But however good a first novel Everway tie-in I'd have written, I'd never have been nominated for the Campbell.
This is almost certainly true. I can only think of one exception: It did not stop Julia Ecklar from being nominated for (and winning, I believe) the Campbell for her Trek work (she may have had other short work out there, but the only thing I can remember from that time period is the Star Trek book, of which she was one of, I think, three writers).
The other thing about writing tie-ins is that they do take time and energy from writing original things, and I think you can end up, if you do a lot of them, by coarsening the way you write, the things you think it's possible to do. I don't think it's just pride you can lose, I think it's horizons.
I could see how this could happen, depending on the writer. I think I've read about half of the Diane Duane tie-ins, and I liked most of them; whatever it was she invested in the story, it was all there. I liked her Trek books, although they're of an older vintage -- the books written when the license owner had almost given up on the franchise, and was willing to let writers play with the universe to a much great extent. John Ford's two trek novels were great, and I would have liked them had he managed to file the serial numbers off them and publish them as something else.
But with the advent of NEXT GEN, that changed, and the guidelines became more onerous, or so I've been told; it was less like play and more like work (as in for hire <g>).
I think tie-ins are our genre's "category" books (in Romance, there are novels and category novels; the former published in the normal way as standalone novels, the latter as part of a line, with restrictions on content, tone, etc.). Some people can think of inventive things to do within category, and they have some enthusiasm for them -- but some can't.
If Elizabeth Hand were to write fifteen more tie-ins before being able to afford to get to her next original novel, I think it might well not be as good as it would have been. I've seen a couple of writers I used to think were very good come back to original fiction after writing a pile of WFH tie ins where I felt their work had really suffered from it.
I wonder, though, how true that is in general. Err, let me try that again. I can think of authors whose early works I adored, and while they've never ever done work for hire, their later books didn't speak to me; they had some technical merit, and perhaps they spoke to other people -- but they seemed to lose some intrinsic heart.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-08-30 09:36 pm (UTC)This is almost certainly true. I can only think of one exception: It did not stop Julia Ecklar from being nominated for (and winning, I believe) the Campbell for her Trek work (she may have had other short work out there, but the only thing I can remember from that time period is the Star Trek book, of which she was one of, I think, three writers).
The other thing about writing tie-ins is that they do take time and energy from writing original things, and I think you can end up, if you do a lot of them, by coarsening the way you write, the things you think it's possible to do. I don't think it's just pride you can lose, I think it's horizons.
I could see how this could happen, depending on the writer. I think I've read about half of the Diane Duane tie-ins, and I liked most of them; whatever it was she invested in the story, it was all there. I liked her Trek books, although they're of an older vintage -- the books written when the license owner had almost given up on the franchise, and was willing to let writers play with the universe to a much great extent. John Ford's two trek novels were great, and I would have liked them had he managed to file the serial numbers off them and publish them as something else.
But with the advent of NEXT GEN, that changed, and the guidelines became more onerous, or so I've been told; it was less like play and more like work (as in for hire <g>).
I think tie-ins are our genre's "category" books (in Romance, there are novels and category novels; the former published in the normal way as standalone novels, the latter as part of a line, with restrictions on content, tone, etc.). Some people can think of inventive things to do within category, and they have some enthusiasm for them -- but some can't.
If Elizabeth Hand were to write fifteen more tie-ins before being able to afford to get to her next original novel, I think it might well not be as good as it would have been. I've seen a couple of writers I used to think were very good come back to original fiction after writing a pile of WFH tie ins where I felt their work had really suffered from it.
I wonder, though, how true that is in general. Err, let me try that again. I can think of authors whose early works I adored, and while they've never ever done work for hire, their later books didn't speak to me; they had some technical merit, and perhaps they spoke to other people -- but they seemed to lose some intrinsic heart.