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The Long Lens Camera I’m Not Blaming

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Department Of Whatever Stupid Thing You’ve Done,
You’ll Feel Better About Yourself After Reading This

Dateline: Wednesday, ~ 8 am; trying to squeeze in some advance dinner prep – mixing up a plant-based Caesar salad dressing – before my 9 am streaming yoga class.

Usually, I turn the blender off, LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO, when I tap down/add more ingredients, etc.  But I was just going to scrape a bit of the dressing down the sides of the blender, and it was such a small spatula…

 

 

Before I knew it the blender blades grabbed the spatula, whirled it around and ejected it, along with most of the blender contents.  My hair and face were blotched with salad dressing, as were parts of the kitchen, including the ceiling, nearby cabinets and counters, appliances, the kitchen floor….  Lemon juice, caper brine, Dijon mustard and other acidic ingredients in the dressing stung my eyes  (and the next day I noticed blotches of acid burns on my face – hopefully, the marks will fade/heal in a few days).     [1]

After I rinsed my eyes and face and beheld the kitchen, moiself’s  heart sank.  Where to start?  I called upstairs to MH: “Uh, I need your help down here…”  He descended the stairs; I led him to the kitchen carnage and said, “Now, you can’t laugh, because I could have blinded myself.”

Later, after we’d cleaned up as best we could, MH tentatively asked, “Can we laugh now?”

This is my contribution to the never-ending, You think *you* did something stupid? Listen to this!, make-everyone-feel-better campaign.  This was a public service on my part.

I happened to have a haircut appointment that afternoon, and my haircutter got a kick out of my explaining why she might find bits of dried yellowish gunk in my hair.  I’d managed to clean most of it out, then stopped when I remembered, “Ah yes, I’m getting a haircut in a few hours and a professional is going to wash my hair….”

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yeah, We All Know How, Sooner Or Later, Drunks Who “Lose Their Way”
Decide To Defraud The Government And Buy A Lamborghini

(excerpts from “Orange County man who bought luxury cars with COVID relief funds sentenced to prison,” LA Times, 2-18-23, my emphases)

“An Orange County man who fraudulently obtained $5 million in pandemic relief loans and then spent the money on lavish vacations, luxury sports cars and his own personal expenses was sentenced Friday to 4½ years in prison….
Mustafa Qadiri…obtained the funds by submitting loan applications to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress created in March 2020 to provide emergency aid to small businesses struggling to survive amid COVID-19 related shutdowns and other business interruptions….
Qadiri…filed the applications…on behalf of four separate Newport Beach companies, none of which were actually in operation at the time…lied about the companies’ employee numbers, falsified bank balances and created fake tax returns….
Several friends who wrote character references for Qadiri…described him as a caring and generous man….successful in business early in life, then suffering from alcohol abuse in recent years — which caused him to lose his way.”

 

 

“I must have lost my way,” said the pope, when he woke up from his latest bender and found this new popemobile in his driveway.

 

*   *   *

Department Of I’m Still Thinking About This

Dateline: early eve, February 5. Texting with a friend who was watching the show, moiself  realized the Grammies were on and I’d forgotten about it. I quickly turned on the TV, but ended up switching back-and-forth between the telecast and a recording of the latest SNL, because the Grammy Awards show was, for the most part, IMO, rather tedious.

I know it’s not an award show these days unless someone gives a speech about how progressive and inclusive they or their idols are. So, there was that.  But another, unexpected drag was having that panel of non-industry folk (read: music fans) giving their take on why *their* favorite song should win the Record of the Year award.  Really? If I wanted to hear the opinion of average Joes re what song they like I’d get together with a bunch of my neighbors and we’d just talk about it.

When I’m watching a show celebrating the arts, I’m watching for the art being celebrated. If the show is (ostensibly) about celebrating popular music, I’m watching for the music performances, not the speeches.  Perform, y’all, not preach! I want to see the performers sing and play their songs, more than I care about whether or not they get an award.

And then:  the MF (Madonna’s face) brouhaha.

 

 

“Look, I don’t know exactly what has happened to Madonna’s face, but like the rest of you I can neutrally observe that most 64-year-olds do not emerge from the back-end of middle age with a brow line as smooth and hard as polished river rock. Earlier this week she appeared at the Grammys looking rather [insert your own kind or unkind adjectives; I’m not going to do it for you], and people noticed in a very big way, and by the next morning news outlets like the Daily Mail had lured in a whole scalpel of plastic surgeons to dissect what they believed had gone into the situation, and into Madonna.

Soon the artist herself responded via Instagram. ‘Many people chose to only talk about Close-up photos of me Taken with a long lens camera By a press photographer that Would distort anyone’s face!!’ she wrote…”

 

 

“…and no, I do not understand her capitalization rules but I am reprinting them because with Madonna you never know when something is a mistake and when something is a curated message. ‘Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny That permeates the world we live in.’
She is right, of course, about the misogyny in particular. The takeaway from President Biden’s State of the Union speech was, his best performance in years, not what is going on with his eyelids? but the takeaway with Madonna — an icon who has been steering culture since Ronald Reagan was in office — was, did Madonna’s face eat Madonna’s face?”
(excerpts from “The unacceptable Look on Madonna’s face: We seem so horrified when women age, no matter how they try to do it.”
Monica Hesse, The Washington Post, 2-9-23  )

I was watching that part of the Grammies show, where Madonna (who apparently hasn’t toured/has stayed out of the public eye for a couple of years) introduced a couple of performers.  A part of me still wants proof that it is/was Madonna who did so.  Is DNA photo analysis a thing yet?  Had she not been introduced as Madonna, moiself  would not have recognized one of the most recognizable figures in pop music.  And I assumed the long-distance filming of her – not a still photographer’s shot, but the camera filming her, while she was speaking – was because the camera operators were equally appalled and thought that a closeup would be…well…even more cruel.

Of course, the pundits had to weigh in via the various news outlets.  Judging from what I read, some of the op-ed writers needed cognitive enhancement even more than Madonna thought she needed Botox.  I’m thinking of author Jennifer Weiner’s NY Times guest essay. Her essay title alone is worthy of a cosmetically enhanced face palm:
Madonna’s New Face Is a Brilliant Provocation

 

 

Oh, deary dear deary deary.  Ms. Weiner, y’all be trying to sell us a big festering turd on that one. That “new provocation” is the same old capitulation to the wolves of sexism and ageism wrapped in the sheep’s clothing of cosmetic “enhancement.”

 

 

(excerpt from Weiner’s essay)
“…Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it. Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side?….

Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves….

‘I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start,’ [Madonna] wrote on her Instagram on Tuesday. ‘I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.’

 

Thank you, oh great one, on behalf of all the women behind you, for taking this trailblazing burden upon yourself!

 

Moiself  will let a couple of letters-to-the-NYT-editors writers have a go:

Ms. Weiner quotes Madonna as saying, “I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.” I am curious, how does this represent trailblazing?
Cosmetic surgery for approval or attention, even self-approval, seems less like trailblazing and more like objectification. To see more women aging naturally in the media spotlight would be the definition of a trailblazing and daring example to set.
(ST, Los Angeles)

Jennifer Weiner writes, “I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.”
Please. As a 65-year-old woman, I can tell you: Having extreme surgery is certainly not a new way to “ ‘critique’…the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind” in which all older women find themselves….
It strikes me as extremely sad that so many beautiful women in their 40s, 50s and 60s think that erasing their years cosmetically — cutting themselves open, pulling or pushing their skin and rearranging their faces — is a reasonable approach toward getting older….
(IK, Brooklyn)

Here’s the thing, Weiner, and all y’all other defending-Madonna pundits:  I (duh and of course) am with you on the sexism and aging thing, and about criticizing the culture that “makes” women think that they have to cosmetically mutilate enhance themselves to hide the physical manifestations of continuing to live (i.e., aging).  But your opinions are only half correct. Yes, the culture blah blah blah, but cosmetic procedures are also an individual choice, especially for someone with as much money and influence as Madonna.

Does Madonna, or any other performer, sincerely want to be radical and provocative and trailblazing? Then show – *be* – an honest portrait of individual aging.  Madonna’s extensive work reinforces, rather than critiques, the unfairness and stereotypes of women and aging, and does *nothing* to change or challenge the ”impossible bind” re women and their appearance, nor does it recognize the power of the individual to dare to age publicly, gracefully, and even proudly.

 

 

I highly doubt that an Isis-backed, terrorist-funded, plastic surgeon’s team kidnapped Madonna at gunpoint.  No one forced her to do the procedures she chose. Societal pressures, schmessures – of course that exists.  But to somehow paint Madonna (or any woman who succumbs to the real and pervasive social coercion to erase wrinkles/dye hair/hide any evidence of aging) as a victim is infantilizing.  Would we do the same for men, in a slightly different but ultimately related topic – as in, would we excuse misogynistic behavior by noting that society was primarily responsible?  Would we accept the rationalization of the bricklayer who, when called out for cat-calling women who pass by his construction site, says in his defense, “Yeah, I know it’s not right, but this is the society I live in, and I was raised to see women this way.”

Sure, females in the public eye, from news anchors to performers to politicians, have been enculturated to see themselves and other women in a certain way…and in Madonna’s case she absolutely participated in setting up her ever-youthful, hyper-sexualized image that can only and ultimately boomerang and provide a then vs. now, comparison downfall. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

 

 

Consider poet/singer/songwriter/photographer/author, Patti Smith, who at age 76 continues to produce her art.  Not only is there no evidence that a surgeon’s scalpel or Botox syringe has ever penetrated her skin, Smith doesn’t even dye her graying hair.    [2]  But then, Smith never based her music and art on her appearance or sexual allure (as Madonna definitely did/does, whether or not you think that by her doing so she exploits or critiques the phenomenon).  Smith’s music and poetry – her body of work – have always focused on what’s beneath the surface, unlike so many female performers where their body of work is entangled with their the presentation of their physical bodies.

…and speaking of so many performers, when I beheld many of the other/younger female performers I saw on the Grammy show   [3]…. Oh, dear, I felt so old.

 

 

I felt like I wanted to be their Wise and Beloved Auntie® whom they invited backstage; I wanted to tap them on their shoulders, point to Madonna and say,

This could be you someday. Have you noticed how your male musicians/actors/emcees/performer peers are not showing as much skin as you are, and have you thought about why?
You’ve been lied to if you think that displaying your sexuality means you are taking control of it and are not in fact being defined and exploited by your appearance.  By creating this body of work that has more to do in some ways with your body than your work, although you may want to keep working on the work, your actual body will crease and change and fade…and then what?
When you make your face and your body such a vital focus in your presentation of your art, *that* will be what your audience will focus on.  They’ll be writing and talking and posting about *you* one day – and not about your work, but about how your face looks like a rhino’s ass.

 

Does your long camera lens make my butt look big?

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [4]

 

(Warsan Shire, Somali-British poet, writer, teacher)

*   *   *

May you not need reminding to turn off a blender when you poke it;
May you never confuse greed with “losing your way;”
May you fight the misogynistic powers that tempt you to embrace “anti-aging”;   [5]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] They have…but not completely, yet.

[2] nor even combed it, as a snarky Rolling Stone magazine writer speculated many decades ago, in his profile of Smith.

[3] And the Oscars and Emmys and all of them.

[4] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[5] And remember that the only sure fire way not to age is to die.

The Label I Was Not Assigned

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Department Of A Man’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do

Dateline: Sunday, 10:30 am-ish.  MH sits across from moiself  at our breakfast table, with his copy of Saturday’s NY Times crossword puzzle.  He’d started it yesterday but stopped when he couldn’t finish a small section of it.  As he’s revisiting the puzzle he tells me he’d made a mistake with one four letter answer, whose clue was “____ stage (concept in psychosexual development),” and that fixing that one answer allowed him to figure out the rest of the puzzle:

“I had to switch from oral to anal.”

I look up from my own (KenKen) puzzle; MH pauses for a moment, then says,

“I need to rephrase that.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Only A Certain Kind Of Geek Will Get This One

Good name for a punk band:

Edith Keeler Must Die.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Space, The Vinyl Frontier     [1]

MH and I – and MH and I translates as, MH – did a clearing-out-space-in the-attic project at the end of the year.  A significant portion of space-which-needed-clearing-out was taken up by a dozen or so crates of LPs. MH moved them to floor the Cat Wall Bedroom ®…

 

 

…where we could sort through them.  In the next couple of weeks, hundreds of albums were whittled down to a select eleven, set aside by MH and/or moiself  for sentimental reasons.  [2]  Almost all of those eleven you can get somewhere else…but since, for example, there’s no guarantee of finding this gem of mine online or elsewhere, it stays:

 

 

The LPs are gone, given away/donated, and the bed in the Cat Wall Room is now covered with hundreds of CDs awaiting a similar culling process.  We haven’t had a working turntable in two decades; up until a few years ago I’d still play CDS, but my new laptop doesn’t have a disk reader.  It feels like the end of an era, of sorts, as we’ve belatedly acknowledged that we no longer “consume” (shudder) music in the same ways we used to.  We still attend live music shows but listen to recorded music in different ways now.  [3]

Side observation:  as we were going through the records MH noted that the digitization of the everyday makes gift-giving more difficult:  it used to be that an album or a book was an easy and “safe” bet for a friend’s birthday present.   [4] 

There was one LP I came across which surprised both MH and I, as in, neither of us had *any* idea it was in our collection.  I have no memory of “making” this record   [5]  and MH has no memory of receiving it.  Its front and back covers:

 

 

The bean/peas theme, I assume, comes from a running joke between us, from our dating days.  One day, early in our courtship   [6]  when we were out driving Somewhere® on our way to do Some Thing, ® MH pointed out to me a bumper sticker (on the car ahead of us) which read, Visualize World Peace.  He said that whenever he saw or heard that slogan his mind turned it into, “Visualize whirled peas.”  Apparently, so did entrepreneurial others, for not long afterward I saw (and bought for him) a t-shirt…

 

 

…which he has to this day.

But wait – there’s more.

When I saw the album I’d made for him, moiself  removed the record from its sleeve and discovered that I’d also altered record’s label, with track listings fitting the cover theme.

Side B  

  1. I’ve Bean Working On The Railroad (Pete Seeger)
  2. I’ve Bean Lonely Too Long (The Rascals)
  3. You’ve Bean In Love Too Long (Bonnie Raitt)
  4. I’ve Bean Searching So Long (Chicago)
  5. I’ll Bean Back (The Beatles)
  6. Could This Bean The Magic? (Barry Manilow)

 

 

Side P

  1. Give Peas A Chance (John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band)
  2. Peas Of My Heart (Janis Joplin)
  3. Peas Train (Cat Stevens)
  4. Peas Peas Me (The Beatles)
  5. (What’s So Funny About) Peas, Love & Understanding (Elvis Costello)
  6. Peasful Easy Feeling (The Eagles)
  7. Peas Come To Boston (Dave Loggins)
  8. Peas Peas Peas (James Brown)

 

 

I’d done that at least 35 years ago. At this point, attempting to remove the labels and the album’s covers might damage both the alterations as well as what lies beneath; thus, it’ll have to remain a tantalizing mystery as to what record I bastardized blinged to make that compilation.   [7]    However, if we find a working turntable on which to play it….

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of A Worthy, If Unsettling, Read

“The New Puritans,” by Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic.  The article is over a year old but moiself  just got around to reading Applebaum’s thoughtful and disturbing thesis – on how mob social justice tramples democratic ideals and threatens intellectual freedoms. The article begins with a recollection of The Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne’s classic tale of Hester Prynne, a woman who bears a child out of wedlock.  Prynne is subsequently exiled by her Puritan peers, many of whom themselves are guilty of the same sin for which she is scorned: (excerpts from the article; my emphases):

“We read that story with a certain self-satisfaction: Such an old-fashioned tale! Even Hawthorne sneered at the Puritans, with their ‘sad-colored garments and grey steeple-crowned hats,’ their strict conformism, their narrow minds and their hypocrisy. And today we are not just hip and modern; we live in a land governed by the rule of law; we have procedures designed to prevent the meting-out of unfair punishment. Scarlet letters are a thing of the past.”

 

 

“Except, of course, they aren’t. Right here in America, right now, it is possible to meet people who have lost everything—jobs, money, friends, colleagues—after violating no laws, and sometimes no workplace rules either. Instead, they have broken (or are *accused of* having broken) social codes having to do with race, sex, personal behavior, or even acceptable humor, which may not have existed five years ago or maybe five months ago. Some have made egregious errors of judgment. Some have done nothing at all. It is not always easy to tell.

Yet despite the disputed nature of these cases, it has become both easy and useful for some people to put them into larger narratives. Partisans, especially on the right, now toss around the phrase cancel culture when they want to defend themselves from criticism, however legitimate. But dig into the story of anyone who has been a genuine victim of modern mob justice and you will often find not an obvious argument between ‘woke’ and ‘anti-woke’ perspectives but rather incidents that are interpreted, described, or remembered by different people in different ways, even leaving aside whatever political or intellectual issue might be at stake.…..

…Hawthorne dedicated an entire novel to the complex motivations of Hester Prynne, her lover, and her husband. Nuance and ambiguity are essential to good fiction. They are also essential to the rule of law: We have courts, juries, judges, and witnesses precisely so that the state can learn whether a crime has been committed before it administers punishment. We have a presumption of innocence for the accused. We have a right to self-defense. We have a statute of limitations.

By contrast, the modern online public sphere, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid ideological prisms, and arguments of 280 characters, favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. Yet the values of that online sphere have come to dominate many American cultural institutions: universities, newspapers, foundations, museums. Heeding public demands for rapid retribution, they sometimes impose the equivalent of lifetime scarlet letters on people who have not been accused of anything remotely resembling a crime. Instead of courts, they use secretive bureaucracies. Instead of hearing evidence and witnesses, they make judgments behind closed doors.”

 

 

Journalist/historian Applebaum has previously studied and written   [8]  about how the political and social conformism and oppression of the early Communist period and other totalitarian dictatorships was the result “…not of violence or direct state coercion, but rather of intense peer pressure,” along with the fear of what will happen to you and your family if you violate the norms, and of how such fear leads to intellectual stifling.

But, the author notes, you don’t need government coercion to obtain the same results.  In our country, Applebaum writes, “…we don’t have that kind of state coercion. There are currently no laws that shape what academics or journalists can say; there is no government censor, no ruling-party censor. But fear of the internet mob, the office mob, or the peer-group mob is producing some similar outcomes. How many American manuscripts now remain in desk drawers—or unwritten altogether—because their authors fear a similarly arbitrary judgment? How much intellectual life is now stifled because of fear of what a poorly worded comment would look like if taken out of context and spread on Twitter?”

In her article Applebaum goes on to write about the people whose stories she investigated, whose violations of the sudden shifts in social codes in America led to their professional and/or personal “dismissal or…effective isolation.”  It is a disturbing read, to see what happens to a variety of disparate persons, whose only commonality is that they have been accused of breaking a social code, and subsequently find themselves at the center of a social-media storm because of something they said, or supposedly said:

“… no one quoted here, anonymously or by name, has been charged with an actual crime, let alone convicted in an actual court. All of them dispute the public version of their story. Several say they have been falsely accused; others believe that their ‘sins’ have been exaggerated or misinterpreted by people with hidden agendas. All of them, sinners or saints, have been handed drastic, life-altering, indefinite punishments, often without the ability to make a case in their own favor.

 

 

The cases Applebaum cites show that cancel culture/mob condemnation can happen on all sides of the political sphere, and evince a tangible, nonpartisan lesson:

“No one—of any age, in any profession—is safe. In the age of Zoom, cellphone cameras, miniature recorders, and other forms of cheap surveillance technology, anyone’s comments can be taken out of context; anyone’s story can become a rallying cry for Twitter mobs on the left or the right. Anyone can then fall victim to a bureaucracy terrified by the sudden eruption of anger. And once one set of people loses the right to due process, so does everybody else…. Gotcha moments can be choreographed. Project Veritas, a well-funded right-wing organization, dedicates itself to sting operations: It baits people into saying embarrassing things on hidden cameras and then seeks to get them punished for it, either by social media or by their own bureaucracies.

But while this form of mob justice can be used opportunistically by anyone, for any political or personal reason, the institutions that have done the most to facilitate this change are in many cases those that once saw themselves as the guardians of liberal and democratic ideals. Robert George, the Princeton professor, is a longtime philosophical conservative who once criticized liberal scholars for their earnest relativism, their belief that all ideas deserved an equal hearing. He did not foresee, he told me, that liberals would one day “seem as archaic as the conservatives,” that the idea of creating a space where different ideas could compete would come to seem old-fashioned, that the spirit of tolerance and curiosity would be replaced by a worldview “that is not open-minded, that doesn’t think engaging differences is a great thing or that students should be exposed to competing points of view.”

(Excerpt from “The New Puritans,”
by Anne Applebaum, 8-31-21, The Atlantic, my emphases )

 

Three cheers for the old Puritans.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things That Make Me Smile Number 892 In The Series
Sup-Department Of Things That Make Me Love My Fellow Snarkers

From “The Week 2-10-23, a section of news blurbs listed under and heading Good week for/Bad week for:

Good week for:
Plain English, after the Associated Press amended a policy, advising staff to avoid “dehumanizing ‘the’ labels, such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French…”
Online wags had wondered if people in France should be called “people experiencing Frenchness” or people “assigned French at birth.”

 

Experiencing Frenchness Support Group.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [9]

 

 

*   *   *

May you enjoy a trip down the Memory Lane of your own storage space;  [10]
May you steer your social justice passions clear of the New Puritanism;
May you, at some glorious point in your life, experience Frenchness;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Sorry, but after the previous Star Trek reference I think I am owed at least one bad pun as a segue.

[2] Son K stopped by to take a few, thinking he might get a turntable…eventually.

[3] I for one still listen to music on my car’s radio.

[4] However, most people will still “tolerate” actual/physical books, as MH put it.

[5] Although of course it is something I would – and apparently did – do.

[6] I never would have used that word then but for some reason it’s fun to use it now.

[7] Probably/hopefully the album was one I found at the bargain bin at Tower records, an album for which I paid no more than $1.25 for and which deserved to be papered over, ala The Best of the Osmond Brothers or Havin’ My Baby – The Worst of Paul Anka.

[8] Her website and bibliography is here.

[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[10] An actual street in my actual hometown.  Actually.

The Advice I’m Not Giving

Comments Off on The Advice I’m Not Giving

As referenced in my blog of 1-20-23  …

Department Of Here We Go Again
Sub-Department OF Preview Of Coming Grievances Attractions

( Sub- Department explanation: the next three blogs will deal with various aspects of The Writing Life As Moiself  Sees It ®)  …

This is part three of a three-part series. Parts one (The Awards I’m Not Winning, 1-27-23) and two (The Platform I’m Not Building, 2-3-23 ) are available to sentient beings by following the links.

*   *   *

Occasionally moiself  is asked, by those who self-identify as either writers or “aspiring writers,” for my advice via my AS-A credentials (“As a published writer, could you give me some tips on….”).  The advice being sought typically has to do with how to get published.  However, on some occasions it has also been – and I am so not making this up – on *what* to write:

“I really, really want to write fiction, but I don’t have any ideas for a story.  How do you come up with your ideas?”

 

 

I was gob-smacked the first time I heard that question, but managed not to blurt out my first thought:  “Holy self-awareness, dude, then fiction writing isn’t for you.” Instead, I leaned closer to him (this was at a book/literature fair) and said, sotto voce,

“Just between you and me, there’s this guy wearing a dark gray trench coat who hangs out in Pioneer Square on Thursday evenings between 10-11 pm, and for $50 he’ll give you a list of story ideas he found that fell off a truck….”

 

 

Last year I received an inquiry from the adult son    [1]   of a friend of a friend who wanted to pick my brain about the writing and publishing worlds. This prompted me to organize, in a marginally coherent form, the notes I’d been taking notes for years on the subject.  Thus, the following essay (which may be of little interest to those outside the writing “world,” and if that’s you, not to worry  – the usual amalgam of political rants, feminist/humanist daydreams, punz and fart jokes will return next week).

Although what follows is quite lengthy – and by lengthy I mean, thoughtful and detailed – it is the gist of what I might say if someone held a gun to my head (and moiself  really hopes that nobody will do that) and ordered me to answer the question,

In five words or less, what would you advise to aspiring fiction writers who want to write for publication?”

My answer, under those circumstances:

Ha! Don’t do it.

And if those four words are enough to discourage you from writing for publication, then you shouldn’t.

 

*   *   *

“Sometimes your job as an artist is to be invited somewhere
and ensure they never invite you back.”   [2]

RAT-A-WOF
(Robyn’s Advice To Aspiring Writers Of Fiction – yes, I know I need a better acronym).

Once upon a time, Writer’s Digest   [3]  asked a handful of writers the following question: “What advice would you offer a person who aspires to a writing career?” My favorite responses included:

“Sorry – if I had any advice to give I’d take it myself.”
(John Steinbeck)

“The…writer needs talent and application….
If you want to write just to make money, you are not a writer.”
(James Thurber)

“Beware of advice – even this.”
(Carl Sandburg)

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Despite my relative-to-almost-complete lack of literary notoriety, I’m occasionally asked what advice I would give to aspiring writers.  I have two bits of counsel.  The first:  never ask other writers for advice.  The second (should you dare to proceed after the first) is a two-parter:  aspiring writers should stop aspiring and start writing, and just as importantly (if not more so), they should read.  If more guidance is requested, well, then, you asked for it…

My Advice To Newbie or Aspiring Fiction Writers ®

  1. Don’t do it.
  2. If you ignore #1 and proceed, develop a hide so thick whale sharks envy you.   [4]
  3. Aspiring writers should stop aspiring and start writing.
  4. Anyone who can be deterred from writing fiction should be.
  5. Never ask other writers for advice.
  6. There is no #6. What were you expecting, after #5?

 

 

Aren’t those bits o’ counsel a tad harsh?

More like honest and direct.

Writing fiction, like old age, ain’t for sissies.  You must tell the truth and run, in both the writing itself and in the dicey area of offering — or accepting — advice.  And yes, my Prime Directive of Fiction is,  “Those who can be discouraged from writing fiction should be.”  Or they should at least be strongly encouraged to analyze their motivation for writing, as opposed to their motivation for “being a writer.”

Do you feel as though you have to, need to, write — as if you’ve received The Call to do so, and that you in some way have no choice in the matter?  If so, I’d recommend seeing a mental health professional to help you figure out the neediness part.

“I love living the life of a famous writer.
The trouble is, every once in a while you have to write something.”
(Ken Kesey)

The most important questions for an aspiring fiction writer to ask are, Do I like to write?  Do I want to write?  Do I have ideas, and do I want to do — am I able to do — the actual process of writing?

I used that quote from Kesey not just to engender a chuckle of wry appreciation; it illustrates an Important Point (the capitals and italics also help).  Many more people want to Be a Writer — supposing it (the writing “lifestyle” or profession)  to be glamorous, well-paying and prestigious — than actually want to write, which can be lonely, frustrating, tedious, and which, especially for the free-lancer (working in any genre), requires an enormous amount of self-discipline and motivation.

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Competition and “Success”

– For every Big Name Writer® whose byline is familiar even to non-readers and whose works are ubiquitously displayed in the high-profile stands at bookstores and in racks at the supermarket checkout stand, there are thousands (a conservative estimate) of unknown writers, slaving away at the office or classroom or café during the day and at their desks or computers at nights and on weekends.

– Several years ago The Writer magazine noted that, of the 275+ million people living in the USA, approximately 60 make a “good living” writing fiction; i.e., they are able to support themselves solely by writing and are not dependent  upon another income (from a spouse or family member or two or three “other” jobs of their own).  Sixty out of 275 million.  DO THE MATH.

– Full-time fiction writers make an average of <$7,000/year from writing fiction (The Writer, 1993…adjusting for inflation will not make this statistic any more palatable).   [5]  

– The National Writer’s Union’s survey found that most freelance fiction writers make under four thousand dollars a year from their writing, and only sixteen percent made over thirty thousand a year.  [6]

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Fun with Statistics (read: How good are you at dealing with rejection?)

I hope you like dessert, as in, the writer’s daily slice of humble pie:

Someone out there always say no.

The vast majority of queries you send out, whether to editors, agents or publishers, will receive a standard rejection. That’s the way the business is. You won’t be told why they rejected your manuscript (which can be frustrating), but there’s a good reason for that: what doesn’t work for one agent or editor might work for another.

If this happens over and over and you really want to know what’s “wrong” (or just not working well) in your manuscript, get it critiqued by a professional, neutral party.   [7]    But keep in mind that even if your work is brilliant, it might not be the right match for particular agents/editors/publishers. It’s analogous to finding someone to marry: it has to be the right person at the right time, and there are many other fish in the sea (especially for agents, editors and publishers).

Here is an example of one of the more gracious rejections letters, from the literary journal Zyzzyva, which also contains an important truth for writers to keep in mind (my emphases):

“Thank you for offering your work for consideration. I regret to say that we do not have a place for your work at this time. Please forgive us for passing on your work and for doing so without further comments or suggestions.
I would like to say something to make up for this ungraciousness, but the truth is we have so little space, we must return almost all of the work that is submitted, including a great deal that interests us and even some pieces we admire.

The grim stats:  Duotrope (a service for writers) keeps track of submission and rejection stats, and has this standard disclaimer for these stats: “Rejections are often underreported, which skews the statistics in favor of acceptances. Most publishers have a lower acceptance rate than indicated here.”  For Zyzzyva, the reported rejection rate is 98.73%.

* Typical statement from a literary journal (this one from anderbo, which, although a non-paying market, is flooded with submissions), re their stats:  “We are able to use less than ½ of one percent of submissions.”

* Milkweed Press, a respected literary publisher, receives over 3k submissions per year and publishes ~15 books per year (a 0.5 acceptance rate).  Albert Whitman Publishers (children’s literature) receives 5,000 manuscripts per year and publishes 30 titles.

* The New Yorker, arguably the most renowned/respected/influential market for fiction, receives 4000 submissions per month (and tends to draw from its stable of “established” – read: “name” – writers). It publishes one story per issue, has 47 issues per year, giving it an acceptance rate of < 0.01%.

* From an agent’s website:  “We receive 1,000-1,200 queries a year, which in turn lead to 2 or 3 new clients.” (acceptance rate 0.03 %, rejection rate 99.97%)

Unfortunately, I could go on with the grim statistics citations.  Everyone loves an overnight success story, which is why those stories of the author with the hit first novel – a truly rare phenomenon, which is what makes it newsworthy – is what you hear about (and not about the 19,000 other authors who have had rejection after rejection).  And many authors/books now considered classics had quite the rocky road to being published (and some of the most critically praised authors and artists never had their work bought or published while they were alive).  Just a few examples: 

* Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by 40 publishers until it found a home.

* Emily Dickinson died unpublished.

* C.S. Lewis sent more than 800 manuscripts out before he made a sale; Ray Bradbury, also around 800.

* Gone With The Wind was rejected by more than 20 publishers.

*Jerzy Kozinski’s The Painted Bird was rejected by the same publisher several times, and one of those times after that same publisher (a different editor) had accepted it.

* F. Scott Fitzgerald was told by an agent, “You’d have a decent book if you’d get rid of that Gatsby character.”

* Karl Marlante’s debut novel, the widely praised Matterhorn, languished in literary purgatory for 30 (yes, thirty) years before the author could find an agent/publisher.

Even if you are published, what are your chances of having your book reviewed?  From Authors Guild Bulletin  and Publisher’s Weekly (2007): “Three thousand books are published daily (1,095,000 per year) in the U.S.  Six thousand were reviewed, less than one percent of the total published.”

* From an article in The Writer:  “It isn’t enough to have an incredible story, a well-written manuscript, and a dream.  Did you know that out of the hundreds of thousands of books published each year in this country (by traditional brick-and-mortar publishers), about 95% of them sell fewer than 500 copies?”

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“Anyone who can be discouraged from writing fiction should be.”
( R. G. Parnell )

How I love quoting myself.  And I’m not the only writer who does so:

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”
( Variously attributed to Oscar Wilde and/or George Bernard Shaw)

But seriously, as you may have deduced by now, “Anyone who can be discouraged from writing fiction should be” is my writing advice motto.   Because if that’s all it takes – *my* discouragement – to discourage you, then you haven’t got what it takes.  And even if you do “have what it takes,” (however that is defined), the art and craft of writing is one thing…and the nasty, competitive, scam-filled and financially unrewarding (for 99% of writers) business of getting your writing published – that’s quite another thing.

The legitimate  [8]  publishing opportunities for beginning (and even veteran) fiction writers have drastically shrunk over the last fifty years.  No longer are most mainstream magazines publishing fiction – whether short stories or novel excerpts – and the few remaining ones which do will not even look at your work unless you have a “name” or are represented by a literary agent.  [9]  So, the markets for your work are mainly literary journals, most of which are associated with university English departments and thus staffed by (cringe) MFA writing students.  Translation: your work is going to be “judged’ by those people who are stupid/vain/gullible/pretentious/naive ignorantly idealistic enough to be paying tuition (or worse yet, accruing loan debt) for an MFA.  All this, and no pay for your work.    [10]

Yep: you will be paid nothing, but it will cost you something. The majority of literary journals and other venues for fiction writing “pay” in the form of free copies (or, worse yet, that dreaded word, “exposure”).   [11]      (Because you of course can turn around and pay your SCBWI and Author’s Guild  [12]   dues and Poets & Writer’s and The Writer subscriptions, as well as postage and toner cartridge and paper supplies, by trading those free copies….)

What with the “digital revolution,” markets for writers now include online journals. Some of these online journals are associated with universities and MFA programs and some not…and all mostly have the same “pay” policy ( “We regret than we cannot pay our contributors…but we offer exposure….” ).

Many journals, and even publishers, have started charging submission fees for potential contributors, (even those journals which are non-paying markets).  Or, they only publish via their contests. There are thousands of literary contests (it seems like every journal, and a growing number of literary presses, has one nowadays, in addition to – or sometimes replacing – their regular submissions venues).   [13]    This has the effect of diluting the distinction of winning a writing contest or award – it’s about as meaningful as a kids’ soccer team award (“Every kid gets a trophy for participating!”).

There are so many literary contests, it seems that sooner or later every writer will be able to claim to be “an award-winning writer.”  (for more fun-poking at this trend see my blog, The Awards I’m Not Winning 1-27-23)  Some of these contests have nominal financial prizes for the winners (which are funded by the contest/award entry fees), but, other than The Big Ones (The Pulitzer, et al), don’t be fooled into thinking that your “winning” the Michael Shaara Award For Excellence In Civil War Fiction    [14]  gives you publishing cachet, or ultimately means anything to anyone inside (or outside) the publishing world. 

 

 

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Writing classes and workshops and conferences and MFA degree programs

I do not recommend any of the above and have boycotted them on principal. Thus, I cannot offer any advice from experience if you’re interested in attending, say, a Sci Fi writers conference.

The thing about writing fiction:  except for fiction’s “one percent”  (the Stephen Kings, et al) it is difficult-to-impossible to make a living doing what you do.  Even if you are a regularly published author, so you have to cobble together other gigs:    [15]    speaking/reading/workshops….  Imagine a profession where you can’t make a living doing what you do, so you have to scheme to get paid talking about doing what you do…which isn’t doing what you do.

“The only way to make money from writing is to fleece (other) writers.
Exposure! Networking! Sigh.”
(Anonymous writer, on a SCBWI forum )

My lack of interest in and even objection on principle to writing classes and workshops is that they cannot help but be formulaic; also, I think that they either consciously or inadvertently promote art by consensus.   It’s possible, of course, to learn or to be taught basic elements of composition, grammar, spelling and punctuation, from a teacher or from your peers – you can even get some pointers on point of view, and you can certainly learn through the example of writers who inspire and impress you.   [16]    But I think the proliferation of writing classes, programs, and “How to Write a Damned Really Good Novel” seminars has more to do with the infiltration of the Cult of Celebrity into the writing profession than from any demonstration of these programs’ supposed “effectiveness.”

There is a desire on the part of many beginning and intermediate writers to rub elbows and Ipads with famous, beloved, or (often self-professed) Important and Successful ®  Authors.   It’s possible that many authors who teach writing workshops, classes and speak at seminars sincerely love teaching and value being someone’s mentor or muse.  However, a driving force behind the workshops/classes/seminars business is one of the literary world’s dirty little economic secrets:  teaching and lecturing to wannabe fiction writers provides a more reliable source of income than does writing fiction.

“It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money
writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.”
( W.H. Auden )

BTW:  Conferences and workshops where you can meet editors and agents and get two minutes to pitch them your manuscript and/or ideas – you will pay for this (such conferences and workshops charge hefty fees to attendees), as the editors and agents are usually paid to be there.  It reminds me of a Tupperware party, or those other home businesses in which the hosts are making money off of their friends, relatives and neighbors.

My advice re writing classes and workshops and conferences and MFA degree programs: save your money and buy more books instead!  Which is related to:

Content/Genre/Topics

“Bad news: everything of (human) significance has already been written.
Good news: most of it is out of print & long forgotten.”
(Joyce Carol Oates)

“If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing
that’s read by people who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.”
( Don Marquis, American humorist, journalist, author 1878 – 1937 )

My advice re fiction subject matter:  write something just out of your reach.  Try to write the stories someone might tell you you’re not ___ enough (young; old; experienced; successful; American; European….) to write.  However, given the current political climate of fiction publishing, be prepared for someone from the self-appointed Literary And Imagination Appropriation Police ® to tell you that you don’t have the “right” to write that kind of story or character (insert world weary sigh).

Most likely, you already have ideas about what you want to write about, whether your interests and story ideas might be classified as literary or genre. So, go for that.  And (1) read *everything* –  across categories and genres –  but (2) craft your own voice.  And remember:  the first is relatively easy, and no one knows how to tell you to do the second (no matter how much they are willing to charge you for their “sure-fire” Find Your Own Voice Writing Technique Seminar).

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Miscellaneous principles, opinions, and unsolicited advice

“Of all the higher arts, it (writing) is the most self-taught…in the end, you have to find your own way.”
(John Updike,  from an interview published in The Writer, June 2001).

I couldn’t agree more or say it better…which is why I find myself using another writer’s words (ahem) to illustrate one of my most strongly held convictions:  that fiction writers should walk their own paths and develop their own voices.   This conviction is one reason I never advise fiction writers (actual or aspiring) to take writing classes and/or workshops, whether one-time seminars, intensive weekend retreats, or MFA or other degree programs in “creative writing” or whatever.   (And if I ever am found to be making bucks from teaching a writing seminar or somehow profiting from the promotion of such programs, you’ve my permission to pelt me with a ream of plutonium-laminated rejection notices).

Some writers join or form writers support groups, wherein group members meet on a regular basis to network, offer support in the never-ending struggle to attain publication, and/or critique one another’s work.  While I can appreciate the appeal such groups hold for some folks, I’ve never had any interest in them.  My time to write is limited and therefore valuable to me; also, I have a life inside, outside, and intertwined with writing.  I’ve been doing this for a while; I’ve a tough hide and can handle rejection (and acceptance) without group therapy or validation.  I am fortunate to enjoy doing what I do (well, the actual writing part – it should be obvious by now what I think about the Biz of Publishing).  I like to write; however, talking about writing — even with other writers — isn’t writing.  Besides, I can barely stand my own first drafts – why would I want to read someone else’s?  😉

“The rise and influence of MFA programs is not nearly as pernicious as the whole notion of ‘workshopping’ literature.  In what other art form would a creative artist claim as his own a work that has the thumbprints of a dozen or more people on it?
The best that can be said of MFA programs is that they give participants a sense of community, time and space to write, and exposure to the business of literature.  The best that can be said of workshops is that they train writers to respond and compromise rather than to catch fire.  These developments may account for the blandness of much contemporary literature.  They also say something about the character of our culture and the ability of workshops to really impart anything except the tyranny of taste.  Finally, it might be that good reading is actually the portal to good writing.  How much better time would be served by carefully reading Joyce and Proust.”
(Michael Keating, from his letter to the editor,
Poets & Writers, July/August 2003;
emphases mine)

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So, after all that, you still want to write fiction for publication?
Here’s what you need to do:

  1. READ! Anything and everything, non-fiction as well as short fiction, novels and poetry.
  2. WRITE! Yep, there’s no way around it.  Write whenever you can, whatever you can.  Keep a folder or journal of observations, ideas, opinions….
  3. GET AN EDUCATION! (But major in something — anything  — other than “writing.”)
  4. GET A JOB! Find or create something you enjoy doing (or can at least tolerate) that pays the bills AND leaves you with enough physical and emotional time and energy to write.  You will not be able to support yourself or your family solely by writing fiction — get used to this idea.
  5. GET A LIFE! What do you expect to write about?  And I must firmly explain what I mean here, lest it be thought for one nanosecond that I would encourage anyone to pen anything resembling a memoir.  It’s not that there is a ready-made audience for the incredible story of YOU, thinly disguised in every tale you tell.  Rather, this advice is meant to encourage you to collect experiences and observations, from and about which you and the characters you create may extrapolate, imagine, expound upon, confirm, deny and challenge.  A writer is (or should be), above all else, naturally curious.  Live, look, listen, imagine, question…and then write.
  6. READ! And encourage others to do so (do you want a market for your work, or what?)

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Oh, and one more fun thing

When word gets out – to family, friends, co-workers, neighbors – that you are a writer, be prepared for the following “I-Just-Have-A-Small-Favor-To-Ask-Of-You” scenario (from a letter to Carolyn Hax’s marvelous advice column, “Tell Me About It”):

I am a writer by profession — meaning I get paid to do what I do. I am constantly asked to edit someone’s community newsletter, write something about someone’s kid who plays lacrosse to send to college coaches, or write someone’s family Christmas letter. (I hate those things, but anyway.)
When I quote my hourly rate, I get the hurt look and, “Oh, I thought you’d just do it for me as a friend,” or — in the case of a newsletter — “Oh, I just thought it would be fun for you; it is a good cause and probably would not take much time.”

You wouldn’t think of asking your son’s soccer coach, who is a podiatrist, to fix your bunions for free (“I thought it might be fun for you – it’s probably be easier than your other surgeries, and you’re so good at it”), or try to wrangle a free housecleaning from your neighbor who works for Merry Maids. But there’s something about knowing that you work in an “artistic” field which brings out the mooch in everyone.

It doesn’t even matter to these freeloaders favor-askers, when you protest that you are a writer of fiction, not grant proposals/term papers/college essays/office brochures.  In their eyes, you are a writer, which means that you can just whip out anything, right?  Your writing and editing skills will be coveted by others, enough that they will ask you to do work  *for* them, yet not enough to be compensated *by* them.

I can count on the fingers of one hand – if that hand had lost three fingers in a tragic panini press accident – the number of times someone has asked for my professional writing skills and what I would charge for the project they had in mind.  In every other case, I very quickly discovered the Favor Asker’s assumption was that I would do the work for free…for them…for the honor of being asked, and…for “the exposure….”

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If you still want to write fiction (or already are writing, and are ready to start investigating publishing opportunities), here are some resources to help you navigate the logistics of submitting your work to publishing venues.

Self-publishing disclaimer: I have not gone that route and thus will not offer advice to anyone who wishes to self-publish, except to note that I have negative opinions as to that option – which seems to be one of last resort.  If your work wasn’t good enough for regular publishers (something several self-published authors I’ve met at book fairs and/or literary events told me was their opinion – about their own work! – which is why, they said, they “had to” self-publish…and gee, could I give them some tips about how I got published by a “real” publisher?), self-publishing won’t make it any better.

Self-publishing seems to be a workable option for some writers in the non-fiction genres.  Still, every self-published fiction book I’ve read (this an anecdotal opinion, not scientific data) has literally screamed amateurish, from the cover art and font and graphics to the content and copy editing, and I’ve noticed that their authors have scrambled for “real”/traditional publishers whenever they can.

 

 

( The rest of this article contained three pages of the resources previously mentioned.  Moiself shall spare you the effort of skipping through them. You’re welcome. )

*   *   *

May you treat yourself to something amazing – if you‘ve managed to make it this far, you deserve it;
May moiself be done with critiquing the writing/publishing profession…for now;
May you ignore that inane groundhog prediction and hope for an early spring;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] The advice I give in this article is not what I would say to a child interested in writing. 

[2] Variously attributed…to someone.  Who knows, maybe I said it.

[3] Way back in September 1961.

[4] Everyone uses rhinos as the epitome of thick-skinned mammals, but the whale shark has the thickest skin of all living creatures.  Who knew? Well, now *you* do.

[5] And these stats may be even lower, what with the rise of eBooks, and the resulting internet piracy cutting into author’s royalties.

[6] From the Nov-Dec 2005 SCBWI journal.  These stats are still valid when adjusted for inflation and population changes, as per current Authors Guild and other sources.  I am too lazy to update the citations.

[7] As in, not anyone who knows you personally; not your uncle, no matter how much of a great English composition teacher he is.  You will need to pay for this service.

[8] Having your story “published” on your or your friend’s blog or website does not mean that your work has been published.

[9] Although, like The New Yorker, they will lie about this in their writers’ submissions guidelines.  That is, they will claim that they are “open to unagented submissions,” but, as one former TNY editor staffer revealed, they have *never* published anything from the slush pile ). 

[10] Beckett, the avant Garde/tragic-comic/black humor Irish novelist, poet, playwright, director, essayist, most famous for his play,”Waiting for Godot.”  Becket also provided one of my favorite anti-privilege quotations, regarding his peers studying modern literature at Dublin University (“Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.”) 

[11] And you have to report the cover price of the “free” copy as income.  So, you received three copies of The Gnarled Kneecap Quarterly  ($10.95 per copy) upon their publication of your short story.  Come time to do your writing business income taxes, you have to report $47.85 worth of income for which you received no cash payment.

[12] The SCBWI – Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and The Authors Guild, are the two preeminent associations for writers.  Members receive their quarterly periodicals, and access to their online data bases of tutorials, publishers, markets, etc.

[13] I wrote an essay making fun of that phenomenon, which one editor told me was unpublishable because, as he pointed out to me, “…practically all literary journals have contests and lack a sense of humor about it.”  But it was published, in a (now defunct) Portland-based journal.

[14] other than to you, your grandmother, and perhaps Michael Shaara’s son, who started that award in remembrance of his father, a writer of – wait for it – Civil War fiction. Yes, there’s a genre for everything.

[15] This, of course, is common to any artistic field. Very few artists, from painters to potters to sculptors to musicians, can support themselves by sales of their art alone, and most teach classes, have “day jobs,” or arrange other gigs from which they cobble together a living wage, or may be supported by their spouses, or have a patron, which was especially common during the Renaissance. And you may have heard of the stereotypical actor/screenwriter who waits tables at nights and goes on auditions (or hassles agents or publishers) during the day….

[16] And you can (and should) do this by reading their writing.

The Platform I’m Not Building

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As referenced in a previous blog (1-20-23) …

Department Of Here We Go Again
Sub-Department OF Preview Of Coming Grievances Attractions

Sub- Department explanation: This is part two of a three-part series dealing deal with various aspects of The Writing Life As Moiself  Sees It ®)  …

Parts one and two feature essays I wrote several years ago. The essays have the following commonality:

(a) I was satirizing certain aspects of the writing/publishing life;

(b) More than one editor to whose journal(s) I submitted the essays wrote, in their kind and complimentary rejection letters, that although they personally liked the article they could not publish it and, added that they felt it incumbent to warn me that that the article might be unpublishable due to my making fun of the process  (i.e., gnawing at the hand that was supposedly feeding me – despite the essays being clear intended as satirical):

“You realize that many people in this world   [1]
do not have a sense of humor about what they do….”

 

 

*   *   *

“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.”
( Daphne du Maurier, English novelist and playwright )

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, moiself  began to admit to moiself a not-so-pleasant realization about moiself:  my growing disappointment with and even contempt for the literary publishing world.  It seemed that publishers had forgotten, or deliberately discarded, du Maurier’s sage advice, and were determined to celebritize authors.  This gradually devolved into pushing for (and in some cases contractually binding) the authors to celebritize themselves, with no resulting increase in royalties to the authors for taking on what is the publishers’ job – publicity.  Publishers did this by convincing authors that they must turn themselves into brands, and construct platforms.

 

 

 

 

For many years the literary world has been riding the towering (and crashing) waves of the relatively new universe of internet/ebooks/digital publishing.  Many publishers (mostly nascent, but also established/aka “traditional” publishers) have formed or remodeled themselves as essentially hybrid publishers, thus avoiding crucial aspects of the traditional work of publishing    [1].  These publishers describe this shift as providing “more opportunities for publishing and more author involvement in the publishing team!…”

 

 

…which translates as, more work for the writer, besides actually writing.     [2]   And the new “opportunities” provided by the internet and e-publishing has also created more opportunities for piracy/theft and downloading of your work without compensation. 

A writer I know, “WK,”    [3]  has published several nonfiction books on a certain technical topic.  WK posted the following on social media as an explanation as to why he’d reluctantly decided that his latest book would be his last.  This explanation was in response to a fan/reader who’d written to WK, praising his most recent book and asking for more books on similar topics.  

WK:
I’m glad you like my books, thanks. But I’m not going to write any more. There is too much piracy of my (and many other people’s) books. Within 1 month of my last book being published, I found dozens of web sites where people could download free copies of the e-book. There’s no point in writing a book if people are just going to steal it.

If thirty-plus years ago (when I began to write [primarily] fiction for publication) moiself’s  crystal ball had foretold how the publishing business would shift to the writer-does-publishers’-duties model, I would not have pursued writing for publication.

All righty, then why am I doing this, I asked moiself? Turns out I didn’t like my answers.  Thus, I took a hiatus – not from not from writing, but from submitting work for publication.

( Self-publication…is not a respectable” option, IMO, for me.  I will deal more with that in part three of my series.   [4]  )

 

 

On to the essay at hand.

*   *   *

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ME

Branding the Un-brandable – a Fiction Author’s Dilemma

I tried blinking several times and even considered rubbing my eyes with sandpaper, but it was too late. I recognized the alphabet, the language…I had read the article. Alas, nothing could remove the images contained on the paper before me. It was the latest edition of one of my writer’s magazines containing the latest piece of prose extolling the virtue – nay, the necessity – of writers “developing and controlling their brand.”

“When we’re shopping at the grocery store, we tend to purchase the same variety of cereal, week after week. When it comes to household goods we waste little energy in thought as we push our cart down the aisle – it seems as if our favorite brand of laundry detergent leaps into our cart on its own. When we’re on a road trip, it doesn’t matter that it has been less than an hour since breakfast – our children beg to stop for lunch when they see the logo for a familiar fast-food restaurant on the highway’s exit signs.”

A graphics reminder popped up on my computer monitor:  a gender-free, ethnicity-inclusive, bipedal, Happy Face figure stretched and wriggled its limbs, signaling to me that it is time for an ergonomics break. I dutifully marched around my desk and circled my wrists for a few minutes, then returned to deleting from my email inbox yet another offer from yet another literary entity wishing to sell me yet another book and/or tutorial and/or seminar on how to use social media and/or professional and personal organizations and/or the skin off my children’s backs to transform myself into an author with an “established platform.”

 

Is this platform enough for y’all?

 

The mandate to create and promote a platform for one’s self was once almost exclusively confined to nonfiction authors, who were sensibly advised to, for example, establish their academic and professional OCD research and treatment credentials before attempting to interest publishers in their book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective Doorknob Fondlers. Increasingly, even fiction writers are told (read:  sold) variations of the following come-on, which I have received, in both hard copy and e-formats, from both long-established and pop-up writers’ journals and newsletters:

“If you are serious about being a successful writer in the 21st Century, you must establish, maintain, market and protect your brand;
you must build a platform as a writer and a content provider.”

Content Provider. Yikes.

But for fiction writers – excuse me, I mean of course, for those of us who are “providers of fictional content” – where the emphasis is (or should be) on the stories themselves, the platforms then become…what? The authors, ourselves?

Picture, if you will, just a few of the notoriously private authors whose works somehow managed to become beloved classics or must-reads despite their authors’ lack of “platforms.” Were those writers to be launching their careers in today’s publishing environment, their books might be seen as a tough sell due to the authors’ reticence for self-promotion. The J. D. Salingers, the Harper Lees, The Thomas Pynchons, the Emily Dickinsons, the Cormac McCarthys – I try to imagine them establishing and protecting and promoting their brands, like so many literary Kardashinans.

Aside from my personal antipathy toward what I call the celebritization of writing, the emphasis on the commercial and personal marketing of authors carries with it, I believe, a backlash potential. The publishing world’s push to adopt advertising concepts once associated with shilling laundry detergent and promoting Hollywood starlets can be off-putting to those discerning readers who care much about the stories to be told and little for the notoriety and fan worship status of the storytellers. One of the most prolific readers I know (herself a published author) put it thusly:

“I hate ‘brand building’ crap.
A writer’s brand is her writing, and she shouldn’t have to put out for every social media outlet like a $20 whore on Sunset Boulevard.

I know nothing about the writers I read. I don’t care. The only time I look someone up is when I think the writing is dreadful.”

I write neither memoir nor autobiography, and my fiction rarely employs the first-person narrative. Even so, I am advised to establish an All About Me platform. This concept applied to my literary life is literally (sorry) so odious to me, I just may construct an actual platform (Olympic competition height), if only to have one from which to jump off.

 

Budding author on his platform, on his way to the content pool.

 

Also, given what passes for noteworthiness these days, how will patient publishers and empathetic editors manage to brand the un-brandable me? The literary publicists’ failsafe archetypes don’t apply in my case. I’m a proficient writer with a substantial list of publishing credits; I can spin an interesting tale, yet there’s no mesmerizing hook upon which to hang my “As a” credentials (“As a writer of speculative haiku, Ms. Parnell, l’enfant terrible of the Pacific Northwest’s burgeoning Occupy: Poetry Slam scene….”).

Alas, I have no sexy back-story. I am not:

  • the rising young star of the future, who studied under full scholarship with A Famous Author ® at the Flannery O’Hemingway Iowa Workshop and who has been touted by Publishers Weekly as one of the “Five Under 25” (make that 35…45…uh…) to watch….
  • the erstwhile ___ (junkie; orphan; differently-abled parolee; gender-neutral sex addict), a survivor of ____(cancer; Catholic boarding school; Tea Party summer camp; the first documented Facebook mass un-friending) who escaped the mean streets of ___ (The Bronx; South Boston; Rodeo Drive; Lodi) after doing ___ (meth in El Paso; time in San Quentin; dinner theatre in Fort Lauderdale; the entire cast – stunt doubles included – of Oceans Eleven)….
  • the charismatic and exotic outsider, whose stranger-in-a-strange-land observations open a window into the perspectives on contemporary American culture that only an expatriate ___ (Afghani Atheist; Bicultural Bolivian-Botswanan Baha’i; Celebrity Chef Apprentice) can impart….
  • the ___ (reluctant; introspective; flamboyant; gluten intolerant) yet articulate spokesperson of her ___ (generation; subculture; dress size; assisted living villa)….

 

 

The who-I-am hook is likely a lost cause, publicity-wise (and words cannot fully express how fine I am with that). As for what I write, aka the content I provide, again, there are no simple classifications. Despite the self-proclaimed broad-mindedness of artists in general and the literati in particular, there are these boxes – exquisitely wrapped, variously sized, but boxes nonetheless – and people want to fit you into them.

I have written and/or published:

  • a short fiction collection and over seventy short stories, but I do not write short fiction exclusively;
  • a one-act play (for which I have received royalties), but I’m not a playwright;
  • poems for both the adult and children’s markets, but that doesn’t make me a poet;
  • a song (both music and lyrics), but that doesn’t make me a songwriter;
  • essays and opinion and non-fiction articles, but I am not a journalist;
  • a picture book and a juvenile novel, but I do not identify as a “children’s writer;”
  • a novel, but I do not call myself a novelist….

My stories’ characters have variously committed murder and other crimes, ventured in and out of love, encountered illusory beings, and lived in the present, the past and/or the future…but I am not a mystery/crime/romance/contemporary/historical/fantasy/sci-fi author. There’s no tidy genre label – nor the ready-made audience that seems to come with such – under which to file my work. I am simply a writer of literary fiction, who quietly, persistently and patiently (I will let that last adverb sink on its own merits) concentrates on writing good stories.

And that’s my mistake, it would seem. I should set aside the notes for my next three books, and instead note how to make myself more noteworthy.

 

 

Along with or in advance of a publication contract, publishers often send writers an AQ (Author’s Questionnaire) which asks about the writer’s background (“Is there additional information you can provide about yourself, to make you more personally appealing to our readers? Any anecdotes, for example, you might share at a reading?”). When presented with an AQ I typically weasel my way through questions I deem overly personal or irrelevant to the work at hand. No more. Perhaps it is time I contact my latest book’s publisher and submit my AQ addendum:

The distinctive silhouette was at once masculine and boyish. Dapper, graying temples, firm, chiseled jaw, roguish eyes and wickedly seductive grin – his beguiling features were illuminated by the waxing moonlight.
I felt a slight tremor of anticipation as his strong hands reached for mine; I found his grip surprisingly tender and reassuringly assertive as he helped me up onto the platform. *My* platform.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin tonight’s reading by categorically denying the rumors of my affair with George Clooney.”

The End

About the author
Robyn Parnell lives and writes in platform-free Hillsboro, Oregon.

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [5]

 

Taslima Nashrin, a Bangladeshi-Swedish author, doctor, secular humanist acphysician, feminist, secular humanist activist. She has been blacklisted and banished from the Bengal regions in Bangladesh (and the Indian state of West Bengal) and received fatwas for her writings on the oppression of women and her critiques of religion.

 

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May we be content with not producing content;
May platforms be reserved for divers and drag queens;
May we understand that brands are for cereals, not people;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

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[1] As in, they want or even require the author to do the lion’s share of the publicity for their book – without a publisher’s PR budget and connections.  And good luck finding the time to learn several new professions (including literary PR, press agent, booking and scheduling agent) while also finding time to actually write….

[2] Imagine going to your doctor for your annual physical, only to find that while her fee for service has not changed you are now responsible for doing your own urinalysis – which the physician’s billing office describes as “…giving you the opportunity to partner with your doctor and be more involved in your health care!

[3] Author of several books, including fiction and non-fiction, self-help, and tech manuals.

[4] I do think that, in the case of non-fiction works, self-publishing may be – and has been –  a viable alternative, for some authors.

[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org