Despite that brave move, Jeff still has some sober advice for fledgling writers: "The publishing world--even as the regular grind of submitting to magazines and anthologies--does a great job of hardening beginning writers to the injustice of the life they have chosen," he wrote in his book of essays, Why Should I Cut Your Throat?
Jeff has worked as a writer, an instructor at various writing workshops, and a content producer for computer software--beating the publishing grind through "mule-like perseverance." While the Internet didn't make Jeff a better writer, it created a pipeline straight to his fans. Every week, he interacts with readers and sells books on his Hoegbotton & Sons website and his blog.
For all these reasons, I picked Jeff to participate in my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...
Jason Boog:
Every once in awhile you mention your day job. What sort of a work/writing balance should the fledgling writer expect? Any advice on how to balance these two halves of your life?
Jeff VanderMeer:
Writing is too strange and unpredictable a business. You might make $50,000 one year and $5,000 the next and $20,000 the year after that…or you might make nothing. You just don’t know... It varies by the writer. I mean, some writers are perfectly happy living on a pittance and not having a day job, or don’t mind the solitary nature of writing as a full-time job, if they have the choice. I think I will always want some kind of base day-job, even if just 20 hours a week.
And if you’re not a fast writer of novels—and I’m not—I don’t think it’s viable to write full-time unless you don’t mind eating horse meat and cat food.
The best advice I can give will sound a bit odd—and that’s to get as physically fit as possible and invest in exercise. If you’re juggling a day job and also then going home at night and writing, you need to be in good shape or you will eventually wind up a physical wreck and the stress will get to you.
In an average week, I work, between day job and writing and writing-related stuff, about 80 to 90 hours. The main balance I find I have to figure out is the amount of time writing versus promoting my books. And, more importantly, to put up a wall between the PR and the artistic side of things so things don’t get muddied.
For my day job I edit and write sample English passages for students to use to study for standardized tests here in Florida. I find that this actually helps my adult writing and refreshes my imagination in a way I never imagined possible.
Jason Boog:
The Internet has turned newspaper and book publishing upside-down. As a writing professor, what do you teach your students to help them survive in this chaotic publishing atmosphere?
Jeff VanderMeer:
I think that the Internet is the great equalizer. It is much, much easier to get leverage and to get things done now. You can approach almost anyone via the Internet.
But it boils down to the same thing it always has: write a good, unique book and then worry about the rest of it. Most students, because it is also easier to get published online sometimes (almost no overhead for the publisher), seem so fixated on getting published and on getting validation that way that they lose track of the bigger picture.
Does it mean anything at all, in any meaningful way, to create a “sellable” story when the threshold for publication is often very low? Not really. So I generally have to deprogram students in my writing workshops. Make them focus on their own writing line-by-line, because this fixation with the idea of being a writer as opposed to working very hard on the writing itself is very damaging.
Jason Boog:
How has the Internet affected the genre of speculative fiction? How can fledgling writers find the editors and readers they need to survive in this field?
Jeff VanderMeer:
I think it’s much easier to make a splash much sooner now, which is both good and bad. It’s good for the truly talented, who also have the mental toughness to withstand all the white noise of sudden adulation. It’s terrible for writers who have potential but are not quite there yet, or who don’t have the mental fortitude to block out that white noise.
A writer can very easily be destroyed just by giving in to the image that is projected out on the Ethernet of what they are as a writer. Because the Internet mirrors and reflects everything so much faster than the way hardcopy magazines and journals did in the past. You can almost literally come out of nowhere and be known in a few months, and perhaps even pass out of being known as quickly.
» Five Easy Questions: Jeff VanderMeer, Part One from ThePublishingSpot
I discovered Jeff VanderMeer while Google-ing madly for new books. Oddly enough, I found VanderWorld before I ever read a single line that Jeff wrote--but reading his opinions about books and music on his blog, I knew I’d found a... [Read More]
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