Writers Who Can’t Read

Here’s an interesting addendum to the whole matter of writers who don’t read… a writer who can’t read.

Justify Your Purchasing Habits

the fish swim to me
my basket is always full
a river of books

(Or: Why I shop for books on Amazon.)

I read on about this on Kristin Nelson’s blog. A publishing house is asking writers who submit without an agent to show a receipt of a book they’ve recently purchased from a brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Writers who cannot afford to buy a book or cannot get to an actual bookstore are encouraged to explain why in haiku or one sentence (100 words or fewer). Tin House Books and Tin House magazine will consider the purchase of e-books as a substitute only if the writer explains: why he or she cannot go to his or her neighborhood bookstore, why he or she prefers digital reads, what device, and why. Writers are invited to videotape, film, paint, photograph, animate, twitter, or memorialize in any way (that is logical and/or decipherable) the process of stepping into a bookstore and buying a book to send along for our possible amusement and/or use on our Web site.”

I buy 99% of my books online. Usually, I still order a tree book; sometimes, I’ll order an e-book. (I have a Kindle.) Publishers should be glad. I buy less books when I go into a book store, because I have to carry them. The weight is an uncomfortable reminder about how much money I’m spending. When I shop online, it’s oh-so-dangerously easy to keep clicking away… I have about 400 items in my “Save For Later” Basket. It’s embarrassing to admit how much I spend on books. Let’s just say it’s actually more than I can afford. If “Confessions of a Shopoholic” had been about a book-buying addition, that would have described me.

I also occasionally order books directly from the publisher, especially academic books.

Honestly, if I could make enough money to pay for all the books by other authors I purchase, I would be satisfied. Unfortunately, most advances aren’t that high.

The picture is by the artist Mary McShane. Visit her gallery.

haiku drafts

a river of books
one click or in my basket
fish who swim to me

a river of books
my online basket is full
fish who swim to me

a river of books
my basket always full of
fish who swim to me

a river of books
my online basket is full
the fish swim to me

the fish swim to me
my basket is always full
a river of books

It depends on what a society values. Not everyone has the ability to master Algebra either, yet we expect all students to do so. I wish someone had just let me take a year of Novel Writing in high school instead of making me repeat Algebra three times. I’m a third generation writer. My grandfather and my father both wrote novels, never published. Those novels weren’t that good, and didn’t deserve to be published, but if they had been able to spend as much time on learning to write as they did on the jobs they took to feed their family, I suspect they would have become much, much better.

Everyone should write a novel and a memoir. At least once.

As a writer, I’m glad they don’t. I have enough friggin’ competition already. And I understand why agents don’t want to encourage more wannabes to submit than already do.

But if one values good literature in and of itself, I think everyone who possibly can or wants to should indeed write. Because I don’t think you find gold by discouraging dross. On the contrary, the more people who try to write, work at it, slave away at it, strive to bring their prose to professional standards, the more gems WILL unexpectedly emerge from the miner’s pan.

Yes, I’ve read slush, so painful, so trite, oy, and I understand the urge to say, “Do yourself a favor. Study accounting.”

But I’ve also read stories that touched me deeply, even though the grammar seemed to be borrowed from another language. I used to work in a shelter for homeless teens, and some of those kids wrote things that made me weep. Those stories would never be accepted by any publishing house. There might have been sixty pages in a row lacking capitalization, apostrophes or periods. Does that mean those stories didn’t speak to the human condition?

I often wonder how many stories we never see because they are lost through the filters of convention and profitability.

I’m not condemning agents and publishers for doing their job as gatekeepers against the tide of trash. I understand the need for that. But I think there’s a good reason for the caution to never assume you have the right to tell someone, “You can’t make art.” Art belongs to the soul.

Now, to tell someone, “You can’t make MONEY making art.” Well. That’s another story. All the idiots who think they are entitled to be rich and famous from knocking off a novel or two…. Let’s just be glad that writing isn’t real estate.

Everyone should write a novel and a memoir. At least once.

As a writer, I’m glad they don’t. I have enough friggin’ competition already. And I understand why agents don’t want to encourage more wannabes to submit than already do.

But if one values good literature in and of itself, I think everyone who possibly can or wants to should indeed write. Because I don’t think you find gold by discouraging dross. On the contrary, the more people who try to write, work at it, slave away at it, strive to bring their prose to professional standards, the more gems WILL unexpectedly emerge from the miner’s pan.

Yes, I’ve read slush, so painful, so trite, oy, and I understand the urge to say, “Do yourself a favor. Study accounting.”

But I’ve also read stories that touched me deeply, even though the grammar seemed to be borrowed from another language. I used to work in a shelter for homeless teens, and some of those kids wrote things that made me weep. Those stories would never be accepted by any publishing house. There might have been sixty pages in a row lacking capitalization, apostrophes or periods. Does that mean those stories didn’t speak to the human condition?

I often wonder how many stories we never see because they are lost through the filters of convention and profitability.

I’m not condemning agents and publishers for doing their job as gatekeepers against the tide of trash. I understand the need for that. But I think there’s a good reason for the caution to never assume you have the right to tell someone, “You can’t make art.” Art belongs to the soul.

Now, to tell someone, “You can’t make MONEY making art.” Well. That’s another story. All the idiots who think they are entitled to be rich and famous from knocking off a novel or two…. I do wish they would do the world a favor and go back to some harmless get-rich-quick profession like real estate or oil drilling.

Words Light as Rocks

Ugh. One ugly sentence after another. Every word is like a rock. I lay down one, another, another and another… then they all spill at my feet, hurting my brain.

Shelter for a Fragil Thought

“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.”

~Edward P. Morgan

There are emotions too shameful, or fleeting, or strange to admit to any form of documentation except fiction.