Skip to main content

Writing Life

How many novels must one man write, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, before you can call him an author?  I’ve completed six, none published, and I’ve got another well under way.  My business card, however, nowhere indicates that I’m an author.

Being a writer is more than an occupation.  It’s an identity.  Like the vast majority of writers, I work for a living.  Long hours.  Long commute.  Heavy eyelids.  Sloped shoulders.  Weary sighs.  My boss thinks of me as an employee.  I think of myself as a writer gathering information.

For me, there’s an ethics about it all.  I spend a lot of time reading.  Years, if I add up all the hours.  Am I not morally required to give something back?  I’ve written, sweated over, edited, and polished my novels.  Yet they sit on my hard drive seen by my eyes only and the even harder eyes of alabaster editors.



Such is a writer’s life.  I’m not really looking for the big time.  I’d like to send my fiction out there for the (I hope) hundreds, or maybe a few thousands, who would find in me a kindred spirit.  I can’t do it alone, however.  Life’s funny that way because writing is such a solitary activity.  Like taking a shower, I only ever do it alone.

No one need tell me I’m naive.  Authors are those with connections.  They’re punchy, upbeat, and cheerful.  Editors fall over themselves to sign up their lackluster books.  It’s the law of the economic jungle.  That book can’t see the light of day unless it’ll make me some money.

The other day I was looking over the results of an amateur writing contest.  Kids receiving awards for their early literary efforts.  I smiled at the irony.  I won a state-wide essay contest when I was in high school.  After that I published a couple of non-fiction books.  Now editors won’t give me a second glance.


So what about the ethics of it all?  Should we be encouraging the sacrificial lambs?  Don’t ask me—I’m no ethicist.  And please don’t look, because I’m going to the showers now.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Working Through It

  The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time.   Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot.   Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group.   Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday.   I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare.   I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run.   And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined.   One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful.   They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only.   Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away.   They also met on Saturdays.   Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Patterns

  There’s a pattern I’m noticing.   For fiction publishers.   Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle.   Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers.   The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in.   That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested.   I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns.   This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses.   I check many lists.   What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic.   It’s literary but it’s weird.   Publishers don’t know what to do with it.   If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered.   Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creativity

  Maybe you’ve noticed this too.   When you step away from fiction writing for a while, your creativity becomes flaccid.   I’ve had to step away from this blog for a while because I was writing my sixth nonfiction book.   God, I’ve missed fiction! Now that I’ve entered that phase of waiting for publishers to respond, I’ve turned my limited writing time back to fiction.   I submitted a couple of stories this week and am waiting to hear about those as well.   When you’re a writer, waiting is a way of life. Opening my software where I store my fiction stories, I was amazed by how many I found.   Some of them are bad—so bad that they’ll never (rightfully) be published.   Some are surprisingly good and have been sitting around while I finished up my nonfic. The vast majority, however, are unfinished.   Some years back I realized that when I’m writing in the heat of inspiration but don’t have time to finish a story that I need to write down where I...
Post a Comment
Read more