Welcome back to the summer edition of Romancing the Genres. The 2024 Romance Slam Jam conference begins on July 11, and I hope to share this anecdote during this three day on line writer's conference. This summer I decided to relax and look back at old joys of my youth, while at the same time working to give something back for the future.
There are the two parts to today's post. By the end, I hope you will see how they connect and not think I am just throwing out content to fill a post.
Part 1: The past is hard to relive
This summer, I decided to take the proverbial stroll down memory lane and set out to re-read a number of my childhood favorites. Many of them are officially out of print (yes, I am THAT old.) One of those was a book I felt was my teenaged girl-power anthem. It was published in the 1960s and was there on the shelf of my high school library, waiting for me when I needed it. At a time when almost every book on those shelves featured a male hero/main character, this book, Podkayne of Mars was narrated by a sixteen year old heroine who radiated girl power. She was smart, sassy, dealing with dual-career parents wha had little time for their childreen, and a genius level younger brother well on his way to becoming a Despicable Me style sociopath. Plus, she was born on Mars in the future. As a science fiction lover since my elementary school days, I loved every word of her first person story.
I grabbed an electronic copy, happy to see that you really could find almost anything on the internet, including books that had been out of print for decades. I settled down to enjoy an old friend all over again.
Then I reached the final chapter and found myself facing a stranger. Someone had messed with my story. I found other editions, each containing the same unfamiliar and unsatisfactory ending. And they all called it the "original" ending. I found a note written by the origional author stating this was the ending he always wanted, not the ending the first publisher had him use, the ending that infused me with that girl power feeling that helped me get through my tumultuous teenaged years.
Apparently, the author intended for the book to showcase that nothing good came from mothers overly concerned with their careers. (Mothers, not fathers) Never mind that the young protagonist's mother was a renowned scientist doing world changing research. He needed that first ending to show that problems arose because she was too busy to notice the things happening to her kids. I don't know who the unknown publisher was who told him to make changes, but I am forever thankful to them. That original ending would have ripped me apart back then.
Part 2: the future has its own issues
This spring I volunteered to be a mentor to an aspiring author of middle grade fiction. I was looking at people with a completed manuscript who wanted help whipping that manuscript into shape for publication. I was volunteering my time at no cost to her, to help her revise the story into something more publication ready. I picked someone on the basis of their fabtasy story. I forgot to query about her experience with things like writing groups or critique partners, at facing any type of feedback at all. I assumed the mentee would want help and advice and be professional enough to realize she needed to revise before she was ready to face a publisher.
We had exactly one meeting. All I had to do was mention that the prologue seemed to be giving information the reader did not for the story, certainly not at the beginning. And that chapter one had a forest and trees situation where things were so wordy readers might have difficulty seeing her story points.
She burst into tears, said she could not work with someone who did not share her vision, and severed ties with me.
Tying the parts together
This is my tale of two writers. One, a professional, the other not so much. One hated being told to revise his ending, but he did so, albeit grudgedly. As a result, his book changed the life of at least one impressionable young reader. The other writer refused to even consider making a change, and, at least for now, she remains a novice writing alone.
I am not a publisher, and this author had every right to decide to ignore my suggestions, although I felt the tears were a little much. The author of Podkayne of Mars was a multi-published author, at least in part because while he wrote angry letters afterward, he heeded criticism. I truely hope this aspiring author eventually learns to accept feedback. She really did have an interesting science fiction/fantasy story. I hope to see a smoother version of it some day, perhaps in my local library, where her heroine can inspire others.
