The Miller Files
NO ONE FINDS THE BOOK YOU NEVER WROTE
During a recent visit to a used book store, I found an interesting, well-used book. Wool by Hugh Howey. The name might not ring a bell, but this is the book that was the basis for the successful streaming series Silo.
What is even more interesting is that the book was originally self-published by Howey in 2011, then picked up for mass publication by Simon & Schuster in 2012. It became a best seller and then a series of scripts. Howey had written the original sections of the book before work and on lunch breaks in his job as a bookseller.
I contacted Simon & Schuster around 2016, and by then, they had developed a subsection of their business for new authors that operated like a Vanity Press: you pay up front, and maybe they put effort into marketing and pushing your book. They get their cut up front with no risk.
Kitsap Literary Artists and Writers had one author who a mid-sized traditional publisher picked up after he posted stories online and built a fan base. So there are occasional Cinderella stories where talent is noticed and appreciated.
However, if you don’t put yourself out there, write the stories, self-publish, or shop your literary works to publishers, nothing will happen. An author/writer has to write first to create. Then comes the editing. Next comes the marketing.
Sometimes being in the right place at the right time helps. However, luck usually comes to those who work and prepare. Yes, there is the one-in-a-million Lotto winner. However, the betting odds are stacked against you. Howey wrote a very dystopian novel, which someone saw and appreciated. Had he not put the hours of writing into the book, it would not have existed to be appreciated. He started with a very dark idea presented in the book, Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald, about survival underground from 1959, and took it to a new level. Sometimes, a new take on an older idea or plot has its rewards. The most important action in the process is to WRITE. You may have lots of competition, but if you don’t try, you will never know if you create something someone likes.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
Marshall Miller
SMOKE, MIRRORS, and MANUSCRIPTS
I became more serious about writing about ten years ago. I tried an online vanity press as an experiment, then a local publisher that turned into one. Then I met the Blue Forge Press volunteers. They liked my writing and came up with some kickass cover art. Soon, sales picked up, and I wrote stories for the Blue Forge anthologies that they published periodically. Things have looked up ever since.
At the same time, I was introduced to a facet of writing I had never considered. You see, as people buy your books and tell you how much they like them, you suddenly have this nagging, buzzing in the back of your mind.
Am I really an author, a writer? Or am I a delusional fake with substandard skills? After all, I am not James Patterson with lots of books in airport stores. So people say they like my writing. Is it all smoke and mirrors?
I started reading a lot of the works I like, by both new and old authors. I really paid attention to how they wrote, especially based on the styles of their times. I had an English teacher in the 60s who kept my essays as examples of various formats and types. He liked my style, so I at least had that in my corner. As I delved deeper into this craft I have chosen, I discovered something.
Doubt does not mean you are a bad writer. Just the opposite: self-doubt can make you a better writer as you strive to improve. Having trained editors to improve your work also helps. Let me emphasize the “trained” aspect. An English major is not a trained editor. Neither are the people on websites and critique groups. Thus, you take feedback from those sources with a grain of salt.
There is no one way to write. “Show, don’t tell” is a catchall phrase that does not mean that front-loaded stories with explosions, etc., are the only way to write. Dune did a lot of telling and sold millions. Sometimes it is the right story, at the right time and place, that gets you noticed—and now, with the Web, marketing.
Thus, I use self-doubt to improve my writing. I read authors with more eclectic styles and see if they can fit my stories. Most importantly, I do not allow doubt to stop me from writing. Thus, maybe, like Poe, I will become more famous after I buy the farm. It matters little at my age. And I have a publisher who will keep my works in print well after I am gone.
Watch for my next book. It will be a doozy.