The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. -Vladimir Nabokov
Ah, the joys of writing proposals.
Just me and my encyclopedia of serial killers, drinking copious amounts of Starbucks, deciding where to go next.
I have an admission. I’m going 100% batshit crazy not having a book to work on. I am driving the people around me batshit crazy. I have the cleanest closets in the southeast, my cat is brushed to a high gloss, I’ve dropped five pounds because I’m actually exercising instead of sitting in my chair drooling, staring at the laptop. In short, I’m miserable.
This is the first time I’ve written "proposals", per se. I’ve verbally
pitched a book (my next, 14) then followed up with a summary synopsis.
I wrote a huge, 13 page comprehensive synopsis for my third book (Judas
Kiss) because I wanted to make sure everyone was on board with my idea.
But this is the first time I’ve written out plans for books that aren’t
already in the works. It’s a fascinating exercise, actually.
I know I want the plots of my next books to be. I’ve got titles for them all — I can’t start on a book if it isn’t named. I’ve got a great idea for a stand alone that’s not necessarily a mystery, and it’s not a Taylor Jackson book. So that’s five "thoughts" that I’ve been laying out. It’s like planning a cocktail party, trying to decide exactly what hors d’oeuvres and drinks might entice your guests. Are they going to want Beluga and egg salad on toast points, or pigs in a blanket? Dom Perignon, or Heineken. Hell, Heineken or Milwaukee’s Best?
There are two questions I’m focused on. Where do I want to go with Taylor and Baldwin, and just how many serial killers can Nashville realistically have? Which means I have to think through the plots first, then worry about how Taylor and Baldwin coexist within them. Thankfully, coming up with plots isn’t exactly a problem for me. Tap into any set of nightmares I’ve had in the past week and there’s a plethora of work. Deciding where the relationship is going, that’s a whole different can of worms. And what does that say about me that I’d rather develop the maim and kill parts than face the love story?
It’s a difficulty in any series, I think, that is set in one locale and has a "relationship." I’ve created an immediate limitation by choosing to make my main character a homicide lieutenant. She has a job. In Nashville. Which precludes rushing all over the country to track serial killers. Which is the reason I got her involved with Baldwin in the first place. He is an FBI profiler, which gives him the freedom to travel wherever the case takes him. It’s a delicate balancing act, and one that I find difficult to manage at times. Especially when deciding how many times a serial murderer can strike in a single town without straining all credulity.
And truth be told, I don’t need to know the answer to that right this very second. But want and need are two different beasts, aren’t they?
You may have picked up on the fact that I’m the teeniest bit obsessive, especially when it comes to my books. I’m also incredibly impatient. As a Taurus (yes, I’m going to blame all this on my astrological sign, sue me) I hate change, have a difficult time not knowing my path, but I’ve always been impetuous, impulsive, even reckless when it comes to decision making. I call that being decisive. The people around me, not so much. Slow down, they say. You have plenty of time to make these decisions. How in the world can you think that far in advance?
And what if you’re wrong? What if you make the wrong decision?
Ha. The wrong decision. I think I make the wrong decision at least 5 times out of 10.
I’m batting .500. Not too bad, considering I’m a flibbertigibbet
writer. I guess it’s just that I’m not afraid to make the wrong
decision, know that as long as it’s not life and death, anything can be
redone.
What’s amusing about all of this is I didn’t used to be able to think in advance. At all. There was a time, not more than two years past, where I told my critique group leader no way in hell when she suggested I write a short story. I do believe that was a direct quote. How in the world would I have room enough in my head for a book and a short story? Shortsighted and naive of me, I know. Then I got a deal and had to think about it. I had no idea where I wanted to go with my characters, could only see the story as it was unfolding in the current book. I saw an interview with one of my idols, Allison Brennan, and she
talked of plotting an 8 book series. Or was it 12? Either way, the whole concept freaked me out. And I thought, WTF? Who could
possibly think that far in advance? When I got my deal, I was actually a bit panicked, realizing I would have to make these decisions, and quickly.
Here I am, 18 months later, books two and three done, and I’m writing out my ideas for, God willing, future books? As my wonder twin points out regularly, I’ve come a long way. At least it’s keeping me busy and away from the cat. Poor thing won’t have any hair left if I don’t start working on something new soon. Even the fact that I’m out on tour hasn’t deterred this . . . obsessive need to write. I guess that’s a good sign.
I’m curious about the rest of you. Do you plan things out? Do you think three, fours years into the future? Do you wait until a contract is secured to think about your next steps? What do you do when you’re in between books?
P.S. Y’all would have been proud of me. Not only did I do my first radio interview Wednesday, I also shared the stage (a STAGE, people) with excellent Florida mystery writer and good friend Frank Foster and our brilliant moderator, Dr. Robert Tate (Florida Southern College). The event at the Historic Polk Theater in Lakeland, Florida was well attended and a total blast. Thanks to everyone in Lakeland, especially Bill Chase and Jim Weeks, for sponsoring the event and inviting me. Pictures up on the site next week after I get home. And if you’re in Daytona Beach Saturday, come out to Barnes and Noble at 2:00 pm and say hi!
I get to smack my gavel again soon as I become a judge for short stories for a well known magazine. This is my third year as judge. I’ve received notification that the first batch of manuscripts are on their way. The thought of it fills me with excitement and trepidation. Excitement at reading some really great stories and trepidation at reading some not so great stories.
The joy has been that I’ve been lucky to have encountered someone’s work with real promise and it was great to reward that person for it. The pain comes from deciding who wins and who doesn’t. I can’t believe the crush of responsibility pressing down on me when I’m short listing the pieces. Who am I to say what is good and what isn’t? The question keeps revolving around inside my head. At the end of the day, I take pride in what I do and I don’t want people thinking I’m a crappy judge, so I take the decision very seriously.
I look for style, structure, prose, originality and a certain indefinable quality that makes me curse and say, “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that.” It’s at this point that I pray that this represents the best of their work because I don’t need the competition out there.
I have to admit I have a selfish reason for being a judge.
Who said money? Fess up. Who said that? Don’t make me come back there.
Yes, the money is much appreciated, but that’s not the selfish reason. Being the judge makes me a better writer. I get to review work that isn’t my own. This is very liberating. I get quite protective of my own work, whereas I can be very callous of others. It’s easy for me to say this one doesn’t cut the mustard and move on. It’s said with a frog in my throat when I recognize something lacking in someone else’s rejected manuscript similar to my own work. I think every writer should take a stint as an editor for this reason. This little wakeup call helps me to be very critical of my work. I use the stories I’ve rejected as a check sheet to use against my own pieces. I must admit I turn a little green when I find screw-ups in my own work. Professional writer, my arse.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Bad stories are just as instructive as the best ones. You can learn just as much from those that grate as from those that are great.
However, I’m not opposed to a fabulous story. I look at stories with a mechanical eye. I break them down into their component parts so I can understand how they tick and hopefully I can use that knowledge to build a better story.
Yours presiding over all, Simon Wood PS: One of my own favorite short stories, Acceptable Losses, received an honorable mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. PPS: I’m moderating a panel at Clayton Books on Saturday at 2pm. If you’re anywhere close, please drop by. PPPS: Thanks to Fran and everyone at Seattle Mystery Bookstore for treating me like a king last Saturday. If you’re resident of the Emerald City, please support them.
Before I tell you the story behind this photo, let’s have a little contest.
Whoever can come up with the funniest caption for the photo wins a signed copy of my UK hardback, WHISPER IN THE DARK, when it comes out next year, along with a signed copy of the paperback version of KISS HER GOODBYE.
Okay, so have at it.
Go to the comments section and write your caption. I’ll meet you back here when you’re done.
Tick tock. Tick Tock.
(Theme from Jeopardy!)
Okay, you back? Read on…
The guy in the photo is not Michael Jordan but me, of course, in a rust-colored, 70’s era three-piece suit. This is what the well-dressed aspiring writer wore in those days. I was reminded of this suit when a friend sent me an email showing photos from the J.C. Penny catalog circa 1978.
I looked at those catalog photos and couldn’t believe that people ever dressed like that.
Then I remembered the infamous suit — which I probably BOUGHT from Penny’s — and knew it was true. This photo is proof.
It was taken about thirty years ago at a wedding. The two guys in the air are me and the groom’s brother, going for the bride’s garter. I was the victor — and a good thing, too, because the garter had 20 bucks in it and I was so broke that that twenty was going to feed me for the next couple weeks.
I actually had to rip it out of the other guy’s hand. Which, come to think of it, probably goes down as one of those "hauntings" I was talking about last time around.
Anyway, I got the twenty, didn’t starve and looked damn spiffy in the process.
And I’m only SLIGHTLY embarrassed by the suit. It could have been worse. I could have been wearing a powder blue tuxedo like the groom and his crew.
What about you? What fashion embarrassments will you own up to?
Six years ago, I found a young man with a strong back and a weak mind. A man willing to create a landscaped roofdeck for me, hauling all the supplies three stories up a spiral staircase, for only $20 an hour.
Ten-foot planks of redwood.
Four trough-like redwood planters.
Over a hundred terra cotta pots, many as tall as your hip.
Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of potting soil and gravel and bark chips.
At least two hundred plants, including five trees more than eight feet tall.
I called in an architect and a roofer to meet with this sweet, witless boy to confirm the safest placement of the largest items. I’ll bet he never bids a job like that again.
My only caveat to this well-muscled landscaper was that I wanted nothing that the California Highway Department couldn’t grow in the medians. I know my shortcomings. I grew up in Arizona, where vegetation didn’t have to be green to prove it was alive.
He planted Mexican Feather Grass and Sea Lavender.
Clematis. Bougainvillea. Cordyline and Passion Flower.
Star Jasmine, Rhododendron and Sage.
Cotoneaster and Marguerites. Yucca and agave and aloe.
The result was stunning. Windbreaks to the east and west. A hundred and eighty degree view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands. A seventy-five by twenty-five patch of paradise.
I love my time up there, in both fair weather and fog.
But now, six years later, the garden has gone wild. The bear grass is big enough to hide a bear. Adult. Male. The jasmine has metastasized and is threatening to eat the neighbor’s house. The yucca has grown to more than twelve feet and has become its own recognizable landmark on the San Francisco skyline.
I made the mistake of creating the garden I wanted, not the garden it would grow up to be. Something must be done.
For the last month I’ve dedicated forty-five minutes a day to getting the deck in shape. Pruning, trimming, cleaning, feeding.
But only one pot per day.
Like the painting schedule on the Golden Gate Bridge, when I finish the last pot, it will be time to start all over again.
And I’ve discovered that it’s a lot like the way I revise my work.
Certainly there’s the cleaning: getting rid of the typos and crappy grammar and lame analogies. There’s also pruning and trimming: tightening the sentence structure, losing irrelevant characters, and rewriting scenes to move the action forward. There’s feeding, too: it’s only the third or fourth draft before the words begin to sing and I can see on the page the author voice I heard only in my head.
There’s also rearranging. Upstairs, I’m reconfiguring the watering system and placing pots in new, more advantageous positions. I come downstairs and do the same thing with whole chapters.
And replanting: I’ll bring in two dozen new plants by the time I’m done, and I’ll bet I can say the same about new scenes and plot elements in my work.
I’m on one single schedule now. By the time the last pot is done, the next book will also be pruned, trimmed, cleaned and watered. And it will be time to start again.
With each book, I forget how many thousands and thousands of decisions I made to create the whole story. A character’s mannerism. The color of a car. The description of a breeze. An unexpected plot twist. Why do I continue to think that I have to create the garden-that-will-be all at once? When will I realize that the garden continues to grow, and not demand instant perfection?
I tamed the feather grass today. Tomorrow the yucca. And Chapter Fifteen.
Fellow writers, how do your gardens grow? Is your first draft just a sketch of where to put the plants? Or do you, like me, hope for perfection from that first seed?
And here’s a happy unveiling: the final cover for the new book, The Fault Tree, coming January 8, 2008, from St. Martin’s Press. Didn’t they do a fine job?
My ARCs arrived at the publisher late last week. They’re gorgeous.
While I love the University of New Mexico Press, and consider it "exclusive" rather than "small," the reality is that my publisher doesn’t have the reach that some of its NYC counterparts do. As a result, I’ve had to do some things on my own; I’ve had to be inventive. I don’t mind at all. A lot of the work is downright fun.
I know many writers who like to keep their marketing ideas close to their chests and I can understand why. Though we work to help each other at times, it’s easy to believe we’re competitors when it comes to readers.
I don’t buy that. I think the more we share ideas, the more we’ll encourage reading and nourish crime fiction as a whole.
(I’ll step off of my soapbox now.)
Here are two tips I’ve found particularly useful:
Tip #1 Buy more ARCs than your publisher allots for media contacts.
My personal stash goes to bookstores and online reviewers, to fans and people who might be able to get the word out about my books.
Tip #2 Participate in the American Booksellers Association’s Book Sense Advance AccessProgram
For $100, an author sends a 50-word (or so) book description to the ABA. The Association, in turn, sends out an email to its 1200+ participating members across the country. Booksellers then contact the author directly for ARCs.
There’s a formula for the description, but you have some latitude. The first line is standard. It’s the descriptive part that is both challenging and entertaining to try to put together.
For an example, here’s what I put in for the mailing last week:
THE SOCORRO BLAST by Pari Noskin Taichert (University of New Mexico Press 978-0-8263-4384-0 HC $24.95 January 2008) Two-time Agatha Award finalist, Book Sense76 pick (2/2004), Book Sense Notable Mystery (10/2005), " . . . she’s a first class writer . . . " Tony Hillerman ". . . New Mexico is conveyed with a poetic eye that is truly evocative. The dynamic or dysfunction of families is captured brilliantly." Ken Bruen
That’s it. I got more than 20 requests. The last two times I did this, my books were well received and short descriptions ended up in newsletter print mailings to the ABA membership. Those newsletters were for customers.
Pretty cool, huh?
CONTEST: Put your best marketing tip in the comments section before midnight tomorrow. I’ll read them all and select the top 10. I’ll put those names in a hat and will draw for at least one ARC of THE SOCORRO BLAST.
The tips can be from authors, booksellers or people who just plain know about sales. My hope is that we’ll all learn from each other.
How much do you want to surrender America to the corporations?
Think about this carefully. This writers strike affects you. Wherever you are, whatever you do, this is going to affect you.
You may say, "But I’m not a writer," or "I don’t watch TV, films," or "I barely use the Internet." Doesn’t matter. In fact, the corporations are pretty much counting on you not realizing this is about you. (I hope you read Alex’s post yesterday explaining it and Guyot’s comment in the response section, because they nailed the cause and cost.)
Now some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute. How big a deal could this actually be? It’s not on the news, no one’s jumping all over this nationally, and if it was really going to affect Americans, someone would have noticed, right?"
12 thousand+ people are on strike. Friday, nearly 4000 people showed up for the WGAw (Writers Guild of America, West) rally in Century City. 4000. Many thousand crew members are going to lose their jobs, and yet, many of them support the WGA’s position. Teamsters are not crossing the picket lines. SAG (Screen Actors Guild) is 100% in support of the WGA.
You know what the lead story on MSNBC was Friday night (owned, I believe, by GE)? That Brittney Spears’ attorney–who was the same attorney for that wacky dead Anna Nicole Smith–had had to sue Anna Nicole’s estate because he hadn’t been paid for hours he’d worked for that estate. The only thing they didn’t bother to begin that little piece of vital information with was, "Dear America, here’s how stupid we think you are: this is what you want to know about."
They (MSN) eventually mentioned the stirke when they announced Schwarzenegger’s comments, (the whole coverage by NIkki Finke has been stellar–page down below first comic), which lumped all writers into the millionaire status, as if they were dilettantes who were simply out to hurt anyone who didn’t give them what they wanted. It’s the position the corporations would love America to take: that if those bratty writers would just quit being so selfish, all of this would be over and people wouldn’t have to be hurt. The average guild writer earns in the vicinity of $61K a year. Average, meaning, statistically, half of them earn below that. But wait–do the math–the bigger salaries of the few top writers/showrunners are averaged into that figure as well, and so that means that a much larger percentage of the actual guild members earn far far below that figure. Many of them have second jobs to try to pay the bills. Do you realize how many people have to make below poverty level in order to get an average of $61K when the few bigger writers’ salaries are included? These writers are not dilettantes. They are struggling to survive, to keep their bills paid.
How is it that 4000 people can rally for two hours with helicopters flying overhead (as seen in Stee’s video) and it’s not a major headline on every channel? We know that Lindsay Lohan is out of rehab. We know the latest thing Brittney is doing or not wearing. This strike is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s going to affect the economy. If thousands of people are out of work in one of the major US cities, the domino effect is going to start: the mortgage woes that are already bad? Going to get worse. More bankruptcies, more lenders losing money, more ripple effects outward. This will hit Wall Street, which will in turn touch the rest of the economy. And yet, this is not being discussed on your nightly news.
According to Nikki Finke, the strike barely rated a 655 word report in the L.A. Times business section. 655 words. 12,000 people on strike in the industry that spends millions of dollars every single day in that particular state, mostly in the L.A. Times area and they buried the story in the business section? I don’t know about you, but I’m not really sensing the bravery there. If they’re quashing a story this big, right here in America, what do you think they’re hiding elsewhere?
The corporations own the news stations. The corporations are anti-guild, and would like to break the guilds. Think I’m exaggerating? (I’ll get to why that matters to you.) The corporations had months to negotiate with the writers guild, and they refused to budge one single iota. As Alex and others commented yesterday, they were actually asking for rollbacks, big honking cuts in what the writers currently get. Now, maybe you’d think, "Oh, well they’re asking for that because they’re hurting, not making any money. The economy is kinda scary right now." At the same time they were asking for rollbacks, here are two of the current headlines / facts, which they confirmed or reported:
[Disney’s Bob Iger] boasts about "another year of outstanding financial results. We posted record net income and record earnings per share for our 2007 fiscal year, bolstered by a strong 4th quarter performance. These results stem directly from our emphasis on the creation of high-quality content across all of our businesses, backed up by a clear strategy for maximizing the value of that content across platforms and markets."
That’s an 8 with a 0 on it up there. Eighty percent. Does anyone out there actually believe that one of the reasons for the uptick in profits has nothing to do with distributing content over the Internet? (If so, seriously, nice rock you’ve been living under. Love what you did with the curtains.)
The AMPTP, the corporations, actually claimed that no one knows what’s going to happen with "this Internet thing"–that it was "too new" to be able to predict how the income would work or even if it would work. I’m kinda impressed with that stunning ability to be that creative, actually, in the face of blatant profits. Jon Robin Baitz (a showrunner for the TV series, Brothers & Sisters) wrote in his open letter to Schwarzenegger that:
The deeply insupportable position they have taken in adopting a blanket refusal to address the economics of new media with us is laughable. Even as they insist to their stockholders that this revenue stream is the hope and reality of their future. To insist on two entirely contradictory positions is either morally bankrupt, or simply profoundly amateurish.
Because they claimed they could not know if there was ever going to be a profit from the Internet… (Okay, an aside… they don’t know? Really? That whole iTunes thing just flew right by them? This Google thing, and YouTube thing, a complete mystery?)… anyway, since they don’t "know" if this whole "distribute stuff on the Internet" platform could be profitable, the corporations want to give, literally, ZERO, to the people who create the content which gets distributed on the Internet. So the writers said, "If you don’t make money, fine, we don’t make money. All we’re asking for is a percentage, not a flat fee per show. Just a percentage. And a teeny tiny one at that." The corporations said no.
The reason they did that? It’s not just about the internet downloads of today. They’re looking to what’s about to happen. Everything is going to be on the Internet soon. Your computer and TV will likely merge into one unit within the next five years. It already has merged for many of the twenty-something generation: they are only bringing their laptops to campus and downloading TV through their cable connections. If the corporations don’t have to pay anyone for Internet downloads, they make 100% profit.
They will make billions in advertising. With no cost of delivery, because the customer pays for the cable bill. No DVDs to cut and distribute. Huge profit margin, because it can play on infinite "channels" any time a customer clicks on the site. The normal residuals paid to a writer now for re-runs on TV? Will disappear. The re-runs will soon be able to fall under the "Internet promotion" description if the corporations have their way. Isn’t that a neat trick? Pay the writers tiny minimums initially, force them to accept zero dollars for the Internet by waiting them out in this strike (while firing the crews, laying off staff), and then when the writers are starving and losing their houses, they’ll have to accept zero compensation just to have a contract. By the time they have recovered, assuming they do, all delivery of content will be through the Internet and no one will have to pay those pesky TV residuals–so they’ll get everything even cheaper.
The corporations walked away from the negotiating table, and Nick Counter, their chief negotiator, has stated emphatically that they will not return to the negotiating table unless the strike is called off. They absolutely would not negotiate before the strike was called. Why on earth would anyone delude themselves that they would give anything if everyone went back to work? They wouldn’t need to: they would have immediately won. They want to break the guild, and to do so, they forced the strike.
The corporations walked away. They won’t come back. They know it’s going to hurt a lot of people. But they are the plantation owners of today, asking the writers to take very small minimums for the show (barely living expenses) and make nothing later while they make a fortune. They’re protected by their wealth. The corporations have billions of dollars and plenty of insurance and except for those pesky stockholders, they are pretty much beholden to no one. Many people suspect they have every intention of waiting it out. In fact, not only will they use force majeure to cancel contracts without penalty, a lot of industry people assert they wanted the strike in order to use the clause. (Why do you think they came to the table on that last day, promised to negotiate if the writers gave up the DVD raise request and, when the writers did give that up… the corporations did not give back anything? Nothing. They got what they asked for (drop the 4 cent DVD raise request). Instead, they waited ’til the strike deadline and then walked away. They did it so that they could use force majeure: the clause that allows them to cancel contracts if there is an ‘unexpected’ work stoppage. If they appeared to be trying to prevent this stoppage [i.e., coming to the table to supposedly negotiate], they could look horrified when the strike went ahead and they then had legal justification to use the force majeure clause.)
So how does this affect you?
Aside from the ripple effect on the economy, and that’s going to be big, and aside from the fact that culture will forever change if we lose the really good writers in TV and film and are subjected to more and more corporate excuses for advertising, or Advertainment, every corporation in America is watching to see if the unions will cave. Where the writers go, the country will follow. Health care, pensions–unions will have a harder and harder time holding onto them if this big union falls. (I’m not working for a corporation, you say. I don’t benefit. If the corporations keep growing unchecked and without having to have any responsibility to the individual, then you’ll be affected. What you buy, what you eat, your health-care options–will all change.)
Now someone out there is naively going to utter the "free enterprise" argument. And I’ll say this: it’ll be free all right. When the corporations don’t have to pay the creators to use the content, the creators will have no control over their content. When the corporations have control of all information delivery–and they’re demonstrating their muscle now–how far away is it that they snap up all of the delivery systems of the Internet? How soon before censorship and control is exerted, because they have the content? If they control the content, they control the country. Period. And you, my friend, will be irrelevant. You, your children, our grandchildren.
So how much do you want to surrender America?
The only way the corporations are going to come back to the table early–in time to keep millions of people from being harmed–is if they feel the kick in their shins, in their profits. Stop watching TV online. Write to an advertiser (surely there is something you bought that you saw on TV), write to a corporation, sign a petition, write to a NEWS ENTITY and ask them why aren’t they covering it?
Your country is changing, right in front of your eyes. This is a chance to do something about it.
By now all of the country and half of the world knows that the U.S. screen and television writers are on strike. This weekend Toni and I are both going to write about it. Toni is in Norma Rae mode and will no doubt be interestingly passionate tomorrow. Because of my work with the WGA, I’ve been living with strike plans and strike talk for three years, now, and my outrage is more quiet. This has been a long fight, and it will be longer – as long as it takes for us to win. What we’re fighting for is the future.
Every three years the Hollywood creative guilds – actors, directors, and writers, renegotiate their contracts – that would be the MBA, the minimum basic employment agreement – with the studios who employ us. The contract includes among many, many other things: minimum payments, residual rates (this is the screen version of royalties), and pension and health contributions, as well as creative concerns. If we don’t reach a fair and acceptable agreement, then really our only tool to sway the studios is to strike – to refuse to work until they negotiate fairly.
I say studios, but the fact is, the old style Hollywood studios no longer exist. Vertical integration has been a fact of Hollywood for going on twenty years now and the creative guilds are actually being forced to negotiate for fair payment with enormous, multibillion dollar, multinational corporations. There is a good argument being made that by now this is in violation of anti-trust laws.
There has not been a writers’ strike since 1988 – before I was in the guild. There has not been a strike in large part because for various reasons, in the years when we needed to negotiate hard, the WGA has not been strong enough to even threaten a strike.
But this year, this contract, we needed all the strength we could get. There are dozens of important issues, but we are really only striking about one: internet downloads.
Anyone with half a brain knows that internet is the future of everything in entertainment. The corporations don’t want to pay writers, directors or actors for reuse of their work through the internet, and they think that if they squeeze us out of that now, that they’ll never have to pay us for that again.
That’s the bottom line.
Not only did the companies come to the bargaining table with a proposal that completely eliminated payment on internet reuse, but their initial proposal had 76 rollbacks of our previous contract, including separation of rights. Separation of rights is what screenwriters have instead of copyright: for example, it allows me to retain the right to publish a novel based on my original screenplay. It is one of the most cherished creative rights we have as screenwriters.
That’s just one of the proposals the corporations lay down which made it quite clear that they were not intending to bargain seriously or fairly.
That’s how weak they thought we were. We haven’t struck in twenty years and they probably assumed that we couldn’t pull it off this time. They thought this would be an easy win and they would be able to cut us out of internet profits once and for all time.
They were wrong.
As a former member of the WGAw Board of Directors, I have had the great pleasure of working with all of the current WGA west officers: President Patric Verrone, VP David Weiss, Secretary-Treasurer Elias Davis, WGAw Executive Director David Young, and most of the current WGA Board of Directors, and a great number of the WGA Negotiating Committee, East and West members, and they have been smartly and inexorably working toward this moment for three years, now.
Here’s when I knew we were going to win.
The strike of 1985 was a huge setback for the WGA in terms of residuals. Back then the issue was videotape residuals – videotapes were an emerging market and the WGA was striking primarily to get a fair share of the profits from videotapes. The WGA had previously agreed to a temporarily lower residual to help the companies build this “emerging market”. The “emerging market” had taken off for feature film releases and accordingly the WGA asked for the higher residual rate in the 1985 contract. The companies refused – making that issue a strike issue.
But the WGA has traditionally been deeply divided between screen and television writers. There are many, many more TV writers than screenwriters, and our issues are different. In 1985 there were no TV shows being sold on videotape yet, and the television writers perceived the videotape issue as a feature writers’ issue. A group within the television writers persuaded the other TV writers to cave on the issue and the WGA didn’t get the residual rates it wanted on cassette tapes. Two months later the original STAR TREK series was released on videotape and the TV writers realized just how badly they had miscalculated.
This year we have the same situation with the internet.
But we no longer have the divide between TV and feature writers. This is EVERYONE’S issue.
Three years ago I saw the current WGA leadership begin a massive courtship of the most powerful TV writers we have, the showrunners – the producer/writers who create and control the shows. The studios can keep pumping out feature films indefinitely – they have a huge backlog of scripts that they can pull out of their vaults while the writers are on strike. But television is much more in the moment. A TV show needs product every single week to stay on.
The showrunners are overwhelmingly united this time around. And they’re not working, period.
More than thirty TV shows currently have no more than one episode left to air before they will have to shut down production. We’ll be going into reruns and reality momentarily.
The corporations have billions and billions of dollars to wait us out. But they have no stories without us. And without our stories, they’re going to be losing money faster and faster.
How long can this go on? As long as it has to.
What we’re asking for, as the creators of television and film content, is a tiny fraction of profit from internet use of our work.
That will be our living, in the future, and we’re not giving that up.
And now I’ll post some links to far more eloquent summations of the issues
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FAQ:
WHY ARE YOU ON STRIKE?
Payment for reuse of our writing has been a key part of our earnings for half a century. Now the studios are using the growth of the internet as a tool to take that away from us.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT MORE MONEY FOR SPOILED, RICH WRITERS?
True, some writers are paid very well — but in any given year, almost half of the Guild’s active writers go without any employment at all. They count on residuals to pay their mortgages and feed their families between jobs. These new pay cuts will be particularly devastating to our most vulnerable members. And right now, most of the writing for new media isn’t even covered by the Guild at all — which means no minimums or pension or health insurance. That’s not fair, and it needs to change.
HOW LONG WILL YOU BE ON STRIKE?
Until we get a fair deal. Because the future — the internet — is at stake, this is the negotiation of a generation.
AREN’T YOU HURTING THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY BY STRIKING?
This concerns us deeply. But remember, we didn’t want this strike; it was forced upon us by management. In fact, we even went so far as to take off the table one of our most important issues — DVDs — in hope of averting it.
ISN’T IT TRUE THAT IN A STRIKE, NOBODY WINS?
We’re fighting not to lose. Management is trying to take so much away from us that if we don’t dig in and defend what we have, next time around they’ll be coming after our pension and health benefits. So we need to draw a line and stand up to them. In that sense, we’re fighting not only for writers, but for many others in our industry as well. We’re all in the same boat, and if we succeed, the pattern we set will benefit every other guild and union in Hollywood.
When you launch a book, something strange happens. A little bitty minuscule part of you dies.
What? JT, you’re out of your mind. You should be celebrating, not feeling like your cells are disappearing, one by one!
I can’t help it. Let me try and explain. I can’t promise this will make sense, but hopefully I’m not the only author that’s ever felt this way. Actually, I know I’m not, John Connolly has written about this on his blog, this . . . feeling . . . that even though the book is done, there’s more that could have been done to make it better. I didn’t understand his sentiments at the time. As I went through the publication process, I truly didn’t understand, because I was so caught up in the first-time-itis of revisions and copy edits, learning the system, that I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. A book is never truly finished. Even when it’s being sold, you always feel like you could have done . . . something . . . to make it better.
The first time I finished the book and submitted it, I made a joke that if I had a child, I’d liken this moment to sending them off to college. You’ve given your heart and soul to shape them, to help them grow into good people. At some point, you need to let them go, see if they can fly on their own. It’s the same with a book. I just didn’t understand that until now.
I’ve mentioned before that this whole process feels somewhat surreal. I still sometimes pinch myself, making sure I’m awake, trying to prove that this dream isn’t really just a dream. At the book launch last week, these doubts came to a head. We were about 15 minutes until the "official" start time. People were showing up, the band was setting up, Borders had just arrived and had three huge cartons of boxes, a big banner, all the things they’d need. They started setting out the books, the wine seller popped the corks on a few bottles, the food was set out, the band couldn’t find the right plug, Hubby came over to see if I knew where they could grab a microphone lead, the host of the party, Paul Nadeau, came to see if I wanted, something, I don’t even remember now, I received a brilliant phone call from a fan who blew me away with her incredible graciousness to call me at my launch party to tell me good luck (B.G., you made me tear up, with pure joy ; ) ), Tasha was standing there talking to my parents, my brother was looking at me with this hysterical look on his face that made me want to laugh, because I know he was mentally calling me by my childhood nickname which will NOT be repeated here on this blog, and I realized I wasn’t breathing. Actually, I was dizzy. Make that borderline about to faint. For God’s sake, here we go. I KNEW that was going to happen.
Thankfully Tasha recognized the signs of imminent distress and got me to the bathroom, away from the hubbub, and reminded me that breathing is highly underrated as a source of not passing out. Once I got my pulse under control, fluffed my hair, and received a heartening pep talk, I left the bathroom, prepared to launch my darling.
The room was crowded, and the Borders folks got me set up to sign immediately. I sat, uncapped my purple fountain pen, and . . . the next two hours were a total blur. I was shocked at how many people showed up. Friends I hadn’t talked to in years, neighbors, people who’d seen the announcements here and on MySpace, fans who’d written me and I’d thrown out an invite, plus most of the people we’d actually invited. And they were all clutching copies of All the Pretty Girls for me to sign. Pure insanity.
Then I had to give a speech. I needed to say thank you to everyone who’d helped plan this great event. I did just fine until I hit Randy. I’d gotten myself in tears practicing the speech earlier in the day and knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through publicly. I was right. I choked up, but it was still perfect. And what a relief to have that over! The highlight of the night was the raffle. We gave away a compilation CD of Taylor’s favorite music (coming soon to iTunes, hopefully) a Killer Year anthology ARC, and the grand prize, a pair of cowboy boots donated by the Nashville Boot Company, where Taylor buys all her boots. They turned into cowgirl boots when our friend Mandy had the winning ticket.
So why, in the middle of this joy and frivolity (and the band singing Corn Dog) was I so freaked out? This was more than the train leaving the station. This was pure, unadulterated terror. A lot of people have read this book. A lot of people love this book. A few hate it. That’s to be expected. I never thought to have universal support, that’s wholly unrealistic. But these people, theses are my peeps. These are the folks who’ve seen me drunk, who know my secrets, who have been cheering me on for years. They’ve been resources for characters, have been patient while I crawl under my rock and refuse invitations, who bring me food and wine when they sense I’m hitting a rough patch. I just don’t want to disappoint anyone.
So that’s brings me full circle to the corner of my heart that shriveled up and died when I signed that last book, late in the evening. This moment, one planned for months, years, really, was over. I got myself a glass of wine, listened to the band (who were singing some really raunchy tunes at that point — the darlings made me laugh!) accepted praise from the people I care for the most, and felt empty.
We write because we want to share our stories. We have something to say, couched deep in the constructs of fiction, about the human condition. Little bits of our souls find their way onto every page. That laying bare, opening ourselves to criticism and praise, is dangerous for an artist. Staying grounded in reality, knowing that your work is just that, words on a page that may or may not appeal, and doesn’t define you as a person, is vital. You have to trust the people around you to tell you the truth, to support you when you’re up and when you’re down, to share the load. And you have to know when to say goodbye to your child, when to let them soar away on their own wings, knowing that they may fall, and hope, pray you’ve given them the strength to get back up.
Thanks to everyone who came out to my signings this week to show support and buy the book. I can’t tell you how much it means.
Wine of the Week — A selection from the wonderful wine sellers who sponsored the book launch — Best Brands —2004 Piping Shrike Shiraz
Here’s a link to some of the photos from the launch, plus other tour stops. I’m waiting on the professional snaps, and will post them to this account, so keep checking back if you’re interested in seeing more. And yes, due to the unfortunate fact of being one-handed for 10 weeks, I was forced to cut the hair. I’m finally getting used to it.
Bugger! I failed my eye-test. I can’t believe it. I studied so hard. I knew all the parts of the eye and I still failed. The eye-guy says that my close-up vision is still good, but, I can’t see distances for toffee. I told him he was dead wrong and he said, “Over here, Mr. Wood. That’s the coat rack.”
Okay, maybe he’s got a point.
I know why I flunked my eye-test. I get so nervous about it, because I don’t know if I’m answering correctly. The guy wheels up the giant Elton John glasses circa 1976 and squashes them into my face and asks me which blurry image do I like the best. Eventually, I can’t tell the difference between the blurry images and I can’t make up my mind which is best. The eye guy loses his temper and I feel like I’m Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, but Lawrence Olivier isn’t asking, “Is it safe?” The words that strike fear into me are, “Number one or number two? I just need to know a number, Simon. One or two? One or two? I can’t let you leave until you tell me. One or two?”
So I need glasses. It’s not a problem. I can deal. I am a little worried that my writer buddies are going to pick on me now that I have glasses. I can see some of the hardboiled guys yelling out, “Four eyes,” then stealing my glasses and beating me up. They’re hardboiled for a reason, y’know. The cozy people, being more subtle, will just write something mean on my back. They’re sneakier.
But to my advantage, I can do the dramatic glasses removal during book negotiations. I look disappointedly at the advance offered and slowly pull my glasses off and rub my eyes and sigh and say, “This is one time I wish I was seeing double (the dollar figure).” So glasses have their ups and downs.
But I’m going with glasses. No contacts for me. I can’t stand anything in my eyes. The eye-guy had a hard enough time getting the drops in my eyes. He had to hold me down and pull my lids back to get the stuff in. Oddly, I kept my mouth clamped shut. I don’t know why. I’m definitely not going with the eye surgery. I’d go on a bad laser day and get zapped, but my mother-in-law dissuaded me. She just had the surgery and said, “I saw my cornea peel off,” like it was a good thing. I don’t need to hear that, especially when I’m eating.
So I’ve been wearing glasses for about a week. It’s okay. I can see better. Things used to have that soft focus thing going on, like on Star Trek whenever James T Kirk set eyes on his woman of the week. Julie says I look very distinguished, but then she laughs and runs away. I’ve stopped complaining that we need a high definition TV because the picture is for crap. I did see an intruder in the house, but it was a false alarm. It was just Julie. I didn’t see that coming. Maybe I should have gotten glasses sooner.
Yours in sharp focus, Simon Wood PS: I’m to San Francisco to do a lunchtime signing at Stacey’s with Tim Maleeny and Mark Coggins. Then tomorrow, I’m off to Seattle to do signings up there. Check my website for when and where.
All my life, I’ve been a reader. My family still talks about how I’d disappear at family gatherings, only to be found later in my parents’ car, stretched out on the bench seat with my feet up in the open window, reading. Whenever and wherever a book was lying around, I’d have to pick it up and read it. Some of the books I picked up during those formative years certainly served as gateways to my current addiction to writing and reading about bad people doing bad things. So return with me now, to those glorious days of me misspent youth, to the writers who hooked me on mysteries and thrillers and led me inexorably to the hard stuff….
Donald Sobol: The Encyclopedia Brown series featured a "boy detective" and the P.I. agency he ran out of the family garage. I snapped them up like popcorn in elementary school. Encyclopedia (given name: Leroy) was a brainy kid who somehow managed not to get the crap kicked out of him by bigger kids. This may have had something to do with his pal Sally, who even the bullies feared. (Come to think of it, this may explain my long standing affection for tough female characters). Encyclopedia always managed to foil the machinations of his personal Moriarty, an evil kid named Bugs Meany. He always caught some inconsistency or other that showed Bugs or some other junior miscreant was fibbing. Once caught, of course, the bad guy always confessed. The best part was where, just before the big revelation, the story would break and give the reader a chance to figure the mystery out for themselves. I managed it about half the time, which made me even more eager to try my hand at the next one.
Arthur Conan Doyle: It’s impossible to have grown up in the late twentieth century and not at least had a good idea of who Sherlock Holmes was. His image, in one form or another, was everywhere: commercials, movies, even on children’s television where a parody character named Sherlock Hemlock was a fixture on Sesame Street. So when I found a collection of Holmes stories in the school library, they seemed strangely familiar, yet still totally engrossing. (I can still remember the cover of that book by the way,with its iconic painting of Holmes in deerstalker cap and magnifying glass). The line, "They were the tracks of an enormous hound!" still sends a chill down my spine, thirty-odd years later.
Rex Stout: It was shortly after falling under the spell of Holmes that I discovered Nero Wolfe in the town library where my Mom took me every Saturday (or at least the ones when I didn’t ride my bike to the Sunrise Theater to watch Godzilla flicks and chop-socky movies). It’s a natural progression, when you think about it, since there’s actually a theory that the corpulent agoraphobic sleuth Wolfe is actually a descendant of Sherlock’s smarter and equally reclusive brother Mycroft. Whatever his origins, Rex Stout’s pairing of the intellectual, puzzle solving detective with the wisecracking hard-boiled type, as embodied in Wolfe’s assistant Archie Goodwin, bridged the gap between two supposedly incompatible sub-genres.
Erle Stanley Gardner (writing as A.A. Fair): Hammett, Chandler and Ross McDonald may have done it better, but "A.A. Fair’s" series about the team of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool were my first introduction to the wonderful world of P.I. fiction. You can thank one of those library book sales, where I found a dozen or more "Mystery Book Club" 3-in-1 volumes for a quarter each, several featuring the wonderfully named Lam and Cool. Bertha was the boss of the outfit, a plus-sized lady as "tough as a coil of barbed wire." Lam was, in Bertha’s words A "brainy little runt" who did better using his wits (and his wit) than he ever did with his fists. Great characters, snappy dialogue, and ingenious (occasionally too ingenious) twists. How can you go wrong?
Ian Fleming: "The two .38’s roared simultaneously." So begins Moonraker, the first James Bond novel I ever read. I picked it up when I was 12 or 13 from the bookshelf in my uncle’s old room at my grandparent’s house. I was hooked from the first scene, where Bond is engaging in gunfighting practice under the amused eye of "the Instructor" ("I’m in hospital, but you’re dead, sir"). From there, Bond heads upstairs to M’s office, and from thence to a confrontation with the evil Sir Hugo Drax. Like Sherlock Holmes, the image of Bond was unavoidable for anyone not living in a cave in the late 60’s-early 70’s, but these were the first books I found that were actually better than the movies.
John D. McDonald; I came across Travis McGee, John D. McDonald’s "tattered knight errant on a spavined steed" at just the right time in my life. Around my mid-teens, I was a lonely kid with a streak of romanticism and a tendency to wax philosophical. McGee was a loner with streak of romanticism and a tendency to wax philosophical, but he was as tough and cool as I wanted to be someday. Plus, he lived on a boat, and he got all the hot women, even though they were usually gone and often dead by the beginning of the next book. Re-reading those books now, I can’t help but still be impressed at McDonald’s storytelling abilities. Despite the digressions over relationships and the destruction of the beauty of South Florida, these books really move.
Trevanian: When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I read and reread Trevanian’s books five or six times each. Trevanian, the pen name of Rodney Whitaker, was probably best known for his novel The Eiger Sanction which was made into one of the more fun 70’s Clint Eastwood flicks.
The movie was certainly memorable, but there was no way to capture
on film that certain atmosphere that Trevanian brought to his spy
adventures, that sense of never being quite sure when he was putting
you on. I mean, how could you resist a character like art
collector/assassin Jonathan Hemlock, who worked for a shadowy
(literally) intelligence boss named Yurassis Dragon? (say that last
name fast if you don’t know why it makes me laugh out loud). My absolute favorite Trevanian character was Nicolai Hel, the half-Japanese assassin of Trevanian’s classic Shibumi.
Killer. Philosopher. Master of Oriental sex tricks. Wine connisseur. When it came to cool, Nicolai Hel gave Bond a run for his money. Trevanian’s books had style. They had wit. They had great and
often bizarre characters. They had hot sex. They were, above all, huge
fun to read.
