I’m what used to be known as a “good egg.” I’ve played by the rules all my life. My fuse is absurdly long and slow to burn. Dogs, children and crazy people gravitate to me like groupies to young musicians with too much hair. I suffer fools gladly, probably because I belong to their tribe.
Lately I’ve been feeling like more of a fool than usual. Back in May, my wife left me for a man of uncertain gender identity. (My wife always liked ambiguity better than I did; that should have been a tip-off.) Anyway, she has my forgiveness: to each his own and all that.
Then the stock market imploded, taking half my nest egg with it. I depended on that nest egg because I’m one of those most abject and ill-favored creatures of our time: a professional freelance writer who isn’t a celebrity. We non-celebrity writers are lucky to find an occasional table scrap at the feast. We gaze with envy and disbelief while literary eminentoes like Sarah Palin, Tina Fey and Joe the Plumber gobble their multi-million dollar advances in our presence.
That brings me to the third calamity in this year’s trifecta of tribulation: my writing career has been stopped like a Dodge Dart running up against a Mack truck. My agent, a jolly New York preppie and former college classmate, professed to love my darkly humorous essays. He envisioned the possibilities: just as Fran Lebowitz chronicled the Baby Boomers in their ascendancy, I’d speak for my generation as it trudged down the long slope to oblivion.
Meanwhile, I prepared two collections of my essays for publication: Lifestyles of the Doomed, a Menckenesque grab-bag of cynical social observations, and the even bleaker Extremely Dark Chocolates, a ruefully funny series of meditations on mortality. I mailed the packages, and I waited for my moment… my two moments.
I heard nothing from my agent for a couple of soul-shredding months. Finally he replied: this was a terrible time to be selling my essays, he said. He had made a phone call or two; the editors wanted nothing but celebrity names and youth-oriented humor. (Ever heard of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell? That was the model to be emulated.)
My agent suggested ripping the essays apart and mining them for their edgiest nuggets — something to grab the under-30 crowd. I said thanks but no thanks.
So here I stand, unrecognized and unpublishable while plumbers, sitcom stars and semiliterate Alaskan governors win VIP treatment (and megabucks) from a tottering publishing industry. Well, at least I’m still standing after my triple-whammy year. My arms and legs still work. I still have my original head, though I could probably use a new one at this point. But how do terminally frustrated writers like me redeem their thwarted careers?
We could self-publish, of course. But that option still carries a stigma — the pungent whiff of “loser” wafts from it like cheap perfume. We could search for new agents — and submit ourselves to a grueling, heartbreaking year of slights and rejections. No thanks; I’m getting too old for that ritual.
I say it’s time to hoist the black flag and turn pirate. Yes, you heard me right. The good egg is ready to turn bad on his own behalf — on behalf of all writers of merit who can’t survive in today’s inclement publishing climate.
When professional book people no longer reward intrinsic merit, we have to take matters into our own hands. Publishing has to be more than a private club operated, as it clearly is now, for the benefit of millionaire celebrities and anemic, inbred M.F.A. litterateurs. You have to wonder if Mark Twain could find a publisher today.
So how do we fight back? I only have a few half-cooked ideas, but they’ll get us started. First we have to ignore the rules, which are made to protect the system. Query letters? Hell – how about marching into the editorial offices of the nearest publisher and demanding to be read? Sure, we might get ourselves rudely evicted, but think of the publicity! We could camp out on their steps until we’re heard or arrested, whichever comes first. The point is that we have to start wheedling, defying, cajoling and performing end-runs around the gatekeepers. We have to be bold and reckless enough to risk the ire of editors and agents, the whole sorry system that’s designed to reject anyone who doesn’t fit the current (and woefully shoddy) Zeitgeist.
We thwarted ones need to swap ideas, band together and sound off about the pusillanimous, risk-averse, celebrity-obsessed mentality that’s driving the entire book business into the ground. If we wait much longer, the current publishing firmament will topple like the dying tree that it is. Then all of us will have to self-publish, and good luck getting noticed!
Are you with me? Aarrrrrhh, mateys, let’s raid the ship!
Being a freelance writer who works mostly in the online markets, I can’t relate to the problems with not being able to find work, but I do have alot of experience with eBooks.
I think self-publishing and eBooks are are viable option for unpublished writers.
I have met a few wonderful authors who are finding success with by publishing their own work (see the last review on our site if you want an example).
I have some ideas of my own for the publishing markets. At one point in time I started a site that would allow authors to pusblish and market their works through a network of peers. I actually got a lot of interest in the site, but I didn’t have the time or resources to really take the idea where it could have gone.
The reality is that many talented authors go unnoticed because of the current publishing model. Change is needed.
Cheers,
Trevas
Thanks for the tips, Trevas. I bookmarked your site.
I hear you, dude. I’m 20, in college, and trying to get my writing career started any which way I can, including blogging and whatnot. I’m thinking about self-publishing my first collection of short stories. I’m just fed-up with the in-crowd nature of the literary world. I could care less about the stigma. I’ll take the DIY route and just do what I gotta do. I feel if the content is good people will flock to it. Not to mention you have total control over your works and their distribution.
But hang in there. You’ll make it one day. Anyway, just writing to say I’m a big fan. I remember you frm your days at the Cynic’s Sanctuary and I love your work. You were actually a big influence on my style.
Agreed that literature does need a revolution. If it happens in other art forms to reach contemporary tastes (like music and painting), why can’t creative writing follow that example?
Thanks for the moral support, my friend. It’s always great to hear from someone who enjoyed The Cynic’s Sanctuary, and I’m proud that you consider me a literary influence. Of course, I’d feel guilty to think I’m the one who inspired you to travel down the often hellish road of the freelance writer. But who knows… maybe you’ll prosper.
That said, I’m aware of the burgeoning self-publishing industry; it definitely provides us with an alternative to the small-minded, inbred world of New York publishing. The problem is that the old system was good at canonizing selected writers and publicizing their work. Self-publishing is still an “every man for himself” venture. When a million authors are self-publishing, how do any of them get noticed?
What we probably need is an online resource that will highlight the best self-published books and boost their public profile. Professional critics still have their place, but I think they’ll be overshadowed by the more democratic Amazon-style of reader-reviewer, for better or worse.
We’re definitely witnessing the end of the Gutenberg era, and we still don’t know what shape the new world will take. It’s both exciting and scary.
Hope you’ll return here now and then to trade ideas. Good luck out there!
lol, no you didn’t convince mt to go down the road of being a freelance writer. It’s a choice I independently made myself.
While I feel the old publishing standard was good for canonizing great writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald or J.D. Salinger, I honestly feel literature is dead now.
We as novelists have a lot of catching up to do. Whle we’re all wandering around sniffing each other’s butts, other areas of art like music or movies are practicing a direct method of reaching out to the general populace.
As creative minds, we can’t stand by and allow this to happen. I say we have something akin to the punk rock movement and take back the reigns. Afgter all, the people are chiefly interested in writers, not the agents, am I right?
I feel the problem with novels and poetry is that they are unconcerned with the afflictions of modern-day society. Whereas Nirvana captured the agst and social alienation of the 90s, we’re honestly not doing anything to become sociological record-keepers.
This is where the self-publishing aspect comes in. If they won’t give us a chance, I say we make a chance. We could possibly become canonized through our own hard work, the “industry” be damned.
I’ve been tossing around this theory of literature for a while. I feel we are poised on the eve of another artistic revolution. Similar to the Dada movement and the counterculture of the 60s, something has to change. As artists we should fight against the constraints of the system, no matter what it is.
Dave Eggers does something like what you describe in “an online resource that will highlight the best self-published books and boost their public profile”. He does this through America’s Best Nonrequired Reading and McSweeney’s. Whether you know it or not a lot of progress is being made, my good man.
I also feel the Internet is poised to play a big part in all of this. Through the Internet we can finally lead a democractic-style scene, as you said, and we can reach millions of people in hundreds of a second. You’re right, it is an exciting new prospect, and as a radical in everything, I feel we should go with the flow and use this to our advantage. Where the establishment of the Agricultural Revolution and the printing press saw humanity evolve through leaps and bounds, the technological revolution will inevitably go down in history.
Sorry to ramble and take up so much of your time, but just had to get that off my chest and wanted to see what you think about all this. If punk rock bands can reach large audiences by starting up their own record labels and reaching fans directly, why can’t we do that with our books?
The old system for delivering literature to the public is broken; that much is clear. The writers who succeed in breaking through these days nearly always belong to one of the following groups: 1. graduates of MFA programs and writer’s workshops with small voices and big connections 2. middlebrow authors who dutifully provide fodder for women’s book groups 3. commercial powerhouse authors backed by the big commercial publishers.
Dave Eggers has created a kind of alternate universe with McSweeney’s, but it’s a very small universe and it already has a kind of prescribed attitude that its writers must exhibit. What I’m talking about is more of a central screening and publicity establishment for self-published writers. It would sift through self-published books to find the best, create reviews and deliver those reviews to the public. It could also sell those books directly.
I don’t know how we’d get this baby off the
ground; it would require a pretty large staff of editors, critics and other staffers at a time when such editorial workers are being laid off by the hundreds each month. I’m sure many of these unemployed staffers would love to review self-published books, but how would we pay them for their efforts? (I don’t believe in exploiting my fellow wordsmiths.) And literature just doesn’t attract the kind of audience that would lure big advertising money to support it.
As for the new movement you talk about, it will erupt when it’s ready. Right now there are so many other media outlets that literature has taken a back seat. We have to compete with the more sophisticated video games now, for God’s sake. But I don’t think bold, impassioned, “literate” literature will ever go entirely extinct, even in the age of texting. Maybe we just need to raise our voices so we can be heard above the din.