From March 06, here’s an outtake from the Notes from the Margin series.\u00a0 I trashed this one for a reason, and that reason is:\u00a0 I’m an angsty cunt.
\n<\/p>\n
I have to say this again.\u00a0 I should take time out every three months and send out a personal message:\u00a0 Writing does not make you a writer.\u00a0 I\u2019ll come back around to that.\u00a0 Right now, riding the Metro into work with my forehead pressed against cold plexiglass, I was struggling with a few demons.\u00a0 They all email me religiously, these great scourges, and they all have one mantra: This story will sell!\u00a0 Do you like it?<\/p>\n
We live in a culture where we\u2019re trained to look down on ourselves.\u00a0 Look at all the personal ads out there.\u00a0 All the negative words these people use to describe themselves.\u00a0 All the confessed bad relations, troubled pasts and embittered hatred for the dating scene.\u00a0 Donald Sutherland\u2019s \u201cnegative vibes\u201d rolling off of the paper or the dating site and infecting me as I try to happily cruise around seeking loose, unscrupulous women.\u00a0 Writers are even worse.\u00a0 They\u2019re obsessed with selling the story and, with so few exceptions, they never try to sell themselves.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a thought:\u00a0 The story doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 It comes second.\u00a0 What\u2019s first is your ability as a writer.\u00a0 That\u2019s how you get in the door, that\u2019s what you should hone.\u00a0 I meet people every day who think the story is the foot in the door.\u00a0 They obsess with how to make it the unique plot that\u2019ll hurl them into the glittering dream of fame and fortune.<\/p>\n
Storytelling.\u00a0 Ooh!\u00a0 There you go.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s dance aside on a tangent.\u00a0 Let\u2019s talk about the big-time writer who can\u2019t get out there because they\u2019ve been pigeon-holed.\u00a0 The .literati who can\u2019t write pulp crime, the pulp crime writer who can\u2019t move into the literati, the romance geek who can\u2019t go into adventure, the fantasy novelist who will never break out of the genre.\u00a0 Lock down, crushed by the publisher or the agent.\u00a0 That\u2019s not what the people want, they say.\u00a0 Your audience expects book 27 of the Sword of Heaven trilogy.\u00a0 You will die writing about a washed up detective in Missoula.\u00a0 You should never do anything but crack out the miughty Pulitzer-level work about coal miners.<\/p>\n
The publisher and the agent couldn\u2019t more wrong.\u00a0 What they are saying is:\u00a0 You\u2019re on a path that makes us money and, even if you burn out and die tonight, or get screwed financially, we don\u2019t care.\u00a0 Short-term gain.\u00a0 Desperate attempts to bring the cash in.<\/p>\n
I knew that was the case all along, but I\u2019ve recently been taught an object lesson from the publisher-side.\u00a0 Dearest god in heaven, how can you make money with something as intangible as art?\u00a0\u00a0 And how do you do it quickly before the accountants catch up with you and run a serrated blade across your ankles, bringing you to their foul level,\u00a0 tearing your intestines out while you scream, insane with horror and agony?<\/p>\n
Can you tell it\u2019s tax time?<\/p>\n
I blame the authors for letting writing \u2013 and publishing \u2013 become such a monster.\u00a0 The pathetic, whining need for fame and fortune, the self-loathing and doubt, the ignorance of the trade and lack of motivation to pick it apart all leads to the sad state of affairs today, and a vicious cycle.\u00a0 The writer, a weak and tasty prey in the eyes of the saber-toothed beasts supposedly \u201chelping\u201d their career,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From March 06, here’s an outtake from the Notes from the Margin series.\u00a0 I trashed this one for a reason, and that reason is:\u00a0 I’m an angsty cunt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[137,127],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sunday-archive","tag-archives","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}