Technical Topic -- The Odds of Getting Published

I was looking at the question  --
What are the odds of getting published?

And the answer, of course, is that if you write a super manuscript that makes folks laugh and cry and forget to feed the hamster,
the odds are very good indeed.

Which is an answer not so much brimming with The Useful, is it?
. . . Since it's hard to figure out how to write such a manuscript and if you know the secret would you please share it with me.

But when folks ask, 'What are the odds?'
They are really asking --
"Do I have a chance of getting published?
Is this is a wild, impossible dream
or hard but doable?

Is getting published like the odds of getting struck by lighning, or more like the odds of playing professional football, or is it an abducted-by-aliens thing, or what?

Answering in a simple, literal manner ... I'd point to  here where a reader for a literary agent looks at 'hundreds and hundreds' of slushpile submissions to find two writers who can be signed. 
Not so good odds, overall.

Trying to be helpful, I could go on to talk about football tryouts and being 6'6", 280 lbs and spending 40 hours a week thumping heads.
Or about standing on high ridges in thunderstorms holding a long metal pole.
I don't feel so competent addressing the whole abducted-by-aliens scenario.

But let's say I riff on the unspoken question.
Which is -- 'What are MY chances?'

It is very hard to get published. There's a lot of competition.

--You have to be persistent. (This is in your control.)

--You have to work your butt off. (This is in your control.)

--You have to learn your craft. (This is in your control.)

--You are more likely to succeed if you consciously produce something in a marketable field. (This is in your control.)

--You have to write better than what is on the shelves. (This is only partially in your control.)

-- You need an innate ability to write. (This is not in your control.)

--You have to be lucky. (This is not in your control.)


Maybe, 'What are the odds?' is not a useful question.
 'How can I improve the odds?' is.

We begin

My mind goes to a strange place when I begin imagining a new story.

I embark upon JUSTINE.

I push away from the shore and see where the winds take me.

I have a map on board somewhere here. And a compass.

I'll consult them eventually.

I use the minutes when I'm falling asleep to see the story. This is a rich time for imagining, of course, but I don't remember it all.
Good stuff, lost.
Maybe it shows up someday in the writing. I hope so anyway.

In my dreams, I'm keeping a blog. I see the words on the screen. I edit. I write. And there's a story I'm working on in my dream.
So weird.

In something approaching IRL . . .

I'm making the jump from my beloved old computer to a new one. These are two identical machines, so it's like some schizophrenic alter ego that looks the same but doesn't have the defaults set right.

I have a newer version of Internet Explorer.
It annoys me.

Next on the agenda is to move everything from the old machine over to the new machine.
It is as if I were Robinson Crusoe unloading the wreck of the ship before it is finally washed away, salvaging one more barrel of nails. Rescuing one shovel, one coil of rope.

I put this dreadful day off till I was finished with Forbidden.

The old machine -- four or five years old now -- became more and more unreliable. I'd be typing away and some keys would stop working. Sometimes the A and the Z would become inert. Sometimes the shift key. Sometimes the M. One never knew.

So exciting.

And the whole shebang turned off at random intervals, taking all my work down with it.

Like the copyedits I was dealing with
under deadline.

These things are sent to try us.

So now I must get the new machine up to speed
and do the galleys.
And the kitchen floor . . . . . . must eventually be washed.

And I'm starting on JUSTINE.

Copy edits done on MAGGIE (Forbidden Rose)

We're finished.

I say goodbye to Justine and Guillaume LeBreton, (who is William Doyle) and Maggie and Hawker.

Though I'll get back to them in a week or so when I start plotting the JUSTINE manuscript . . . which used to be the ADRIAN manuscript in my head but is now Justine's story.

As to Forbidden Rose and all I wanted to accomplish . . .

it's either in there, or it's not.

This post-copyedit period is when I walk around muttering, "I could have made it really good if I had another month."

I'm probably fooling myself.

Technical Topic -- Of Historical Hyphens

Let me say right off that this is a posting only for the linguistic and philological of heart.

Discerning reader Annie posted this question:

. . .What most interested me about your post, though, is what you say about 1790s usage.

In previous posts, you've touched on when and why using a slightly anachronistic term makes more sense than rigidly adhering to contemporary vocabulary. Given your attention to detail, I'm not surprised you pay the same attention to punctuation. But I am wondering how you decide when, for example, leaving a space between counter and revolutionary helps to keep the reader in the world of the novel and when it might be distracting.

I acknowledge that folks whose pasts do not include several years deciding when to hyphenate are probably delightfully oblivious to the author’s choices in this regard, but I'm still curious.


To which I reply …

The most important thing about all this word choice is -- I’m not writing 1790s language. I couldn't, any more than I could write authentic Shakespeare-era language. My readers, (they may number in the four digits by now,) do not expect me to reproduce real 1790s-speak.
If they want the authentic they can go to Walpole and Richardson.

I 'hum a few bars and I'll fake it' my way along. You could say I’m gelding modern English by cutting off all the Victorian constructions. Then, happily mixing metaphors, I slap on a light coat of 1790s slang.

But when the reader goes, 'Boing! 20th Century American phrase!' I've failed her.
(When Lazarus says, "That's a sweet idea," that was written before it became American slang. Not my fault. Not my fault.)

I write Standard English. I avoid hitting the reader over the head with big clunky modernisms, but I don't try to reproduce the 'voice' or the word choice of an Eighteenth Century writer.
I make a plentitude of mistakes.
Though I don't indulge in outright erroneous language when I happen to see myself doing it.
Except sometimes when I cheat.

ETA:  The rest of some tiresome commentary on the use of historical language in a 2010 book  is below the cut, where it is doubtless happy to stay.

Copyedits of Forbidden

Coming down to the wire on this.

Have I ever indicated by some slight subtle bitty hint how much I hate and despise and abominate the Chicago Manual of Style? Loathe and abhor it? It is a subject that does not leave me gravelled for lack of synonyms.

Ok. Why do we use double quotes for emphasis?

As in --
After the court martial, she was "out of commission" for about a year.

Has nobody noticed that double quote marks are being used in great numbers by dialog?

Single quote marks, on the other hand, hang around at the pool all day drinking Sex on the Beach.

Has anybody noticed how confusing double quotes are when we want to emphasize stuff in the narration surrounding dialog.
So why don't we use single quote marks for this? Huh? Huh?

And colors. I am just steamed purple by the stupid no-hyphen-in-colors bloody rule. A blue and white set of dishes. A yellow green field of wheat.

Are we richer, linguistically, because we don't use the hyphen? Are we, like, saving the hyphens for something important?

Right now my annoyance centers on certain French usages, which is not really CMOS's fault, but I will be mad at them anyway.

Sans-cullotes and counter revolutionary are the 1790s terminology.

Sansculottes and counterrevolutionary are NOT.
They're mostly MODERN. But they're in Websters and thus the pure quill as far as CMOS is concerned, (See, I got a swipe in at CMOS.) Webster's being, if not God, at least a theoretical construct of Infinite Wisdom.

So I've been stetting counterrevolutionary like mad all through the text.
Bet you didn't know counter revolutionary was a 1790s word.

In Japanese

I am in Japanese.

This is so wonderful.

I do hope this is a good translation. It's not just that I want Spymaster's Lady to be available to readers in Japan.
It's ...
(Ok. I'll admit it.)
I want somebody to read it
and say -- Manga!!
Yes. I want Annique to be a manga.
I have many unrealized dreams.
This is a particularly intelligent cover. Look at those wonderfully symbolic white cliffs of Dover. The scene where Annique comes ashore at Dover is not just a random point in the book. It's the division between dark and light. The turning of the action.
And the cliffs give a sense of the 'fortress' England presented to any invasion from France.

As to Annique . . .
This is not the face I picture for her,
but it's somebody I like the looks of.
It is here, at Amazon Japan, ready for all your Japanese Christmas shopping needs.
And see Spymaster's Lady visiting the Mejiro Gardens in Tokyo. Here.
Sherry Thomas tells me the title translates as The White Cliffs of Dover on the Other Side.
This, I like. Oh yes.

Off to California

Off to California to visit family,
and friends,
and more family.
Yes!!!