Mitt Wrongney

Though I haven't added to the blog for almost a year (I've been focusing on fiction-writing, and that's taking all my time), I couldn't resist posting on the current presidential campaign. Or, more specifically, on the clown who's running for office on the Republican ticket: Mitt "I Know What It Takes to Create Jobs" Romney.

How many times has he said those words during this campaign? He's said them at least ten times during each of the three debates (even though the third was ostensibly about foreign policy), and I'm sure he'll keep saying them until he's blue (or red) in the face. But what do they really mean? Or, more importantly, what evidence does he have that they're really true?

While Romney was governor of Massachusetts, his state ranked 47th out of 50 in job growth. Granted, that probably wasn't altogether his fault (any more than the sluggish rate of job growth during President Obama's watch is altogether his fault). Still, for a man who "knows what it takes to create jobs," he sure did a lousy job when he was in office.

Why is this? It's because, like many businessmen-turned-politician, Romney fails to grasp the difference between being a businessman and being a politician. He says to himself, "Heck, when I ran a business, I could create a job any damn time I felt like it, merely by calling up HR and saying, 'Hey, let's create a new job.' So I must be pretty brilliant at job creation, mustn't I?"

But of course, it doesn't work that way when one is governor or president; as Romney himself admits, government policies can have some influence on job creation, but as a rule governments do not CREATE private-sector jobs. Romney's policies--slashing business income taxes, gutting regulatory agencies, dismantling unions and health care plans, and so forth--might help create some jobs (but then again, they might not). But whatever the case, for him to say he "knows what it takes to create jobs" is flat-out wrong, at least when it comes to the role of government in doing so.

But then, in what other line of work does it actually attract people when one makes the claim that one is not what one has been hired to be? Plumbers don't say, "Trust me with this heart bypass operation--I'm not a career heart surgeon!" Heart surgeons don't say, "Trust me with this leaky faucet--I'm not a career plumber!" Only in politics does it seem to work to say, "I'm a businessman, not a politician--therefore you should vote for me to run the government!"

Or, in Mitt Romney's case: "I know what it takes to create jobs, because I have no experience and no success actually doing it while in office."

A Nibble

The title of this post is intentionally restrained, maybe too restrained, because I don't want to get all excited and then all disappointed if things don't pan out. But....

An agent requested to see my novel!

This is big news for me. Big, big news. Huge, in fact.

And it all happened thanks to a revised query letter.

That's right. I'd been sending out a query for Survival Colony Nine that seemed pretty good to me, but it wasn't getting any bites. So I went back, did a little research, and revamped the query, making it catchier, snazzier, snappier, whatever-ier. And within a day, I got a reply from the agent asking to see the whole manuscript.

So first of all, thanks to all those online resources that tell you how to write a dynamic query. They obviously helped.

And second of all, thanks to those (mostly my wife and children) who have held faith in me during this process. My daughter said to me just yesterday, "I have a good feeling about this."

And third of all, keep your fingers crossed for me!

Novels and Stories

One thing I've discovered about writing novels: it definitely slows down one's ability to write short stories.

Duh!

But seriously, since I've committed much of the past two years to novel-writing, my short story production has drastically slowed. I've got a bunch of half-finished stories in the hopper, some of which I'll try to complete, others of which are probably best left where they are. But I haven't been able to muster the time to work on them.

It's not just a time thing, either. The novel I'm currently revising is Young Adult fantasy fiction--requiring a very different voice and narrative approach than the experimental, literary short fiction I've been producing lately. So changing gears from the one to the other presents certain problems; it takes a period of decompression of whatever to move from one style and genre to another, radically different kind.

Case in point: I just completed a very short short story (1,700 words or so) titled "Girl Drives into Oncoming Traffic." I'm pleased with it, and I've started to send it out. It was short enough that I could write it in a week and thus not take too much time away from revising the novel. But its language and narrative were SO very different from what I'd been working on, it had a powerful effect on the novel when I returned to it--in the middle of a lovely, straightforward prose passage, I found myself spouting postmodern nihilism. I cleared it up, needless to say, but it was eerie seeing the hold a particular voice gains over you.

Eerie, but also encouraging. Sustaining a narrative voice is one of the hardest things about writing, especially writing longer works. You have to let the voice take control to a certain extent if you're going to keep it strong and consistent. So it was good to see how deeply the voice I'd created had taken on a life of its own.

But now, it's back to the novel. And to another long dry spell for all the other voices clamoring to get out.

What the Dog Saw

I just received word that my latest science fiction story, "What the Dog Saw," has been accepted by Bellow Literary Journal. It should be out early next year.

Warning: this is the story I mentioned a good long time ago (last year, I think, when I was first writing it) that possesses a very experimental voice. It can be off-putting--though interestingly, two or three journals that rejected it said they liked the voice but didn't like other aspects of the story! I personally think it's a pretty cool little piece, but consider yourself warned.

It's also interesting to note that the editor of Bellow spent some time working with me on this story to make it better. I say this is interesting because, in my personal experience, I've found editors of speculative fiction journals more willing than editors of straight-up literary journals to work with their writers. Several of my spec fic stories, including "Cats in the Backyard," "A Very Small Child Called Eugene," and "A Chimaera Story with Four Morals," were published only after some editorial changes, all of which made the stories better, in my opinion. Now, this might be a false comparison; it might be that my literary fiction just isn't good enough to get published in the journals that offer editorial assistance, so such stories of mine aren't even making it to that point. But it might also be that the editors of journals that specialize in genre fiction have a particularly keen sense of what their readers want, and thus they are particularly invested in crafting stories to meet those expectations.

Whatever, the story's coming out soon! I'd love to hear some reader reactions to it once you see it in print.

Finished!

This is to announce that I've officially finished a draft of my young adult fantasy novel, a month ahead of schedule! Beating my own deadline is not uncommon for me; I get a spurt of energy and creativity at the end, once I've finally figured out what the heck I'm trying to say, and the last couple chapters fly by. (It also helps that the final chapter is presently very short.) But the draft is complete: 304 manuscript pages, roughly 66,000 words, and a plot that wraps up most of the loose ends but still leaves room for the sequel. I did mention this is part of a trilogy, didn't I?

That makes two novels completed in the past two years. Not bad for a guy who hadn't written a word of fiction since college!

So I think I'll take a week off and then get down to the work of revision. A writer's job is never done....

The Frog Prince Is Coming . . . Slowly

I found out today that my creative nonfiction essay "The Last Days of the Frog Prince" is scheduled for publication in the journal Snowy Egret . . . a year from now!

That wouldn't seem all that unusual if not for the fact that it wsa accepted for publication . . . a year ago!

Can we say "glacial"?

But, no biggie. The essay concerns a childhood experience of mine, so it's hardly essential to rush it to print; what happened when I was ten isn't likely to change anytime soon. I'm just excited to know that the thing is actually coming out.

I'll keep you posted on its progress . . . a year from now!

Gone Hollywood

As you know, I've been busily working on my latest novel, which is now nearing completion (18 of 21 chapters drafted). But this is a strange business, and you never know what's going to drop into your lap.

To wit: I received a phone call yesterday from a Hollywood producer who's interested in optioning my forthcoming book Native Acts for a screenplay.

Before we all get too excited, let's be clear about certain facts.

First, the aforementioned book is a collection of scholarly essays for which I, along with a colleague, served as editor. I've always thought of it as my final work of scholarship, a project conceived before I made the decision to switch to fiction-writing and thus a project I felt obligated to see to its completion even after I made the switch.

Second, despite its cool and racy title, it's not comparable to, say, Smoke Signals or The Last of the Mohicans. It's a bunch of historians and literary critics writing essays on Native American performance in the colonial era.

Third, I'm not even sure I have the rights to sell the book to a film production company. I'm a bit fuzzy on this, but I assume the publisher would be the one to do that.

So this is probably a dead end at best, a scam at worst. It's probably a guy who saw the title, knew it had something to do with Indians, said to himself, "Hey, Indians are hot these days!", and jumped on the phone. It's probably not going to amount to anything.

But as I said, this is a strange business.