To commemorate five years in the genre fiction business, I’m writing a series of blog posts about my experiences in the hope they might help new or upcoming writers understand a bit more about the world of agents, indie publishers and the often harsh, often rewarding realities of fiction writing. This is me, Five Years In.
If you’d like to view the previous entries before continuing, please click below:
Part One: "The Acorn that Became the Teeny Tiny Oak"
DECEMBER 18, 2019
PART FOUR: “REISSUES, MOVIE OPTIONS AND THE GREAT NOVEL CONUNDRUM”
2018 was a fresh start.
I had my debut story collection back in print, with no small thanks to the efforts and patience of Mike Davis at the Lovecraft eZine. I’d found a new agent (we’ll call her Agent #2). I’d pumped out a few new stories and sold a reprint to Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, which was pretty neat. I took a deep breath and decided to take another stab at the whole writing thing.
I spent months going back through the novel manuscript and, essentially, putting it back to the way I’d wanted it in the first place. It was a difficult, frustrating project. I was spending weeks and weeks of writing time fixing the changes I’d been asked to make over the last year. A truly Sisyphean tale, to be sure, but I like to think the whole thing made me a better editor, a better writer. If nothing else, it certainly taught me one very important lesson: EVERYBODY is going to have a different take on your work, and you can’t fix everything for every reader. Take criticism with a grain of salt. Listen to the ones that matter and take strides to review and correct the ones you agree with. Be wary of trying to please everyone, because I hate to tell you, but everyone is not going to love or connect with everything you write. That’s why they call it art.
So, BEHOLD THE VOID was reissued in a snazzy new, illustrated and corrected format (BTW – you can buy it here). I’d sold the book to a couple foreign territories, and the short stories were flowing again. I’d finished a new screenplay and been approached about optioning a couple of my stories for film adaption. Ultimately – to date – two stories have been optioned: Fail-Safe, a very, very short story, and Mandala, a fat novella that endcaps BEHOLD THE VOID.
SIDEBAR: What’s an Option?
If you know the answer, feel free to skip ahead to the next break. If you don’t, here’s the deal:
Basically, an outside party (could be a producer, a development executive, a director, a screenwriter, etc.) PAYS you – note that ALL CAPS word there, very important – to exclusively control and represent your intellectual property (i.e. short story, novel, poem, etc.) for a contractually-restricted period of time. Often, this 3rd-party will have the right to “re-up” for an additional period of time, for more MONEY. That’s right, you’d need to get paid again. Hug yourself.
They’re essentially driving the car you built around to different buyers and paying you for borrowing the keys. If they sell the car, you need to make an entirely separate deal that insures you are getting your fair cut of whatever money comes in from that sale.
Typically, an initial option window sits between 12 and 18 months. The extension usually matches that or settles in around 12 months. This way, if the optioner is this close to making a deal for your IP, they can throw you some more money to buy the time needed to finish a deal. Money-wise, options aren’t gonna put your kid through college. Like anything, there are different levels. I’m sure Stephen King’s option deals could buy me a nice new home. But for the most part you’re talking low thousands, or even hundreds. The idea being that if the project “goes”, gets “greenlit”, etc., then everyone gets paid (language you want to be sure is written into any agreement). Bottom line: If anyone is getting paid, you’re getting a piece. Kapeesh?
Lately, the option agreement seems to be making way for a newer-type arrangement called a shopping agreement. The primary difference, as I understand it, is that it’s a looser deal. Basically it gives a 3rd-party the right to represent your work, but not necessarily have any control or exclusivity over it. It’s a funny line in the sand, but it keeps the commitment / cost a bit lower for the optioner, and allows the content creator more flexibility with their IP.
Regardless, I’m no lawyer, so most of what I just said is probably wrong, but that’s the way I understood things after speaking with several professionals and a few lawyers on both sides of the deal. Bottom line: If you’re approached about optioning your work, make sure you have a lawyer or agent on speed-dial to look over anything BEFORE YOU SIGN IT.
Good luck.
Back to the writing, things are suddenly looking a little less crappy. My agent doesn’t yell at me, my publisher is supportive and also doesn’t yell at me.
But now I have a new problem:
Agent #2 wants the novel.
Like… now.
Newbie Writer Conundrum #3
To Novel, or Not to Novel
The problem with writing a novel (and having a day job and having a family and maybe even just a tiny pinprick of a life) is that, for me at least, it’s an all-consuming, all-in kinda deal. And it takes a LONG time. It’s a lot of work, a lot of outlining, a lot of writing, a lot of revising. And that’s before you send it to an agent or an editor who will inevitably ask for more (or less) writing, and a ton of revising. Which is great, right? Because novels are cool, and, frankly, that’s where the money’s at. Sorry, but it’s true. Joe Hill ain’t selling a million copies of a short story collection, and publishers are not going to pay “novel money” for your short story collection. If you want to get paid, and if you want to get widely read, you need to write a novel. Reality sucks, but there you go.
For me, it was definitely a hard decision. My agent wanted the novel, and to be clear, I wanted a novel. I wanted to finish what I’d started over a year prior, to clean up the mess that had been blood-splattered all over my brain, to complete my original vision of this book.
So I committed to the novel, and that meant pushing aside short stories and novellas for what would turn out to be another six months on top of the year I’d wasted going back-and-forth with Agent #1 on changes and fixes and and and…
It was a hard call, but I think it was the right one. When you make that decision, you’re basically saying to your readers, “Hey, it’s been great, but I gotta disappear for a year. Hope you remember me when I come back! IF I come back.. ha ha… ”
Every writer wants to write, sure. But frankly, what every writer really wants is to be published. To be read. And after publishing over a dozen stories between 2015 and 2017, it was really difficult to pull up stakes and wander into the dark woods alone, essentially taking 2018 off from the short form, knowing it would mean no new stories for at least a year, and maybe more. And it’s scary, and dark, and frankly damn lonely in those woods. Bring a light.
So you writers out there, know that writing a novel means sacrifice, and it means risk. If the novel doesn’t sell, if no agent wants it, you’ve just spent six months to a year writing a glorious diary entry. And not much, if anything, else. Hooray?
Five months, ten hours a day, seven days a week.
I work freelance so I’d saved up some money, knowing the only way (for me) to get it done would be 100% commitment. And that’s what I did. And it worked.
By March 2019, I had my novel, and not much else.
Of course, the stupid thing took off on me and ballooned to about 170,000 words (approx. 600 pages – YIKES). Any writer or editor or publisher will tell you that’s WAAAAY too long for a novel, especially a debut novel.
Agent #2 sure thought so.
Enter Agent #3. Who loved it. As is. Didn’t change a word.
See kids, miracles happen.
And so it was that in the spring of 2019 everything seemed to finally be coming together. I had a new version of my debut book sans angry publisher. I had all my rights back for the work I’d pulled back from angry publisher, and I’d just sold a new novella to uber-publisher Cemetery Dance. I had a couple screenplays being shopped. The novel was done and was being shopped by my amazing new agent. I had assembled a selection of stories for a new collection (also being sold by shiny new agent), and I had a second novel already outlined and ready for me to hammer into the world.
In the immortal words of (the late Heath Ledger version) of Joker:
But wait. Hold on, clown. Something is amiss… something is Not Right.
Hmm, how do I explain it?
Imagine being in a dragster. You’re at the starting line. The engine’s revving, the crowd is cheering, the light bar begins to countdown – RED, RED, RED…
And… nothing. The green doesn’t come. The green is supposed to come.
So you sit. And you wait.
Soon the crowd begin to filter out of the stadium like the third quarter of a Detroit Lions home game. The other drivers have blasted off, finished the race, and are now all having drinks at a local pub, toasting each other and handing out awards and accolades and blurbs like happy hour pints of IPA.
But you? You sit. Engine revving. Staring at those dead green plastic lights that refuse to light up. And so you wait… and you wait… and you wait…
And you wonder if things are going so well, after all.