Publetariat

I watched the most godawful movie the other day. It’s my fault, usually my 10-minute rule is pretty good. But somehow this one lasted beyond 10 minutes and we suffered through it. [New York, I Love You] With a cast of people who I generally like, an interesting soundtrack, and pretty good cinematography I had to think about why it was so terrible to watch. First, the stories were not compelling. They were overly dramatized in these long cinematic sequences.

It was smug. It was self-gratuitous.

It was like the film was masturbating right in front of our eyes. It was fully enjoying itself, in all its glory, parading around in its celebrities, music, and eye-candy. Well guess what, Hollywood, you clearly made this film for yourself and not us, the viewers. Not to mention the inaccuracies, which grate on a viewer like nothing else. NEVER in my life has anyone ever gotten into my cab; and I have never gotten into anyone else’s cab. Doesn’t happen. So, L.A., please don’t use that stupid scene again.

So it got me thinking about self-gratuitous art (elephant dung and Jesus pictures), and self-gratuitous music (5 minute long guitar solos), and self-gratuitous cooking (obscure, tasteless variations of offal with fruit combinations), and self-gratuitous dance. And of course, self-gratuitous writing.

What exactly do I mean by self-gratuitous? Being different just for the sake of being different, without any particular meaningful purpose is a component of this characterization. Or writing overly descriptive passages that don’t serve the story–or worse, divert from the character development or the story. When I took my first acting class, the instructor kept telling us not to act self-gratuitously. I had no idea what he meant and I was terrified of violating this cardinal rule, yet I didn’t know what to do to avoid doing so. Then I watched two guys do the seminal passage from Waiting for Godot and it was just dripping with an indescribable smugness that our instructor couldn’t even explain, but to stomp around and throw things and curse in Russian. It was then that I learned what it was to be smug on stage.

One could even argue that the beloved Chuck Bukowski wrote self-gratuitously. Certainly some poetry is self-gratuitous, serving only the writer in the secret code of meaning. Experimental writing walks a fine line; and self-gratuitous to one may be high art to another. But the discerning judgment lies with the reader, ultimately; and that is what should keep any writer (and artist, musician, filmmaker, fashion designer and dancer) staying on the right side of the self-gratuitous argument.

Gaining confidence in your art and writing shouldn’t necessitate smugness; but it also shouldn’t be a continuous struggle, right? As I get started on my new novel whose characters I’m absolutely in love with, I will keep that front of mind through the duration of my writing so they don’t become small details of masturbatory writing exercises.

This is a cross-posting from Jenn Topper‘s Don’t Publish Me! blog.

reposted from 9/2009

This my entry for Publetariat’s one-year anniversary contest.

Friday, Civil War Days begins in Belle Plaine, Iowa. I’m going to sell my books in the park on the fringes of North versus south battles. So am I ready?

I’ve watched the weather forecasts. Looks like perfect days for having a table full of books outside. To help the customers visually see what kind of books I write, I made place cards that states the genre to place by each pile of books. It would be a good thing if the wind wasn’t too strong, or I will spend time chasing those place cards down. Also, the bookmarkers I printed that list my inventory and address for future reference.

I’ve been doing a mental list in my head this morning. It has taken a lot of preparation for this three day event. I’ve got an aluminum folding table left over from my craft sale days. (Those craft sales are where I learned some salesmanship.) An Indian blanket for a table cover, doesn’t go along with the Civil War but in that century. Dressing in a pioneer dress and wearing a bonnet should give me some attention. (How did I come by a pioneer dress and bonnet? I revamped a dress and sewed the bonnet years ago when I volunteered at Usher Ferry in Cedar Rapids. I was spinning in a one room log cabin as the woman who lived there. When visitors came in, I had to tell them about my life. It was fun to act the part.) I still have my money box from craft show days (a small fishing tackle box). It’s perfect with a top divided shelf for change and the bottom for bills. I bought a mesh folding chair with a canopy top so I wouldn’t have to sit in direct sunlight. Haven’t had it out of the bag to see if I can set it up. Every time I buy something in a bag or box that needs put together, I’ve found it a struggle to put the object back in the bag. So guess I’ll wing putting the chair together in the park after I have the table set up.

After some fall house cleaning, I found a four by four poster board upstairs to use for a sign to lean against the table. This advertisement shows that I am a local person. That might help get me some interest if not sales. So I printed large banners and tacked them to the poster board. The sign reads Keystone Author Fay Risner – Book Sale – Featuring – Ella Mayfield’s Pawpaw Militia . On each side of the Book Sale line was a blank space so I put a picture of my book cover on one side and a Confederate Flag on the other. That definitely states which side of the war I’m on. Figured I might as well join. You can’t hear it in my writing, but I have a southern accent. That would be a dead give away if I tried to join the Union forces. They might shoot me for a spy.

I have no idea where I am to set up. The man I talked to said I could be by a building where reenactors sell their wares. Guess someone will point me in the right direction.

Friday is the day the schools bring students to learn about the Civil War. I wanted to be a part of that education. Besides, a presentation will go along with my book. So I made up another poster board. While the reenactors will be talking military feats, I will be discussing Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers. A time line of the border war between Kansas territory and Missouri is on the poster. A large Missouri map dominates the board with stars for important places and Vernon County drawn in so the children can see where my history comes from.

I won’t have anyone to watch my table and I don’t know how far it will be to the concession stand. I baked an apple cake. That will be meals and snacks plus I’m taking a large container of ice tea.

My husband isn’t so sure all this stuff will fit in my small car. Best be prepared. Today I pack the car just to see how is the best way to fit everything in. It will be good to have that much done. I’ll have to get an early start to be set up before 9 a.m.

No matter what, this will be a fun experience going back in time amid the smell and explosions of gunpowder, war cries and crowd appreciation of the battles. Lincoln will give his Gettysburg Address, a church service will be held under the open sky and much more. I can’t wait to get there.

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Have you ever had a family mystery tale passed down through the generations. The story is usually elaborated on along the way. My southern Missouri family had one such mystery in the 1930’s.

The mystery was the disappearance of my mother’s aunt. Aunt Leona was the sister of my mother’s father. She was five years older than my mother. The two of them saw a lot of each other when they were growing up.

It was agreed by the family that Leona was very spoiled. She was born a few years after the other four children were about grown. Her mother gave her baby girl anything she asked for including nice clothes which were the envy of my mother who didn’t have nice things.

The mystery took place in the Great Depression. Leona and her mother spent a lot of time making quilts. By the time she was in her mid twenties, Leona had a closet full of quilts stored for her hope chest. When she fell in love with a trucker, her parents disapproved. What they had against him was not clear. Who knows if Leona really loved him or just didn’t want to wind up an old maid. Nothing they said could change Leona’s mind so they gave her a fancy wedding in their front yard. According to a niece, one of Mom’s younger sisters, she wore a lovely white dress and large straw hat which in Depression times was considered expensive.

A few days later, Leona’s husband brought her back to collect her closet full of quilts. They left and were never seen again. Did she leave of her own free will? Did he murder her? Was he the bad person Leona’s parents feared, and she just didn’t want to hear, "I told you so."?

About fifteen years ago, I wrote to the reader to reader column in Capper’s, asking if anyone could help me find descendants of Aunt Leona. While I waited for a reply, I began to worry. In today’s world, the type of person who might answer my ad or show up to visit as a relative might not be to my liking. What had I let myself in for? As it turned out, I didn’t have anyone answer my request.

A few years later, I wrote Specious Nephew, Book two in the Amazing Gracie Mystery Series. ISBN 1438248202 sold on my bookstore website http://www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com

and Amazon

Let’s start with the word Specious in the title. This is the way my mother pronounced suspicious, but I was surprised to find that the word specious is in the dictionary. The pronunciation fits right in with my historical mystery. However, the word tends to give libraries the impression that I misspelled the word. I’ve seen my book acknowledged in a library notice where in the title the word had been changed to suspicious to help me out.

The premise of the story is that Moser Mansion For Women resident Melinda Applegate hasn’t any family close by to invite to a special wedding for the Moser Mansion owner’s back yard wedding. So she sends a plea to the reader to reader column. If she has relatives she would like to hear from them.

Unlike me, Melinda gets an answer. A young man, Jeffrey Armstrong, shows up just in time for the wedding. He claims to be Melinda’s nephew. She’s more than willing to believe him, but Gracie Evans is not. He appears to be a con artist after what little money Melinda has. Gracie tries to warn the Moser residents but not one of them listens to her so she is determined to prove the man is up to no good.

Next week, I’ll give you an excerpt to show you why Gracie thinks the man is dishonest.

Try http://andiriel.blogspot.com for some funny essays.

This is as good a "quick hit" as any for my first (but not last) blog post on Publetariat.  not sure if this is better off in the forum, but I’ll do it here and stand corrected if I shouldn’t have.  anyway. .

Literary Agent Kathleen Ortiz of Lowenstein Associates is having a query contest this week on her blog. Three winners will get a full critique of their query from Ms. Ortiz. It’s a great opportunity for your writers out there to get some professional feedback on the hook for your magnum opus.

More and more agents are doing things like this, and to my way of thinking it is valuable for just about any author.  I am actually submitting to agents at the moment, but even if you’re going to self-publish, professional feedback about your hook is always helpful in figuring out how best to use it to promote your book.

So what do you have to do? Well, you can check out the exact rules on her blog at http://kortizzle.blogspot.com/2010/02/query-contest.html. She’s got an easy way and a hard way, so choose. . .wisely.

– Ed

An update on my Corel Print/Photo Shop computer software. In mid December, advertising came in an email about the software being on sale. I’ve wanted new software for a long time. The freebie I got in the 90’s with my first computer was lacking many of the latest additions this software has. I ordered right away, and the software came soon. To my consternation, the disk wouldn’t download automatically. I didn’t get the computer book for dummies I asked Santa to bring me so I was on my own.

After some dialogue with a help support person at Corel, she finally thought to ask me if I had a DVD player. The disk is dvd. I found the disk stated that on it, but who looks at the fine print on a software disk. No, my computer doesn’t have a dvd player, and I’m betting that a lot of other computers for home use are not set up with one, either. I debated sending the software back rather than have a player installed in my computer. Then I decided to buy an external dvd player online. I might only use it once, but my reasoning was the software was on sale and within my price range at the moment. By the time I added the price of the DVD player that brought the total up, but still only about half what the software usually costs. I really, really wanted that software, but now I own a DVD player I may never have a need for again.

I did ask the Corel support helper if I could return the software in exchange for the download version. Would it install? However, I pointed out that I have dial up and it takes hours and hours to download anything from online. The Helper didn’t reply which leads me to believe she expected me to have a problem.

The dvd player is plug and play. I plugged its Y posts into two holes in the portable USB station. The player wouldn’t work. After several days of struggling with why, I finally got the brain storm to plug the player in the back USB ports. Not a handy place on the back side of my computer under the desk. Now the DVD player is way to the back of the computer. However, I got down on my hands and knees with a flashlight and plugged the software in. Right away it installed. Why? I emailed my brother that knows about computers. Turns out the portable unit doesn’t have the power the USB ports on the back do. Seems I never stop learning about my computer.

To Corel’s credit, the company support help does try to talk you through a problem. Once I got the DVD player, my mind was on how to make it work. A week or so later, I got an email from Corel asking me if I was doing all right with the software. They had not heard back from me. I explained the situation, and that I was all set now.

As a tip for other consumers, I said I went back and looked at all the write up on the software and not once was the fact that the disk would be DVD mentioned. If I had known that I would have trouble installing the software I wouldn’t have bought it. I am not the only one with a computer that didn’t come with a dvd player. I suggested to save other consumers the headaches I had, Corel should put that information in the advertising.

Last night I read the one-page intro to my 4^th mystery to my sister-in-law, a retired nurse and a non-writer. It’s supposed to be funny, but her reaction was rather unexpected. “Did you write that?”

“Well, yes, why?”

“I couldn’t believe the clarity of detail in your descriptions. I could see everything you were writing about in my mind’s eye!”

I’m never one to aw shucks a nice complement. I thanked her and later on, I thought back on the incident. It was the detail of the story which had impressed her. Evidently I had written the right amount. That’s what I wanted to blog about today—the need for writers to strike a balance between enough details to make what they write interesting without being too parsimonious or too wordy. Perhaps you have read something that left you puzzled, not sure you understood what was being written. Or, perhaps you wondered when the writer was going to shut up about the golden red sunset that sent the lady, who was wearing the virginally white dress with the freshly tatted lace given to her by her latest beau into a dizzying paroxysm of awestruck marveling about…well, I think you get my drift.

Know the Genre

A good storyteller, instinctively considers the target audience’s need for information about the story and how much to include. Oral storytellers commonly tailor their tales to the vibes they get from their audiences. So much so, that it may seem they never tell the same story in the same way twice. Writers of stories don’t have the luxury of immediate audience feedback, so they have to come to an understanding of what may be expected by typical readers of the genre in which they are writing. How do they do that? By reading an immense amount of material from that genre to learn how others do it; by talking to folks who enjoy reading the genre, about who they like and why. Armed with this kind of knowledge, the writer then has a better feel for what is expected from his stories and descriptions.

Realism and Accuracy

It’s important that the details be realistic without going overboard. One wonderful example of a writer who did this consistently well was the great writer of westerns, Louis LaMour. The amount of research he did was amazing. If he wrote about a cowboy’s life being saved in the desert because he stumbled upon a watering hole at such and such a place, you could go to that location today and find that watering hole. Readers in the know were constantly blown away by the accuracy of his detail. Of course, there can also be too much of a good thing. James Michener was infamous for his, “How this region was formed and grew to be,” first chapters of almost everything he wrote. Some of us found this information to be excellent background; however, there were many readers who would actually skip over this plentitude of background detail and charge ahead to where the characters first appear so the story could commence to unroll.

Nonfiction Too

This concept of detail balance is especially evident in nonfiction. Different readers have different needs. Compare, if you would, the level of detail present in a textbook about a certain subject to the level of detail found in a simple how-to book on the same subject. Again, it’s all about who your target audience is and what they need and expect from writers. It is the amount and complexity of detail that makes written material readable. Software that provides a grade level of readability for written passages uses just these points of evaluation—word and sentence length, choice, and amount of detail.

Ignore at Your Peril

It is essential that you write with the appropriate amount and level of detail expected by your readers. There is no hard and fast rule of this. The best writers are usually the best readers—familiar enough with what they write about to find that best balance between what might be considered way too much or far too little. Good luck on the seesaw of life.

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

This post, from Jim C. Hines, originally appeared on his blog on 1/4/10.

This is the third year I’ve posted about the income I make as a fantasy author.  (See the Money Posts from Year 1 and Year 2.)  Money tends to be a taboo topic, but given all of the myths and illusions about writing, I think it’s important to get some actual data out there.  Because knowing is half the battle!

The background: I’ve been writing and submitting my work since 1995.  Goblin Quest was my first book with a major publisher, and came out in the end of 2006.  2009 saw the publication of my 4th and 5th novels with DAW.  So while I have five books in print, I’m still an early-career author.

I am not a full-time writer, for reasons which will soon become apparent.  I also write only fiction, unlike a number of authors I know who write both fiction and non-fiction (in part because the latter usually pays better).

Thanks to a last-minute D&A (delivery and acceptance) check from DAW, my writing income for 2009 came to $28,940.

Breaking that total down, I earned:

Read the rest of the post on Jim C. Hines’ blog.

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. "Resolve" seems a stony thing, grim and inflexible. In a mountain river, I’d rather be water than boulder.

Rather than make a resolution, I prefer to set an intention.

An intention seems to better fit the truth I’ve felt attracted to lately: that free will is merely an illusion. As Jay Michaelson says in a Huffington Post essay that brings nonduality into pop culture: "Free will" exists as a psychological reality, but not as an ontological one. Like the individual self, it’s a mirage: "You" exist, sure, but you exist just like a wave on the ocean: here one minute, gone the next, and never apart from the ocean itself. In that light, taking a firm-jawed, self-important stand on a "resolution" just seems silly.

So I have intentions. One intention for the year is to return to regular journaling, using ink on paper. My most creative and prolific writing years were when I was freely journaling, filling up book after book with both mundane record-keeping and giddy flights of inspiration. Then, I would develop the eureka moments on a keyboard, transforming them into fiction. As I’ve moved further into the cyber-world, my use of dead trees has declined, but so has my creative juice. For me, there’s magic in the hand-pen-paper circuit.

Not only that, but blogging is unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, it’s too public, which for me means it’s not spontaneous enough. I craft my blog too carefully for it to fill the uninhibited role of a journal. Second, it feels transient, not actually real. When I’m gone from this sphere, I want my children to have a physical record of my life, rendered in my own handwriting, caressable by their fingers, easy to pull off a shelf… not merely a list of hyperlinks or a shiny thingy full of binary code inaccessible without an electric machine. Maybe I’m not confident there’ll be an infrastructure left by then.

Another intention for 2010 is to re-read some favorite fiction through a new lens. I’m interested in how literary fiction can incorporate principles of nonduality without losing its identity and without becoming didactic or cliched. I want to explore the expression of Unity, from ancient Advaita to the mysteries of quantum physics, in modern realistic storytelling. This is done in several ways: by looking with new interpretive eyes at work I already love, by reading new stuff, and by writing my own.

This intention does not bite off too much: I’ll begin by looking again at some of Paul Auster’s early work, which has been of vital importance to my creative development, and see if it offers up new insights through my nonduality glasses. Then, if I feel so inclined, I’ll move on to Nabokov, Brautigan, Marquez, others. And I’ll keep an eye out for writing I haven’t already read that seems likely to feed this hunger.

Maybe I’ll even write about what I discover. Maybe it will appear here on this blog. Or not. Maybe it will only appear as scribbled notes in my journal. Or not. It will be what it will be. After all, it’s not a resolution, only an intention.

The Road More Traveled
If you’ve looked into the current self-publishing boom at all you’ve undoubtedly heard the advice that you must work on your platform to have any hope of being successful as a self-published writer. If you’re at all like me you probably seized on this mushy advice while also struggling to make sense of it. And struggling. And struggling…

At some point the thought may have occurred to you that while the advice is undoubtedly solid, it’s your ignorance of key terms* that makes it hard for you to seize this golden opportunity. What, exactly, is a platform, and how is it most effectively worked on?

Taking the bull by the horns, while also somehow following conventional wisdom, you equate your platform with your website or blog or personal appearances, and equate work on with writing and saying things for free so as to induce other human beings to care about you. (Over time, as you dedicate yourself to this apparently-but-not-really more robust definition of a platform, this exchange of labor and skill for attention may also convince you that you can profit by giving other things away, including the books or stories you naively intended to sell before you became so much wiser about self-publishing.)

At some much later point, when you’re lying by the side of the self-publishing road with an I.V. in your neck and blisters on your hands from crawling those last long miles, you may marvel that personal determination seems to have so little to do with success in publishing or self-publishing. While it’s certainly true that you can’t win if you don’t enter, it’s more likely the case that even if you enter constantly and do everything you’re supposed to do — including working on your platform, whatever that means — you still won’t win.

At which point, if you’re a good and decent sort, you will simply blame yourself for having failed. You will man-up or woman-up as appropriate and acknowledge that you never really figured out what your platform was, or how you could work on it. Being a decent sort, however, you won’t hesitate to encourage others to crack the code by working on their own platform, which will endear you to the next crop of earnest, hardworking fools determined to make a name for themselves with their writing.  

Platform Defined
Having said all that, I think the word platform does mean something real, and that there are many ways for you to work on it that will help you sell books. The fact that it doesn’t mean what you think it means, or that it has, literally, nothing at all to do with good writing, or, in some cases, the ability to write at all, must immediately be dismissed as a curiosity, but that’s a small price to pay for success.

In all its incarnations, platform is an interesting word. Because no definition of the word meets the usage referred to in this post, I am proposing the following addition:

plat*form [plat-fawrm]

-noun

xx. Publishing. celebrity: Gary worked hard on his platform by giving nude readings of his book, “Dreams Deciphered”.

Now, whether a lightbulb just went on for you or not, it should be a little clearer why the word platform seems to make sense in some mushy, ill-defined way. If you think of celebrities as having high visibility, and you think of something on a platform as being more visible, then celebrity = platform and working on your platform means raising your own visibility.

(If you ever spend any time in politics — and I encourage you not to — you will learn that candidates for public office spend a good deal of time on what their advisers, aides and managers literally call visibility. Speech at the Ladies’ Auxilliary? Visibility. Kissing babies during a parade? Visibility. Lunch with the mayor? Visibility. Angry speech about hot-button issue that guarantees press coverage even though data conclusively shows that nobody actually votes the issue? Visibility. What’s also interesting here is that politicians traditionally embrace a platform of political views, which are ostensibly the equivalent of policy positions. In practice, however, political platforms are usually designed to placate or seduce supporters — meaning even here the idea of a platform relates more to marketing and celebrity than it does to the work product of politics.)

The Platform Advantage
To see how the platform = celebrity dynamic plays out in publishing (and self-publishing), let’s look at an exhaustive series of examples. For each of the following, imagine that the person in question has just written a book that they are hoping to bring it to market.

• Barack Obama — huge celebrity; huge platform
• You — no celebrity; teeny-weeny platform

I could go on, of course, but I think you get the idea. When you’re being encouraged to work on your platform you’re actually being encouraged to raise your visibility and celebrity. The more well-known you are, the more books you will sell. (And you thought there was no hard science behind all this platform talk.)

So what can you do to raise your celebrity?

Well, the good news is that there are a lot of options. In fact, you’re really only limited by your imagination and morality. Because pathological liars, narcissists and sociopaths have an unfair advantage here, I’m not going to go into specifics about things you might actually do to raise your celebrity lest anyone get any really bad ideas. I will, however, list a few names of people who currently have an absolutely dynamite platform and let you draw your own conclusions.

• Bernie Madoff
• Osama bin Laden
• Wall St.
• Balloon Boy’s Dad
• The Owner of the Indianapolis Colts

Again, I could go on almost infinitely, but I assume you get the point. Celebrity, like sex, sells. So whatever it takes to raise your celebrity is inherently a good thing for your publishing career. It won’t make you a better writer, of course, and it won’t increase the likelihood that you have something to say, but it will almost certainly sell more books than being you or caring about your craft. [Tip: if you’re short on time, work ethic and content to give away, there are myriad ways you can jump-start your platform by giving away your dignity as a human being.]

The Road Less Traveled
On the other hand, if you are still determined to put craft first I can offer you a faint silver lining. To the extent that celebrity trumps all else in publishing, you can’t compete. Sarah Palin will always get a book deal, even if she has trouble forming coherent thoughts without the literary support of a ghostwriter.

However. If what you care about is writing, and in particular storytelling, you have a shot at competing on the merits today that you wouldn’t have had a few years ago. The reason for this is that the marketing machinery previously used to raise the visibility/celebrity of other writers has broken down. You as a romance writer or literary author are no longer up against a stacked deck guarded by industry gatekeepers protecting franchise writers. Today, all but the most famous (meaning most bankable, not most talented) of your competitors are in the same boat. Even long-time mid-list old hands are having to figure out what their platform is, and how to work on it, and that puts them on an even footing with you.

Assuming that there ever was a paying audience for the kind of stuff you write, you now have access to that audience directly, and can — at least in part — rely on the quality of what you write, rather than the q-score for who you are, to determine your success. You may succeed and you may not, but believing in and improving your craft vastly increases the likelihood that you will attract attention for your skill set as opposed to your celebrity — which could also lead to offers from publishers, or work-for-hire opportunities.

The choice is yours, of course. I’m going to go the craft route, but only because I wouldn’t want to belong to any group of celebrities that would have me as a member.

* In your later years, after life has beaten you down, you will realize that advice which is devoid of recognizable terminology is no advice at all, and you will either chuckle or shake your head at this realization depending on your disposition. If you still have a fair share of your marbles, and if what you foolishly wanted all along was to be a good writer, you may also realize that mushy advice is the hallmark of the guru, the salesperson and the con artist, and that what you really could have used was the utility and reliability of craft. Again, depending on your disposition, you may or may not punish yourself further by noting that bridge builders spend very little time attending motivational seminars, but lots of time on math.

This is a cross-posting from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk site.

This post, from Bonnie Kozek, originally appeared on her Case Files blog on 4/20/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

The writer suffers. London, overdose. Woolf, drowning. Mattheissen, leap. Hemingway, gunshot. Plath, gas. Berryman, leap. Inge, carbon monoxide. Sexton, carbon monoxide. Brautigan, gunshot. Levi, leap. Kosinski, overdose. Gray, drowning. Wallace, hanging. Mishima, ritual suicide culminating in assisted beheading. This accounting, even in the extreme, barely skims the surface.

The American psyche has long been acculturated to the idea of the “suffering writer” – the “mad artist” – the connection between creativity and insanity. Moreover, American writers, as referenced in the above abridged list of suicides, have substantially contributed to the incontrovertible nature of this broadly accepted “tradition.” Indeed, beginning with research first conducted in the 1970s, the scientific community has attempted to explain the phenomenon of the “suffering writer.” In her book, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, reports that writers are as much as 20 times as likely as other people to suffer depressive illnesses. Why? There appears to be two principal reasons: First, illness brought on by individual biology and/or traumatic experience, and secondly, a predisposition by way of birthright. Couple this with the inherent downsides of the profession — isolation, loneliness, rejection, financial insecurity – and the glamorization of the suffering writer – so prevalent that it has engendered a kind of “suffering competition” – (Upon learning of Plath’s suicide, Sexton is reported to have said covetously, “She took something that was mine! That death was mine!”)— and there you have it: A foregone conclusion.

However incontrovertible, an examination of the links between writer and depression – and the questions that logically arise from such inquiry – continues to be written about and debated by scientists, psychologists and writers alike. One subject of contemplation is the age-old question of whether psychological suffering is an essential component of artistic creativity. There are those who, based upon the mountain of empirical evidence and technical research, conclude that it is. Others disagree – citing literary giants – Shakespeare, e.g. – who had no significant psychopathology. Both positions are reasonable and, effectively, indisputable. Ergo, there’s no clear victor in this particular piece of the dispute. Yet, how can both be right? During a recent interview I was asked why I chose to be a writer. I answered that I have an irrepressible attraction to the words, to the letters – that I sense something beneath the surface – a kind of code. That I’m forever trying to break the code – to decipher the mystery – to find in the words something that is true – to craft a story that someone will want to read. And then I added, “But then again, I’m not so sure if I chose writing or if it chose me.” And, there it is — the articulation of uncertainty about the “choosing” or the “being chosen” — that offers one possible answer to the question.

Writers are born of two distinct and disparate sources. Some come to the world with innate talent – a talent which is either recognized early on, or discovered and nurtured in time. Their gifts are immense. Their minds are healthy, or rather, comparatively healthy. Others come to the world with burden. They write to survive. Of this latter category, the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author J. Anthony Lukas once said, “All writers are, to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ourselves. In my own case, I was filling a hole in my life which opened at the age of eight, when my mother killed herself . . . ” (Lukas, diagnosed with depression ten years earlier, hanged himself in 1997.) This category of writer starts with a less intellectual methodology. The personal risks are titanic. Talent, not wholly inborn, is learned and earned through the sweat of the flesh and the letting of blood. Some writers of this sort are able to effectively compartmentalize their suffering – fight their personal demons on the battlefield of human relations – between themselves and others – rather than on the written page. In this case, the resultant work may be indistinguishable from that of the writer unburdened by disease. Others are capable of redirecting and baring their pain in less conspicuous ways – through plot, character, and subject matter. And then there is the writer whose entire body of work is drawn solely from the wellspring of personal despair – a seemingly bottomless and unforgiving pit. This writer’s illness devastates – subjugates every aspect of her life. Her world becomes small, her purpose compulsive and single-minded. Such crushing depression may eventually suck all the oxygen out of her being, extinguish what flicker of hope has managed to survive the storm of her insidious affliction. Ultimately, this writer is consumed by the illness that fueled her creativity. There seems no way out. But might there be?

What if a writer under the influence of depressive illness became “un-depressed”? What if some combination of treatment – drugs, electric shock, psychoanalysis – was successful? Would the writer’s creativity – would the writer’s work – become negatively impacted? Would the writer stop writing about “depressing” subjects like defiant human emotion? Would, for example, an Artaud, Baudelaire, or Poe start writing “happily-ever-after” prose if “cured” by Zoloft? Of course, we won’t have the technical answers to these questions until future researchers – basing their findings not on the work and lives of dead authors but on the work and lives of writers currently living with depression – both in and out of treatment – provide them. Yet, un-technically – via experience, observation, and intuition – answers can be deduced. A Samuel Beckett, even partially restored, would not produce a “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The “change” for the writer, I submit, would come not in content, but rather in fecundity and endurance. For, when the annihilating destruction of depression – the “storm of murk” as William Styron so aptly described it – is muscled into symmetry with the writer’s purpose and faculty – when creative juices are feeding not just a single monster – there is an opening up of the universe – a vision that allows the writer to “rewrite” the inevitable – to comprehend what had previously been incomprehensible: That when it comes to writing and living, there is a choice. And finally, this writer, given the option, may choose not one or the other, but both: To write . . . and . . . to live.

When reflecting upon the vast, poignant, and enduring anthology of work produced by writers who have suffered from depression – as those mentioned in this article – and assuming that literature is necessary – that it matters – that it enriches all humanity – it is not hard to imagine that the “freeing of will” would bestow gifts far beyond those given to a single beleaguered soul.

Bonnie Kozek’s highly-acclaimed noir thriller, Threshold, is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Powell’s Books and other online sites. Her follow-up book, Just Before the Dawn, will be published in 2010. Learn more about her work at: http://www.bonniekozek.com or contact her at: bk@bonniekozek.com .

This article from Mark William Jackson appears on http://markwilliamjackson.com/2010/01/11/the-threat-to-poetry/

Here’s another of my three-minutes-or-less editorial screenplays of a movie I’ve seen which strained my credulity, patience or sanity on some level. I find it’s fun to rewrite those movies to more closely approximate my experience of them. This was my take on Amelie.

EXT. PARIS – GREEN
Impish, charming, disarmingly cute AUDREY TATOU disarms her ANGRY NEIGHBORS with a charmingly cute smile.

ANGRY NEIGHBORS
We have seen ‘Emma’ and ‘Chocolat’, and we know what you’re up to! You are trying to impishly charm us into changing our selfish, staid and priggish ways with your disarming cuteness.

AUDREY TATOU
(Impish)
Am I not cute? Do I not remind you of Bjork?

ANGRY NEIGHBORS
Must…resist overwhelming power…of cuteness…anger weakening…

AUDREY TATOU
(Disarming)
Have you noticed the way that the clouds all look like hearts and teddy bears when I’m around? Or that everything is green?

NOT-SO-ANGRY NEIGHBORS
We surrender to your impish charm. All of our lives have been enriched by your
disarming cuteness, the greenness and the teddy bear clouds.

Only slightly less impish and charming NINO steps forward.

NINO
I am hypoglycemic.

AUDREY TATOU (Charming)
Ah, the man of my dreams!
They exit together, Audrey skipping.

NINO
Could you please try to be less impishly girlish? It makes me feel a little pervy.

THE END