Thoughts Provoked by The Rejectionist

Author and blogger Sarah McCarry and I have pretty much nothing in common, but last night we both went to see Skyfall.

In Sarah's post about her viewing, she shares a personal issue she has watching violence, even fictional violence, particularly against women.  She describes her intense and visceral reactions as being "not normal", and it's true that I for one did not have the same reaction at an emotional level to the Skyfall shot in question even if it did disappoint me from a critical standpoint for the same reasons.

I do, however, have a similar issue with children. Any time I hear a story about a child coming to harm through malice or neglect, I am undone.  I hear the story and the scene starts playing in my head in IMAX 3D.  I am there, watching, helpless, feeling the pain and the fear and the need.  And then the hopelessness and the anger and the sadness and the bitterness  And then the scene repeats and it keeps repeating.  Eventually my own life mixes with the images and I sort of come back, though I never unsee these little movies.

So I think I can relate to Sarah a little, but I am lucky.  I've learned how to mostly avoid such stories from real life (with some help from my husband), and I am also forced to observe that popular entertainment does not, as a rule, feature harm coming to children except in sanitized stories actually written for children. 

But why do you suppose this is?  Are we spared the glorification of violence against children as a matter of traditional values, or because a significant proportion of viewers are like me, so genuinely repulsed by it that the shit just wouldn't sell?  And do we tend to be more repulsed by children coming to harm than adult women - or men - out of biological instinct or simply because we are more inured to the latter? 

My guess is that a lot of parents, possibly mothers in particular, are biologically hardwired to protect children, and the more the children seem like our own children the more intense the instinct.  I think if we could be inured to it, if it could sell, there would be such movies being made left and right already.  I sincerely hope we never see that day.

Congrats to D.J. Kirkby

Thing #1:  I'm still not dead.  Just running the biz and working on that other project that has everything to do with writing except actually writing.  (Why you ask?  Because I like my life meta.)

Thing #2: Congratulations Congratulations Congratulations to blog buddy and client D.J. Kirkby on the release of her second novel, My Dream of You.  Go check it out and celebrate with her on her blog (pssst... she's giving away prizes!)  I can't wait to read it!

What Should Your Focus Be?

Thursday was a busy night.  First I had dinner with a seasoned entrepreneur.  She told me founders don't think enough about exit strategy.

Right from there I went to an event where another seasoned entrepreneur was giving a talk.  He advises not thinking too much about exit strategy. 

After he spoke, I met another guy, who went through a startup accelerator program, wherein one meets with dozens of such mentors.  So often does one get conflicting advice in this world, he said they have a name for it: mentor whiplash.

So at the end of the day, you just have to use your own judgment.  In this case, I've decided not to think too much about exit strategy.  Basically, when people talk about startup exit strategy, they're talking about selling their company - figuring out which bigger companies might want to buy it, at what point it would be most attractive to those companies, what it will cost the founder to get to that point, and how to position the startup to the founders' best advantage.

In my opinion and experience, thinking this way early on can be a trap.  The problem is you start designing the product for the potential acquirer instead of for the user.  It's a huge risk in any case, but if you stop focusing on the user, you're going to have an unusable product.  What's worse is that a hundred other entrepreneurs are probably looking at that same opportunity, so you're going to have an unusable product in a particularly competitive space.  You won't be able to sell the product or the company.

All Thursday night, I was remembering agent and editor blog posts along these very same lines.  Don't write YA paranormal romance because that's what your favorite agent likes, or steampunk because some editor said they're looking for it...  if it's not your passion, you either won't finish or by the time you do finish, it will end up looking like the same formulaic coattail-chaser as a million other entries, and the moment will have passed anyway.  Instead of writing a specific kind of book, write whatever kind of book you can make great.

It Happened AGAIN!

OK, so last night this guy emailed me.  We used to work together - sort of.  He was a VP at this consulting firm I worked at right out of college.  I remember him not at all, and only remember a few things about this firm:

1. The consultants were, on the whole, conspicuously attractive people.
2. The consultants were, on the whole, lazy.  The few people who worked really hard kept the whole thing afloat, but they got less good-looking the harder they worked.  True fact.
3. At the time, I wanted to write a novel about a data analyst at a such a firm who discovers a big international plot and is recruited by the CIA... or turns out to be a spy all along...  or some such bullshit.  I couldn't figure out how else to make data analysis seem interesting.

Well, I just talked to this guy.  (He claims to remember me, which is either very flattering or an obvious lie.  I have an inflated ego, so I choose the former.)  And guess what?

HE WROTE THE NOVEL.  He wrote a novel about an international consulting firm that has something to do with spies.

It's sort of adorable that I ever imagine my ideas to be unique, or ever worry they aren't.  What they are, mostly, is just ideas.  Ideas are a dime a dozen; everyone has them.  Original idea is practically an oxymoron.  It's execution that matters.  This guy spent three years figuring out how to make consulting seem interesting, and another three years getting it published. 

Kudos man, kudos.

Better Sooner Than Later

I guess it was inevitable.  I have four novels in various states of completion.  Tonight I saw the movie trailer for one of them.  The exact same story.  The same opening scene! 

&^%$*! @#$%*!


Oh well, of the four novels, it was the least complete and least interesting.  Hopefully it was the least original too, right?

How Starting a Business is Like Writing a Novel

1. The Blank Page.

You start out with a general idea of where you're going, but there are no constraints - you can go anywhere.  The choices can be overwhelming.  You spend a lot of time meandering and no small portion completely lost.  Your final destination is practically invisible until you're practically on top of it.

2.  The Work.

It is so much more work than it looks like.  Every day you realize it requires another skill, another domain of knowledge, another chunk of time that you have to find a way to acquire.

3. The Qualification Paradox.

You know perfectly well you are woefully underqualified, and also that the only way to become qualified is to just do it.  So you fake it 'til you make it: spend every day pretending to yourself that you can do it until you discover you've actually done it.

4. The Business.

You have to figure out who you're selling to, what they want, how you can give them something they didn't even know they needed that can only come from you.  You have to figure out who you want on your team and how to attract them and how to deal with them.  You have to figure out where the time is going to come from.

5.  The Investors.

You have to decide if you want outside investment, who would be the best fit, and then polish your pitch.  And polish it some more.  And realize in the process that your product needs work and go back and polish that, and then come back and polish your pitch all over again.  Repeat.

BONUS.  The Courage and the Faith.

There is every reason to believe you will fail, and that it will hurt.  This is why most people will never try.  But those who do, who take the leap of faith, will tell you that creating something is a journey, not a test.  The concepts of success and failure over time are far murkier than you'd imagined.  At the end of the day, it is your journey and your courage that will make you proud and bring you happiness.