It is somewhat tropical here today. My clothes are the only things preventing my body from melting off my chair and onto the floor where I would get stuck in the rug with all the other disgusting things that have fallen between the fibres over time. Along with the tropical heat and humidity we also have the monsoonal type of damp weather pattern hovering over us. Despite the intermittant drizzle and/or torrential downpours I have put the washing out because I'm that kind of girl - edgy and rebellious - and, well, the wind is blowing too. The WIP is in an awkward phase where it is refusing to write itself - dagnabbit - and everything/anything else is a way more attractive proposition then knuckling down (so neanderthal) and actually writing the thing. So I am blogging, considering putting my neck to the Creative NZ funding guillotine again, checking the lint trap in my navel and chugging through other people's books.
I have just finished reading I am Number Four which was a fairly ripping read but had these strange sentences from time to time that failed the 'I am a sentence' test and the occasional incorrectly applied turn of phrase which rendered the sentence it appeared in meaningless. The main character is the cause of the mess he is in but is told several times by his guardian "its not your fault." This book, barely published, is already a movie out later this year with some recognizable actors in it. Over the last couple of days I came across a discussion about the downside of particular ages and locations if you are trying to get published here and here. It interested me that Adelaide in Australia was considered a back water and concerned me that New Zealand was noted as further down the list of backwaters from there. I know a writing career can be hard down here in the Antipodes but I thought it difficult everywhere. Now I wonder how the rest of the world sees us. If I wrote I am Number Four without James Frey's cache/notoriety and without his US location would it a) be the bestseller it already is and b) be the movie it already is? I know that a number of Kiwi authors have been successfully picked up overseas (Helen Lowe, Bernard Beckett, Lloyd Jones to name a few) but are they the lucky exceptions? Are the words New Zealand a red flag for some publishers?
4 comments:
it's just torture! torture!
Time to relocate I wonder?
Great links with some very interesting thoughts to ponder.
Ageism is in the publishing industry...but it is hidden in that it comes under the Commercial Marketability heading. Nicola Morgan is right that it is the quality of the manuscript that is very important and will trump this but only if the editor can convince marketing that the writing is so outstanding that it trumps their concerns. So use face cream and never tell your age....that includes your birth year online...everything is searchable...
The internet has made the world a lot smaller so hopefully the backwater location argument won't be able to be used. But authors do need to have have some web presence...If you can't do that book signing in New York because you live in Ekatahuna...You can still give your fans something personal...on your website...blog...etc...and isolation can be a marketing point...Joy Cowley wrote a book about her life for kids called 70 miles from ice cream...when she was living in Fish Bay.
Although I don't think it was the case in the example in the link, I guess some publishers will use these issues as polite ways to say no to somebody. I hope for good publishers it will always come down to the writing. Maureen I don't intend to ever get old and Pen while I do fancy spending time in some very high profile book cities like New York and London, there is a kiwi stamped on every cell in my body.
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