I Me

How leaving commercial publishing changed what I write

In the middle of last year I made up my mind to leave the commercial traditional publishing world behind. This has led me to change what I write. Here’s how.

To start, I must say I was not at the time much in the commercial traditional publishing world. I had sold and published two fantasy novels, years back (actually they were the first parts of one novel, whose end has never been published). Since then I wrote a few more books that were not published, and went on writing other tales that I could never bring myself to finish.

In the meantime I watched what was happening in publishing from afar, and none of it looked healthy or good. And the copyfight began, and the publishing houses were merged and taken over by larger multimedia conglomerates, and the idea of ‘intellectual property’ arose, and the corporations and money-class of financiers moved closer to their goal of dissolving all national governments as viable entities and ruling the world as an interlocking series of corporate masters, with the other 99% of us humans serving as serfs or slaves.

Before the Soviet Union failed, I visited there. I came back by way of Scandinavia. Even after a mere three weeks as a tourist, I felt a great relief in setting foot in Finland and Sweden. It was as though a weight were off my shoulders and I felt free to breathe again.

I feel the same way whenever I move from the world of proprietary, closed software to Gnu and Linux and other free and open computer applications.

I feel the same way whenever I move from those tales now locked up in perpetual copyright, owned not by writers but by corporations, to works in the public domain or under Creative Commons.

I made up my mind to join this movement.

This is why I release all my works under a Creative Commons Share-Alice license. This license gives anyone the go-ahead to adapt, republish, distribute, rework, edit, or translate the tales I tell, so long as they allow others the same freedom with the results.

Oddly, I feel a similar freedom to breathe now that I don’t work with an eye to selling my works to those corporations.

When I wrote with commercial publishing in mind, I strove to keep my tales conventional. I read accounts on how to tell tales the way editors want, and what editors are looking for, and the taboos of modern fiction writing such as ‘show don’t tell.’

Now I write as I please. I work with tales that appeal to me, and I tell them in ways I myself prefer. This has driven me into an odd corner. I have looked to stress my own quirks, and not suppress them.

It has good points and bad.

Among the good, are that I enjoy more what I am doing. My work enriches the world of tales more than if I only aimed at repeating what others said with variations. I used to dislike advertising my tales; this smacked of ‘sales’ and I blushed even to attempt it. But now I can give my works away and this makes all the difference in the world. Now I say, ‘Here’s a story I wrote, you might like it, feel free to try it if you wish.’ Since there is no payment or penalty involved on the reader’s part, this to me feels more like sharing than huckstering. And because the tales I tell reflect me with all my quirks, they approach more what and who I am, and thus have more of an identity.

Among the bad are weaknesses in the tales, that I should stress. The good I need not stress any more than I have already; all I can add to any young talesmen and would-be writers out there is, If you love your freedom, there is no other way to do it.

When I wrote with the fear of Editorial Orthodoxy ever upon me, I felt a keen awareness each time I strayed near the borders of What Was Not Done. Then I had to question myself and argue, I had to justify each such ‘error.’ And I worked to make those passages sound so wonderful in every phrase, that, I prayed, the Editorial High Priests would sigh and let the transgression go by.

This left the work stronger, and better.

I was also aware, even when I kept well within the bounds of What Was To Be Done, of One who would Judge the tale. Be he Agent or Editor, some Professional would squint at my lines, and grumble, and must be satisfied. This gave me a consciousness of an Other whose tastes simply must be met, and this made me see my own lines with other eyes. Even though I had only the vaguest notion of what would please that Other, it still made me redact my words, and go over them again, and catch phrases that were weak, and consider passages that were not strong enough, and I think in many ways the tales got better, and better-told.

Now I don’t have that any more. I have as yet no clear sense of the Audience of Readers, either. I don’t even know if any of my tales, though I spread them widely over all the Earth with more copies than even the largest corporate publishing behemoth would, will even be read.

And thus I am inclined to let things go before, perhaps, they are wholly ripe. I will declare a tale finished complete & done with fewer drafts and less polish. It will be more individual, it may be more enthusiastic, but in some ways it will not be as rounded or as accessible as it would have been had I told it with an eye to please that Professional Other of the Publishing Church.

Therefore I say this too to you, O would-be writer and young talesman: Beware also of your self.

(Composed with pen on paper and on keyboard Friday 28 March 2008)