Mostly what a writer does is sit alone
in a room in front of a computer monitor and type. Of course he reads, thinks, surfs
the Internet, remembers, imagines, talks to other people, makes connections, sees
a pattern, realizes he is imposing a predetermined order on reality rather than discovering
the order in the material.
He lives the life of the mind.
When his
books are published, he goes on tour, and reads from them. He attends workshops
and seminars on small press publishing, distribution, and sales. He belongs to professional
organizations like the old Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers (COSMEP),
or Poets & Writers, and is listed in the directory Poets & Writers
publishes, or Contemporary Authors.
Sometimes he goes to conventions,
like Bouchercon. A lot of trade shows, book fairs, arts festivals, and so forth,
often selling his wares, and autographing books.
Even an underground writer
does this, although on a bush-league scale, compared to a writer published by a reputable
commercial house.
This may be enough to keep the writer going: the joy of
doing it, the progress he sees himself making, in the work, the feedback he gets
from his coterie of steadfast readers, or cult, and his sense of belonging to a tradition,
that of the outsider.
He may even feel a kind of reverse-snob pride in being
excluded, and believe that being rejected by the mainstream gives him, and his work,
cachet-a kind of a street-cred cachet insiders lack. He may look down on insiders
as apparatchiks, whited sepulchers, phonies. Careerists.
I feel that way
about writing program graduates, writing instructors in universities, grants specialists
in foundations and arts agencies, book reviewers in the media of mass communication,
and editors at corporate book-publishing companies that are part of multi-media entertainment
conglomerates.
So there is a negative goad that keeps you going. I'll
show them.
SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL is a celebration of writing 250 books without
selling one to New York or Hollywood and an account of how I did it. What kept me
from quitting, selling out, or turning bitter.
By the time I saw such a milestone
within reach I had created a body of work, my stack, and invented a form to present
it in, daily typewriting, and I was damned if I was going to let two such related
feats pass unnoticed.
Who else has done it?
Nobody.
It's
not rational behavior, economically.
No, I had a call. From vocare.
Compare vocation.
I just kept writing about vocation and career in
conflict every day and before you know it I had written my first 250 books.
When a writer like me is discovered it's like catching a coelacanth. The whole typology
must be revised. Reputations are ruined, careers destroyed. Good. Everybody loves
an outlaw. Think of Waylon and Willie turning Nashville on its head.
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