Reader entitlement

Neil Gaiman has an interesting reply to a reader of his blog who was (politely) bitching about George R. R. Martin being late with the next book in a series.

George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.

Expanding on that a bit …

You’re complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off, or they complain that the books, although maintaining quality, aren’t coming out on time.

Both of these things make me glad that I am not currently writing a series, and make me even gladder that the decade that I did write series things, in Sandman, I was young, driven, a borderline workaholic, and very fortunate. (and even then, towards the end, I was taking five weeks to write a monthly comic, with all the knock-on problems in deadlines that you would expect from that).

For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don’t really care what it takes to produce that.

The article as a whole is a lot longer, and Gaiman makes a number of good points. That he’s just at home and exhausted from a writing-related trip doesn’t endear him to the idea of dancing for the reader’s pleasure, to be sure, but he approaches the question quite reasonably and cogently.

I’m not sure if I entirely buy his conclusion, though. I suspect it’s a more complex proposition than either Gaiman or his correspondent make it out to be.

No, there’s no contract. If Steven Brust never writes another Jhereg book again, there’s nothing I can do about it but lament the fact. (His publisher might have something to say about it, but that’s another matter.)

That said, writing is not just a matter of finding contentment and letting the words roll out at the pace they will (not quite what Gaiman was saying, but …). Readers want stuff from a writer. They don’t always know what they want, and what they want (and when they want it) may not be reasonable, and it certainly may not be what the writer wants — but readers do want stuff. They are not entitled to get it, but they can have expectations (a series, in this case, builds expectations, unless the book ends with the protagonist irrevocably erased from the multiverse — and sometimes not even then). 

Further, they are the people who are paying for the writer’s living (or at least for the writer pursuing a writing career). They are the customers. Their expectations are not entitlements, but still are dismissed only at peril.

Gaiman’s points that are most valuable here are his noting writing is not just labor, or turning on and off a tap. The writer must be allowed to engage in some level of creativity and avoid burn-out on a given set of characters or setting, otherwise neither the writer nor, most likely, the reader, is going to get what they are looking for.

Some writers need a while to charge their batteries, and then write their books very rapidly. Some writers write a page or so every day, rain or shine. Some writers run out of steam, and need to do whatever it is they happen to do until they’re ready to write again. Sometimes writers haven’t quite got the next book in a series ready in their heads, but they have something else all ready instead, so they write the thing that’s ready to go, prompting cries of outrage from people who want to know why the author could possibly write Book X while the fans were waiting for Book Y.

I remember hearing an upset comics editor telling a roomful of other editors about a comics artist who had taken a few weeks off to paint his house. The editor pointed out, repeatedly, that for the money the artist would have been paid for those weeks’ work he could easily have afforded to hire someone to paint his house, and made money too. And I thought, but did not say, “But what if he wanted to paint his house?”

On the other hand, I am allowed only so many days a year to blow off work and “paint my house” before my employer suggests that I take up painting as a new job. Office work is not the same, in many ways, as the creative effort, but they are not entirely divorced, either.

In short, George R. R. Martin is not his readers’ bitch — but neither can he ignore their wants or expectations, if he expects them to fund his lifestyle in the future. He may be more (properly) driven at the whims (or ennui) of his Muse, but his stomach has a say in things, too. And while patience on the part of the reading audience is a very good thing, they are not his bitches either, compelled to wait until whatever crumbs he decides to pass on from his table to an eager public are ready. Despite what Gaiman says, Martin does, to the extent that writing is his job, “work for them.” It’s just that they’re going to be a lot happier with the work he does if they give him enough room and time to be comfortable in doing it.