real things, like politics and sports and where we were from and whether that stuff Starbucks puts on our java chip frappuccinos is real whipped cream or some kind of cream substitute. It was like a mass epiphany. No-one was writing, and it felt awesome. Going back to work afterwards was a real drag, but those TV series tie-in novels just don’t write themselves, yet."

AMPTP president Nick Counter said the annual strike would be a win-win for writers and the entertainment industry. "Now, whenever we hear writers crybabying about how little actual money they will see from the new deal, anyone from the executive producers down to the makeup assistants and grips can say ‘Save it for November!’. They get some time off to recharge their precious little reserves of inspiration, and producers get eleven months to stockpile scripts to ride out the strike. Plus, we can spend that thirty days counting all the freakin’ money we’re making from new media distribution. That’s all the AMPTP was asking for in the first place, you know, just some time to count all this money."

National No Writing Month is an annual protest against the declining standard of fiction writing, screenwriting, poetry, journalism and blogging in America. "There are more crappy screenplays being produced in America right now than in the whole history of film and television," said Harlan Ellison, WGA award-winning screenwriter and patron of last year’s event. "National No Writing Month is an opportunity to step back from the electronic vomit box and think about whether giving tongue colonics to Harvard MBAs so you can play script assistant on Two and a Half Men is really the direction you want your life to take. Making the strike an annual event gives writers, and the entire industry, the opportunity to take a good look at itself. Afterwards, everyone can go back to work knowing they deserve exactly what they get."

Stephen Jayson Harris is the Hollywood-based entertainment reporter for Industrial Lubricants Quarterly. He is presently seeking a publisher for his book-length photo essay of the writers’ strike, featuring stark black and white images of writers not writing.