First up, I got some new digs online for PAWNBROKER. If you get a chance, check out www.pawnbrokernovel.com and let me know what you think. If you like it and want to help spread the word, that's awesome and appreciated.
Patriotic American though I am, for far too long we've been fed some nonsense as part of our national ethos. What?!? Yup. Here's the lie: "You can be whatever you want to be." How many times have you heard that or a variant of it? It just ain't so, my friends. (This has nothing to do with politics, so there's no need to tune out. Read on.)
I'm 1000% for encouragement to excellence, for each one of us being the best we can be, for each achieving all we possibly can. The problem is this noble idea has been so distorted through the years/decades as to now be the source of real societal problems. By fostering this nonsense, we have created a country full of people who chase dreams outside their talent sphere. When you waste years or decades pursuing something you just aren't capable of, you deprive yourself and the rest of us of the gifts God did give you.
Example: I love football. A lot. Passionately. I WOULD LOVE TO BE A FOOTBALL STAR. There, I said it. There's just one big hitch: I'm 53, slow, and probably not the most athletic specimen you've encountered. So what? I was taught my whole life--and this teaching has been vastly expanded and exaggerated over the decades--that I could "be whatever I want to be." See the problem? Reality? It's a lie. I cannot be a football phenom like Johnny Manziel. I could train and practice and study for the rest of my life and even if I had a time machine to dial back my years, I still couldn't be Johnny Football. It's not a gift I was graced with, and to pretend otherwise would be delusional.
We see this issue on dramatic display each year when American Idol broadcasts weeks of auditions from those who are certain they're stars despite the fact that they shouldn't even be singing in the shower. Aside from the few obvious ones who will do anything to be on TV, including intentional self-humiliation, these people are devastated or angry or blown away when the judges tell them they suck. How can this be? Have they never heard themselves? Maybe, but what they've for sure heard is, "You can be whatever you want to be." It's so ingrained in our culture now that it's lost any context of common sense. If that isn't bad enough, there's the whole American Idol industry, perfectly willing to put these people through to the next round of judges over and over and over and over for the explicit purpose of eventually having them make idiots of themselves on global TV.
A bit closer to home, nowhere is this phenomenon more prevalent than in today's publishing environment. The barriers of the past are gone. Anyone can publish their own work almost instantly. There's a lot to like about this new paradigm and I'm sure I'll feel like commenting on it more than once, but my point now is this: Instaselfpublishing has enabled a globe full of wannabe writers to elevate themselves to self-published authors with the click of a button. The result is a system loaded with...well...what do you think it's loaded with?
We see this issue on dramatic display each year when American Idol broadcasts weeks of auditions from those who are certain they're stars despite the fact that they shouldn't even be singing in the shower. Aside from the few obvious ones who will do anything to be on TV, including intentional self-humiliation, these people are devastated or angry or blown away when the judges tell them they suck. How can this be? Have they never heard themselves? Maybe, but what they've for sure heard is, "You can be whatever you want to be." It's so ingrained in our culture now that it's lost any context of common sense. If that isn't bad enough, there's the whole American Idol industry, perfectly willing to put these people through to the next round of judges over and over and over and over for the explicit purpose of eventually having them make idiots of themselves on global TV.
A bit closer to home, nowhere is this phenomenon more prevalent than in today's publishing environment. The barriers of the past are gone. Anyone can publish their own work almost instantly. There's a lot to like about this new paradigm and I'm sure I'll feel like commenting on it more than once, but my point now is this: Instaselfpublishing has enabled a globe full of wannabe writers to elevate themselves to self-published authors with the click of a button. The result is a system loaded with...well...what do you think it's loaded with?
Hopes...dreams and yearnings. At least that is what I would like to THINK it's loaded with. :)
ReplyDelete:)
ReplyDeleteCaustic, but true. I'm sure many will hate you for saying it, but I have to agree.
ReplyDeleteI figured it out in college. I took a minor in music, practiced my French Horn daily, worked really hard--and my the time I was a senior I knew that if I practiced really hard all my life. . . I could be okay. Never better than okay, and probably not good enough for any kind of paying work. I just didn't have that little extra we call natural talent, and no amount of hard work would change that (L. Alcott says that somewhere in Little Women, when the artistic sister realizes that she's not an artistic genius. She's right.)
Yeah, I went through the musical chase myself, Rebecca, and finally figured out that I could pursue forever and never catch because it just wasn't my gift. I think you nailed it when you mentioned "paying work." Therein lies the problem; if someone wants to write for internal pleasure and satisfaction, they should do it as long as it satisfies. I still enjoy playing my guitar every now and then. But when you publish and hang a price tag on something, in my mind you've implied that it's something worth paying for, something...well...professional.
DeleteActually, it takes a fair few button clicks to be a self published author. :P
ReplyDeleteSelf publishing allows people who need time to develop their skills a chance to grow and develop as writers. My first book, released only seven months ago, already seems flawed to me now, but it was a great learning experience and I'm still very fond of it. I've just release something I consider to be better and I have no doubt I'll improve further in the future. Great talent doesn't come overnight.
Hi, Adam. I haven't read your work, so nothing here is a commentary thereon. I can only say that, to me, a better approach might be to do the work on craft, THEN publish, as opposed to putting out not-ready-for-public-consumption work that will forever be associated with an author, no matter how much he later improves.
DeleteThey say it takes a million words, written and discarded, to become a writer. Too many believe that the ability to write a sentence which, to their eyes, is grammatically and functionally sound, fits them to write novels, and put them out in the marketplace. Then they are 'published writers'. Some are good because they have that inborn talent, many are mediocre, and many many more are truly terrible, and the worst of it is - they expect the public to pay for their work. In most jobs you have to put in at least the minimum training period before you'd expect anyone to pay for your skills, hence the 'million words'...
ReplyDeleteWell said, Jane.
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