George R.R. Martin is not your bitch, but I might be.: seanan

George R.R. Martin is not your bitch, but I might be.

So recently, Neil Gaiman made a post about entitlement, which has been circulating widely under the assumed title of "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch." Good title. Interesting entry. Lots of people are saying lots of things about it, most of which boil down to "here, here" and "you go, girl." Er, "you go, British guy." Whatever. Anyway, as is my natural inclination when presented with such things, I've been thinking. (And she's been crying, and I am the Rain King.)

See, the core premise of the original post is one that I agree with: an author doesn't owe their work to anyone except, perhaps, their agent and their publisher. Buying Rosemary and Rue doesn't somehow create a contract between us wherein I swear on penalty of death to do nothing but work on Toby books, all day, every day, until the series comes to a satisfying conclusion. For one thing, Kate would kill me. For another, if I worked only on Toby, with no pauses for other books, I'd go crazy, and the quality of the Toby books would decrease dramatically. And then The Agent would kill me (if Kate didn't get there first).

At the same time, the email which inspired the post contained a very different question. Is it wrong, the writer asked, to be annoyed when I read the blog of a favorite author and see nothing to tell me what the status of the next book is? And to that I have to say, quite honestly...

...no.

Look: there is no formal "deliver or die" contract between writer and reader, and there's a reason, as

jimhines so helpfully pointed out, that very few publishers actually punish authors for missing their deadlines once in a while. Quality matters, and sometimes getting something done right takes longer than originally expected. I finished Late Eclipses in December of 2008, dammit! It was done! It was...nowhere near as good as it honestly needed to be, both to live up to the standards set by the first three books, and to live up to the standards I set for myself. I gave it to The Agent. She promptly gave it back, with a command to fix it. If I'd been working to a January deadline, I'm afraid my release date would have slipped more than a little as I took the book and ripped it apart to resolve its structural issues. Quality is always going to come first for me. Hopefully, it'll be a long time before that makes me miss a deadline, but even I and my OCD work habits can't guarantee that slippage will never occur.

At the same time, I do believe that there's a certain "social contract" which exists between writers and readers when those writers hang out their proverbial shingles out for the world to see. Once I've opened a professional blog and announced that hi, this is the professional blog of Seanan McGuire, come on in, I do owe you updates, even if those updates are things like "didn't work on Toby this week because I was busy following the Counting Crows around the Pacific Northwest" or "didn't finish the new chapter of Discount Armageddon because Alice got into the watercolors again." I have said, on some level, that I will keep you posted. The social contract demands that I uphold my end of the bargain, and if I don't, you have every right to get annoyed with me.

(This is similar to a scenario that plays out frequently with web comics, who have been dealing with their audiences online for longer than nigh anyone else. New guy hits the web comic scene, updating regularly. Sets an update schedule. Basks in the love. Starts missing updates. People start to complain. Snaps "I do this for free, and you should be grateful." Well...yes and no. I don't have the right to demand you work for me, but I do feel that, once you've entered into a social contract which says I'll get updates on days one, three, and five, I should get an update on those days, or, failing that, I should get information on why that update isn't there. That was the deal. If you tell me why the update is missing, you take away my license to bitch.)

In conclusion, no, George R. R. Martin is not your bitch, and no, you shouldn't view delays as personal attacks. Often, delays are there because the book is being made better. But yes, I do believe that once an author says "come hang out in my virtual office and play with my virtual fidget toys," you have a right to expect to be told what's going on, and a right to ask "why is the eighth book in this series not out yet?"

It's all a matter of where you stand.

Deleted comment

Re: Different question.

seanan_mcguire

May 19 2009, 17:16:48 UTC 8 years ago

New comment

That gets trickier, because it's not always within the author's power. Let's say I sell the Corey books to Young Adult Lit Rules, a new YA publisher looking to break into the market. I gleefully announce that all five books have been sold—woo-hoo!—and each volume says "watch for the next adventure" at the back.

Only it turns out that YALR goes under after book three (eep!), or that my sales are horrible (double eep!), and either way, books four and five aren't published. Now, I was speaking in good faith when I told you they were coming, and I most assuredly don't want to go talking trash about my publisher. Not only were they acting in good faith, which makes it mean to take swipes at them, but I don't want other publishers to view me as a source of trouble.

I don't approve of abandoning series in the middle—it seems impolite, if nothing else—but there are definitely other factors that can step in there. I feel that I should try to keep you informed to the best of my ability. My ability will just have limits.

Re: Agreed.

8 years ago

May 19 2009, 17:20:40 UTC 8 years ago

I like your solution that you post updates saying why the next book isn't finished without owing the fans anything. The dirty details don't need to be given, a generic "contract concerns" or "life is sucking right now" is ok to me, and posting something should keep the impatient at bay while preserving your sanity. Readers mostly haven't a clue about the writing process and don't understand why suddenly it takes three years to finish the next book in the series, so an announcement would be a good thing. (I didn't know this stuff until I starting writing.) I hope this post gets pass around too.

May 19 2009, 17:23:27 UTC 8 years ago

Yeah. A simple error message is sometimes all it takes ("We're sorry, Mario, but your sequel is in another castle") to keep people from getting cranky, and the lack of that message is just sort of, well, anti-social.

markbernstein

May 19 2009, 17:31:08 UTC 8 years ago

I have a lot of sympathy for the position George is in. At this point, everyone knows exactly where things stand - A Dance With Dragons is well past deadline, he's working on it, and he's promised to let everyone know the moment it's submitted to the publisher. Interim updates have proven to be unhelpful, and even counter-productive. A few times now, he's given in to the constant pressure and said, "I hope to have it finished by X", and then missed that date, which only made the angry people angrier. I imagine it's a little like having a couple of hundred hyperactive kids in the back seat, with at least a dozen of them asking "Are we there yet?" at any given second. And there are construction detours everywhere.

And that's why I think his last update is a perfectly sensible statement. I very much want to read A Dance With Dragons. But I want to read the good version, I know George cares about producing the good version, and I think it does more harm than good to bug him about it. Given publishing cycles, we'll all know it's coming months before it arrives. Why isn't that good enough?

May 19 2009, 17:40:52 UTC 8 years ago

Oh, I have a lot of sympathy for his position, and frankly, I think people just need to chill out and watch a few episodes of So You Think You Can Dance. He's keeping people as updated as he can. I want his books to be as good as they can be, and as long as his readers have a vague idea of what's up, he's doing what needs to be done. It's mostly that once you start interacting in an unmoderated social setting (like this one), questions are going to be asked, and people are going to expect to know what's going on.

Everyone needs to take a deep breath and chill.

... as long as it really has dragons

tigertoy

Re: ... as long as it really has dragons

archangelbeth

May 19 2009, 17:52:04 UTC 8 years ago

I think he's getting in trouble by "I hope to have it finished by..."

Better to say, "Making some progress, but not as much as I'd like," and answer, "When's it going to be done? When I can ship it to the editor and not have the editor ship it back because I forgot all the commas." >_>

Save the "I think I can" deadlines for editors only. *grin*

keristor

May 19 2009, 17:53:46 UTC 8 years ago

I agree. Having been in a position where I was unable to get any work done because everyone kept interrupting me to ask when it would be done (at least once per hour every day), and finally snapped and said "NEVER! Because I keep being interrupted by IDIOTS ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS and it takes me the rest of the hour to get back to what I was in the middle of doing!" (at which point my manager intervened and we agreed that he, and he alone, could ask me once a day and everyone else would leave me alone).

I think it's a very good point about publishing times. Knowing about books due to be published in 6 months time is bad enough wait, why would I want to torture myself by reading about ones which haven't even been sold yet? (Except that I do want to know, masochist that I am...)

Personally if I were in GRRM's position I'd be very tempted to kill the blog totally, and set up an autoresponder to email saying "here's the publisher's website, you can see on there when it finally appears".

liamstliam

May 19 2009, 17:49:43 UTC 8 years ago

This reminds me somewhat of Laurell K. Hamilton's approach when people criticized the direction of her books after No. 8 ("Anita Jumps The Shark").

She basically said it was her work, and she would do what she pleased with it.

(Yes, I know this is a tangent).

May 19 2009, 17:52:14 UTC 8 years ago

Well, it is her work, and she can do what she pleases with it. That said, I do feel that you need to listen to editorial feedback, and that having a good editor, agent, and editorial pool will keep you from hitting that point. If I said something like that, a line would form to hit me upside the head.

You can't change things because you want to make everyone happy. You just can't. At the same time, if everyone is unhappy, maybe you need to take a second look at what you're doing.

May 19 2009, 18:21:37 UTC 8 years ago

Wait, I don't remember a shark ... Leopards, wolves, dead guys. I think I would have remembered the wereshark. There was that seal, though - no, wait that was Merry Gent

phyr_nyt

kvtaylor

May 19 2009, 18:08:53 UTC 8 years ago

Totally. There are too many shades of gray in this weird world where authors are a computer screen away-- and to deny that is a bit silly, really.

But yeah, I really don't want him to churn out some crappy book and ruin one of my favorite series. Can the extreme entitlement, people! It's one thing to ask, and another to open up a can of crazy on the guy.

May 20 2009, 14:21:44 UTC 8 years ago

The cans of crazy make me sad. They also make me cranky. There's a reason I have a machete, an army of flying monkeys, and a canister of hemorrhagic fever, people...

May 19 2009, 19:17:29 UTC 8 years ago

Do I have the right to be irritated at - oh let's say the publication schedule of Jean Auel's books? Yes. Does that mean I get to be a bitch about it? No.

kyra_neko_rei

May 19 2009, 21:19:41 UTC 8 years ago

Hello fellow sufferer!

mariadkins

May 19 2009, 22:42:39 UTC 8 years ago

Heh. Try being a fan of Melanie Rawn. We're still waiting for Captal's Tower.

/grumpy

May 20 2009, 14:21:54 UTC 8 years ago

Exactly.

misachan

May 19 2009, 20:12:26 UTC 8 years ago

Not to mention that ever since Robert Jordan passed away with the Wheel of Time series unfinished there's been a creepy, deathwatch subtext to the ASoIaF nagging. As irking as "Is the book done yet?" must be, it must go double when the next sentence is, "Because we're worried you might kick off before you finish."

May 19 2009, 22:47:34 UTC 8 years ago

Yeah. I kept slipping into that mode about Madeleine L'Engle during her last 10 years...

palmer_kun

May 19 2009, 21:28:53 UTC 8 years ago

Annnd for no apparent reason I am besieged with nightmares of George Lucas deciding in 1981 to stop all production of Return of the Jedi in favor of making a James-Bone-esque series for Howard the Duck.

Seanan, if you were, say, planning to release a hallucinogenic-then-turning-hemorrhagic pandemic viral infection throughout humanity by spreading it to your readers over the internet, you'd tell us first, right? ~~So I could live out the last week or so of my life driving a Lamborghini I'll never live to make the first payment on.~~

May 20 2009, 14:26:20 UTC 8 years ago

I would make a chipper announcement, which everyone but my friends and fanbase would discount. Promise.

the_s_guy

May 19 2009, 21:52:02 UTC 8 years ago Edited: May 19 2009, 22:01:00 UTC

I think it depends a bit on the author.

I know that if I were an author, my update schedule would be linked to something with less regularity than discoveries of the Higgs boson. The closest I would have to an announcement would be a permanent note that "The next book will be out when it's out, unless it won't."

Part of my stance is that writing is, for a large part, art. Sure, there's technical skills in using correct spelling and grammar, recognising and working with arcs and flows and characterization etc etc, but at its core it's art.

And art doesn't always arrive on schedule.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes an author, painter, sculptor, actor, hits their groove and it just flows, an unending torrent of top-quality production.

Until it runs out, for any one of a million reasons.

So because of that, I take each artwork - painting, book, statue, play - as it comes. I know that while the original author is the most likely candidate to turn out a sequel or other work in the same vein, there is absolutely no guarantee that they'll have it done in precisely 173 days, two hours, five minutes from now.

Art arrives when it arrives. If it's not arriving fast enough, and you're not the artist's agent (or the artist), chill. Go look up some other artists and their works in the meantime. It'll provide a broader background for when the next work from your favorite artist does turn up.

May 19 2009, 22:13:38 UTC 8 years ago

"The closest I would have to an announcement would be a permanent note that "The next book will be out when it's out, unless it won't."

You could also word it as "The next book will come out one year from today." and never change it. It'd never be wrong unless you stopped writing. lol