The Artful Writer

My earliest blogs on the PENS site revolved around my hopes, dreams and aspirations for writing and selling books. As a way of fruitfully and enjoyably using time in my semi-retirement and making a little pocket money, the plan had a lot going for it.

Time has moved on a bit, and my understanding of writing has, too. First came the crunch: I had to leave the rewarding work of writing and editing to look at marketing. I looked, and I shied away. Not my scene, the clamour for attention, the incessant ‘look at me, please look at me.’ Not only did I feel no attraction at all for spending my time that way, I had no innate skill or experience to undertake it either. Whether self-publishing or seeking an agent and a trad publisher, brutal self-marketing was clearly absolutely vital.

As a possibly valid distraction, I began working on some of the materials that process would need. Blurbs, synopsis, description, author bio. Of course, I soon discovered that, too, needs a keen eye on the market, a great deal of self-selling. 

I also reached a point where I could no longer happily ignore the facts being presented on various media connected with the process of writing. The majority of authors need a decade of experience with a dozen books written before achieving any kind of publication success. My initial enthusiasm and determination now seemed matched only by my naivety.

What is ‘writing’ all about then, I asked myself. Do I need to be published, do I need success?  Well, certainly, I do need success, I always need success, but what is the definition of success for my writing? I wanted to write more than I wanted to earn money, that seemed sure. Hence I continued to write instead of, for instance, seeking a job as a van driver. So publication for money in itself was not my metric of success. 

If I painted, I argued, success would be a painting good enough to hang on my wall and take pleasure from whenever I passed it. I wouldn’t need to sell it, or prints of it, to feel I had achieved something.

So, the logical argument continues. Does not the same apply to writing? Can I not simply be pleased I’ve written a good story? The trouble is, that sense of pleasure from the writing is not so accessible. Seeing the book in my bookcase will not bring the same satisfaction as beholding a painting. The enjoyment can only be had by reading it, and, the tricky bit, the delight can only be fully appreciated by reading it in complete innocence. Knowing the plot reduces the impact and weakens the emotional journey. So the author can never really appreciate his or her own work the way a painter or a sculptor can. Our best metric, in fact, becomes publication success, a symptom of work well done, rather than direct evidence of our own senses. Is this why, I wondered, I still feel that need to see money rolling in to feel I’ve made it as a writer?

It’s complicated, I can only conclude, this writing itch. For all my meandering thought experiments, I still cannot settle to writing only for my own pleasure, nor am I particularly willing to face the horrors of marketing. All I can do is to keep on going, aiming for better and better writing, until I have a body of solid work which might attract the necessary attention more easily than flogging my first offerings to death.

^{Image: delivery van by msaeedsalem https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=8360717}

^{Image: flower in pot by tanrıca https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=9676110}