long and rambly part the second

[psocoptera]

Teresa Nielsen Hayden (an editor at Tor) wrote a blog essay about slush and rejection letters, including a list of reasons manuscripts get rejected, from most to least obvious: {{which I don't seem to be able to post because of "bad unicode inputs" or something, although god only knows how something copied into and out of a plain text file could have bad unicode in it}}

In the ensuing discussion, someone inevitably made a slushpile - fanfic archive analogy. (I suppose in fanfic the equivalent of "buying the book" is recommending the story? Or maybe 11-14 just don't apply in fanfic and 11a is just "good story").

And you have to ask yourself - at least I had to ask myself - just where does my fic fall? The reassuring bulk of 1-6 insulates me nicely from the bottom. I'd like to think my 7s never make it as far as getting finished. The 8s... I suppose one would have to file porn written to one's own taste there, the beauty of fandom being that with enough writers, someone else might share it, and one man's 8 is another man's good PWP ::grin::. (Forestalls argument: yesI'veactuallyreadsomereallyamazingwritinginPWPs anddon'tthinkeroticwritingis inherentlylowerqualityoranythinglikethat.Give me some credit, people.)The 9s... I've written that story. The 10s... hey, I'm probably *proud* of writing that story.

I feel less sure I know what differentiates the 11s and 12s and 13s. Arcane editorial matters such as what there's a market for, maybe. Market is interesting. Between the fic I've written For people, and the stuff I've written just for myself, well, okay, I don't really have the data to make a proper comparison. But I think I've gotten more reader response from stories that were written for someone, such that I suspect when I write with the intent to please one particular person it has the effect of making the story more generally pleasing to people in general. Some combination of the inclusion of Crowd-Pleasing Elements (such as being less weird and depressing - is it any coincidence that my possible favorite of all of my nsync stories is the one where none of them get taken in the Rapture and Lance and Chris are going to Hell and nobody else ever has ever liked this story) and a higher standard of clarity and such.

So there's a question - how do I decide if I want to try to write a given story with the reader in mind (by having a particular reader in mind) or if I just want to write it for myself? If I'm gonna care about it at a 9, how many of those stories, and which ones, have the potential to get pushed on into the 11s and 12s? I'm sure the real writers try to make all their stories Good for reasons of writerly ambition and drive which I, realistically, lack. I'm not trying to sell this stuff. Just entertain myself and occasionally others.

(And then there's glorious 14itude. I don't delude myself that I could sell fiction in the actual publishing world, but I've had a couple things recommended or archived or given feedback that made me go eeeeee, dude! So, you know, that is pretty 14y in my book.)

Comments

[ursula]

I don't think it's that hard to sell fiction in the real publishing world. Selling enough to make a living is well-nigh impossible unless you want to write a novel a month; but selling something, ever just takes a thick skin and a lot of stamps.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

Okay, it's probably worth mentioning, in that case, that I don't really read or have any interest whatsoever in popslash, but I have read and liked the Rapture story. So it has made at least one person other than yourself. . . umm, happy is the wrong word in this case. But I liked it.

Re:

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Cool! Yay! Thanks!