... might not make the slightest difference, because you can do everything right and fail, and everything wrong and succeed:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/je-fishman/hugh-howey-success_b_2853612.html

Very interesting.

Catkin, I thought of you reading that piece - reminded me of your example of you and another comp winner (hope I'm remembering this right), and how your nil promotion, and their busy promotion, resulted in exactly the same sales...

Thinking of FSOG, is even writing a good book a rule?

Perhaps the only rule: be in the right place at the right time.

Depends what you mean by good, doesn't it. In the book trade, "good" is the siamese twin of "saleable" which is very different.

I was ruminating on that a while ago here:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2007/10/theres-good-and.html

Catkin, I thought of you reading that piece - reminded me of your example of you and another comp winner (hope I'm remembering this right), and how your nil promotion, and their busy promotion, resulted in exactly the same sales...

Yes, that's exactly it. No comps involved, though - it was a novel (my friend's) and a novella (mine) published at about the same time by the same small American e-publisher.

I hope, Emma, you don't mind me quoting from that blog, but I feel this extract could be written for me, as it so closely reflects my aims.

About 'good':

It might be rhythm, vocabulary, imagery or syntax, but the hundreds of thousands of tiny decisions about these can add up to many different new ways: spare and tough, rich and baroque, fastidious and contemplative, off-the-wall and hilarious... but it's something original which makes the words sing in the reader's ear,

I'll add startling and surreal, hoping to by-pass shocking and purple.

Don't mind at all, Alan.

The risk, of course, is that working at this level:

It might be rhythm, vocabulary, imagery or syntax, but the hundreds of thousands of tiny decisions about these

sidelines or even derails the writer's interest and attention for the business of storytelling.

When it's working, of course, it improves the storytelling. And, of course, readers vary in how much they'll feel the richness of the prose enhances the experience of reading the story, or inhibits it.

But sometimes the goal of gorgeous prose and goal of narrative drive aren't compatible. It's something I've sometimes found in novels written by poets, for example; the poet's freedom to play faster and looser with the conventions of grammar/syntax and so on, in pursuit of sound and rhythm and the perfect image, can make the text harder and slower to read.

That's not necessarily a bad thing (see here: http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2011/01/desirable-difficulty.html - which I jumped off a point Terry made years ago about typography)

But it will become a bad thing if actually the desire for micro-quality is allowed to trump (rather than reinforcing) the absolute necessity of macro-quality. In this as in so much else, you do have to murder your darlings.

Interesting article. I reviewed Howey's book for New Scientist's Arc Magazine (http://arcfinity.tumblr.com/page/2). After finishing it, and finding out more about Howey, I felt more optimistic that a well-written, heart-felt book can succeed in self-publishing. That and some good/lucky word-of-mouth promotion. Wool isn't a great book: clunky in places, long passages without much happening; but parts of it are brilliant and it's very readable. For what it's worth, I think readers are responding to the fact that it and its author are genuine about what they do. Not just in the writing but in his dealings with readers. The latter may be where a lot of older writers (including myself) can improve. We're used to the idea of producing the best book we can write; but after that, perhaps tend to sit back and, well, hope. It's interesting how many 'rules' Howey is breaking, e.g. letting people write books based in his universe (even endorsing them), replying to negative critiques on Amazon (very charmingly and honestly).

Traditionally, I don't think commercially successful authors always put total care into their product. They aim for 80%, perhaps, because that allows them to produce more content. Some of that content will fail but quite a bit will succeed, especially with some nice packaging etc from the publisher. But I think this kind of writing won't do so well in self/e-publishing, at least not with the kind of reader who's responding to Howey's work. So, perhaps the challenge to people who write genuinely and well is to get their work out there and support it.

But sometimes the goal of gorgeous prose and goal of narrative drive aren't compatible. It's something I've sometimes found in novels written by poets, for example; the poet's freedom to play faster and looser with the conventions of grammar/syntax and so on, in pursuit of sound and rhythm and the perfect image, can make the text harder and slower to read.

Short stories, too:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Touch-Graham-Mort/dp/185411512X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364204582&sr=1-1

I love poetic language in stories/novels but used judiciously, for specific effect, not ladled all over the prose like sauce.

It's about design. Like a flower border, you put in the occasional star turn which is set off by the more ordinary plants that surround it. Fill the border with star turns and they all fight for attention and all coherence is lost.

Poetic language is most at home in the poem. Horses for courses.

Traditionally, I don't think commercially successful authors always put total care into their product. They aim for 80%, perhaps, because that allows them to produce more content.

Yes, 80% is good enough - more than good enough, a lot of the time. If you stretch towards 100%, you greatly improve the quality of your work but significantly reduce your chances of publication or, at least, good sales. Bestsellers are rarely great books. The majority of paperback readers aren't bothered about quality in a literary sense, they want a thumping good read that they don't have to think about too much. And there are plenty of writers who are happy to set the bar low for both themselves and their readers because they value commercial success more than literary accomplishment. Of course, for some of them, they are producing 100% inasmuch as its as good as they will ever produce.

and you don't know what that time or place is, so you can't plan to be there!

But sometimes the goal of gorgeous prose and goal of narrative drive aren't compatible.

Thank you for this Emma - it has absolved me from a niggling but unsolved minor worry about my writing, that I am incapable of incorporating , umm .... more <i>poetic</i> turns of phrase such as I used in some prompt challenges in novels - I'm aware that folk who are familiar with one will be disappointed by the other.

Like a flower border, you put in the occasional star turn which is set off by the more ordinary plants that surround it. Fill the border with star turns and they all fight for attention and all coherence is lost.

Yes - Nicola Morgan makes a similar analogy about overwriting being like wearing two diamond necklaces at once - neither can have its full effect.

Although a poem can just as easily be over-written as prose can: any half-way decent poet will be working with a rhythm of intensity and air, stress and slack. And any poem needs a sense of forward movement - journeying - as prose does; it's the poetic equivalent of narrative drive.

I am incapable of incorporating , umm .... more <i>poetic</i> turns of phrase such as I used in some prompt challenges in novels

I think if you're capable of them in one context, with luck they'll come along if/when you need them in the other, and not otherwise.

After all, you don't need great passages of it. "Georgeous prose" can encompass one, perfect verb in a sentence which is otherwise simple and energetic.

And working with voice and point of view helps: if you set up character who are capable of experiencing the world in those ways, then sometimes - at the right moment - they will. And because that experience is springing from your character-in-action's action, it won't stall the action while we read some pretty descriptions: it'll be part of their action...

Although a poem can just as easily be over-written as prose can

yes

"Georgeous prose" can encompass one, perfect verb in a sentence which is otherwise simple and energetic.

yes