Every year or two I do another blurb post, yes? Trick is, I want to pay back into the system that’s helped me, but I also, you know, have such limited time and bandwidth, and of course, like all of us, I have to carve out time just to read stuff I’ve been planning to read, to be part of the world. I’ve tried so many mechanisms and policies and workarounds to juggle blurbs, all of which fail. The most recent blurb-post is here, which links to the one before, which may link to the one before that, not sure. And they may all be saying some version of this, I already can’t remember.
Anyway, what I’ve been doing the last . . . ten months, maybe? What I’ve been doing is, instead of explaining to askers-after-blurbs (writers, agents, editors) is saying “Maybe.” Because? I honestly don’t know. I could get snowed into an airport for sixteen hours, and fall into a book I wasn’t even planning on. Happens all the time. So, nowadays, except for when I can definitely see that the next few months are bleak, time-wise, I’ll usually say “Maybe,” put the EPUB (please, please, EPUBs?) on my device, and . . . maybe? Hopefully?
But, too, if it does work out, I’ll let you or whoever know. No need for nudging. Nudging’s always awkward for everyone, and so far it’s never actually made anyone do the blurb, so far as I know.
And, too, going through my lit agent (she’s in one of the menus above, the . . . the “About” one, I think?) is always the way to go. My inbox is so ridiculous these days that I hardly even answer the pressing stuff from people who are my bosses, so the chances of my opening an email from someone I haven’t been in contact with are sadly low. But I always answer her emails.
Too, as for my own personal guidelines, tastes, all that:
- I prioritize debut or just-starting-out writers, as I remember what it was like to need that helping hand up
- I only blurb stuff that’s already under contract.
- I’m a lot more likely to make it through stuff that’s been through some copyediting. Which is ridiculous, I know: who among us doesn’t leave a backtrail of typos? Definitely not me. All the same, if I have one mss. that’s been cleaned up and one that hasn’t, then . . . the clean one kind of has a leg up.
- I tend to pull the eject lever on stuff that, say, doesn’ have a speaking verb in the dialogue tag, or doubles punctuation (?!”), or spells “okay” with two letters—this is just my own taste, not the world’s. If the story’s gripping enough, then I can look past it. But if I’m the fence, and have a stack of other novels to be maybe-blurbing? Then mistakes like these (well, things I call “mistakes”), they’ll generally push me on to the next thing.
- Like most with limited time, I do better with short than epic, brief than doorstopper.
- Oh, and: I give my own students priority.
- Also-also: I usually only blurb a person once, not twice, not over and over. I’m happy to help logroll, but will probably not be a cheerleader.
Too, though this probably doesn’t make my many friends: I’ll no longer taking edits on the blurbs I submit. Which, I kind of set myself up for: when I like a book, I’ll often offer two or three different blurbs, and say use any. Invariably, then those three get stitched together into some Frankenstein-blurb, which doesn’t seem to have voice or rhythm anymore. Also, far too often I submit a blurb and the response I get (only from editors, never writers) is . . . “What if it actually said this? And . . . what if it said it like this?” Which, again, strips away what I feel is the shape I tried to bake in. So, from here on out, it’s either as I say it, or not at all. But? Feel free, of course, to mine a “scorchingly original” or whatever and paste it up. Just, it always feels so wrong for me to be using up my time going back and forth for fifteen emails with someone, trying to salvage the heart of a thing I already didn’t have time to do. I mean, I want whatever book this is to succeed, of course. But I also don’t write blurbs to get them edited.
Anyway, will close with this amazingness:
