Yay, Barb!

Yay, Barb! I hope this helps to restore your confidence in your talent.

Chapter 20 is over. That puts me at 114k words now. That puts me on target for about 160k words.

I got about 800 words into Chapter 21. I have a few new characters that are slowing me down. I don't have a good feel for a couple of them yet.

I have a column due tomorrow for Romancing the Blog and I'm hitting on a potentially testy topic-- reader entitlement.

Anyone want to give an opinion on whether it makes sense or not?

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A couple of incidents lately have had me thinking of entitlement–both, interestingly enough, brought about my love of baseball. I’ve been a baseball fan all my life. And while locally, what I’ve got is a AA team (Go Suns!) it so happens that they’re the farm team for my home team, The Florida Marlins. I love the Marlins. They’re the most bargain basement team in the majors, in terms of their salaries and as such, they’re also one of the youngest teams. Just guys who love to play the game.

A few weeks ago one of our rookies, just three or four days out of being called up, hit his first major league home run. Has to be one of the most exciting moments ever, right? And it might have been if it hadn’t been for what happened afterward. See, he hit the dinger at Miller Park, home of the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers, unfortunately, have among their fan ranks, a guy who calls himself “The Happy Youngster.” (Website, t-shirts, and all.) The guy is a self-professed ball-hawk, living out in the bleachers for the purpose of catching home run balls. And he happened to catch Chris Coghlan’s homer. By the time the Florida Sports Network roving reporter caught up to the guy in the next inning, he already had his list of demandsrequests, written out on a piece of paper that he held up for the camera to see. It’s common in baseball for a player to exchange a signed ball or bat in order to get a personal milestone home run ball back. However, this guy didn’t just want a ball or bat signed by Coghlan, he wanted the signed ball and bat, plus a signed ball or bat from Hanley Ramirez who’s the Marlins’ All-Star shortstop, plus a pair of tickets to the Marlins/Yankees game that’s coming up in Miami this month and a picture with Coghlan. His reasoning was that the Marlins should only be so happy to hand over all of that stuff. Besides, the fans pay, right? It’s no less than what they deserve.

“I explained that ballhawking is my hobby and that what I was asking in return was fair,” Yohanek said Thursday, in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “I told him I make $50,000 a year working in law enforcement and that I didn’t feel like I was asking for too much. He responded, ‘Good for you.’ Real classy. Way to respect law enforcement. Way to respect a fan.”

‘Scuse me while I call foul. Way to respect a fan? He’s acting as if he’s… entitled to all those goodies. No. No, he’s not. And let me say it once more with a Whitney Houston emphasis, oh, hell to the no. He paid to watch nine innings of baseball. That’s precisely what he got. Anything else, extra innings, a picture flash on the big screen, a ball caught, whether a foul or a homer or just an extra tossed into the stands by a player in between innings… bonus and nothing more and certainly not to be expected.

Contrast this with earlier this week. Another Marlins rookie, Brett Carroll, hits his first major league home run, off 300-game and future Hall of Famer, Randy Johnson. A fan in the bleachers caught it. Says he comes to all the Marlins home games and that he likes sitting out there because it feels like real baseball. The roving reporter asked what he wanted in exchange for the ball– all the fan wanted was to shake Carroll’s hand and congratulate him. The reporter then asked “and if Carroll offers a signed ball or bat?” the fan laughed and said, no, he wouldn’t turn it down. (He got a signed bat.)

By now you’re probably saying, “So okay, Barb, what does this have to do with writing and/or reading?”

Ironically, quite a lot. Around the same time that the Coghlan situation was making the national sports news, Neil Gaiman posted a blog on, you guessed it, entitlement. A fan had written him complaining about George R.R. Martin’s lack of communication on the progress of his next A Song of Ice and Fire novel and wanted some of Neil’s insight as to what responsibility he (continued...)

( continues...) thought George owed his fans and wasn’t George letting his fans down by, you know, having a life and having the nerve to blog about it, instead of writing the book, right now.

Neil’s response? “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.”

What I really liked about what Neil said goes right back to the whole theme of entitlement. He pointed out that there has recently been this trend among readers whereupon they believe that by buying the first book in a series, the reader has entered into some sort of contract requiring the writer to devote themselves exclusively to writing each subsequent book until the series is complete. His take? A reader pays their money for a book. That one book.

I think this hit me in an especially resonant manner because lately, I’ve been seeing similar pockets of reader response across several genres that could be interpreted as veiled (and not-so-veiled) threats—if a writer doesn’t step it up, a reader can easily move on to another writer. (Uh, you really think we don’t know that? C’mon.) Not only that, but that writers should be downright grateful (preferably in some groveling sort of fashion) and apply themselves diligently to serve the needs of their readers. Really? I mean, it’s not that I’m not grateful for the people who have read my books and who share with me how much they love my books—believe me, I am. I cherish each and every reader who has gone out of their way to tell me they loved something I wrote. But I think what a lot of readers might not realize is that writers don’t set out to serve the needs of readers– we set out to serve something within ourselves. We choose to share it with readers and we work darned hard to do so. So many writers, they don’t simply write– they have an outside job, or families, or pets, or any number of obligations and interests, all of which they ultimately bring back to their writing. Material that inspires and serves to enrich each book.

And really isn’t that what every reader should want? That a writer take the time to write the best possible book? I mean, not only does the writer benefit from the sense of accomplishment from a job well done, not simply for themselves, but for the publisher who’s actually paying them for the manuscript, but the reader benefits as well by getting their money’s worth for that one book. Sounds like a win/win situation to me.

Makes sense to me, Barb. Although I think you want to say "brought about BY my love of baseball."

whoops

And I can't wait to see some of the crazies' responses.

The ones at RtB, I mean.

Not only that, but that writers should be downright grateful (preferably in some groveling sort of fashion) and apply themselves diligently to serve the needs of their readers.

If you are actually writing for a living, I would think there would already be plenty of incentive to please the readers without worrying about gratitude.

You'd think, right, Gud? But sadly, no. There are readers who have this attitude:

I think authors ought to be doing their darnedest to deliver the goods the best they can in the most timely manner possible and with a smile on their faces and gratitude in their hearts that readers actually want to spend their hard-earned money on their books, that they love those stories so much that they’re upset when someone insults them and can’t wait for the next book to come out. And a fan re-writing a book, this is the height of flattery! Remember, *readers pay the bills.* It’s in the authors’ own best interests to at least present an extremely grateful attitude.