Rejection. Talk to any agent (or publisher), and they’ll tell you the easiest answer they can give is a no. It’s kind of a hard thing to swallow isn’t it? It was hard for me to hear, and when it was said to me, it was so completely matter of fact, that it was almost offensive in it’s cavalier. I used to write movie trailers (yeah really, someone really writes those things), but of course I never stuck to the formula (I’m not a team player). And although no one told me what the formula was, I ended up figuring out that it was always a list. “In a world … full of shit … there was only one man who could wipe it away from his ass in time … and that’s only because … he shaved it.” You must include a lot of pauses, and a lot of fragments. Believe it or not, they were really hard to write. Every time I turned them in, there was this group of producers who would read them, and berate them so much so I would end up leaving with this “about to cry” look on my face. I once had a boss who asked me “hey Kael, how come you have to be on … GLUE to understand anything you write?!” He was a dick, but he was also a person who probably cared a lot about me, and in my potential. He sat me down one day and said “Kael, you can’t be married to the things you write.” That was probably the best advice I had ever been given, and even though I knew that at the time, I also knew it was a piece of advice I would never take.
I will give everyone who reads my blog that advice … for free! The irony is if you’re anything like me, you know deep in your heart that there is no way you can not love what you write, and there is no way you can not feel a certain sadness at someone putting down you work … the fruits of your labor, but I dare you to take it. You see if you take it, you will probably go pretty far as a writer. You will move away from writing things that only you like, and move onto things that other people like.
Now here’s the problem: there are too many issues with that advice. First, and the most important part is why write something you’re not in love with it, and why be in love with something you’re not committed to? The less and less you’re in love with something, the less passion it has, and the less of a point it has. There is a certain euphoria you have when you find the perfect sentence which sings your lyrics so masterfully that you almost want to cry it’s so good. I’m not sure I can write without that feeling. I’ve written stories that have a really bad ending, and I can’t sleep until I fix them. I have written stories about people I know, and I can’t bear to change them for fear that it will no longer do that person justice. I know this is all bullshit, and does not belong in the business of writing, but it certainly does belong in the art of writing.
And isn’t that what I’m pretty much always talking about, even without saying as much. Yeah I’m of the personal opinion that most writers (and please note the word MOST, because it is certainly key in this discussion, because there are obviously exceptions who make this rule true), sell out the art of writing for the business of writing … and it’s almost always because they love the art so much, they want to do it all the time. It’s not unlike a person who becomes a prostitute because they love sex so much, or a person who loves to paint and becomes a graphic designer, and starts designing logos for Nissan. I’m pretty sure that most writers, and most of the ones that I’ve had the misfortune to read, write for the money, and by committee, and not from their souls. I know it can be done, but off hand I can’t really figure out many second novels compare to an author’s first. Most likely the first novel is written for the love of the word, where the second is mostly written to capitalize on the success of the first.
What I’m trying to say is this … there is no money in literary fiction (trust me on this one). You need to love what you write, because although there isn’t any money in literary fiction there certainly are readers. I’m a reader of literary fiction, and it kills me that mostly the writers who write the shit are in the box thinkers. I just entered a contest where they wrote they wanted “out of the box thinkers.” When I read the winners, I was thinking what the fuck box are they talking about? I mean does the box now mean free thinkers who write from their hearts, and find original content, and out of the box means 12th grade honors composition?
Keep writing … this isn’t a complete thought, but I will come back to this point eventually. Kael
