Next Article
Back to Zine cover
The last line of the above describes a discipline I didn't always have, and don't always have now.
A little sign above my writing table (or more accurately, where my writing table used to be before Life interfered) says "Writing without publishing is like acting without applause". It's been there for decades. Recently, I've noticed it again and thought it should probably say "Writing without publishing means there must be a reason".
I like to think of myself as a latter-day Gentile Fran Lebowitz. I'm certainly no Dorothy Parker; totally lacking her sophistication and her genius for the turn of a phrase. That's what we used to call clever and entertaining writing. Most of today's writers (which now includes everybody over the age of nine with access to a computer) would not recognize "the turn of a phrase" any more than they do correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, or paragraphs of more than one sentence.
But having matured somewhat in my chosen calling as a writer, (and having been at it in varying periods of production for over half a century, I should hope so), I've developed a few rules to try to follow myself and wish others would. I only wish, I don't insist. I am not a government regulatory bureau; my rules do not apply only to others, they apply mostly to me.
One of my rules is "If you can't write it very well, don't". There may be times when you can't tell until you take it out and look at it six months later. If you're not staring at it in horror, it's probably okay. This rule should have a codicil; "don't put it on a web page if you're not sure." That is one I wish a lot of others had, but most don't even observe the basic commandment of words - if you can't spell it or use it correctly, don't. Simply applying that one to the words "there", "their" and "they're" might increase unemployment among journalists alarmingly. To them, not to me.
Another rule is "you can't write about your own unhappy, unsatisfied, non-conformist or plain depressed life, because, unless you're Oscar Wilde, you are just boring." Nobody wants to read it and no writer likes to be boring, even though so many of them really work at it. This does not explain the brief apparent popularity of all the purposely prurient autobiographies by people we never heard of, before they hit the remainder bins and get sold on Amazon for one penny if they can be sold at all. I didn't claim my rules could be verified by reality. But I follow this one.
Here is another rule I follow: "You shouldn't write fiction unless you have an actual talent for it". I used to have a way of thinking up good plots and characters and outlining a novel, but that's as far as it got. When I find the outlines thirty or forty years later, I throw them out. If it was in me to write a novel, I would have. Obviously it wasn't. (I do like to claim I was just too busy - once again, that interference known as "Life".) Even if a much more literate public might have paid $3.00 to read your novel in 1950, the present public isn't going to pay $30.00 to read it now.
Many are the tomes in this age of information which never should have been written or, once they had been, never should have been published. I suspect a lot of these books hit the trash cans of people who are gagging. But that's assuming anybody is actually reading in the first place. And you know what they say about assuming. (Well, our oldest generation - mine - knows, anyway.)
However, and this is rather peculiar to me, having come from the era of pink rejection slips, you can get any non-fiction (or what claims to be) published in the present era by greasing the right palm or politician if it is, of course, politically correct this week. Which means it never, of course, mentions God or Republicans in any remotely complimentary way. Don't any publishers (I use the word loosely) send out rejection slips any more? They should, particularly for non-fiction, which is my forte' so I can say that.
One of my rules is good for non-writers as well; "When you start something, finish it". I seem to have a bit of trouble with that one, having often found unfinished poems and articles which had been laying around somewhere for years. It usually doesn't work to try to finish these years later, and they're better tossed or deleted. So, in order to avoid the shock to a writer's psyche of tossing or deleting anything, finish it.
You may correctly note, that's what I'm trying to do right now.
Acting without applause doesn't sound like any fun. Writing without publishing - I know that isn't. I'd venture to guess that a great many writers were unpublished (and let's be clear, being published is not what makes one a writer) before the internet. Now, of course, anybody who can string a few words together (and some who can't even do that) are "published" by themselves on the internet. So am I, voluminously. Big whoop. The company is somehow not the same, I have discovered in this latter-day. That's not an elitist remark. I know the difference between National Review and a blog. (Although National Review could have a blog, too, by now - I haven't looked.)
To me, publishing still means on that old anachronism, paper. There may be some decent writers in this group (and yes, I count myself among the "decent" or I wouldn't be here) and probably better ones than those being published (this is not hard to guess), but the best ones are writing, if not best sellers, at least columns for magazines and newspapers. So are some of the worst ones. But just try to crack that market. I'd like to believe it's luck, but I don't. It must sometimes be related to laziness on the part of the writer, I'd like not to believe, but I do.
Last rule: Nobody, actor or writer, gets applause by being lazy. Wait. Correction. Most of them don't. But I suppose that's the rule I need to work on now.
Thanks for reading.