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On Writing....
Jun. 7th, 2007 10:04 pmTo post or not to post...therein lies the question. Yesterday, Wales gave me an article entitled My Book Deal Ruined My Life - it is basically about how writers can't help but write, even if their habit kills relationships, makes them lonely, and often broke - taking day jobs to support it. Oddly comforting.
Anyhow - I found a link to it - so you too can read it and be comforted or not as the case may be.
http://www.observer.com/2007/my-book-deal-ruined-my-life
Here's a couple of snippets:
“You hear about these big contracts coming in, and it whets your appetite,” said Leah McLaren, a columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail, who landed a book contract with HarperCollins Canada in 2003 for her chick-lit novel, The Continuity Girl. “You start to think, ‘This is my lottery ticket …. It could be optioned for a movie or become a huge best-seller!’”
“But then, it could completely disappear and sell five copies,” added Ms. McLaren whose own book was published to little fanfare as a paperback original in the States this spring. “And you’ll never be heard from again. You’ll disappear. And that’s the real risk of writing a book.”
Then there are the truly epic downfalls of authors like James Frey, whose fabricated memoir caused his life (and his seven-figure two-book deal with Riverhead) to shatter into a million little pieces. Now he’s writing two novels without a contract and posting on the blog and message boards on his Web site, bigjimindustries.com—the literary equivalent of living in a trailer park.
[I always thought the publisher and editor should have gotten the brunt of that attack not Frey who was talked into taking a fictional story he wrote and turning it into a memoir because that would sell. They had no interest in doing it as fiction. If the editor who told him that should have lost his/her job over it. Maybe they did. Not sure.]
And then there’s the self-loathing.
“You’re not letting people read it as you write it. Nobody has ever read what you’re doing. It could be terrible. It could be brilliant. And you start to think, ‘Oh God, this is a complete piece of shit that couldn’t be published—nobody is going to read it.’ But then you have a sandwich and go, ‘I am a genius and I’m going to win the Booker Prize.’”
And even before the potential post-publication humiliation, there’s deadline pressure; crippling self-doubt; diets of Entenmann’s pastries and black coffee; self-made cubicles structured with piles of books, papers and unpaid bills; night-owl tendencies; failed relationships; unanswered phone calls; weight gain; poverty; and, of course, exhaustion.
But...if this is the case why do we do it?
Mr. Sullivan has held 27 jobs to support his writing career, from selling chapstick on the street to being a night guard in an art gallery (“That was my favorite job ever, because I just sat in a chair and read novels all day,” Mr. Sullivan added.)
He is currently working on his second novel. His first one, well, “There are eight drafts of it—they’re in my basement right now,” he said in a phone interview from his Fort Greene apartment. He trashed the novel after he got into a public fight with his first agent and decided to start anew. “You have to learn how to suppress your gag reflex in order to get anything out. Like in love, you make a lot of mistakes and you learn from them.”
Indeed, despite the heartbreak, the loneliness, the trashed drafts, the rejected proposals, writers will continue to reach for the golden ticket, the fulfillment of their American dream.
“In terms of the most joyous life to have in the world, in terms of pleasure receptors, it might be like being a heroin addict: It’s the most pleasurable thing that you could choose, if you have that constant access,” said Mr. Englander, before hanging up to head to the coffee shop and write. “I’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, it almost killed me,’ but I’m saying that in the most positive way, because it’s all I want to do.”
- The article is by Gillian Regan.
I remember ages ago...in a Creative Writing course in college - it was approximately a semesters worth of work crammed in the space of two months. Did the same thing for a Creative Writing Poetry course. All you did was crank out the work. In the space of two months I cranked out over fifty some stories, revised them, and worked late at night in the campus library computer room with over a 100 degree fever (didn't own my own computer so had to use the school's - computers were pricey back in those days). Ironically the story that ended up winning second place in the college's annual literary contest - was the one I wrote with the fever. At any rate, my Creative Writing prof, an old curmudegeon of a guy, looked a bit like a troll, or rather how I'd imagine a troll would look, wrinkles falling in on themselves, protruding upper lip, bulbous nose, bushy eyebrows, heavy forehead, big and squat, with bulging eyes behind magnifying glasses - told the class that if you were writing because you wanted to be a bestseller or Stephen King, for the glamour, don't. Since that was unlikely to happen. Write, he said, because you can't help yourself. Because you have something to say. The drive.
I looked at Wales the other night, somewhat bummed, and said..."It's true. I can't help myself. I've been known to stay up until midnight or two in the morning on a work night writing in my lj. That movie review I sent you? Nothing. Do those all the time. I would rather write than hang out with friends at a restaurant or bar. My jobs? To support my writing habit. It's insane. But I can't stop. I love it too much. I love writing stories, letters, posts, what-have-you. Just writing. I can't explain it."
Wales simply nodded and said, "you don't have to."
Anyhow - I found a link to it - so you too can read it and be comforted or not as the case may be.
http://www.observer.com/2007/my-book-deal-ruined-my-life
Here's a couple of snippets:
“You hear about these big contracts coming in, and it whets your appetite,” said Leah McLaren, a columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail, who landed a book contract with HarperCollins Canada in 2003 for her chick-lit novel, The Continuity Girl. “You start to think, ‘This is my lottery ticket …. It could be optioned for a movie or become a huge best-seller!’”
“But then, it could completely disappear and sell five copies,” added Ms. McLaren whose own book was published to little fanfare as a paperback original in the States this spring. “And you’ll never be heard from again. You’ll disappear. And that’s the real risk of writing a book.”
Then there are the truly epic downfalls of authors like James Frey, whose fabricated memoir caused his life (and his seven-figure two-book deal with Riverhead) to shatter into a million little pieces. Now he’s writing two novels without a contract and posting on the blog and message boards on his Web site, bigjimindustries.com—the literary equivalent of living in a trailer park.
[I always thought the publisher and editor should have gotten the brunt of that attack not Frey who was talked into taking a fictional story he wrote and turning it into a memoir because that would sell. They had no interest in doing it as fiction. If the editor who told him that should have lost his/her job over it. Maybe they did. Not sure.]
And then there’s the self-loathing.
“You’re not letting people read it as you write it. Nobody has ever read what you’re doing. It could be terrible. It could be brilliant. And you start to think, ‘Oh God, this is a complete piece of shit that couldn’t be published—nobody is going to read it.’ But then you have a sandwich and go, ‘I am a genius and I’m going to win the Booker Prize.’”
And even before the potential post-publication humiliation, there’s deadline pressure; crippling self-doubt; diets of Entenmann’s pastries and black coffee; self-made cubicles structured with piles of books, papers and unpaid bills; night-owl tendencies; failed relationships; unanswered phone calls; weight gain; poverty; and, of course, exhaustion.
But...if this is the case why do we do it?
Mr. Sullivan has held 27 jobs to support his writing career, from selling chapstick on the street to being a night guard in an art gallery (“That was my favorite job ever, because I just sat in a chair and read novels all day,” Mr. Sullivan added.)
He is currently working on his second novel. His first one, well, “There are eight drafts of it—they’re in my basement right now,” he said in a phone interview from his Fort Greene apartment. He trashed the novel after he got into a public fight with his first agent and decided to start anew. “You have to learn how to suppress your gag reflex in order to get anything out. Like in love, you make a lot of mistakes and you learn from them.”
Indeed, despite the heartbreak, the loneliness, the trashed drafts, the rejected proposals, writers will continue to reach for the golden ticket, the fulfillment of their American dream.
“In terms of the most joyous life to have in the world, in terms of pleasure receptors, it might be like being a heroin addict: It’s the most pleasurable thing that you could choose, if you have that constant access,” said Mr. Englander, before hanging up to head to the coffee shop and write. “I’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, it almost killed me,’ but I’m saying that in the most positive way, because it’s all I want to do.”
- The article is by Gillian Regan.
I remember ages ago...in a Creative Writing course in college - it was approximately a semesters worth of work crammed in the space of two months. Did the same thing for a Creative Writing Poetry course. All you did was crank out the work. In the space of two months I cranked out over fifty some stories, revised them, and worked late at night in the campus library computer room with over a 100 degree fever (didn't own my own computer so had to use the school's - computers were pricey back in those days). Ironically the story that ended up winning second place in the college's annual literary contest - was the one I wrote with the fever. At any rate, my Creative Writing prof, an old curmudegeon of a guy, looked a bit like a troll, or rather how I'd imagine a troll would look, wrinkles falling in on themselves, protruding upper lip, bulbous nose, bushy eyebrows, heavy forehead, big and squat, with bulging eyes behind magnifying glasses - told the class that if you were writing because you wanted to be a bestseller or Stephen King, for the glamour, don't. Since that was unlikely to happen. Write, he said, because you can't help yourself. Because you have something to say. The drive.
I looked at Wales the other night, somewhat bummed, and said..."It's true. I can't help myself. I've been known to stay up until midnight or two in the morning on a work night writing in my lj. That movie review I sent you? Nothing. Do those all the time. I would rather write than hang out with friends at a restaurant or bar. My jobs? To support my writing habit. It's insane. But I can't stop. I love it too much. I love writing stories, letters, posts, what-have-you. Just writing. I can't explain it."
Wales simply nodded and said, "you don't have to."
