You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Do you ever feel guilty as a reader? Not just in what you’re reading or in the things you “ought” to be doing in the time you’re engaged in a book or even a magazine, but also in the reality that you just can’t keep up in your particular field of interest?
And how about that nagging fear that maybe somebody else, somewhere, is already covering what you’re trying to develop … and probably doing it better?
Let’s begin with the competition. Readers are a minority in today’s society. If you want to tell your story or deliver the data in readable terms, it’s a shrinking audience, one further diced by increasing alternatives.
Let’s start with the first question. Do you read books? If not, nobody’s interested in yours. Period. Forget all the movies and so on of fame and wealth.
Google Books concluded that 129,864,880 books have been published since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440 up to 2010. But, thanks to self-publishing and ebooks, there’s been an explosion since.
It’s enough to make the writing life feel futile.
November is the month when a lot of amateur writers make a push to start and finish writing a novel. While I applaud the effort, I also question whether we need that many new manuscripts.
Again, definitive figures turn out to be elusive. Still, focusing on the United States, here’s what turns up:
These days, it seems that everyone I meet has written a book. As an author myself, I’d much rather for everyone to have read a book in the past week. Or, gee, even a newspaper.
Trying to get solid figures on how much is being published or read is trickier than you might suspect. But to get us started, let me offer some findings, albeit with a grain of salt. And, to further complicate matters, I’m not exactly sure how the researchers are defining “book.” I’m assuming textbooks, instruction manuals, catalogs, and the like are excluded. But cookbooks? They’re big in our household. That said, in the United States:
“Gimmicks” is, of course, a loaded word, pejorative, “cheap tricks,” say in contrast to “devices” or structural support or a Greek chorus or some such. In Vonnegut’s day, his repeated quips made him hip, sassy, cool, droll, fun to read, on the same shelf as supercharged Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson. They were never dull, archly serious, overtly pedantic. Oh, maybe strike the last item, in retrospect. But somehow we always wanted another hit. I don’t mean that in the best-seller sense. No, that would be a sell-out. (Maybe that’s the crux of the issue you’re raising.)
As much as I loved Vonnegut’s work, especially Rosewater, I’m surprised how little I remember all these years later, apart from the asterisk, just don’t ask me which novel that punctuated.
By the way, I am taken with the ideal of a short novel, though obtaining that can be elusive.
One facet to consider is the way Vonnegut spoke from the Midwest, a region largely ignored or overlooked in American literature, in contrast to New York City mostly Manhattan but rarely Queens or the Bronx. That in itself was a major accomplishment, even if it was from his firehouse on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. So it goes.
Well, his father did run a hardware store and had to sell, uh, useful gimmicks. Drain stoppers, screws, nuts, hammers. (Bang, bang, expletive.)
It is amazing how much “bad writing” fills “great literature,” or even the New York Times Magazine, as one of my ambitious writing teachers led us to see. (He, too, had his own addiction to cool as in gimmicks.)
One question you stir up is how much a piece works for the time when it’s published and how much will still work (function) in later eras? And why?
What did your daughter think of the book, anyway?
Many of the typos are a consequence of deep revisions.
Blame revision, too, for the times when subject/verb or the time tenses don’t match, especially when a novel shifted direction after an earlier draft.
The fact remains that for a writer, the work is rarely if ever actually finished.
It’s like an itch, actually.
Others have pointed out that most of the places I’ve resided in have been rich in natural beauty. While I’ve dampened that with an argument that you can find beauty wherever you are, or at least visual stimulation, I do have to concede how rarely that’s the case.
Many places, in fact, are brutal on the eyeballs.
Part of the attraction to Eastport for me was, after all, its access to wilderness and a rugged shoreline. Good shots seem to be waiting everywhere.
It shouldn’t be surprising that I’m overwhelmed by the number of solid photos I’ve been taking. How on earth is one supposed to organize them, much less share them?
It’s not like the old days of light meters, F-stops, film, or even focus, either.
Digital makes it a snap. All you have to do is look and see something.
And, yes, sometimes the camera – or cell phone – sees something more.
Eastport is a pedestrian-friendly village with old houses and storefronts, meaning more variety and detail than you’d find in the average drive-by suburb. It’s surrounded by forests, shorelines, and streams that present more opportunities. No wonder we see people pointing their lenses everywhere, and not just for selfies.
Where are all of these images going to go, anyway?
The author misuses “that” for “who.”
Or uses single quotation marks randomly where a double is required.
It really smacks of amateurish, a warning of some less than savvy writing ahead. Still, there’s a chance the content will outweigh faulty prose – no guarantees, though.
Creatively, I’m feeling a lull or perhaps more accurately adrift.
After my Cape Cod presentation via Zoom earlier this month, I have no other Quaking Dover events on the horizon. Nor do I feel compelled to undertake another big writing venture.
Authors these days are often saddled with the promotional end of any publication, and I’m coming up on a year of launching the marketing push on my latest book. Admittedly, I am proud of my public appearances on its behalf – each one unique, reflecting what another writer declared a “rich feast of a book” – but it’s also exhausting, especially, as I hate to confess, at my age.
Do I cut the ties and say it’s time for the book to sink or swim on its own, or do I find new ways to try to generate a buzz? It is the one book that seems to speak to a wider audience, especially, say, than poetry or my hippie novels.
The blogging hits have slowed down, perhaps as many viewers have shifted to other platforms. Social media and mass media both appear to be hemorrhaging there, so I can’t say I’m alone.
I’m certainly out of touch with youth and often can’t understand their conversations. That really hurts. I believe there’s so much knowledge that needs to be handed down but don’t know where to begin. Besides, I’ve often found them a source of great energy in my own outlook.
In short, I don’t have a big project calling for my attention and devotion. That part feels really weird.
I do have a big backlog of periodicals and books to finally tackle as well as a shelf of personal journals that deserve visiting, so that points to an overdue reading orgy.
There’s plenty of outdoors around here to indulge in, too.
I may even have to look at my remaining possessions and reorganize and cull them.
As I’m saying, I’m feeling a bit strange.
I’ve loved the phrase, “island garden,” even before we relocated to Moose Island, Maine.
The resonance comes in a classic book of that title by poet Celia Thaxter from her efforts on Appledore Island at the other end of the state. Her volume is illustrated by the great American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam, an addicted summer visitor. He made some stunning paintings on the island.
My wife and I did make a pilgrimage to the site, which once included a hotel considered by many to be America’s first artists’ colony. Nowadays, you do need permission to land there – we arrived on a research vessel as guests of the University of New Hampshire, which shares a major ornithological center with Cornell in what had been a World War II watchtower and bunkers.
Moose Island, in contrast, connects to the mainland by a causeway – no need for a ferry – but it’s still an island, an element that grows in awareness the longer I’m here.
Celia’s text often laments the arrival of garden slugs on the previously uninfected island, a pestilence we certainly understand, even before relocating from New Hampshire.
Alas, we do have those slimy destructors here. Apparently, Celia was unaware of the advantages of using seaweed as a mulch, one that repels the offenders in both its fresh and dried states. It’s something I’ve previously posted on. And something I need to reapply here.
While her garden was mostly flowers, ours skewers more toward edible items. And that adds a further layer of offenders, as you’ve been seeing here: deer. The ones with voracious appetites.
Jnana's Red Barn 