Let's Get Dirty

   
     Clay Shirky's piece was a well written and well thought out analysis about the shifting marketplace and the ever changing state of the publishing industry. While it was all fascinating to read, I have to be honest, one question kept running through my mind as I digested the article--something that has been running through my mind since the beginning of this semester's e-pub class: Who cares?

     No, I am not being snide and no, it's not that I don't enjoy thinking about the "why's" and the "how's" and the "what the hell does it all mean's" that pertain to the industry. It's just that, the dominating thought that pulses through my brain has less to do with analyzing the state of things and more to do with figuring out how to best work my way, as a writer, into what publishing has become. 

     I've become resigned to a few things this semester. The industry is what it is. The state of flux will continue until a new stable model is found. There will be good and bad things relative to the torrent of self published writing out there. There will be more shit and more experiment. There will be greater pushing of boundaries. There will be more, more, more. We will burst at the seams and then burst again.

      Do I have opinions about it all? Sure. Are there things that I like and things that I don't like? Of course, but what I have realized is that the movement of the industry is not impacted by my opinion or yours for that matter. It is a thing that is moving on its own, shaped by the market and demand and many things that you and I have little to no control over. 

     In the new model, there will always be a means for us to put our voice into the world, but whether anyone will care or listen is another matter. This is the matter that most concerns me, because as a writer, I want my voice to be heard; I want to be part of the conversation; I want to be read and to make people think and maybe even, to change minds. I am most concerned with the best way for me to do this in the market that currently exists and then in the one that will exist five years from now. If I am going to succeed, I'm going to have to dive in to the mud pit, regardless of whether I am particularly fond of mud or not. So here's to getting dirty. 

   

     Holy Macaroni, Sean Bishop's blog post about the state of the publishing industry gave me so much to think about that I don't even know where to begin.
     Sometimes, I lament my (poor?) timing in coming into the writing/publishing world (i.e. now) because it seems that things were so much simpler before the Internet--you either made it or you didn't. You got an agent, got an advance, got your book published, went on a book tour and that was it. Or at least that's my understanding of it. The writers who managed to do all of that could actually spend their days writing instead of working at some other job and simply writing in their spare time. They could answer the question, "What do you do?" by saying that they were a writer rather than saying that they were a, oh I don't know, cabinetmaker.
     But alas, it's much more complicated now, which as Bishop points out is mostly a good thing, but whether you think of it as good or bad is largely irrelevant because the world has moved and if you don't move with it you're just going to get left behind.
     The whole thing reminded me of this guy I used to work for. He owned his own cabinet shop and I was one of three loyal employees. The man had been building cabinets for twenty plus years and he could design and build almost anything, but he was a terrible businessman. Our paychecks would regularly bounce when we deposited them and he would inevitably make up some ridiculous excuse about how it was the bank's fault, but we all knew that he was responsible.
     The point is, you can't successfully run your own business if you are terrible at the business part, even if you are really good at making whatever you are selling. And in this day and age, being a writer or publisher is pretty much like running your own business. It doesn't matter how good of a writer you are, if you can't run the business end of things.
     Like my old boss, I've probably bounced a few metaphorical checks thus far in my writing career, but Bishop's piece really made me think about all of this in a new way. Running a "business" might be the death of me, but I guess I'd rather die trying than not.

Tribrachiality

From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

           

             

Definition

Tribrachiality is a condition where a third arm sprouts on the upper portion of an individual’s back.

Development

The third arm is not visible at birth. It typically begins to form around adolescence, although initial growth has been noted both earlier and later in life.

Cause

Nobody knows why some people grow third arms and others do not. Some argue that the condition is genetic but many others believe that the third arm begins to grow as a direct result of a person's upbringing. Still others believe that there is an element of choice involved in the matter. They espouse the belief that those who develop a third arm should be able to prohibit its growth through a careful and concerted effort.

Groups dedicated to the eradication of third arms have sprung up across the nation, but are generally viewed as having very low success rates. Despite this fact, some tribrachial individuals enroll in eradication programs, hoping to learn techniques that will result in the withering of the third arm, or at the very least, how to live in such a manner that the third arm will become an unused and atrophied appendage.

History

           

Scholars argue over the history of tribrachiality. Some prominent anthropologists point to depictions of ancient people in which a protuberance can be deciphered around the upper portion of their back. Such anthropologists believe that tribrachiality is as old as civilization, but other scholars reject such interpretations of the ancient art, attributing the bulge to a special decorative adornment ancients wore under their clothing during celebratory rituals.

           

Up until 1950, most tribrachials attempted to hide their condition. They did so by curling their third arm between their shoulder blades and wearing bulky clothing; however, many tribrachials report that doing this caused a great deal of both physical and emotional pain.

Wilhema E. Foster was the first tribrachial to cut a hole in her clothing, thus allowing her third arm to hang out. Foster was subsequently imprisoned for this act, which was deemed a “grotesque display”, but she became a role model for other tribrachials and is largely regarded as the founder of the Tribrachial Rights Movement.

           

Though Foster pioneered the practice of displaying the third arm, remarkably, it was not until 1995 that the first three armed shirt was manufactured in America. Tribrachials everywhere celebrated this as a major triumph and sign of a shifting cultural perspective, but those opposed to tribrachialism deemed it yet another sign of the moral erosion of modern society.

Mating

             

Sexual intermingling between bi and tribrachials is widely scorned in much of society; however, it is estimated that anywhere from three to seven percent of the population engages in such intermingling. Those who oppose such pairings do so widely on a moral basis, claiming that each arm needs a companion during sexual intercourse. According to this contingent, it is unnatural and immoral for an arm to be idle during intercourse. They stake much of their claim on references found in the Book of Civilization, which they widely regard as the touchstone for all rules regarding morality

Proponents of intermingling believe that love, rather than anatomical differences or similarities, should be the determining factor for what draws two individuals together. They see no intrinsic harm in an idle arm and tend to judge the morality of individuals on a differing set of criteria—one based upon the way an individual conducts herself in day-to-day interactions with other people. 

Aesthetics Aside

The yoke will spill over her small hands and she will cry, will run into her room, into the hard, blue agate of her sadness, and I will not know how to follow her. I still don't."
                                          -Meagan Cass from  Egg Toss, August 1989

    This line is from a story featured in Smokelong Quarterly. Aesthetically speaking, this journal really doesn't do much for me. Something about it seems messy. Instead of putting me in the mood to read, it puts me in the mood to tidy up.

    Fortunately, I fought that urge long enough to read Egg Toss, August, 1989, which was a really amazing story. Something about the line I quoted above, touched me in a way that, if you're a writer, you hope and pray that your words will touch someone, someday. It explained myself to me in a way that I didn't even realize was possible.
    The writing is so good and the design of the journal is so not good that I'd have to say the two don't really match, at least not in my mind. I wouldn't expect such clean, beautiful, sparse prose to be featured based on the way that the journal looks, especially on the home page.
    One feature of the journal that is nice is that each writer's story is paired with an artists rendering, although I'm not sure how this pairing works (i.e. if the story inspires the art or if the art is simply paired with a relevant story). Either way, the pages that feature the stories paired with the art, are really attractive and simple. If the rest of the journal looked the way that these pages do, I'd be in love.
    It was relatively easy to find some of Meagan's other stuff since Smokelong was nice enough to feature a short bio at the end of her story and since google is nice enough to exist.

Trolling the Web for Journals

   
    So I've been trolling the web checking out some literary journals. Our professor gave us this as an assignment and gave us a couple of specific questions to answer about each journal. One questions was, "Do they pay?"

    I got a good laugh out of that one. No, no, and hell no. Prior to this assignment I'd spent plenty of time looking at journals and sending pieces of my writing out to them. During that time, I found exactly one online literary journal that paid writers for contributions. I know that you're all on the edge of your seat wondering the name of this journal, but I think I'll be best served by keeping that information to myself thus not exponentially increasing my competition by sending the throngs of people who read this here blog over to that that there journal where they will submit their own writing that is probably better than my writing. Find your own needle in a haystack.
 
    Plenty of these journals want to pay, hope to pay some day, but for now they seem to have the same problem as newspapers--nobody wants to pay for their content, which means that they're not getting paid, which means that no one gets paid. The good news is that a great many journals hold at least one contest that pays winners and sometimes the prize money is significant. The bad news is that these contests tend to cost money to enter, which means that unless you are one of the lucky winners, you will have paid to not be published. Math isn't my strong suit, but something seems awry there.

     But enough blathering. Here is my take on some of the journals I scoped:

Walk That Line, Just Don't Fall

  Robert Mills' article, Finding Your Tone of Voice, was a bit of a snooze for me, but it did offer up a couple of points that could be applicable to my life as a writer.
  Mills notes that, "There's a fine line between coming across as fun and quirky and coming across as unprofessional and snarky."
  Indeed, there is a fine line and I have no doubt that I often walk that fine line and (gasp) often fail to walk it, which is to say that I step right on over it into snarksville.

  Usually, this happens when I send out pieces of my writing to journals. I find myself habitually writing some funny/slightly sarcastic remarks in the comments box and hitting send before thinking too hard about it. What compels me to do this is my awareness of how many submissions they receive. I often wonder whether they even read them all, and I think that I've convinced myself, perhaps unwisely, that I need to make and impression in order to stand out amongst the masses.
  I'm not completely willy-nilly about these remarks. If a journal seems super serious or uptight, I leave the comment section blank, but if they are more laid back and loose, like say The Rumpus, I might tend to put a little something something in there that would make them scratch their head or howl with laughter. Interestingly, this has everything to do with what Mills writes about in his article. I am interpreting the tone of each site, although perhaps I should spend a few more seconds considering how the people who read my comments might interpret or misinterpret me.
  Being a smart  ass has its risks, but there is supposed to be a certain risk/reward ratio, right? Then again, there's probably a similar correlation between risk/failure. Mills has definitely given me something to consider and I'll certainly be more mindful after reading his article, but I don't think that it's humanly possible for me to go cold turkey on my smart ass-edness. I mean, I've got to be me and this is part of me. Here's to hoping that I find a way to walk the line more than I cross it.

 

  

If I'm Selling Books, Am I Selling Sex?

 Cathy Day's piece about the life of a novel was both inspiring and incredibly dispiriting. Let's begin with the dispiriting aspects so that we can end on a positive note, shall we? Cathy Day called attention to a whole host of things that I already suspected. Things like the way that marketing, luck and chance play into the degree of "success" that a book can have. (Here we are defining success by sales, the way that her piece seems to do at least initially).
     Incredibly, Day points out that a portion of the population (in her example men) will only consider reading a book if it might increase their odds of getting a woman in bed. She purports a situation where a man sees a woman reading "your book" and then considering whether he should acquire "your book" so he can then have something to talk to the woman about. It's all very interesting to ponder, and I have no doubt that this scenario plays out all across the country, but as a writer it makes the effort--the  agonizing over every word and sentence--seem somehow futile or at the very least, cheap.
     All that time and thought spent pouring over pages and at the end of the day, "your book" is being used as a tool to get into someone's pants? Does this make me a matchmaker or a madame? Who knows, but it's definitely a new way of thinking about the way that my words could change a person's life.
     But at least after running "your book" and the reaction to "your book" and the feelings that you might have over the worlds reaction to "your book" through the spectrum of depressing possibilities, Day gives us writers hope, or at least she gave this writer hope.
     The beauty of writing, like any art, is that it outlives us. While the chances of my work winding up in obscurity are much higher than any other outcome, there is also the chance that my writing might touch people I have never met, that it might change their minds or change their souls. It is this chance that keeps me writing, this possibility that lifts me up.
 

Author Web Sites

Well, as we were supposed to do for this week, I've checked out some of the websites of my favorite writers. (Note: I couldn't remember what we were supposed to look up for our favorite writers who are dead so I stuck with ones who are still alive.) Here are my brief summaries of each.

Cheryl Strayed's page: Her site is pretty expansive, with lots of stuff to click on and check out. She has links to her column on The Rumpus, to her tumblr blog. She also has a lot of pictures of herself, a long bio, and a trailer for her most recent book. I like how interactive Strayed's site is and the fact that it feels like it is a place that she maintains herself, but I'm into keeping things a bit more simple, methinks.

Joan Didion's site: Didion's site definitely lacks the personal feel. It's definitely maintained by a publicist, which is no great surprise given Didion's famous stature. Even the link to Didion's twitter account reveals that her tweets are written by "Ariel and Zach", huh? Boring. On the plus side, at the top of her home page, there's a drawing/caricature of Didion that is very cute and makes the site seem more homey, if only slightly.

David Sedaris: I expected more from this funny man's site. Like Didion, it's not very personal (it seems that the level of personalization corresponds with one's fame as a writer). What is cool about his site is that the home page has five things at the bottom (I don't know what they are called) that you can hover over and hear Sedaris reading one of his essays to a live audience. You can also link to interviews with him and appearances, etc. I also love that he has a downloadable app called David's Diary.

Dave Eggers nonexistent site: Dave Eggers doesn't even have a personal site. This link goes to McSweeney's, which has lots of great stuff on it, but is a product of Eggers and not about Eggers. Or is it? Maybe this is the best way to represent yourself.

I also looked at Lorrie Moore, who only had a Facebook page that was maintained by her publisher. All of this got me thinking about one thing more than any other. What's the point of having a website? For the more established writers, (if they even have one) it seems that they use it as a mere marketing tool--a place to sell books and showcase what they've written or where they might currently be writing. What struck me was that, I don't think that I'd have a reason to go to any of their sites more than one time.

As a less established writer, the goals of my website are different. I'd like for it to be a place where people can read my writing (crazy, I know), where they can get to know who I am as a writer. I'd like for the site to be interesting enough that they would feel compelled to check back from time to time to see what's new. For now, it seems that the best way to do this is by putting up good content, but I realize that I'm going to need to figure out a way to attract some web traffic since there are millions of blogs.

My friend David Carr

  I recently read My Dinner With Clay Shirky, and What I Learned About Friendship by my good friend David Carr. Well, to be honest, I don't actually know David Carr but I know some of his writing. New York Times stuff, of course, as well as The Night of the Gun, in which he explores the limits of memory by reporting on the events of his very screwed up, drug addicted life. He does this by going back and interviewing people who were present during particular instances in his life and comparing his memories with the memories of the people he interviews. Brilliant concept, even if it is completely narcissistic in the execution, but hey it's David Carr, what do you expect?

     

     In this particular piece, Carr contemplates the pros and cons of digital interaction. This is nothing new. We've all pondered the way that we can feel so damn lonely after spending hours on social media and "interacting" with all our digital friends. I'm reminded of the commercial where a teenager pityingly looks at her parents' Facebook pages and verbally laments the fact that they have so few friends. While she is reveling in her own Facebook popularity, the ad cuts to her parents who are out biking and living life with actual friends. I don't even know what the ad is supposed to be selling, but I always find myself chuckling at the absurdity of the teenager. 

     These days, I'm trying to be less of a digital curmudgeon, but I do agree with Carr's rather obvious conclusion when he says "...you can follow someone on Twitter, friend them on Facebook, quote or be quoted by them in a newspaper article, but until you taste their bread, you don't really know them." 

    So I will end this post by saying, great point my friend. Wait, we are friends, aren't we? Dave?