Wattpad brings you a guest post by our newest Featured Story writer Catherine M Wilson, author of the When Women Were Warriors trilogy:
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Amazing Stories
Back in the 1980s, there was a TV show called Amazing Stories. The show’s open featured a group of cavepeople sitting around a fire in a dark cave while an old man told a story. That open gave me chills, because it captured the feeling I got when I was a child and someone settled down to tell a story. Whether it was my mother telling me a bedtime story or storytime at the library or a teacher reading a story to the class, there was always something magical about storytelling.
I saw that Amazing Stories open recently on YouTube, and I got the same feeling again, and suddenly I was struck with the idea that we’re going back there. We’re starting to tell each other stories again. And I think it’s about time.
But first, a few words about the bad old days.
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In the bad old days, if you wanted to tell the world your story, you had to get published. And if you wanted to get published, you had to find an agent. Then the agent would sell your book to a publisher. The publisher would pay you an advance, and you would sign a contract giving the publisher the right to publish the book. The contract also gave the publisher almost total control of how the book was presented. The publisher could change the title, create cover art designed more to sell the book than represent its contents accurately, and choose how it was marketed. The publisher could even ask you to make changes to the book’s content. In the old days, writers often complained that their publisher demanded changes that made the story a completely different one from the one the writer had meant to tell.
In those days, the only way a writer’s work could reach the public was through a traditional publisher. Writers knew that. They knew that certain kinds of books— books that appealed to niche (i.e. small) audiences or books with controversial themes—would never get past these gatekeepers, so writers wrote “for the market.” And “the market” wasn’t the people who read. “The market” was the publishing industry.
In the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of the indies. Independent publishers may be micro-publishers who publish work the traditional publishers aren’t interested in, or they may be the authors themselves. It started with POD (Print On Demand) technology, which greatly simplified the process of producing a paperback book. Then ebooks came along, and making an ebook available for sale on Amazon or Barnes & Noble was so simple that anybody could do it.
At first, writers were just glad that they didn’t have to jump through all the old hoops anymore. Writers used to spend a great deal of time trying to get the attention of someone in the industry. They went to writers’ conferences, where you could pay an additional fee to get a few minutes to pitch your book to an agent. They joined online communities of other writers to share tips: what makes a good query letter, how long should a synopsis be, which agents are looking for new clients? So in addition to writing, a writer’s other job was learning how to navigate the twists and turns set up by the people who controlled which books are published.
Many writers haven’t given up the dream of a traditional publishing contract, but many others are realizing that there is much more to be gained by publishing one’s own work than not having to jump through those hoops anymore.
What is beginning to dawn on writers is that now they can write what they want. That point is so important that I’m going to say it again. Writers can now write what they want. They can write what is closest to their hearts without worrying what their agent will say or what their publisher will or won’t be interested in publishing. This is a HUGE change, and we’re only beginning to see the consequences.
Most writers I’ve spoken with had no idea how much the need for the approval of others affected their writing, but now they realize that the feeling of someone always looking over their shoulder, ready to tut-tut their disapproval, is gone. Now they can dare to write the true stories of their lives.
When I say “writers,” I don’t just mean the folks who always intended to “be a writer,” the folks who have dozens of manuscripts covered in dust at the bottom of a drawer. Now we are all writers, each one with a story to tell, perhaps with many stories to tell.
There are so many stories we haven’t heard. There are so many stories no one has had the freedom or the courage to write. And even if people were writing those stories, few people ever got to hear them. Now we’re going to hear those amazing stories.
So the old man, the caveman, the storyteller is back. Except that now we are all storytellers, and the whole world is sitting around the fire listening.
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You can see the open to Amazing Stories here:
