We are living in a new golden age of the arts. Do we feel it? No, but neither did the Romantics of Paris, the Beats of Soho, nor the Mods of Liverpool. The only thing we must do is create. It's not the gallery owners or the publishers who let us down--they have never really mattered to creativity anyway--it is ourselves we must keep in check. I believe we are the ones who have gotten us into this mess. Believing that art owes us not only a living, but a fine fortune and global fame, is one of the greatest audacities the artist can adopt, and creates a demand for execs, lawyers, managers and dealers.
We must create, for that which is remembered is that which is survives, and that which survives is that which is plentiful. This is why I think the new wave of self-publishing is so important. It's not merely an alternative marketing tactic, it's a rebellion against the corporate overlords. Follow the new hack formulas if you like. Remove all the adverbs and descriptors. That plays into marketability, not art.
"Then you won't sell."
"Then I won't sell. But I'll leave something behind that I'm proud of and that people might like when you and your ilk are dead and gone."
I will not be a serf in their corporate feudal system.
15 comments:
Amen!
The jury is out for me on this. There is also an argument that can be made that says if something is good it is undeniably good and will see the light of day regardless of whether or not we are in a time of cultural stasis. In fiction half the battle is being sure you've found the right person to represent you - meaning someone of like ilk who knows where the holes in the wall are and that's what they do. There are ways to find them.
Though I've self-published I've never followed through on its promotion (because I hate the version it is in right now). And what has happened also is that I've decided my job is to write it. It will get written no matter what anyway. If it isn't written it doesn't exist and all this is is a hypothetical. After that I'm starting to not much care where it goes. Maybe it stays in my closet and my kids get it published. Don't care as much as I used to.
Speaking for myself, RW, in my heart of hearts, I am a performer, and performers demand an audience. I make no apologies for the fact that when I sing, I want to sing for an audience, when I write blog entries, I want someone to read them. And when I go to the trouble to research for 10 years and then take another year to write a piece of historical fiction, I want people to read it. The other thing that is thrown into the mix here is control over my work. I want full control and I don't want some snot-nosed kid in a suit with an MBA in marketing telling me what to write or how to write it. I don't give a shit what sells. I've been given the inspiration to create and I won't be hindered or reined-in by what some marketer tells me is popular or not popular. Neither will I dumb my writing down for a public with little more than a 6th grade reading level. So I've chosen the route I have with all this in mind, and thus far, I'm very pleased and content with it.
When I was going to speech competitions, I had a collection of poems that I read, which were all about poetry and how poetry is an important reflection of truth. This was the last poem in the series.
Let Them Alone
by Robinson Jeffries
If God has been good enough to give you a poet
Then listen to him. But for God's sake let him alone until he is dead;
no prizes, no ceremony,
They kill the man. A poet is one who listens
To nature and his own heart; and if the noise of the world grows up
around him, and if he is tough enough,
He can shake off his enemies, but not his friends.
That is what withered Wordsworth and muffled Tennyson, and would have
killed Keats; that is what makes
Hemingway play the fool and Faulkner forget his art.
Your post made me remember the poem.
In the words of an old friend of us all, the times, they are a-changing. We need to change with them. The old ways are only working for the suits these days (for the most part), buying them summer houses on Long Island and vacations in Belize, while the writer has to do all his or her own marketing and leg work anyway. Most--not all-publishers, agents and editors think only of the bottom line, not art.
If I could find a publisher who didn't tell me to take out the back story and add more sex, I might give him or her a shot. But I've spent the last 15 years playing that game and it got me nothing but a file cabinet full of empty compliments and apologetic rejections.
The point of writing, for me, is to be read. By self-publishing that will happen.
That's a great poem, Deni. So true.
All too true, sadly. But every once in a while a bitch gets over the wall. No one could possibly say Russell Hoban's work fits the corporate overprint, and the world was a very staid and dry place when Kerouac put On The Road on the road.
When I look back at the history of my acceptances and rejections I can't help but notice that what got taken fit the venue and what didn't, didn't.
I guess my paradigm is a but skewered then. I write because it demands to be written, I can't stop from writing it. Sometimes - for me then - the product is enough, whether somebody gets it or not.
I think it all depends on where we come from as creatives. I know that the compulsion to write--to express--is what fires most of us. I does me, but like Lynette, I'm also a performer so I have an equal need to be read.
I think we're agreeing that great art comes from times like we're living in now. Kerouac, as you say, is a fine example. I also doubt that while Henry Miller lived in a louse and roach infested hotel by the generosity of his friends, and proofreading for the Chicago Tribune, he would have called his times golden. Yet, look at all the great work that came out of that era in general.
If there are publishers and agents out there who care about writing, I'd like to know their names.
Lee Lofland, the author of Police Procedure and Investigation, A Guide For Writers, wrote the following in a comment I recently read:
"I receive mountains of emails from frustrated writers who take the time to conduct quality research only to have an editor tell them their facts are incorrect because "it didn't happen like that on last night's episode of CSI." What the editors don't seem to understand is that readers (especially readers of mystery/suspense) are often put off by unbelievable procedure, etc. They just have to tolerate it because editors don't seem to be willing to stop watching TV as a source for their fact-checking."
This is what I'm tired of. Editors, publishers, and agents who can't write, don't know history, and can't get their nose out of the ass of the bottom line.
My novel, So Faithful a Heart has been published with Lulu since mid November. (I have just republished the second edition with an ISBN) In that time I have sold approximately 50 copies--mostly to people I know. Over and over again, the feedback that I keep getting is that it is a beautiful story, well-written, powerful, and engaging. My readers say that that it made them cry, (even one reader who doesn't normally read love stories and never gets emotional, said the book made her cry), that they couldn't put it down, and some are reading it for the third or fourth time. Some have even expressed that even though they have already purchased the 1st edition, that they want to buy the 2nd edition as well. (I'm offering it to them at my cost.)
Those are the greatest compliments I could ever receive as a writer, and that's my bottom line.
I think that the day of the corporation is dying. More people are starting their own businesses, more people are self-publishing. When our local Borders bookstore opened up, I could find all kinds of very intellectual books and bought a lot of them. Now, that Borders is full of nothing but dreck and fluff aimed, as Nettl said so well, for an audience with a 6th grade reading level.
Fuckin' A.
Whoa! This article from PBS about the rise of the print-on-demand publishing industry just showed up on Facebook!
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/03/self-publishing-author-services-open-floodgates-for-writers060.html?utm_source=Facebook
What if someone is so ahead of their time that they have trouble selling their work? Think of Schubert and his struggles with publishers. People have to make a living, and often a part-time day job just doesn't cover the bills.
By the way, here is a wonderful Schubert piece (published posthumously), sung by the Vienna Boys Choir. I just love children's choirs, and thought you would like listening too. :-)
What if someone is so ahead of their time that they have trouble selling their work? Think of Schubert and his struggles with publishers. People have to make a living, and often a part-time day job just doesn't cover the bills.
By the way, here is a wonderful Schubert piece (published posthumously), sung by the Vienna Boys Choir. I just love children's choirs, and thought you would like listening too. :-)
I think it all depends on where we come from as creatives. I know that the compulsion to write--to express--is what fires most of us. I does me, but like Lynette, I'm also a performer so I have an equal need to be read.
I think we're agreeing that great art comes from times like we're living in now. Kerouac, as you say, is a fine example. I also doubt that while Henry Miller lived in a louse and roach infested hotel by the generosity of his friends, and proofreading for the Chicago Tribune, he would have called his times golden. Yet, look at all the great work that came out of that era in general.
If there are publishers and agents out there who care about writing, I'd like to know their names.
Lee Lofland, the author of Police Procedure and Investigation, A Guide For Writers, wrote the following in a comment I recently read:
"I receive mountains of emails from frustrated writers who take the time to conduct quality research only to have an editor tell them their facts are incorrect because "it didn't happen like that on last night's episode of CSI." What the editors don't seem to understand is that readers (especially readers of mystery/suspense) are often put off by unbelievable procedure, etc. They just have to tolerate it because editors don't seem to be willing to stop watching TV as a source for their fact-checking."
This is what I'm tired of. Editors, publishers, and agents who can't write, don't know history, and can't get their nose out of the ass of the bottom line.
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