Monday Ramble from Joan

Ramble night...

Authors and Editors

"Jubal," Anne said worriedly, "is your stomach upset?"

"Always."

"That one's for the file too?"

"That's for the New Yorker. Their usual pen name."

"They'll bounce it."

"They'll buy it. It's morbid, the'll buy it."

"And besides, there's something wrong with the scansion."

"Of course there is! You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets frustrated. After he pees in it himself, he likes the flavor much better, so he buys it."

—Robert Anson Heinlein, A Stranger in a Strange Land

I love it when real-life authors write about fictional authors, like in Jae's excellent Second Nature. I can't help but feel that some real experience spills over into the story. But what do we have here? Let's get back in time for a spree.

-- RAH's novel was published in 1961, and he had been forced to cut back the word count from about 220,000 to about 160,000. Could he have refused? Certainly, but then this brilliant novel would probably not have been published at all. You see, RAH has long been dubbed a "Science Fiction" writer, a category that was received to be at the lowest end of literature, if literature at all. ("Wham! With a smile, Buck Rogers blew the smoke from his Universal Disintegrator and warily surveyed the remains of the extraterrestial intruder.") Only few people seemed to notice that, while investigating tomorrow's science as part of the deal, RAH always concentrated on the the social impact of that science. To him SF probably translated as Social Fiction.

Imagine his frustration when he had to shorten this novel by such an amount. Of course, it was simply too long, wasn't it? Could have done nothing to do with the fact the he was challenging commerce, certain aspects of capitalism, government and human sexual behaviour, could it now?

Fast forward. Today, lesbian fiction seems to emerge from the bottoms just as SF was about to then. It's still on the fringe (classics like Jane Rule's Desert of the Heart aside), but there are publishers who will judge your writing solely on the merit of your text, not accepability of the ideas expressed. See ylva-publishing.com for one shiny example, and no, I am not getting payed for mentioning them here.

Mind you, it's not a song and a dance with them. Their editors will work you to exhaustion, shivers and desparation -- not to make you conform, but to get the very best you can deliver out of you.

So, Ladies, keep on writing. If you want to undergo the struggle with publishing, I whish you luck and endurance. If you just want to entertain yourselves and your friends, have fun. But keep at it.

Best, Joan

Please take the time and thank Joan for coming by and sharing some words. Always good.

Enjoy those updates.

Peace, Health and Happiness.

Elisa

BtVS
• Chapter 20 of You Can't Hurry Love by Really-an-angel (The Chosen Two Archives).
  
  
• Chapter 71 of Forging Bonds by rebelrsr (rebelrsr's web site).
  
  Comics
  
• Jane's World: 02/23/15 by Paige Braddock (Comics.com).
  
  Grey's Anatomy
  
• Chapter 22 of Gilligan's Anatomy by zenparadox (Callie-Arizona).