Gatekeepers

With rare exceptions, we all find our way to the audience through a number of people. Editors and critique partners, publishers, marketers, educators, reviewers, legislators, and in the case of the younger audiences particularly, parents, often have a lot more direct control over whether our work ever hits the target audience or not.

So we try to please them. We datamine rejection letters for hints, revise according to advice and try again, agonize over making the perfect query, study the markets till our brains bleed. And far too often we forget some important things.

First, that the gatekeeper is not the audience.

Second, that the gatekeeper does not owe the creator anything (outside the stated terms of an existing contract).

Third, that other gates are out there.

Widespot is currently sitting in the moderation queue (essentially a slushpile) at Mod the Sims, a large download host which has evolved procedures to control what kind of content it provides. This is my second time through. The first time, I misunderstood many points on the submission format desired and messed up the submission so badly they had no choice but to reject it. I had to re-take all the pictures, which is far more difficult for me than someone who sees straight lines can easily understand. Then the moderators closed the moderation queue for a period of time necessary to clear out a backlog and update some of their policies, which took over a month; and then I had to double-check the revised guidelines and reassess my drafted submission document before finally starting my submission thread, shortly after hundreds of other people with smaller submissions had swooped into the queue ahead of me. So now I'm waiting.

That all sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Then this will sound familiar, too. The original rejection, an obvious series of cut-and-paste boilerplate, cited crimes of which I am guiltless, though my botching of the format may have misled the moderator in charge of accepting or rejecting it into thinking that I was. I expect these objections to be dropped now that I have (I think) done things right. But a couple of items do give me pause. Like this one:

Item 3: ... your sim does not represent a unique and different overall look. While your sim may have an interesting face, anyone can create interesting faces spending a few minutes fiddling in Body Shop - the idea is to create a unique overall look... The submission guidelines clearly state that sims without custom content created by the uploader (i.e., new eyes, new hair, a variant skintone) will not be accepted.

Leaving aside the vexed and unanswerable question of whether anyone else ever would produce Dixie Land's face, and granting its theoretical possibility, the citizens of Widespot are not the shells generally uploaded for sharing, but characters in an established neighborhood with an ongoing storyline. It is Dixie's looks in combination with her stats, aspiration, biography, relationships, and history in the context of the whole neighborhood that make her and the other citizens of Widespot both unique and fun to play (as my playtesters assure me they are).

I more or less expect the story content of the neighborhood to be treated as the necessary custom content in this instance. Insisting on other kinds of custom content, such as genetics or clothing, would be counterproductive. Firstly, because Widespot is intended as a Base Game Only/Custom Content free neighborhood which anyone with a Sims2 game can drop in and with a minimum of hassle. Custom content would be unnecessary padding and violate the purpose.

Secondly, I can't make any other standard kind of custom content. Wouldn't know where to start. I can't do visual media to a professional or even amateur display standard, as I've demonstrated to my own satisfaction many times. I can make story and character all day long, and frequently do. Demand exists for inhabited neighborhoods with ongoing storylines, and this is where I can make a contribution. So I think my sims fit the intention of the guidelines even though they violate the letter of it, and I think the moderators will recognize that.

But you know what? I could be wrong. And if I am, Widespot will be rejected and that will be that. Because I'm not going to shoehorn stuff that doesn't belong, which would make me less satisfied with my work and would please my target audience less, into my work just to get it hosted. I'll find some other place, with different criteria, or no criteria; or I'll put a link in the sidebar of the blog and keep it on Mediafire as long as I can, directing people to the blog in my sig; or eventually I'll write off spreading it any further and be satisfied with the dozen or so people playing it now.

If, however, the moderator doesn't like the house the Lands live in and makes specific suggestions about how to make it acceptable without adding anything not available in the base game, and I can make those changes around the Land family as they are frozen in pause on the Friday morning that I intend the story to begin - heck, yes, if that's the only thing standing in my way, I'll do that in a heartbeat. Because the Land house really is a bit of a mess. It's playable, and to a certain extent the mess is deliberate, as it's supposed to have started out as a one-room cabin and added onto willy-nilly as finances allowed and a growing family required; but I got contradictory feedback on its aesthetic in playtest and I stopped fiddling with it more because I'd run out of ideas than because I was truly satisfied. As long as the concept of the house isn't violated by a suggestion, I'll tweak it as often as I need to in order to get it uploaded in the place I believe the intended audience will find it most easily.

The difference is that adding custom content would violate the work and, therefore, make it less suitable for the target audience; but changing the arrangement of a few walls and floors in the house may substantially improve it. These are the only considerations that matter, in the end.

If a gatekeeper rejects your work, it will not be (necessarily) because the work sucks; nor will it be because the gatekeeper is a Philistine with no taste; and it certainly will not be (in any viable market, even the internet) because the gatekeeper has some animus against you personally. It will be because, in the gatekeeper's judgement, the audience he's serving will not be well-served if he passes it. He may be right; he may be wrong; that is not the issue. The gate keeper controls this gate and if he won't let you through, you need to go look for another gate. Don't stand at this one whining to go through - you'll just make yourself obnoxious.

And for pity's sake, don't mutilate your work to please a gatekeeper. You'll regret it, I promise. Consider all suggestions as dispassionately as you can, see if your judgement coincides with his on this point, and only make changes that your judgement approves. For what profiteth it an author to gain publication, and lose the point of book?

I admire gatekeepers. They are, for the most work, overworked and underpaid. I've seen editors in the office and at home, and you would not believe the places they find to stack manuscripts, or how much work they have to get through with how little help. Most of them can't do any actual submission reading at work because they're too busy doing other parts of an editor's job. Librarians and teachers and parents are in much the same boat, and I presume that other kinds of gatekeepers are, too. If submission guidelines are difficult, it's because the number of people who think they've made something good enough to share far exceeds the number of people who truly have, and even some of those people have not taken sufficient care to be standing at the right gate. The more of these people who can be eliminated before the gatekeeper has to waste any time on them, the better for everybody.

Nobody owes me, or you, or anyone, publication. The loyalty of the gatekeeper is not to the creator, nor to the shareholder (if there is one in the market in question) but to the audience they conceive themselves as representing. Which is as it should be and I, as a creator, would not ask anything different of them.

Which doesn't mean I'm not really, really tired of sending queries and partials and fulls out into the cold world and never seeing them again except with the word "no" stamped on them. Especially when I know, as well as anyone ever knows these things, that the work is good. That isn't always what matters, in this imperfect world.

But that's life.