Photo Credit: midnightcomm @ Flickr.com

“You must be a mother,” the man said. “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Ellie smiled politely. She was used to complete strangers approaching her and wanting to see her baby. It was hard to say what might motivate that sort of behavior in people – somehow, you just seemed to become more approachable when you were wheeling around a stroller. It was certainly not what she’d expected. Her husband, Mark, had always complained that parents had eyed him suspiciously when he’d show any interest towards their children, as if they feared that any man who spoke to a child must be trying to harm them. Ellie had found very little reason to be suspicious of people, and was more annoyed by the attention than paranoid about their intentions.

“How old is your baby?” the man asked.

“About a month old,” she said, and began wheeling her stroller through the parking lot towards the Target store entrance. The man walked along beside them, though not close enough that Ellie was concerned. He was a large man with short brown hair, wearing dress slacks, a plaid shirt and thick plastic glasses. He wore a smile that seemed to be a regular feature on his face. By all appearances, he seemed rather harmless.

“I’ll bet you’re ready for her to sleep through the night,” the man said, and laughed.

Ellie laughed too, out of politeness. “Oh, yeah,” she intoned. “I used to think I know what it meant to be tired. And then we had a baby.”

They were approaching the entrance now, and the man began walking faster. “Enjoy your day,” he said, and vanished into the store.

Ellie went about her business, too, picking up a desperately-needed nursing bra and some snacks. She crossed paths with the man twice, both times making polite eye contact and offering a nod. By the time she was done and on her way to the register, she saw him again, this time speaking to another woman with a stroller.

“You must be a mother,” he was saying to her. “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Ellie wasn’t certain why it bothered her so much for the man to be saying that to another woman who was obviously a mother. But as she passed by and made her way to the checkout lane, she felt a twinge of disappointment building within her, like this odd interaction should have been hers and hers alone.

“Are you having a Happy Mother’s Day?” the cashier asked her as she checked out.

“I suppose so,” said Ellie. And she wanted to add, but I wish I didn’t have to share it.

Photo Credit: Trina Baker (Flickr.com)

The canvas was blank.

The artist stared at his hand.

It wasn’t that he was looking for inspiration – after all, he knew exactly what it was that he wanted to paint. The problem wasn’t in the idea.

It was in finding the right place to start.

His eyes followed the lines on the inside of his palm. It was like looking at a river on a map – he could trace each line, and see it branch out into tributaries, streams and creeks. He could see the delta up near his index finger, and the stronger, deeper, more powerful line it formed. He wondered which way the water would flow on his hand – towards his thumb, or towards the outer edge of his palm.

He thought about spitting on his hand, just to see how the liquid would flow, but no—that would defeat the purpose of the exercise. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking; just staring.

He turned his vision to a small piece of calloused skin that had turned white and flaky. Underneath it, his hand was smooth, free of the wrinkles and creases he could see elsewhere. The hard skin on the top wore its ridges much more deeply than the skin around it. It was as if the top layer removed all signs of age as it came off his skin; the bottom layer was fresh and new, wrinkle-free and able to be molded into something new. He wondered if the texture of the paintbrush would start to shape it. Perhaps his hand would take on the smooth polish of the wood. Perhaps it would even start to feel smooth, like the wood, and give the brush a point on his hand on which he might lose control. That would be unfortunate. He could see himself now, painting and slipping just a bit. A slip of the brush could cost him hours of work if it was too severe.

He sighed and turned his hand over. The purpose of this exercise was to put the mind in a creative place, not to stifle his creative energy with thoughts of failure. The back of his hand – now that was an interesting place, far more worthy of creative consideration. He flexed his fingers, watching the muscles of his knuckle push up the mountainous bones that controlled his fingers, along with the skeletal structures under the skin that seemed to pop up. His gaze went deeper into the flesh, admiring the individual craters that made up the surface of the skin. Some of them had fine blond hairs sticking out, but most didn’t seem to have any hair at all. He wondered if the craters were supposed to be hair follicles, or if they were just tiny dimples in the skin.

He’d heard, once, that the reason human fingers were so dexterous was because they had tiny, eye-like sensory organs in their tips. They weren’t eyes in the conventional sense, but more like sensors that could see with a sort of blind sight – aware of things, but not conscious of them.

He stretched his fingers up under his eyes and studied them carefully. The light overhead gleamed off their tips. One would think, if there were any eyes on the fingers, you would be able to see them wincing in that light. He turned his gaze slight away from his fingers, but watched them in his peripheral vision, waiting to see if he could detect some sort of motion – some sign of eyes opening and closing. He waited, watching, and thought, for a moment, that perhaps he’d seen something. But he realized it was more likely a trick of the light, or an error of his eye.

His eye flitted to the canvas in front of him, and suddenly, he knew exactly where to begin. The entire plan seemed to appear on the canvas in front of him, almost like a paint-by numbers picture stacked upon other layers.

He picked up his brush, and he began to paint.

Photo Credit: Aussiegall (Flickr.com)

“I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” confessed Chris. He pulled his head out from underneath the car’s hood. “I mean, I have some ideas, but I don’t really know enough about cars to say.”

The car had been lost power during his commute, and he’d barely gotten it home. It was a weird problem — the battery seemed to have no problems at low speeds, but completely went out during high speeds. If he was driving locally, the car was fine. If he was on the highway, the dashboard would go out, the air would turn off, and the car would have trouble accelerating.

“Well, take it to a mechanic,” said Alice.

“I can’t afford it,” said Chris. “I just had to replace my starter last month.”

“Charge it, then,” she said. “You’ve got to have a car. It’s not like you can get to work without one.”

She was right about that. But Chris was reluctant to tell her that his credit cards were already maxed, and that he was already worried he might have to declare bankruptcy if, God forbid, he lost his job. It wasn’t that Chris was bad with money, per se – it was just that he hadn’t slowed his spending down quickly enough, when he’d been cut back to a part-time position, and he hadn’t considered how quickly his credit card balances would shoot up.

So, he was in a precarious position now. He’d hoped it would be something simple that he could fix himself. But as he stared at the engine, schematics in hand, he realized that he had no idea of how to fix the blasted thing. He’d had to make a few repairs in the past, but they’d always been very minor things. This problem was far out of his realm of repair consciousness.

He cursed. “I hate feeling like this,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Alice.

“Helpless. Incompetent. Stupid,” he said. “Car repair seems like one of those basic skills everyone should have to learn. Why don’t they teach this stuff in high school?”

“They do, I think,” said Alice. “I mean, I think they did at my school, anyway.”

“Well, not at mine, and if they did, I didn’t take it,” fumed Chris. “It should have been a required class. Why don’t they make you learn stuff you actually need to know instead of stuff you don’t even care about?”

“That makes sense,” said Alice, her smile slightly wry. “Your car breaks down, and so of course it’s the educational system’s fault and not yours.”

“Don’t get all defensive,” Chris said. “Just because you’re a teacher doesn’t mean you know what’s best.”

Now Alice’s smile dropped into a dangerous frown. “I know a hell of a lot more about education than you do,” she said. “I’ve got a master’s degree. You never even finished college.”

“Right, let’s just bring that back up,” said Chris. He slammed his screwdriver down on the ground in anger. “Chris is a failure. He can’t finish anything he starts.”

“I never said that!” shouted Alice. “I never said that. All I said was that you need to finish one day.”

“Once again, because you think you know better than me!” Chris fired back. He yanked the car hood down now and stepped towards her. “If you think I’m such a failure, you fix the car!”

“Fix your own car!” Alice said. “At least I can afford to keep mine running! Maybe if you’d go get a job that didn’t require a nametag, you’d be able to keep your bills paid.”

Chris felt like he’d been sucker-punched. “That was low,” he said quietly. “You know it’s been a rough year.”

“And yet somehow, I’ve managed!” shouted Alice. “They’re cutting jobs left and right in my field, but I’ve held on!”

Chris stormed inside the house as she said it, leaving her out in the garage. She didn’t follow him in, and he assumed she’d gone home when he looked out the window a few minutes later and saw that her car was no longer there.

He felt boiled over, with no ambition to do anything but sit in front of the TV and fume. The car wasn’t getting fixed today. That much he knew. But the whole experience had been a reminder that he had plenty of other things in his life that were broken as well.

Photo Credit: Mike Baird (Flickr.com)

George let out a heavy sigh as he stared as his naked body in the mirror. From the front, it looked find. But when he started to turn even slightly to the side, it became clear that his figure wasn’t as flat as he wanted to believe.

“When did this happen?” he asked his wife, Elli, who was busy showering behind him. “I was thin when we got married, wasn’t I?”

“That was ten years ago, George,” Elli said, her voice raised slightly to cut through the noise of the falling water. “You were a lot more active then.”

“I don’t think I was,” said George. “The kids and the dogs wear me out. I think I’m probably more active now than I was then.”

“Well, it’s your metabolism, then,” Elli called. “I don’t know. Maybe if you’d quit eating hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch every day, you’d be better off. Or lay off the beer when you get home.”

“I don’t know,” said George. “I’m skeptical that it has much to do with my diet.”

It took Elli a moment to respond — it sounded like she was in the midst of washing her hair – and George turned to the other side, and clutched his gut. It wasn’t huge, and it didn’t even really feel like fat. He could feel his ribcage underneath his slightly sagging breasts.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Elli said. “Either eat less or exercise more. It’s up to you.”

“I don’t know,” said George. He released his gut, and watched it jiggle. “I guess I could start eating more salad.”

“That’s probably a good start,” said his wife.

George started to dress. “It’s just… I don’t know,” he said. “You cover salad in meat and dressing and cheese, and you might as well just be eating a pizza, you know?”

“Then why don’t you use our gym membership?” Elli asked. “We’re paying for you to go, and you never use it.”

“I hate the gym,” George said. “It just doesn’t seem natural to me.”

Elli turned off the shower and pulled a towel behind the curtain. “You look fine, George,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind if you lost a little weight, but really, when you’re dressed, you look fine. Don’t be so self-conscious about it.”

George didn’t believe a word of it, of course. Elli cared. She had to. She just didn’t want to get into an argument and was trying to end the conversation. George knew full well that she’d complained about his weight to one of her friends.

“There’s got to be a better way,” he mused. “But what is it? Why is it so hard for us, with everything we can do with technology today, to lose weight?”

Elli didn’t have an answer. And George realized, as he buttoned up his shirt, that he didn’t either.

Photo Credit: Duane Brown (Flickr.com)

“I don’t understand it at all,” said Joseph. “I’ve been developing video games for years, and this just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Well, the problem is that you see video games as being structured in a traditional way,” said Amir. “You expect to see them on a disc, or in a cartridge, packaged for sale and put on a store shelf, or available to buy online somewhere. You expect them to come with a manual, or to teach you how to play, and you expect them to have some sort of goal at the end.”

“Yeah, that pretty much sounds exactly like a video game to me,” confessed Joseph. “At least, one you plan to make money off of.”

“Well, we’ve figured out another way,” said Amir. “One that circumvents all of that. One that gets right to the heart of why people are playing.”

“Fun?” suggested Joseph.

Amir smiled in an almost patronizing fashion. Joseph had been his teacher, once. The irony of the situation was amusing. The fact that they were having lunch at an expensive bistro instead of a quick service stop, all at Amir’s expense, was a testament to the difference between the results of their two philosophies.

“Fun has nothing to do with it,” said Amir. “Video games are rarely fun for long.”

“I disagree,” said Joseph. “If a game stops being fun at some fundamental level, the player will move on to something else. You know that.”

Amir shook his head dismissively. “Fun is what gets the player in the door,” he said. “That’s all. Once the player has been engaged, once the experience has started out fun, a game becomes about work. It stops being about fun, and it becomes something far more important.”

“Achievement?” Joseph asked.

“Progression,” said Amir. “The player must move towards some objective, no matter how arbitrary or difficult it is.”

“True, but you have to reward the player, eventually,” said Joseph. “If the game’s impossible, they’ll stop playing.”

Amir smiled at this. “Really?” he asked.”Do you truly believe that?”

“I can’t not believe it,” said Joseph. “It’ s a fundamental of game design.”

“It’s a fallacy,” said Amir. “What keeps the player engaged is not whether or not the goal can be achieved, but whether or not he or she becomes frustrated in achieving it. A goal can be across an endless chasm, impossible to reach, but so long as the player believes that the chasm can be crossed, somehow, and the game leads the player to believe that wholeheartedly, he or she will search for a way.”

“So, that’s the secret to CastleTown, then?” asked Joseph. “People love it because it can’t be won?”

“Precisely,” said Amir with a smile.

Joseph shook his head. “That shouldn’t work,” he said.

“I agree, with a conventional game,” said Amir. “But CastleTown has something other games lack.”

“Oh?” said Joseph. “Enlighten me.”

“Social repercussions,” said Amir. “If you stop playing CastleTown, your peasants will leave and your castle will erode. But your friends who are playing need your Castle to exist. They can allocate a small portion of their resources to keep your Castle intact. And because you are costing them something in the game, they are likely to convince you to come back and continue playing.”

“Well, sure, but what if you just tell them, ‘no?’” Joseph asked. “They’ll quit too, eventually, right?”

Amir shook his head. “You think of the gamer as a solitary, lonely person looking out for his own interests,” he said. “That has been the paradigm of the last thirty years. But the truth is that gamers are people. They want to please other people. It is far easier for them to keep playing and to help their friends work towards that next achievement than it is to leave their friends crippled in the game world. We have data that shows that 90% of gamers will return to the game if a friend asks them to do so.”

Joseph’s eyes widened. “That’s just… sort of evil,” he said. “You’re preying upon peoples’ desire to be liked so they’ll play your game.”

Amir smiled broadly. “We give the game away for free, and we offer the players the opportunity to take shortcuts for a small fee,” he said. “We sell small items to make the gamers stand out amongst their peers, and we host contests that they can pay to enter to win special items they would not be able to earn otherwise. None of this costs us a penny, you understand — whatever we can create for the game, the players want. The quality of the game, the richness of the experience, the power of the graphics — none of those things are important to us. We developed CastleTown in a month and had over 20,000 users in a single day, each of them recruiting their friends to join.”

“And all in the pursuit of an impossible goal,” mused Joseph. “What is the goal, by the way?”

Amir leaned forward. “Whatever the player perceives it to be,” he said quietly.

Joseph felt a chill roll down his back. Amir had stumbled upon something here, something powerful and raw and important where human nature was concerned. And Joseph could not help feeling that it would one day be looked upon as the beginning of a dark era for humanity — a new manipulation, subtle and seemingly harmless, but able to direct large groups of people to give up large sums of money without ever realizing what was happening to them.

Personally, I never liked that aspect of religion — as far as I was concerned, if God gave me a mouth to speak and ears to hear, why couldn’t He just talk to me directly? It’s a mystery I still don’t have an answer to. But as it happens, “Yes,” “No” and “Wait” are the three types of answers you’ll hear any time you are asking another human being or organization for support of some kind,  especially when it comes to creative works. Sadly, while I’ve seen many articles that tell aspiring writers how to elicit a “yes,” I haven’t seen many talking about what it means to “wait” or receive the all-too-common “no.”

And while this article might not be too helpful to those seeking spiritual answers from the Big Guy in Charge, it should be quite helpful to those seeking practical knowledge about gaining traction in the world of publishing.

I have a lot of friends who are aspiring writers, and I’ve watched many of them devote an incredible number of hours into developing a manuscript that they intend to sell to a publisher one day. Often, they like to talk about the various “tricks” they’ve heard about for getting the attention of a publisher or a literary agent, as if all one really has to do is write a manuscript, manipulate things the right way, and get a story published. Anyone who’s been around the publishing scene knows better — the truth of the matter is that the publishing industry is fairly closed to those who don’t have an “in,” primarily because there is far more supply than there is demand. That’s one of the reasons some writers chase after agents — good literary agents can take a manuscript from an unconnected writer and get it on the desks of otherwise inaccessible editors with very little fuss.

I hate to be hard on the publishing industry, but hang around it long enough and you’ll realize that it’s a cesspool. The big trade publishers like to muscle out the indy companies by cozying up to retailers and buying up successful authors and lines. These same publishers overprint in such large numbers that they wind up destroying 25% or more of each print run just to keep their books from being devalued in the market. Agents often make promises they have no intention of keeping, and they’re well-known for stringing would-be authors along. The few published authors who achieve “bestseller” status tend to choke the market with their pulpy, bland writing, and a lot of really good writing goes unread as a result. And there are tons of “bottom-feeder” authors as well who are out there looking to grave-rob from deceased authors and copy ideas from up-and-coming writers.

In this industry, most would-be authors don’t ever actually finish their manuscripts. And even when they do, they send them off only to get that infamous rejection letter a few weeks later. More often than not, “no” is the only answer they receive, often with very little clarification. It’s an extremely discouraging time for a writer, and it’s caused quite a few writers out there to put down the pen and give up their dreams.

But what they don’t realize is that “No” can mean many things in the world of publishing, such as:

• I didn’t actually take the time to read your manuscript because I’m too busy.
• We don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, so I didn’t read yours.
• I flipped through it, and it looked boring.
• The title doesn’t grab me.
• The story sounds dumb.
• I read the first few chapters and it didn’t grab me.
• This manuscript’s not right for our market.
• The story’s not genre-specific enough

And what they miss most often is the fact that at least “No” is an answer, even if it’s not the answer desired. But that’s far better than getting no answer at all!

Occasionally, a writer will receive specific feedback from an editor that touches on some of these points, but more often than not, the rejection letter dispatched is a simple form letter that offers very little explanation. And yet the writer is personally crushed. Feeling the sting or rejection, he or she falls into a dark mood, wondering what’s so terrible about the manuscript, and why editors constantly seem to be rejecting it.

But the truth is, no matter how bad a manuscript may be, the writer should never be daunted by a simple “no.” In fact, I advise writers who receive “no” answers to keep submitting, because being told “no” doesn’t mean the manuscript wasn’t good; it just means that particular editor didn’t want it.

Now, of course, there are “no” answers that are qualified with additional information. For example, a statement like, “We cannot publish your manuscript because it contains numerous plot holes, derivative characters, and a plot that a child of eleven would find unrealistic and bland,” offers a pretty good indicator that the manuscript might need some retooling… or outright torching. But it’s rare for a writer to receive such a critical response. Editors just don’t have that sort of time or interest, and it can leave them vulnerable to a lawsuit if they don’t choose their words with care.

More often than not, editors or agents who take an interest in a work will send a “wait” letter — something along the lines of, “this isn’t right for us at this time, but feel free to resubmit this work once you’ve made some revisions.” This letter indicates that they’re not willing to pick up a work, but that they are willing to consider it down the road.

Unfortunately, most writers I’ve known who have received this response take the wrong approach to it. They get giddy and start dreaming of success, acting as if in being told to “wait” they’ve been guaranteed a “yes.” Sadly, this is not how things tend to work out; the world of publishing is very volatile, and the potential an editor or agent might see in a work generally relates to the subject matter of a book, not the writing itself. For example, if an editor senses that Steampunk novels are on their way in, he or she might want to keep in touch with authors who are submitting those kinds of stories just in case the trend emerges. That doesn’t meant that the publisher intends to pick the book up; it just means that they want to keep that author from going elsewhere until the trend either materializes or fades away.

My suggestion to anyone who gets a “wait” letter is to weigh the situation carefully, and to suspend excitement (and bragging) until things work out. And as for that elusive “yes” letter, I’d warn writers to still be cautious about getting their hopes up when their work is picked up. I’ve had a good number of projects that I’ve gotten very excited about, only to have them fall through when it came time to sign the contracts. My wife had a similar experience earlier this year. Had we simply crossed our fingers and waited to get excited, neither of us would have had to deal with the disappointment of seeing the project canceled or assigned to someone else.

Getting a “yes” answer is a great thing for an author, but remember: even a “yes” can become a “no” until the contract is signed, and if the contract isn’t fair to the author, the book can still be dropped. Having an agent negotiate contracts is never a bad idea, but that agent has to be dedicated to the cause of seeing the manuscipt published. With that in mind, I’d like to comment on the different between being picked up by an agent, a vanity publisher, an independent publisher, a mid-range publisher, and a trade publisher.

Being picked up by a literary agent means very little. Some agents have a good reputation, but most acquire far more manuscripts that they can ever actually sell. Agents perform a function that’s not so different from a retail store — they stock themselves up with a variety of products knowing they won’t sell everything, but hoping they’ll sell enough to stay in business. I’ve talked to several writers who have signed with agents who have done nothing for them. That doesn’t mean that agents are bad; they’re quite useful for negotiating terms and contracts, and they often know what’s going on with other writers in the industry. But they are by no means a “sure thing.”

Running your book through a vanity publisher, “print-on-demand” publisher, or anything else of the sort is a shortcut that guarantees that your work won’t go far. Simply put, if your publisher demands money up front or insists that you have to sell a certain number of books for them to take a chance on you, they’re not really a publisher — they’re just providing “printing with added services.” If you have to take all the risk, you might as well get all of the rewards, too. It may be faster and easier to run your books through a vanity publisher than a traditional publisher, but don’t be fooled — your work will never be taken seriously by the publishing industry at large, particularly on the retail end.

Independent publishers are generally small companies that can only afford to sell niche titles. They don’t do a lot of fiction, and they don’t get a lot of exposure. Many, including my own company, don’t accept submissions. Those that do generally don’t pay advances, and your work may never make it beyond their niche audience.

Mid-range publishers are generally established publishers that focus on specific popular genres. They are often lumped in with independent publishers, but they’re really at the top of the category. These publishers generally have good relationships with distributors, wholesalers and retailers and know how to use these channels to sell lots of books. New writers are probably best off starting with these companies since they will be treated better and taken advantage of less… as a general rule, of course.

Trade publishers are the big, established companies that operate out of New York and London. They often have a variety of imprints specializing in genres, and they put out the majority of books that you’ll find in a retail store. These are the companies that pay big money for manuscripts, and these are the companies that tend to drive lesser-known writers crazy, because they stall on contracts, play games with publishing schedules, and cancel titles they’ve already picked up. They’ve very biased towards authors who can sell well or who have built-in marketing ability, and they tend to give little support to writers who can’t. Getting an answer of any sort from a trade publisher seems like a big deal, but remember – they deal in volume, not in quality, and they’re most concerned about what they think will sell.

Personally, I think there are better ways to publish your book than to submit your manuscript to every possible source; I’m a big fan of self-publishing myself, and while it wasn’t feasible even a decade ago, it’s more than possible now to publish your own work and distribute it via the internet directly to customers. It might lack the glitz and glamour of having a major publisher, but it’s a much better deal for the author… and a great way to bypass ever having to hear “yes,” “no” or “wait” from anyone.

So, it’s time for me to start updating again with more of my latest research.

But in the meantime, here’s a quick update on what I’m doing these days.

First of all, I’ve been quietly building up marketing momentum for my next book, Code of the Wild: North American Wolverine Vs. Timber Wolf, which is hand-painted by the incredible Jason Maranto. You can read all about the book at http://www.codeofthewild.com, but you can also check out this cool video I made to get a glimpse of the first book:

I’m also credited in the upcoming seriesDog Eaters, which I adpted from the screenplay by Malcolm Wong. It’s coming out as a 6-part comic book series in November, and a graphic novel next spring. You can read more about it at http://www.dogeaters-manga.com.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve had a big change in my life lately as I’ve transitioned from earning my undergraduate degree in business administration to working towards my Master’s in Marketing Research. It’s time-intensive, but one of the perks of the program is that I was placed in an internship with a small marketing research firm in St. Louis called The Research & Planning Group. It’s taken me a few weeks to get adjusted to the new schedule (particularly since I’ve been taking some time to make adjustments to my personal life as well by exercising more and devoting more time to reading), and I’ve had a hard time staying focused on the publishing side of things.

But the good news is that I’ve been writing fragments of articles in OneNote over the last month, and I’m ready to start finishing them up and posting them. I think a lot of them will be very valuable to aspiring publishers, especially my pieces about STP (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) and the Blue Ocean Strategy (which comes from a book I just read). I’ve also been clipping articles about the Amazon Kindle, comics as an educational tool, and the future of the publishing industry, all of which I intend to discuss in upcoming pieces.

I do want to thank those who have taken the time to approach me for work as of late. I apologize that I’ve had to turn some of you away, but as my next article will discuss, sometimes, being told “no” is the best thing that can happen to a creative person… and sometimes, being told to “wait” is one of the worst!

With that said, enough about me. Onto the articles!

-SJJ