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From the mind of Jason Kapcala comes an eclectic journal dedicated to the study of creative writing, rock music, tailgating, and other miscellany. The musings, meditations, contemplations, and ruminations expressed here are my own unless otherwise indicated. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, and opinions, but do so respectfully and intelligently.
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The Tale of Two Writers: A Choose Your Own Adventure

10/10/2012

3 Comments

 
I recently had an enema  / bloodletting  / conversation with a fellow writer who I've known for a long time but hadn't spoken to in years (and was reminded, perhaps, why I don’t speak often with this person). In the past ten years, this writer has graduated from an MFA program, found a job, and published a book on an independent press. Not bad. That said, as is most often the case, the book (despite being well-written) hasn't made this person rich or famous, a household name. (We’d all love to sell as many books as Stephen King, right? But most writers realize quickly that it probably isn't going to happen.)

Most writers. . . .
Picture
“It’s so unfair,” my writer-acquaintance bitched  / whined  / said. “I deserve to be a big name writer. I’m a great writer—my work should be a thousand times more popular than it is. I should be selling ten times the number of books I’m selling now. I should be a household name. No kidding, I deserve that level of recognition, and no one will ever convince me otherwise.”

This writer also went on about why his/her newest book deserves to be published, too. (As you can probably tell, “deserve” was the word of the day.)

I didn't say much of anything—I focused on my Yuengling bottle (a treat, now that I've started watching what I eat and drink), enjoyed the changing of the seasons here in Morgantown, thought about what breed of dog I’d own if my apartment would allow it—and when my writer-acquaintance finally finished writing his/her acceptance speech, I flipped the table and took out as many people as I could before security arrived  / burped loudly and said, “that’s what I think about your problems”  / nodded sympathetically and said something bland and noncommittal like, “boo hoo, cry me a river, chump”  / “I hate you so much--now do you think they’ll bring us more bread sticks?”  / “I’m sorry you’re having such a rough go of it.”

I've gone back and forth over blogging about this septic tank overflow  / pity party  / lunch conversation because it seems to me a dangerous mentality that we should discuss, and yet I didn't want to do anything to feed this writer’s enormous ego  / actively harm this writer. Eventually, the desire to talk about the experience won out. (If my writer-acquaintance reads this and doesn't want to come to my weekend barbecues anymore, I’ll rejoice  / survive  / live with the consequences.)

My problem doesn't lie with this writer's confidence. I think that every writer needs to be a little cocky at times—if you’re doing the hard work, reading and writing regularly, approaching revision seriously, then you have to be confident that what you've produced is worth being read, worth publishing, and that someone out there will recognize that. Otherwise, you aren't going to make it. 

Should you think of yourself as a great writer? If it gets you to turn on your laptop each morning and start typing, sure. But I’d also caution against almost certain disappointment. If you’re putting words on paper because you want to be a writer, and you’re hoping someone else will notice and praise you for it, I have a bridge to sell you  / strongly advise you not hold your breath for too long  / believe you are in a great position to reevaluate your priorities. If you’re putting words on paper because you love to write and you feel you have something worth saying, well, then your motivations seem pretty pure to me.

It’s very natural to be discouraged when it seems like no one wants your work, or when you place a piece but feel like no one is likely to read it. You've worked hard, made sacrifices, written a book—that’s not easy to do, no small thing—but it’s worth remembering upon completing that task that the world doesn't owe you anything. Yes, you have to have faith that there is a readership out there for your work—if you love it, someone else will, too. But when I hear writers start talking about what they supposedly deserve, I find myself fighting the urge to slap them--open handed but hard, just the once  / openly mock them in front of their friends and loved ones  / get a little annoyed.

I want to see my books published. I think it’s a realistic goal. If they make any money, that’s just gravy on the top of my meatloaf, but it isn't something I ever think about when I sit down to write. And I don’t think of publication as something that has to happen just because I want it to happen, or even because I've worked hard at my writing. There are a lot of other factors at play. Timing. Marketing. Luck.

I think back to what Darrell Spencer said to me once in an email when I let slip that I was teaching his short story collection Caution: Men in Trees to my Community Writing class: “I appreciate your using the book; it always seems odd to me when I hear that someone out there is actually reading what I wrote. Strange.” This is the book that won the 1999 Flannery O'Connor Award, by the way, and the guy who wrote it is just surprised to hear that anyone is actually reading! Perhaps more revealing is the fact that he isn't acting like someone who feels entitled. He’s not complaining. If any writer deserves to be a household name, it’s Darrell—he reads three stories a day, a novel a week; writes every single day and has done so for a long time; and his work is fantastic—and yet he’s not talking about what he’s owed. He’s just glad to be writing.

Puts my young writer-acquaintance’s tantrum  / hissy fit  / concerns into a certain perspective, does it not?

So let me pose this question to you: Does anyone really deserve to be published?

Is it like a job where, if you do good work, you should be able to expect some measure of fair compensation in return? Or is it like the notion of religious salvation: you can’t really do enough to earn it (flawed as you are), but you do your best and pray for mercy?

Or maybe there’s a better metaphor out there for it. I don’t know, what do you think, dear readers?


While you are pondering that question, check out this interesting blog entry, “After Stage,” which offers up a very different perspective on "success" from that of my writer-acquaintance.

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3 Comments
s sauter
10/11/2012 02:55:23 am

Wow. So glad you wrote this & posed the question. I'm first responding before reading "After Stage." Initially I thought, Anne Frank posthumously deserved to be published but its not a response that carries similar enough characteristics but I'll still leave that to be considered.

I love your [couched] fury/red/underscore--yet you do protect this individual by using "he/her" and try to balance the fury with great kindness by saying, for example, that writers need to have a big ego sometimes to do what they do and I needed to hear that, in this instance, because of a recent crass title of mine that my ego confirms needs to stick. But yeh, hey, there were even such ideal jobs as hinted might exist in some Special Writer's Land-- in the Roosevelt era when the CCC-type writers were paid for what they wrote--yet even their work wasn't automatically published. No, indeed, I believe there is no one that deserves their work to be published regardless. The pub industry is just that, an industry which involves what you say, luck/timing/competition/incest. I, too, a total amateur, have come to think I want someone to read my material--but do I deserve to be published? No, that's nonsense and red flags pop up that great imbalance exists in such an attitude.

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Kap
10/11/2012 03:29:16 am

Thanks for the response--I think I agree in the abstract with that idea that there are probably certain pieces that are so important they deserve to be published. Pieces that, as the argument would go, need to be put out into the world because to not do so would be tantamount to crime. (The _Diary of Anne Frank_ scenario, you mention.) There probably aren't many of those pieces floating around out there though, and I'm certainly not writing anything like that, so I don't know that it would ever apply to my writing. (That's not meant as a knock on my writing--I think it offers something valuable to our culture, it does something that makes it worth picking up and reading, just as all serious fiction does. And I'm not just talking about the prospect of entertainment. I'm also not talking about "Truth"--don't let us get down that road again! I'll talk about that in some future post, perhaps. That said, I also realize that it does so as a very small part of a very large literary movement that's been going on since before I was born and will continue on after I have died. In other words, I realize that if I never wrote anything, literature would still exist, and there would still be many, many other books offering similar "valuable somethings." If that makes any sense.)

Worth also considering that Anne Frank, given her circumstances, probably didn't ever consider the publishability of her diary or its impact in some larger sense as a cultural/historical artifact. (I'm not scholar on the matter, haven't read the book since high school probably, so this is really just an informed assumption.)

Very interesting points you raise--thanks again!

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Dominique
10/13/2012 04:28:45 pm

When I teach English 101, I teach a review Stephen King wrote for the Harry Potter series. He has a deft touch thematically, but he says by book four, "Rowling was writing for adults and she knew it." I never focused on the FOR in that passage until I read this blog entry. I want to make sure of whatever I am writing FOR. As Kap says, writing because you have something to say, and you say it well thereby your purpose is pure, that is a good thing. But when you are not: when you are not writing for that purpose... what do we do with that?

Anne Frank liked to write, and she owned it. But she heard on the radio that the government would be looking to publish work written by her countrymen in the troubled time that she was living, and so she went back through her older journals and began a very selective editing process, cutting things, and changing her addressees (each entry was "Dear ______") and some names! Rather impressive in one so young. Her father originally published the work as she intended. It was only later that her full manuscripts were published, showing more intimate scenes of Anne Frank exploring her sexuality, and rather ranty-tirades (though common in teenage girls) against her mother. When that happened, the book actually made a few "banned" lists...

JK Rowling, the mythology says, began drafting her stories about a boy wizard on napkins at coffee shops as a single mother. I don't know if this is true, or not, and then I think about the WHY behind Rowling's writing. Obviously she wanted to sell her work. The obscure little branch of the United States publisher that eventually picked her up said, "I wanted to publish those books because I liked them!" And of course only after he picked them up did the series really take off on both sides of the Atlantic.

Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games, said in one interview, that she would not have written the series if it were not for her father's description of his time in Vietnam, and seeing young people die on the television set each night during the Iraq War. She said that her "trigger" was, "Is this our highest form of entertainment? Watching people die on TV?" And the rest, as they say, is history.

Do these writers that I just mentioned have a purity of purpose? Can we tell? I really hate the word, "deserve" but I wonder what they deserved, all the same.

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