Toddler self-portrait 1
1. I’m 25 pages away from the end of my friend Lon’s novel manuscript. This is the third draft I’ve read of it. It was good the first time. It keeps getting better. And yet, I’m not at all confident that this novel, or mine, or any number of other quite good to excellent literary fiction manuscripts will ever see publication. The state of publishing, it’s getting damn discouraging. Of course I write mostly for myself (or I would write something far more marketable than what I do), but yes, I want my novels to be published, and yes I want them to be read. What’s a novel that no one ever reads? I’m not sure it truly exists until it goes out into the world and interacts with readers. So where does the current trade publishing industry, so afraid to take risks and so insistent on short-term Return on Investment, leave the literary writer? Our best hope is most likely with the smaller independent presses, but they don’t have the distribution or marketing power of the big houses, so… So I don’t know. But it’s kind of terrifying.
Toddler self-portrait 2
2. My teaching rotation with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project begins soon. I’m excited and nervous. Trying to prepare and not sure how to approach it. On the one hand, these women are writing students like any others. On the other, their experiences are so very different from mine, and from what you’ll find in the general population of a writing workshop here in the US, that I don’t think I can approach them in the same way. I mean…someone is putting themselves in danger just to participate in your class… Can you really give them exercises like, “Okay, so go out and eavesdrop on a conversation…”
Anyone who has taught writing to students in extreme situations out there? I would love to hear from you.
Toddler self-portrait 3
3. Also the kiddo starts preschool in a few weeks. How can he be that big already? Who is this kid in the Thomas the Tank Engine underpants? Where’s my chubby little baby?
Teaching writing is always an extreme situation.
I have had a lot to say on the subject of publishing, factory publishing, literary publishing, how the world for writers has changed so quickly and so dramatically in what I see as my short life span. I think you’ve read some of it over in my blog world.
If you are writing commercial fiction, and you do it well (say, like Stephen King, or Robert Ludlum, or Danielle Steele, or such), then the factory publisher’s will welcome you and welcome you to make some money that increases their bottom line acceptable to the accountants in their corporate ownership offices. If you write literary commercial fiction (like John Irving, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, and a few others), and you have been so extraordinarily lucky, like they have so that by some astonishing accident of fate a film was made from some book of yours … then you can get through the corporation door that now regulates every, that is every, large book publishing company.
But even these writers we have heard of, from the point of view of the corporation, might as well be widgets or dohickys; it’s just a product that can be sold for a profit.
Otherwise, in these last days of the book, if you are creating literary fiction, then there are only a few remaining truly literary publishers, and they are all very small (yet very dedicated to the art of the book).
Ah, but these last of the breed true publishers are either being absorbed into the factory or being killed by the factory.
You might as well accept this as the state of things as we lunge into the 21st century, and live your writerly life accordingly.
He has definitely an eye for selfportrait 🙂
If everyone who tells me they want to WRITE would just buy and read more damn books it would help.
/cranky mode
It is terrifying, and I’m so sorry for you. My friend Martin says he won’t probably be selling his latest novel in the U.S., though it has great reviews and sales in the UK and Europe. He says he’s told it’s because of the recession. He asked me recently, “Don’t people read during a recession?!”
It’s sad. And sadly, I might be representative: I just don’t have time for pleasure reading right now. The “right now” has extended now for quite a number of years. I used to have my nose in a book all the time, but not anymore. And it’s not because I’m Twittering or gaming online, neither. 🙂
I note that I buy more books now than ever before, but I also buy a lot less fiction than I ever have. Looking over at the random stack of books on my window seat right now, there’s the newish translation of Anna Karenina (prompted more by my recently begun relationship with a russian than by Oprah’s imprimatur, but it’s on it), Haruki Murakami’s meditation on running, Barbara Kingsolver’s essays on food, Kate Atkinson’s latest novel, and Siegel’s text The Mindful Brain.
I don’t see this as an era of the death of the book — but I do think how and what we read is changing. I think it’s kind of interesting that two of the books on my little stack here are memoir/essay forays from people who also write fiction. Not sure what that *means*, but it’s more evidence of the shift.
Financially, I just can’t afford to buy books right now. But that doesn’t mean I’m not reading–I’ve got two books from the library, along with something like 4 audiobooks. (It’s easier to knit while I listen instead of read–and the toddler doesn’t try to steal my MP3 player.)
As for your toddler–well, mine is going to be 3 next month, too. And I’m wondering how he got so big–and where phrases he uses come from. He’s making whole sentances, telling knock-knock jokes, and is far more polite than most “terrible twos” I’ve seen–instead of the standard “No no no no!” he says “No thank you, no thank you mommy, no thank you!” He makes me laugh on a daily basis–and where did you get that Thomas underwear? I need to go searching some out soon….
have you thought of offering it chapter by chapter via itunes or here and we buy it?
If we admit to ourselves the unlikelihood of selling a piece of literary fiction to a publishing house, why not serialize it on the web, where it can gain an audience? Honor-system donations for free downloads have worked for some musicians, who have used web distribution to build a following. Even without a donation box, it’s hardly less money than we’re bringing in while trying to get a foot in the traditional publisher’s door.
If we’re successful in assimilating it, the feedback from readers on the web can help to inform our revisions. Those web readers who have become attached to the work then become the buyers of an e-reader or print-on-demand paper edition.
There are still things that a traditional publisher can offer that such a new media workflow cannot: prestige, promotion, excellence in editing, shelf-presence in stores. This is all very costly stuff for a publisher to provide. My guess is that, if we start showing them B+ work that has demonstrated its ability to create and hold an audience, they’ll be more likely to buy in, and help take it that last step to a well-distributed A. And if not? We won’t have lost any money over what we’re spending already, and we’ll have got our work to readers — readers whom the publishers might not have been willing to take the gamble on trying to reach.
I’m not trying to be the Pollyannaish new media apologist; but, if they won’t seat us at the prestige restaurant, why not try that new place down the block?
Re: teaching writing to an atypical student population and/or those in extreme situations, I will be training soon to teach prison workshops. We should talk.
Preschool?! You will survive to see him go to first grade. Every day school (serious trauma for a mom). It doesn’t seem like he can be that old, though. Wow.
I have a cousin-in-law. She is not a very nice person. She writes many, many books in the YA category. Gotta give her points for being prolific. The books are something about teen vampire romances, I’m not quite sure. Everywhere I turn, I see her name on mass market book kiosks, in bookstores and even in the supermarket. She makes a ton of money. I find this all very depressing, and I’m sure you do, too.