(no subject)

[oselle]

One of the comments that came out of my "On Not Writing" post was that writers aren't "discovered" in the sense that I put it (I said that I couldn't understand why a writer like big_pink hadn't been "discovered"). It was interesting enough of a comment that I thought it deserved a post.

I think "discovered" may have been the wrong word -- it conjures up all sorts of magical Lana Turner at Schraft's images. "Recruited" may have been a more realistic term for what I meant. The traditional way to get into the business of writing (and here I'm speaking of both fiction and scriptwriting) is after years of hard work, disappointment and rejection and that's probably still the rule. But there's been a huge change in media and popular culture within the last ten years or so -- on television, there are more networks than ever and many that once showed only movies or reruns (like ABC Family and the SciFi Channel) are now producing their own original material. In terms of books (both fiction and non-fiction), it seems like more than ever are coming out. I think back to when I was a kid and even the grandest bookstores (like the now-defunct Scribners on Fifth Avenue) were like cozy little boutiques compared to today's "big box" bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble -- and jeez, don't even mention Amazon. Someone's got to keep all those shelves filled and they're not being filled with the new releases and back catalogs of a select few authors. There's a ravenous demand for new writing and all of these writers have to come from somewhere. Given the demand, people in the industry aren't necessarily waiting around for that next perfect spec script or manuscript to land, unsolicited, on their desk -- they're out there, proactively looking for new talent. They're recruiting and yes, they're doing some of that recruiting by keeping tabs on who's writing what online.

Now, I think television is a little more closed to untested writers because the demands of writing for television are so specific. It takes a lot more to write for television than just being a good writer. You can be a brilliant writer and still not be able to keep things like budgets, shooting schedules and locations in mind while you're writing. I think that's why you see so many of the same writers migrating from show to show -- producers and show-runners will stick with the writers they know can do the job.

Nevertheless, it's not unheard of for people to turn their online writing into a real career of writing for television. Kay Reindl and Erin Maher got their big break on a newsgroup devoted to the show Millennium, which aired from 1997-1998. After Reindl put up some particularly insightful post about an episode of the show, Millennium's executive producer, Glen Morgan, contacted her to find out how she would have handled the episode herself. She and her writing partner Maher submitted a spec script in response. Morgan was impressed enough to recruit both of them to work on the show. Millennium didn't last long, but both women are still writing for television, most recently on the CBS vampire series Moonlight. And think -- neither of these women was even writing real stories or blog posts online. They were recruited from a newsgroup! It may be wildly uncommon, but it happens.

When it comes to books, there's a lot more leeway. A literary agent or an editor can recruit an author without risking too much -- there's not an entire series with cast and crew and network on the line if the author's no good. I occasionally run across stories of new, unpublished authors receiving jaw-dropping advances for work they haven't even written yet, and often based on little more than a promising opening chapter or sometimes even less than that -- 19-year-old Kaavya Viswanathan was recruited by the William Morris Agency after her college counselor introduced the girl to her own agent. Following nothing but an interview and a few emails, she was picked up by Alloy Entertainment who then marketed her to Little, Brown. Little, Brown offered Viswanathan a two-book deal and a $500,000 advance -- and she hadn't yet written a word. Of course, things didn't go so well for Viswanathan after that -- parts of her first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life were found to have been plagiarized from several other "chick-lit" novels. But the point here is that she was recruited and offered a lucrative deal based on next to nothing. (Click HERE for a good article about Viswanathan and the business of book packaging.)

It's good to mention Viswanathan because I suspect that her plagiarism scandal dampened some of the fervor for recruiting new talent through non-traditional avenues. It may be that publishers and agents have decided to play it safe for a while and go back to the old-school method of waiting for that great manuscript to land on their desk. But as recently as 2006, The Wall Street Journal was reporting:

"Fan fiction, stories by amateur writers about characters from their favorite books, movies and television shows, was once mainly a fringe pursuit. Now, it's changing the world of fiction, as Internet exposure helps unknown authors find mainstream success. Some Web sites are attracting unprecedented numbers of readers and, in some cases, leading to book deals."

(You can read the entire article, "Rewriting the Rules of Fiction," HERE The article's a little hyperbolic, IMO, but the fact that the subject even merited an article in The Wall Street Journal proves that media companies are definitely keeping tabs on what fanfiction writers are doing.)

Blogs too, are an avenue to a mainstream writing career. In 2004, The New Yorker wrote that part of an assistant's job at mega-agency International Creative Management was reading blogs:

"Lee spends the majority of her workday in the manner of any agent-to-be: reading manuscripts from the slush pile, vetting contracts, negotiating rights, checking her boss’s voice mail. But she spends approximately an hour each day reading blogs. She scans a dozen first thing in the morning and keeps tabs on another twenty-seven throughout the day, though any of these may lead her to countless others. Reading blogs on company time is hardly unheard of, but Lee does not so much read as prospect..."

At the time of the article, ICM was representing six bloggers and seeking deals with more.

The point of talking about all this is to prove that the writing landscape has changed a lot. While the path to publication probably still lies in all those lonely years of cold submissions and rejection slips, it's no longer the only way to get into the business of writing. There are people out there prospecting and really great writing -- whether it's on a blog, a message board or in fanfiction -- has a chance of getting noticed. Whether the best fanfiction writers or bloggers have any interest in making the leap to a mainstream writing career is of course, up to them, but it's not a wild fantasy for great online writers to be recruited -- or, if you will, discovered, in this way.

As for me, I've got laundry to fold. Have a nice weekend!

Comments

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Becoming a paid writer means becoming responsible to others, having someone tell you that you have to write a certain number of words to a deadline, or you don't get paid, and maybe even telling you what you have to write in order to get published.

Half the books I've seen on the shelves in the past couple of years read like stories written by high school students who can't spell, don't know how to conjugate a sentence, and wouldn't know a plot point if it bit them on the ass. And they're evidently being edited by people who don't have time, or don't care, to do it right. And part of it is because there's that pressure to get stuff written and published and get it on the shelves.

I have a friend who's written a really good young adult novel. It's timely and relevant, and it has social and literary merit as well as being just damn good prose. She's been communicating with an agent, who told her that if it isn't written in first person, she'd better have a damn good reason why, and be able to convince the agent that it should be in third person because nobody wants to see anything not written in first person any longer.

And I think what the fuck? Why should I even try? I write almost everything in third person. I've written a couple of young adult novels that have been rejected more than once. So I have to change my writing style, what I feel is right for me, in order for an agent or a publisher to even look at my stuff? Fuck that. I'll write fanfic, and post it on my journal where a few people might enjoy it, and it pleases me. I'm not nearly as good a writer as some others, but I write what I love.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Becoming a paid writer means becoming responsible to others, having someone tell you that you have to write a certain number of words to a deadline, or you don't get paid, and maybe even telling you what you have to write in order to get published.

Yes, but on the flipside, you're getting paid. Paid to do something that you presumably love (no matter the demands) and are good at and that's got to be a nice feeling. I wouldn't mind anyone telling me what to write if there was half a million dollars in it for me at the end of the day.

I think your friend needs to find a new agent. The entire Harry Potter series was in third person and rumor has it that did quite well.

Check that link to the Viswanathan article. The Alloy Entertainment mentioned in the article handles a lot of young-adult fiction -- they were responsible for the Gossip Girl and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, among others. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff but they know how to market the stuff. That could be a lead for your friend.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. I'll let her know about it too.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I guess I'd like to get paid for writing. But having someone tell me what or how would take the joy out of it for me, I do know that.