So you want to write the next Great American Novel. You sit in front of your computer, hands ready to type, ideas filling your mind to the brim, and you begin to write. What happens next is the difference between a writer and everyone else.
(my response to Andrew Sprong’s Blog, Writing is Labor of Love –
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2735638.M_Andrew_Sprong/blog/3530-Writing-is-a-Labor-of-Love)
Everything you write is so correct. It’s even buffered by the fact that you have published under your own name. You struck out on your own.
Yet I find there’s another side to the story.
I love writing. And quite frankly I don’t know how I or any writer could expect to sell a million or so copies of a book with or without publicity when the economy is so poor along with the fact that people are so busy.
With the U.S. publishing 300,000 books each year–I don’t know if that includes self-published or not–I think it’s a little ego centric for me to come up with a plausible reason why a great volume of readers should choose to read my book over all the other 299,999 books that are published–except that someone told them to–say as with huge amounts of publicity that as you so correctly point out publishers pay quite steeply for.
And let me say. There’s a cost to having your book so heavily publicized by a top publisher. No longer are you simply writing from your heart. You become part of the publisher’s bread-and-butter currency.
In so many ways they own you.
I don’t want to be owned by anyone or any one thing or entity.
That is not to say that I don’t think my books are well-written, at least to be best of my and my my editor’s ability. I seek to do my personal best when writing and preparing a book for publication. I have been traditionally published and am now self-publishing my novel.
And yes, writing and selling one’s work is a business.
But when does the business of writing reach a point of tear at one’s soul–and in such a way–a such depths that their writing no longer holds their, the writer’s interest–and subsequently that of their readers–who have oftentimes remained loyal?
Statistics show that only 5% of the the books published sell enough to reap profits that sustain not only the costs for their publication, but that of the remaining 95% of books published.
If your books is a best seller you are essentially a workhorse for the other books.
And that is an honor. Yet and still for a writer to become known for that kind of consistent output and production, brings costs with it.
I often wonder what kind of family life they have.
What is the nature of their relationships with their children?
Do they have a spouse that as Stephen King so eloquently deems his wife–the one who holds things stable in my life so that I can write–or are they as I read of Jurassic Park author, Michael Crichton, the husband of 5 women, four of whom he parted with in divorce? A Harvard physician, he died at age 66 from throat cancer.
Michael achieved a lot. The success of his books also provided many jobs for a lot of people. He was a work horse that I am certain loved his work. Yet and still we are all human.
Thus I return to the title of this blog–“Writing is a Labor of Love”.
Any child who’s sat down to write a story consisting of 5 sentences each using one of the week’s spelling words knows that writing requires labor.
But how often do we finish a day’s worth of writing to open our chests and breathe in not simply the rush of accomplishment that comes with having completed the task of your commitment to this liturgy of ours–the spiritual work of our soul–writing the words of our hearts and shaping them to have clarity and meaning? But how often do we feel the love that not only goes into the words we type and/or put down on paper? As well–how often do we feel the effects of that love–the love that went into imagining the story, setting the initial draft to print, revising it and then launching it into the world–and also the love of the story and our love for story–that so deeply and ultimately transforms us as writers. The love of image and word, and phrase that reaches beyond all understanding of why we do this over and over–and return to do it once more?