Writing for an Audience

Probably the best diatribe on the ludicrous nature of the publishing industry that I have read in recent memory comes from Jack Engelhard, author of Indecent Proposal and The Bathsheba Deadline.

Anyway, it seems that even best selling novelists have their issues with the industry. (I think in Engelhard's case it may be with a reviewer who did not sing the praises of his latest tome, but I am just guessing...) In fact Engelhard quotes both Hemingway (who apparently told Bernard Berenson, "Having books published is very destructive to writing"), and Salinger ("There is a marvelous peace in not publishing") even as he outlines the impossible steps it takes to get something published.

So why try? Because as Engelhard says "a book being read constitutes a private and intimate conversation between reader and book"--not between reader and author--in which the author has no business intruding. It is not about what the author meant or didn't mean or whether or not his/her work is influenced by some deep dark secret of his/her past--it is about what the reader reads and to Englehard, "readers who understand this--they are what keeps us going."

But it's not easy. First you have to find an agent but "that is impossible if you don't already have an agent." You also can't get published unless you are already published and quality doesn't matter, as long as you are "marketable."

And then there is the business of being assigned an editor who may or may not "get" what you are trying to say (Don't be too literary--you aren't literary enough) only to be thrown to the critics, which in this day and age is anyone and everyone who writes a review for Amazon.

In case you don't know this, one of the sure fire ways to generate interest in a book you are trying to sell is to convince a bunch of your friends to post glowing reviews on Amazon. Of course, the same thing applies in reverse. The fastest way to watch your book bomb is with a review by Joe Schmoe who just might be out to get you.

And if you think that reviews don't matter, Engelhard notes Frank Rich, the former theater critic for the New York Times actually laughed on Don Imus' radio program when he remembered "that some of the stage plays he poisoned were not so bad after all, and some were even good, very good." And yet, Englehard wonders how many of the plays that literally closed after one night because Rich panned them were written by playwrights who never wrote again?

So there you have it. We crazy writers who write because it is in our blood, subject ourselves to an awful lot of pitfalls before we can share it with the people for whom we write--the few "dear readers" who do indeed "get it." Which is why blogs are so wonderful for the purists who agree with Hemingway, and probably why my Barbaro story needs to be rethought. Which is a shame because I think there are some people who just might like to read it, regardless of what I have to say.