Category: writing

[Kelley’s note: This post refers to an unpublished story that used to be available on the old website. It isn’t here right now. Maybe one of these days I’ll get it posted… it’s interesting now to me to look at it in light of “Dangerous Space.”]

I read “Shine” earlier this morning and it has stuck with me throughout the day. In trying to determine why, I found myself going back to the story, trying to find those pointed barbs that usually catch my mental attention when I’ve read something good that stays with me. However, this story doesn’t seem to have “points” that are meant to catch the reader (me) as much as it seems like an emotional road that travels from point A to B with a lot of fractional stops in between. There is an emotional movement to the story, starting in the realm of emotional panic (?) of realization towards an ending of acceptance…but then I continue to question myself, could it be an ending that is focused on searching? I loved the movement in the story but am wondering what she would be doing in the next week or the next month. Will she find something in her searching and singing or will she even recognize it should it come her way? (Is she capable of realizing it?) I suppose my question is, if you took this story any further, in what direction do you see it going? Or do you see any direction at all?

I liked it and thanks for posting it.

Christine

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I’m glad you liked it. Thanks for letting me know.

“Shine” is the first fiction I wrote after Solitaire, and it reflects my search for the next thing — in writing, in life, in myself. Joanne’s older than Jackal; she’s wrestling not with the complexities of assuming an adult identity, but with the damage to our dreams and sense of self that seems inevitable as we live adult lives. In the two years after “Shine,” I wrote 16,000 words of one novel and more than 20,000 words of another… still looking for that next thing. I talked a little over a pint or two about wrestling with these books; and ultimately I had to step away from them because I couldn’t find my way past the pretty writing into something that was both risky and real for me the way that Solitaire was, and “Eye of the Storm” (the most recent story prior to “Shine,” written while I was working on Solitaire).

Walking away from 36,000 finished words (plus many, many more in draft) was not a happy experience. I wondered in public (somewhat indirectly) a year ago if I was even meant to be a novelist, and what I was really thinking was that perhaps I wasn’t meant to be a writer. There was a difference between doing (even doing well) and being that I could see but not touch, much the way Joanne came up against her own reflection in the rain.

And then came screenplays — and I fell in love with the form and thought, Okay, I’m a writer after all, but maybe not a fiction writer. And then I threw myself headfirst into “Dangerous Space,” the new novella for the collection, and it was…amazing. 25,000 finished words in six weeks and the only reason I stopped was my deadline. Unlike “Shine,” unlike the aborted novels, “Dangerous Space” is a story that makes me excited and nervous and itchy to have people read it. I think some people will find it eyebrow raising. I think some people will hate it a lot. I hope some people will find all the layers in it that I think are there, underneath the in-your-face surface.

When Matt Ruff talks about a writer walking the line of not embarrassing herself (in his blurb for the collection), I think he’s talking at least in part about this story — and no doubt some people will think I have embarrassed myself. And you know what? That’s fine. Because it’s the first fiction I’ve written in years that puts me right out there on the edge of myself as a writer, not because it’s so beautifully stylized, but because it is as transparent, as lacking in ‘style,’ as I could make it. And that, brothers and sisters, is where I want to be right now. I want to be writing pretty words that don’t show. I want you to mainline the story, to feel yourself inside the characters, have the experience of living with them jack right into your system and run away with your brain without you needing to appreciate how clever and articulate and wordcrafty I’ve been.

And now I’m just so in love with writing again that I can’t see straight. Words in my head all the time. It’s just astonishing.

Which means you may not see a story quite like “Shine” from me again, at least not anytime soon. It’s a good story, and there’s a lot of truth in it — it rings clear to me (see my essay with Nicola about writing if you want to know more about what that means) — but it’s a chronicle of a journey, not the journey itself. And right now as a writer I want a more direct experience when I write and when you read. I don’t just want to show you things: I want to put them so far inside you that you have to dig them out with a spoon (and there’s a little taste of “Dangerous Space” for you).

I hope that the sense of ’emotional movement’ you’ve described will always be a part of what I do. And as for your question about Joanne — well, if you have come away from the story wondering what she’ll do, caring about what choice she makes, then it’s your story now to continue as you see fit. I’ve talked before about my belief that once the story is out of my head and in yours, that I as the writer don’t have any particular authority over how you should read it. But if you’d like to know what I think, then here it is: yes to all of it. Yes, it’s acceptance. Yes, it’s searching. It’s Joanne acknowledging that this may be all she ever has of her dreams, so she’d better have it with all the gusto she can. And it’s also Joanne continuing to want the rest. Does the knowledge that she will never be a rock star keep her from being the best rock star she can be? I don’t think so.

Kelley,

First off — glad to hear you and Nicola are staying together!! I was sure worried about that. (Rolling eyes way into the back of my head.)

Thanks for taking the time to give me a thought filled answer here and here.

Your answer helped to clarify my “question”. (I put that in quotes because now I see it’s always been more of a felt observation rather than question.)

The issue has been one of you (as writer) being there naked on the page and what that experience is like for you. If I understand your answer you’re saying that when the writing comes out of you (the physical entity that you are) it is not you the personality of Kelley. Rather the writing is art, creativity, something other. You’ve cleared Kelley out of the way for whoever the fictional characters are. So, not only are the characters not you but in order for them to be real in their own way you Kelley, must absolutely NOT be present.

Seems clear enough. I get that. Then I must ask this one final question on the issue.

Are you Kelley ever surprised by what comes out when you open that door? When you Kelley go back to see what you Kelley-as-writer has written, are you ever surprised? (This is where Robin the psychologist, is hovering in anticipation.) Despite the rhetoric you use, the words and the characters are still coming out of you the physical entity. Your mind has “created” them. All along this is what I’ve meant by “seeing yourself naked on the page”. In this sense my use of ‘yourself’ is simply another word for the capability of your own mind.

This conversation has been helpful in ways you Kelley (grin) cannot imagine.

Hoping you and Nicola live forever!!

Robin

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Thanks, I hope so too (big grin). And I hope you still mean it after you read this (another grin), because I’m about to do a 180 on you in some ways. Try not to throw anything….

This is an interesting conversation, and the timing is a bit spooky, since in the last months (even since July, when we last talked about this), how I think about writing has changed — maybe partly because of this conversation, who knows? So first, let me clarify a little more what I meant, if I can, and then talk about what’s new.

In all the times I have written novels and short stories, I’ve been present, but almost (in the best writing) as if standing to one side. Or maybe it’s more like trying to stand very, very still while a river runs out of me, the rush of story that can be so easily derailed if I’m not both relaxed and utterly focused. Like aikido, if you’ve ever practiced that art.

When I talk about getting out of my own way, it’s not that my personality disappears and some other writing force takes over. It is, in fact, all me. Perhaps “personality” is the wrong word. Perhaps what I mean is that those parts of me that are culturally constructed (or culturally constrained) need to be put away as much as possible.

I can’t write beyond my own limitations (as a writer and a person) unless I find a way to put those limitations off in the corner, preferably with a muzzle. If the characters in a story do or say things that I wouldn’t, feel things that I don’t (or, more to the point, things that I do feel but don’t want people to know about), I have to go there anyway, as honestly and completely as I can. I have to understand and embrace those things, make them imaginatively possible for me so I can make them accessible to the reader. No matter how unsettling it is for me.

I trained as an actor, and for a while I thought that’s what I’d do with my life. For me, writing is very much like acting. And so it occurs to me that my last answer to you wasn’t complete and wasn’t honest. Because it is all me there on the page, in some way that is not “Kelley Eskridge is Jackal Segura,” but rather “When you put these particular elements — situation, background, feelings, relationships, fears, hopes, et cetera — into the mind and soul and deep dark places of Kelley Eskridge, Jackal is the character that comes out.”

And that process makes those “fictional” experiences psychologically and emotionally real for me in ways that do reveal me, or change me, as a person and a writer. They do.

But that’s not the point of writing, and it can’t be the goal. If that process becomes too conscious, then result is self-indulgent and boring. So part of getting out of my own way is just letting the process happen without getting too bound up in it at the time, without stopping to think about what I’m exploring or revealing or changing. I may on some level choose to write a particular story so that I can have particular fictional experiences, but I’d better not know too much about that while I’m doing it — or it becomes all about me and the story suffers.

And to answer your question — Am I ever surprised by what I’ve written? — sometimes, yes, I really am. And sometimes I’m not surprised by what I’ve written, just surprised that I actually wrote it. That I actually went there. It’s not that my work is so brave in an absolute sense, but in fact I have explored things in fiction that I would never easily talk about in a group of strangers. And most of those things will never be noticed, because they aren’t outrageous enough to stick out as “yikes, look at that!”. They won’t attract anyone’s attention. They’re only outrageous, dangerous, naked if you’re me.

So, why the different answer now? Well, I’ve recently finished my first screenplay (“finish” is a relative term in that things can be rewritten pretty much until they’re on the screen…). It’s so far been a fascinating, intense experience, an E-ticket (for those of you who remember the old Disney theme park system of admission). It has, in fact, been like putting writing and acting and the solitary creative fall-down-the-hole process and all my collaborative skills into a blender. I am so happy.

And it has so far been a thousand times more fun than writing novels. Because it’s a screenplay — human behavior directly expressed through dialogue and action, without the veil of prose styling and metaphor and authorial musing — the fictional experiences have been equally direct. And it turns out I love that a lot. It’s exhilarating.

I’ve learned a ton, and have much more to learn. I have the great fortune to work with an executive producer who is smart, communicates well, and is in love with story. I have more joy from the work, and am more productive, than at any other time in my writing life. And I see myself naked on the page and in the process in ways that I’ve never imagined.

So there you go. Either I’ve really answered your question this time, or you’re ready to pour your beer over my head (laughing). Let me know which.

Cheers.

Ho Kelley! Have thrown back a few from the stool here and thought I might try to respond. Cheers baby!

I agree with what you said about truthful prose combining physical, emotional/psychological truth. In addition the cultural, national, religious, sexual, (‘ingredients’ ) etc. history of the person must have the appearance of consistency.

My first response (as a reader) is: Many fiction stories I read (even some non-fiction) seem to supply very limited psychological information for the characters/people to be the way they are. And in that sense do not feel “truthful”. This is the case even when most of the other ingredients are accounted for. Of course, I’m a psychologist. So, could there be enough??? The thing I’ve learned in listening to many, many stories from clients over the years — is that despite everything I’ve already heard and know, there was no way to predict how the next person would react to a similar situation. This is what I find so . . . boring . . . about a lot of fiction. There is not enough variation in how characters respond to even the most common situations.

And yes, there often does seem to be a rush to explain complexities of character. So, I don’t want the writer to beat me over the head with it but I also need enough to have a thread to grasp so that I can use my imagination and thoughtfulness to fill in the blanks. So the question for me (as a writer) becomes: how deep do I have to go, what sort of examples from the past or from the character’s thought process, etc., do I have to put out there so the character makes sense, is complex and shows consistency? And, how many characters within the story do I have to do that with? I mean in the example you gave from Solitaire, Mist tells Jackal it’s hard to always have to be nice to her. It’s a great example of characterization for Jackal, but tells us virtually nothing about Mist. I remembered reading that and I know my thought was something like “then don’t be, say what you think” and then wondering why she would say such a thing in the first place. Or another way of asking and again only for illustration — would it have been more helpful to understand the development of the psychology of Jackal’s mother to better understand its impact on Jackal???

. . . . so to get back to my original question . . . to be truthful, in revealing the character in physical, emotional, psychological depth, do you feel revealed? Does it ever feel like taking your clothes off in front of strangers? And, I’m not asking in a real sense, I mean it more like . . . when you’re sitting in front of the story and trying to get out what you mean, what is truthful for the character — in the silence of your own mind, in the privacy of your own home — do you ever feel like that? Like you’ve just peeled off all your clothes and are naked there on the page? The question is not about the truth you reveal about yourself to me as reader, but to yourself ABOUT YOURSELF.

I’ll have to find another way to talk about the rest of the question I’m trying to ask.

Perhaps I’ve fallen off the stool. Let me get another . . .

Robin

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Hi Robin,

You’ve been very patient, thanks. I’ve been eyebrows-deep in a project for the last six weeks or so, but have been circling back to your question and chewing on it during that time. I think I understand it better, but I’m not sure that I can answer in a way that’s any more satisfying for you (grin). Let’s see how this one goes.

You’ve asked a writing question (how deep to go and what to show) and a writer question (what do I reveal to myself about myself), so…. writing first. It’s hard to talk about this, because so much of it is instinct (by which I really mean, practice and expertise so deeply integrated at this point that I no longer know how to talk about it as decision-making process). But I’ll take a whack at it.

It occurs to me that it’s in large part a function of the challenges of writing from a single, deep point of view. Solitaire is Jackal’s story, so as a writer I’ve tried to go deep with her, and then show in other characters whatever she needs to see in order to interact with them. In that example with Mist: we’ve already had a previous interaction (brandy and orange juice is disgusting), and we’ve been privy to some of Jackal’s opinions of Mist — she’s a fashionista, someone Jackal feels unconsciously superior to, someone she regards as fundamentally shallow, etc. And so in the interchange, Jackal is surprised by not only what Mist says, but how deeply she seems to feel about it. And since it’s Jackal’s story, we only get to know or see what Jackal wants (or is forced to) know or see. Jackal isn’t focused, in that moment, in wondering why Mist is who she is: she’s focused on herself, her own insecurity and embarrassment.

Would it help to understand Donatella’s psychological history to better understand its impact on Jackal? I guess my response is, helpful for whom? (That’s a real question, not me being snarky). In that moment, Jackal doesn’t need it — again, she’s focused on herself, trying to cope with the experience. Later, the reader gets the information that Donatella’s always been competitive in this way, and also the memory of the rescue on the cliffs. But Jackal doesn’t spend a lot of time dissecting her mother’s psychology. Jackal’s an impatient soul, more into doing than reflecting, which is how she gets herself into trouble sometimes.

I think that writing in this way (from a single, deep point of view) is a lot like the physical transmission of television: all the black on a TV image is not black pixels being beamed to my TV set, it’s the absence of any data at all that my brain interprets as black. If I’m doing my job as a writer, the reader will fill in the blank spots for herself because that’s what Jackal is doing.

Other points of view are more flexible. One of the things I love about Stephen King’s work is his facility in wandering in and out of everyone’s heads, primary and secondary characters, and combining their real-time thoughts with memory, behavior, observation and feeling to paint a complex picture in a few simple strokes. He’s fantastic at creating character.

As for the writer question, well…. No. I don’t feel naked on the page with myself. And I’m guessing this is not the answer you expect (I won’t presume to guess what answer you want), because it’s pretty much a cultural given that writers do expose themselves in their work, so it makes sense that it would start “at home,” so to speak.

But no, that’s not how I feel. When I write, it’s not about me, and I mean that in lots of ways. I do not write “about Kelley” in fiction — that’s what the virtual pub is for. I learn a lot more about my own psychology and process in the act of writing these pints than I do in the act of writing fiction. Fiction is not self-analysis. It’s story. It’s the joy of walking through the door in my head and finding myself in another place with people that I grow to understand and to love. And I am both there and not there during that experience — I’m there, in the story, sometimes in their heads and sometimes as an observer, but it doesn’t matter that I’m Kelley Eskridge, it doesn’t matter who I am in the daily waking world or why I behave the way I do. I’m not there to reveal myself to me or anyone else, and if I do experience a self-revelation, it will damn sure derail the writing. All that matters is that the writer is there with space in her heart and mind and soul for all manner of human behavior and feeling and action and relationship. The writer is the doorway. The writer is the physical transmission process for this TV of the mind. And Kelley had better get out of the writer’s way if anything true is to be written. Because it’s not my truth but the truth of the story that is important. Something doesn’t have to be true for Kelley in order for it to be true for the character — the writer’s job is to make space for everyone.

This probably sounds like I think that “I” am not “the writer,” but that’s not what I mean. The relationship between art and craft and artist is pretty complex. Craft is learned behavior that has to become instinctive, integrated, in order for the art to emerge and the artist to function. The writer has to both know, and not know, what she is doing in the moment of creation — be both hyperaware and deliberately not looking. The writer must control and surrender, simultaneously. It’s like riding a bicycle with no hands, something I enjoyed immensely as a child, which is surprising considering that I was in almost every other way physically risk-aversive. Writing, like those bicycle moments, is a rush that only happens (in my experience) after a lot of bloody hard work and a fair amount of falling on one’s ass. It cannot be done if the writer is busy looking at whether or not she herself is on the page in any way. If I am looking for the truth of myself in the work, I am missing the point. It’s not about me. The writer doesn’t give a shit about me — whether I’m tired or grumpy or wrestling with Big Identity Issues. The writer want to write. I’m finally learning that I am happiest when I get out of my own damn way and thereby help the writer, the opener of deep doorways, do our work.

And that’s the best that I know how to describe it right now. It seems like a clumsy description, and maybe it doesn’t make sense, but it’s the most naked I can get about it.

Let me know what you think.

hey, you sound WAY too busy….how is the new novel coming along, or is it bad to ask? me, I think the winter has been very long and we will all feel less stressed when the sun starts shining a bit more. Well I will anyway.

amanda

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Pretty busy, for sure, although everyone is, right? It’s a busy world. We’re ‘supposed’ to be busy, it’s a cultural value (a silly one, but I sure have internalized it). But the sun is shining now, and you’re right, it does help.

As for the new novel, well…. I sent my editor about 20,000 words and an outline, and she thinks the story needs to be focused slightly differently before she’s ready to start showing it around within HarperCollins. She has some good ideas that will make the book stronger, so I’m thinking about them, and about a screenplay, and about a short story collection that I’m interested in putting together (with some new work as well as what’s already been published).

I think the writing in my new book is my best so far, and I think the story will be compelling if I can ever get there. But, as with Solitaire, I find that beginnings are an issue for me. I didn’t know any other way with Solitaire than to trace out the circumstances and events and choices that bring Jackal to the top of the Needle — and yet there are plenty of readers who think the story doesn’t really kick into gear until then.

I have competing instincts as a storyteller. I want to start with a bang and tell a story that’s exciting and compelling and large, full of choice and consequence. And I also want to tell the story that’s real for the characters, that shows where they’ve come from and builds the foundation for those big choices. But if that story is to be truthful (psychologically, emotionally), then it is of necessity a slower story, a story built on smaller details, more daily incidents (as we’ve already talked about with regard to the journals). The stories of real people are stories of accretion; we’re like coral that builds its shape slowly.

I know that one problem with the current novel, for all its beautiful prose and psychological truth, is that it’s just too damn slow. And I’m probably going to have to throw away at least 10,000-12,000 of those words, and go back, and start over again. And just trust that I’ve improved enough as a writer to embed the smaller story within the larger story, rather than spelling it all out for the reader.

So, I am having to step back and let things work themselves out in my writer’s brain at their own rate. I write slowly anyway, and this makes it even slower, and that frustrates me beyond belief, sometimes to the point that I don’t feel like a ‘real’ writer anymore. (That usually passes, smile). But what I learned writing Solitaire is that it takes as long as it takes. If I had rushed Solitaire, it would be a lesser book. If I rush this one, ditto. I know that impatience is not my friend, and I ignore the voice inside that tells me I am failing because I am not meeting the one-book-a-year expectations of the ‘busy’ world.

While the new book is mulching, I am working on Something Completely Different — I’m putting together a new business venture. I’m not ready to talk about just yet, but will share the details soon, and will say that I think Jackal would approve (waggles eyebrows in the annoying way of people who have a secret they think is really cool).

I hope the sun is shining wherever you are, and your stress is out walking with its shoes off and grass in between its toes.

I’ve just read “And Salome Danced“. Beautifully written story and I thank you for that.

So my question isn’t about the story as much as it is about your process. I write a bit (more all the time) and often find it difficult to translate my thought-feeling into accurate written language. The effort to convey what I mean (as I think, feel, smell, and imagine it) is an ultimate challenge.

I imagine you struggle with this as well? Has it taken some self-discovery, self-examination and maybe an equal amount of willingness to let others know that you think (etc) that way in order to write it down? Are you vulnerable when you write “accurately”?

I think of this because Jo/e Sand seems to say exactly what Mars feels, desires, and experiences in the secret depth of her life. You were able to make it happen.

My experience of reading the story, of feeling Salome be inside Mars was exhilarating — I had to remind myself to breathe when it ended. If I could ever write one sentence that made another feel that way I would be successful.

I am grateful for any insight and willingness you may have to discuss this.

Robin

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Hi, Robin. I’m glad you enjoyed the story.

Conveying the particular moment is half the essence of good fiction, in my opinion. So if you’re finding it a challenge, well, join the club (grin). The other half is knowing what moments to convey: in other words, what sequence of moments will best tell the story. But that’s a different discussion: you’ve asked about the process of making the moments truthful, which is a large enough question to be going on with.

Truthful prose, to me, combines physical and emotional/psychological truth. Our culture, our background and our experience affects what we believe about the world, and influences what we notice as we move through our everyday lives. Here’s an example of this that interests me. Another example is that people from groups that experience cultural discrimination or oppression will notice different things about an event or an interaction than mainstream folks.

And what we notice about a situation affects how we respond to it. In fiction it’s important to make these correlations visible to the reader, because that’s how we learn about the characters. For example, it makes no sense to a reader if Billy Joe says, “I like your shirt” to Bobby Sue, and Bobby Sue hits Billy Joe with a baseball bat — unless we already know something about their relationship, or Bobby Sue’s anguished past, or we see Bobby Sue noticing that Billy Joe has a knife behind his back. Whatever. The important thing is that the particular moments — the sensory details, the internal dialogue, the rhythms of speech or movement — somehow support our understanding of the character and her actions.

One small example of this from Solitaire is in the first section of the book, when Jackal and Mist and Turtle are standing in line at the omniport and Mist tells Jackal that it’s hard to always have to be nice to her, to always have to support her. It’s significant, to me, that Jackal has to have this pointed out to her, and also significant that she is embarrassed by it. Without “explaining” the character to the reader, I’m (hopefully) giving you access into a corner of the psychology of the assumption of privilege, and the test of character that occurs when it is pointed out that we enjoy privilege at the expense of people we care about.

I think that good fiction is an accretion of small moments like this. I think one mistake that writers make is to rush these things, or to assume that it’s enough to “explain” a character’s actions at the time they are happening. But it’s not enough.

I think there are two kinds of these moments: things the characters notice, and things the writer wants the reader to notice. Sometimes they combine, sometimes they don’t.

I do think it takes awareness to write these moments, but not just self-awareness. I think it takes awareness of others, the commonalities and the differences between us.

In most cultures, and in most of our hearts, we use difference to separate ourselves from others. But I think that for writers, difference needs to become a path to connection. I will step into a core of strangeness in a character that in ‘real’ life would send me off the bus at the next stop, you know? And in order to do that, I have to imagine, and then I have to experience the world in another skin.

To write a sentence that makes someone forget to breathe because they have just seen some aspect of their secret self in my words, I have to spend a lot of my time figuring out why I behave the way I do, and then I have to figure out why others behave the way they do. And the trap here (that writers, including me, fall into all the time), is assuming that I am somehow the reference point against which behavior ought to be measured — that people who don’t behave like me should be expressed as deviating from the norm. This leads to preachy writing and cardboard characters, people who would only “be normal” (i.e. “like me”) if they were smarter or kinder or whatever. (I’ve talked about this in context of white writers describing the skin color of non-white characters.) This passes for character development in a lot of writing, but I don’t think this is enough either.

When I was studying American Sign Language and Deaf culture, I learned a concept of “Deaf center,” which means that if I really want to understand the language I have to understand where it comes from: I have to do my best to understand Deaf experience not in terms of my hearing background, but in its own terms. I have to take myself out of the center of the universe, and become a witness of the experience that is happening to other people at the center of their universe.

One thing that really helped me with this was a lesson I learned from my mom when I was very young, and my parents were active in the civil rights movement in Florida. She told me that when African-American people described their experience, I should always start by assuming their experience was true for them. It took me until adulthood to understand that what she was saying was not “everyone tells the truth.” What she was saying is that everyone tells their truth, and it might not be mine. I remember being at prep school and telling upper class white students that our phones had routinely been tapped when I was growing up, and they didn’t believe me, because it had never happened to them or anyone they knew. And rather than admit the world was different for me than it was for them, they asserted that I had a “wrong” perception of the world.

This makes for frustrating experience, but potentially interesting writing. When characters conflict, worlds are colliding.

I do think that fiction can reveal much about the writer, including some things that might make the writer feel vulnerable or exposed. The thing is, most readers never know what those things are. Many of the moments or perceptions or behaviors or attitudes that characters express in my stories are not mine at all, or at least not as written. No one but me (and often Nicola) knows at what moments in my fiction I am deliberately showing my self, opening my world to the view of the reader. That’s fine with me. Fiction isn’t memoir, even when it’s true.

I’d be interested to know what you and others here in the virtual pub think about all this (from a writing or reading perspective). And if I haven’t answered your question, please let me know.

Hi!

I have recently read your article on the internet about the process of being published etc. I was wondering, just out of curiosity –” is it possible, or just acceptable to publish one story in two different publishers at one time. For example — get the book accepted by both a publisher from UK and USA? Can the author, in that case, accept both of their offers and work with both?

Thank you horribly much for your time,

I hope you can respond,

Best regards.

anonymous

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I’m not sure which article you mean, but for those people who are curious, here’s one.

And the answer to your question is, it depends. It’s possible, sure. Most everything depends on how each individual deal is structured.

The approach that I’m most familiar with, since I’m a US writer, is this: an author sells her book to a publisher in the US. That publisher buys the right to publish the book in English in the US , or in North America (US and Canada). Sometimes they also buy foreign edition rights, which means that someone from the publisher offers the book for sale into foreign markets, and in this case the UK would be one of those markets. If that’s the case, then the author cannot go off and make a deal on her own with a UK publisher –” she no longer has the right to do that.

If she doesn’t sell that right to the US publisher, then she and her agent can market the book to other countries, including the UK .

In either of these examples, the US publisher would make sure to publish their edition first, before selling to other markets. Occasionally, for big name authors, a publisher like Random House or HarperCollins, with divisions in the US and UK, will buy the book for both markets and coordinate the publication. For example, I was in the UK when Stephen King’s latest came out, and got the UK edition with the (in my opinion) cooler cover.

As for submitting your novel at the same time to a US and a UK publisher, sure, you can do that if your agent thinks it’s not going to upset anyone. There used to be a firm, fast rule against simultaneous submissions, but it seems less rigid than it used to, although the author and agent need to be very clear with all the parties involved about what’s going on. It makes editors grumpy to make an offer and only then find out that they are in competition with other people.

So the short answer to your question is that you can sell your book in any way you have the right to. And every time you sell the book, you sell some of your rights to it. The game is balancing the short-term money against the long-term potential, your time and energy, et cetera. There’s no one right way.

Thanks for the response to my questions about Solitaire. I see your point about not wanting to come out with a disappointing sequel, as they so often are. I think Tolkien is probably the only one whose sequels were as good as the initial novel, and you could argue that they aren’t sequels at all but one huge novel parceled into publishable units. At the same time, Solitaire was such a great book that it would be nice to continue it, and hope that literary lightning strikes the same place twice. I liked your idea re: Jackal/Snow/Scully, assuming the novel is not simply an exploration of Jackal’s melancholy and adjustment. Will she conquer Ko? The world? herself?

Thanks for the favorite books –” I am not familiar with them, but am always happy to hear about quality writing.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing the next novel, whatever it might be.

Julia

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Hi, Julia.

Yes, I’m looking forward to the next novel too. I confess that one of my favorite parts of writing is “having written,” if you know what I mean –” it’s nice when it’s done and I can just pat it happily and then go have a beer. It’s not my only favorite part, thought: I’ve learned the hard way that I have to enjoy writing as well as having written.

I’ve read the first chapter of the new book (working title Hollow) twice, to very different audiences (a high school student/faculty audience in New Hampshire, and a group of science fiction readers at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle). Both readings got a great response, which gives me confidence that I’ve made a good start. Now I just have to not fuck it up.

Hollow is not Solitaire, but it’s already clear to me that I’m exploring some similar questions and concerns. And some different ones, as well –” it’s not a retread. At least I sincerely hope not. I do not want to be a writer who writes one book over and over and over. Makes me think of a fly trapped between a window and the screen, batting itself around trying to find its way out.

I console myself with thinking about how different the book after Hollow will be (I already have some ideas….) But, you know, I bet that someone who has read Solitaire and Hollow will see immediate connections with that one, no matter how “different” I think it is. I’m starting to see my writing as a highway system: a small town might be pretty different from a big city, but the same road can run through both.