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MY FRIENDS, I am not a good man, by any stretch. Good men do great things selflessly; all I do is bitch and complain and trust me, any entertainment you derive from my bitching and complaining is purely accidental. I think the best anyone can do is be honest with themselves and be aware of their faults and shortcomings. Shovel all the bullshit you want at the world, that's fine, but don't bullshit yourself, is my motto. If only my fellow authors took this advice.
I try to avoid my fellow writers as much as possible. First of all, they usually want to discuss writing. I don't recall joining a club or paying dues, and I don't recall telling anyone that I wanted to earnestly discuss literature and my current writing projects: I don't. I started writing alone, in my room, and that's how I like it. But my fellow writers, sweet jebus, that's all they want to do. They want to tell me what they're working on, what their influences are, blah blah blah, shoot me in the head. Plus, aside from this boring tendency, they tend to be arrogant little fucks. I know this because I am a writer. You need to be arrogant to withstand the tsunami of rejection and criticism you get on a daily basis. This does not, of course, make arrogance any more of an attractive personality trait-just ask The Inner Swine Inner Circle. They'll tell you. Sweet jebus will they tell you. So, I avoid my fellow scribes. That doesn't mean I completely ignore them. In fact, I find the little bastards endlessly fascinating, in the same way your white trash second cousin's descent into alcoholism and small claims court can be fascinating-from a distance. Lord love the Internet, because it allows me to watch them eat their own dog food when it comes to the bullshit they're shoveling at the world. I get this entertainment simply by looking at their author photos and reading their author bios. The photos? Often pathetic, dependably entertaining. The bios? Often laughably walleyed. Any time I need a good chuckle, I surf on over to a web site like www.publishamerica.com or www.authorsden.com and take in the sights. The photo. The main problem these writers have is that they think of being a writer as a lifestyle choice. They resent being required to actually achieve something (like being published legitimately) in order to have all the trappings, so they seek out the trappings. They're playing dress-up. They go out and get a book printed through a vanity publisher like Publish America, so they have the softcover book in bound form, check. Then they set up a web page (whether their own or through something like the Author's Den) where they can 'promote' their book. Check. The final piece of writerly cruft they need to complete the illusion is, of course, the posed author photo, the sort of PR photo used on book jackets and in incidental articles on the author appearing in magazines etc. If I were seven again and pretending to be a writer, which I did (let's not get into my sad, sad childhood of the mind) that's exactly what I'd do. Hell, that's exactly what I did: Bind together some looseleaf pages into a book, complete with faux copyright page, write up a one-paragraph bio, and have a picture of myself staring solemnly at the typewriter. The author photos on these web pages are all the same: Taken by some 'photographer' friend of theirs, or at the very least one of those accidentally serious photos we all have sitting around. They usually emphasize the writer's seriousness. They are always stiffly posed, and often contain props like books, a typewriter or laptop, and elements from their obsessions-cum-literary subjects. The photos are so horrifyingly serious they might as well have the words I AM NOT A CRANK embossed along the bottom. Sometimes the photos are actually professional, black-and-white headshots, which just makes me wonder: Did they really go out and pay a few hundred bucks to have real headshots done? The Bio. The biographies on these web sites are always fun. They almost always contain the following information, usually in this order: 1. They have always loved to read; 2. They have been writing since childhood OR they have recently had some sort of midlife crisis and emerged from it charred and smoky, manuscript in hand; 3. Their 'bestselling' first novel is available through Publish America; 4. They're already working on a second novel; 5. Because they are writers and cannot be stopped. Sometimes they mention their children, too, usually as "my greatest achievement". Do not get me started on listing a biological instinct as your greatest achievement. Let's just say it puts you on the same footing as Porn stars. Here's a representative bio, taken off the web without permission: . . .I have been married for 18 years and have given birth to 6 children. . .In February of 2002 I lost my job of 10 years. After a month and a half of feeling sorry for myself and finding a very poor job market I decided to write a book. I told my husband and kids I wanted to write a book and to my surprise they said go for it, you can do it. So I did. . .I had this story starting to tell its tale in my mind and all I had to do was listen. When I finished I found it was just the beginning. Book two (the continuation) is telling its tale now. I am still not sure where it will end. What really gets me about these bios is the smug way they all talk about loving to read and needing to write, as if this were some sort of special genetic mutation they received from the cosmos. You have to imagine that they're still trying to make themselves feel better about their miserable, lonely adolescence: Sure, I was a lonely thisclosetoColumbine kid who re-read The Lord of the Rings on Prom Night, alone in my room, but that's because I am a special mutated GIFT FROM GOD because I read books and have a PASSION FOR WRITING [snork][snuffle][don'tlookatmeI'mhideous]. Instead of viewing those lonely, book-filled years as part of growing up, they choose to see themselves as superior, evolved humans who will one day transform into a being of pure energy and leave the rest of us suckers writhing in agony as the Earth is destroyed by Nerds. Some of these people, of course, might have great books in them, and it's a shame then that they will put all this effort into pretending to be published, and then never pursue real publication-or even real self-publication. They go solemnly out to the backyard and pose for their author picture as they gaze off into the distance, thinking deep thoughts, and that's all she wrote. Of course, I am superior. Or so I like to tell myself. E-mail me your outrage here. Jeff |
April 30, 2004