The Writer's Landscape

This article in the LA Times succinctly summarizes the attitudes of both publishers and writers today.

Dani Shapiro writes of how the "writer's apprenticeship -- or perhaps, the writer's lot -- is this miserable trifecta: uncertainty, rejection, disappointment" has changed today, so that "Today's young writers don't peruse the dusty shelves of previous generations. Instead, they are besotted with the latest success stories: The 18-year-old who receives a million dollars for his first novel; the blogger who stumbles into a book deal; the graduate student who sets out to write a bestselling thriller -- and did." Writers today, she says, "do not include insecurity, rejection and disappointment in their plans. I see it in their faces: the almost evangelical belief in the possibility of the instant score."

Say it ain't so...

From November, over at Agent in the Middle:

However, it's become increasingly difficult to sell any genre fiction from a male protagonist's perspective, unless he's really hot. But even if he's a really hot teen vampire, it's better to tell the story from a female point of view. If you have a male character, I'd almost suggest that you change the gender of your main character to sell a novel in this climate.

So let's see...I'm white, straight, middle-aged and male, and I write mystery/suspense novels rather than YA, vampire, zombie, and my male protagonist's are not really hot in the classical sense. That's like nine strikes...if this was baseball I'd have struck out the side all by myself! Too bad for me that I will continue to write what I am  passionate about, published or not. Still...not exactly a cheery post....(read the whole thing here).