Subjectivity in Publishing

This is for anyone who writes, or anyone who wants to write. The rest of you should go back to your previously scheduled programming.

Few of us struggle with words strictly for ourselves. We may not aspire to the New York Times Bestseller list, or even to make money from our writing, but most of us want other people to read the words we have wrenched from our very souls. (Too much?)

Anyway, this is about subjectivity. You hear it all the time – that publishing is an extremely subjective business. There is usually one person at a time who decides if your work moves on to the next set of eyes, the next step in the publishing process. And this process can involve many such judgments along the way.

To give you an example, I entered a story in a contest at this year’s Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Conference. It’s probably my favorite short story that I have written. Short, simple, sad, and centered on a young girl’s abortion. I entered it last year in the same contest and it received a score of 99/100. Great score, right? And the comments – raving. However, since there were so many entries to the short story category, my 99 didn’t merit 1st through 3rd place, or any of the eight honorable mentions. On the bright side, because it didn’t place in the contest I was allowed to submit it again this year. So I did. And it scored…. ready?

68/100

The comments, as you can imagine, were not complimentary.

Maybe it was my subject matter and the fact that I live in Bibleland, USA, or maybe it was the writing. Either way: publishing is subjective. Never doubt it.

99 or 68 – it’s still my favorite.

When the Villain is a Husband

One of the most important things about creating believable fictional characters is to avoid making them one-dimensional. Real people aren’t simple, and you never want story people who are either all good or all bad. This comes up a lot at our writers’ critique group meetings.

Recently one woman was going on and on about how there’s nothing she hates worse than some mustache twirling villain that’s just one hundred percent bad. I reminded her that she had no trouble accepting the cheating spouse in my novel who is also stupid, vain, and terrible in bed.

“Oh that’s different,” she says. “That was a husband.”

Disclaimer: The quotations reported in this blog reflect the opinions of those who said them. (Which is why they’re anonymous.) They do not necessarily reflect the view of the blog writer, who is at this writing happily married, to a man who–it’s probably best–doesn’t read this blog anyway.