Bending the Rules

I had a conversation the other day with an acquaintance who is trying to get a first novel published. His unsuccessful efforts to acquire an agent have been very frustrating for him, and when he talks about it, he sounds like a man on a quest for something he only half believes exits. Our conversation was memorable to me primarily because of his attitude. I’ve never encountered a writer who was as convinced as he is that success will only come by following the rules of the game. In his mind, the publishing companies, the editors, the agents, all know precisely what they want, they all want the same things, and the writer’s job is to provide it according to specs. The reading public has been analyzed, quantified, and only figures into the equation as a predictable target demographic. He sees the writing process as algorithmic, like a computer program. Given the correct input, the program will produce a manuscript guaranteed to sell. And like a computer program, if there are input errors, the publishing machinery will necessarily give you nothing but error messages.

I can understand his attitude. Trying to get a book published can be a gruesome process. Certainly, there are plenty of agents and editors who lack the ability to judge a manuscript by any other than the most formulaic criteria. They are themselves dependent on a recipe and expect writers to be, as well. Agents and editors are no different than people in other professions: one in a hundred are really good at what they do, and the other ninety-nine are just trying to pay the bills. 

But what about the writer whose work doesn’t conform to a recipe? Is he as doomed as my acquaintance would have me believe? I don’t think so. Obviously, you can be successful by following the rules. But you can also ignore the rules and do just as well. After all, where do the rules come from? How do they evolve if not out of being broken? The publishing industry, like every other industry, is populated by people with standard allotments of imagination. (The 99% who are just paying the bills.) Over time, the publishing companies consecrate certain genres, styles, topics, etc.. They become “industry standards,” and in so doing they also become rigid.  These consecrated categories serve a purpose, they work, but with gradually diminishing returns. Then someone comes along and breaks the rules and, to everyone’s surprise, writes a book that is a hugh success. The rules are then rewritten to accommodate the new form, new standards ensue, which in turn gradually rigidify, and the process repeats itself. 

So if you are a writer who finds the rules too constraining, bending them, even to the breaking point, is probably not as damning as the rule-bound think. Forget the industry statistics. The reading public is not as dull, homogenous or predictable as the corporate marketing departments would like you to believe. There are lots of readers out there waiting for you to surprise them. And don’t give up looking for that one-in-a-hundred agent or editor with imagination and vision. They’re out there, too.