tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6525161379578984040.post1648139472921715919..comments2023-12-15T00:45:21.381-05:00Comments on Unmapped Country: Stuck in the MiddleHope Perlmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599511890390199730noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6525161379578984040.post-50665107078367224142017-04-05T19:16:11.694-04:002017-04-05T19:16:11.694-04:00Thanks for your comment, Victoria. Like Michael...Thanks for your comment, Victoria. Like Michael's above, I missed it somehow. I apologize. <br />I'm so appreciative of my audience! I find when I expose my worries, people relate. It's kind of scary, but it seems to resonate when I do. So I will share the book travails along the way. Hope Perlmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10599511890390199730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6525161379578984040.post-35634715831427388972017-04-05T19:14:45.586-04:002017-04-05T19:14:45.586-04:00Ah, Michael, I don't know how I missed your co...Ah, Michael, I don't know how I missed your comment! I apologize. While I'm not a science fiction fan, I certainly appreciate your description of your book. I love the idea of writing it as if it were a memoir. I hope your book is funny, because your writing is! <br /><br />I'm struggling with genre myself. Is my book self-help? Or memoir? Or self-help memoir? Or humor? I think we both ought to stop worrying about the genre and write the book we want to read. That's the best option. You know if the voice is compelling, the genre will appeal to people outside it. After all, I don't read fantasy, but I read Harry Potter. I don't read sci-fi, but I read Ray Bradbury. <br /><br />Keep going and going!Hope Perlmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10599511890390199730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6525161379578984040.post-63572880264169382322017-03-25T14:09:06.299-04:002017-03-25T14:09:06.299-04:00Hope -- I think you are right to move forward with...Hope -- I think you are right to move forward with the book itself, rather than continue to craft proposals for a changing readership of one. I think the idea of being "in the middle of it" is actually one that would resonate with many people. Success will always be a relative ideal; that realization should encourage people to accept that it should not only be a personal ideal, but one that changes with time and circumstances. I look forward to reading more about your book as the manuscript grows and reading the whole thing when it is done! Go, Hope, Go! plaidumbrella@gmail.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16081886851433828417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6525161379578984040.post-41071661672723812952017-03-19T12:05:45.708-04:002017-03-19T12:05:45.708-04:00I totally sympathize with your book travails becau...I totally sympathize with your book travails because I’ve been struggling with one myself. I’ve published two books, but this third book is proving to be far harder to sell than the first two. Like you, I’ve had inconstant success with editors. The proposal sold to Yale, but the book turned out to be very different than either of us had expected, and they pulled out of it. I didn’t blame them, because they were expecting reported nonfiction and they were getting something that looked more like a science-fiction novel – but it was a blow nonetheless. So now I am trying to assemble a fresh proposal to sell it again, and it’s really difficult because I’m bending all kinds of genre expectations. The book’s objective is to show how evolution could build sapient creatures along very different lines than our bipedal hominin architecture, and what kind of languages they would consequently have. For example, one civilization is built of social insect colonies. Of course, science fiction has posited hive-mind civilizations for decades, but to my mind no one has sat down and really worked out how cognition could emerge from a giant pile of bugs, let alone language and technology. Well, I have. The problem is, how do I make such a book appeal to more than a very small niche of readers? I’m trying to write it as a memoir, as if I had actually gone to these planets and tried to communicate with these creatures. I’m also overlaying it with some earthly politics, by asking if humans of different political persuasions can actually be “alien” to each other. I would bet that most Democrats feel that Trump voters are pod people roaming the halls of power with lizard eyes. Some Trumpists have have sneaked on board the expedition to these planets and are predictably creating all kinds of trouble. I’m finding it fun to do, but my beta readers are complaining that it feels like a weakly plotted and overly didactic science-fiction novel. The problem is genre expectations: they assume that any writing about nonexistent civilizations on other planets must be a science-fiction novel, so they’re thrown by the fact that there isn’t a conventional plot nor conventional characters. I am pondering creating a stronger plot, but the tricky problem is that these aliens are so alien that it’s difficult to have meaningful relationships with them -- which is part of my point: there could be minds in the cosmos so different from ours that we wouldn’t have much to say to each other. So I’m either a crank trying to write a book that no one will read, or a genius writing the first example of an entirely new genre. It’s very hard to tell which I am. In any case it has been an extremely trying process. My wife has been enormously supportive, but like you I feel rather lost in the wilderness with no recent conventional markers of success. Good luck to you, Hope, and may we both find success at the ends of our respective roads.Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10397002790874437015noreply@blogger.com