The joy of mid-listing

[Marc Joan]

An FB friend posted this. Not sure if it is depressing or comforting, but it's worth reading.
What's the Point of Writing If You're Not Going to Succeed?

 

[Rich.]

A bit of both, I think! But it was a good read. Thanks for posting it, Marc. I must admit though, it left me wondering if the tortured artist example is not just a little too romantic, a little too overdone. I'm sure there must be a raft of mid-list writers out there who keep writing to satisfy their calling, but who do not have broken families, dingy garrets and problems with booze. And equally, you don't have to be a writer to fit the tortured description.

Back in my student days, I took a summer job cleaning boats – pleasure craft and luxury yachts. There was another chap – middle-aged and ex-army – on the marina who did the same, not as a summer job, but all year round. Apart from the suit, he fit the description of Yates pretty snugly. He would turn up at the chandler's first thing in the morning looking like death, stinking of last night's booze, squinting and grunting his way through a list of the day's jobs. By the end of lunch he'd be pissed as a newt, but happy, lucid, and surprisingly adept with a pot of anti-fouling paint and a broad-headed brush, not to mention his mirror-like varnishing. He also had an ex-wife and some ex-kids somewhere, also had dreams bigger than his luck about building boats and not just cleaning them. He was a mid-list marina worker. But boats were his life. He was following his calling. And it was clear that he found solace and satisfaction in the work itself.

Are writer's so different? Must we claim monopoly on the tortured soul?

I would probably say yes, being the old romantic that I am.

 

[Marc Joan]

Nobody could describe my soul as tortured. Branded with hot irons, skinned and rolled in salt, maybe, but not exactly tortured. Seriously, though, most starting writers would think of mid-listery as success -- but the article paints it in real colours, not the hues of fantasy.

 

[Rich.]

Nobody could describe my soul as tortured. Branded with hot irons, skinned and rolled in salt, maybe, but not exactly tortured.

LOL!

You're right though, this kind of cold truth is valuable, and it's good to see it being written about. It also raises the other question: the one about how you fairly monetize creativity.

But to answer that we'd have to agree on what we mean by fair. Easier said than done, I reckon.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

That's a very sad story, Richard Yates. He could have had a hanky for the snot though.

He was a Hermit, wasn't he? The Hermit walks a solitary path, hears things, notices things, can light a way along a path but few seek him out. Or her when it is a her.

Maybe it was the joylessness. Unlikeable, unheroic characters But he seems due a revival:

 

[Marc Joan]

I'm something of a hermit; the family tease me about it. Don't think you are, though, KTLN. Is there a Wise Owl tarot card?

 

[Marc Joan]

"If my work has a theme," Yates said, "I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Loneliness, yes. Some can use it for good, some can escape it when it isn't being good for them. Some don't know how. This poor fellow was apparently a nuisance, a liability to other folk and that was probably at least part of his problem, even before social mmmmeeeeejiaaa.

The Hermit is a wonderful archetype and stands for the sign of Virgo too. There is a bit of Hermit in me, Virgo rising. If a client wants to know when something seems most likely to happen and I draw the Hermit, we're looking at a likelihood of late August -late September. Likelihood. I don't deal in prediction, only forecasting. I know nothing, I don't know. I only say what I see when I sit down to look and I don't always want to...see or say. But that's me job, no one made me do it and it is a great privilege, reading for the people who come through the door or over Skype etc. I hear many fascinating things, and often very moving things.

Owls apart from just being spectacular, fascinating birds are symbolically are messengers of Hecate. There is no card as such, though owls do feature in some decks. Sometimes The High priestess is shown with an owl, as here in 'The Legacy of The Divine Tarot', illustrated by Ciro Marchetti. (warning: lengthy Youtube presentation of all 78 images.)

It's a thriving publishing industry in its own right. The Hermit looks very different in this deck...tired but rather glamorous

 

[Carol Rose]

What a gorgeous deck! Those cards really speak to me. *rushes off to buy it*

 

[Amber]

Are writer's so different? Must we claim monopoly on the tortured soul?

I would probably say yes, being the old romantic that I am.

So close to wisdom and then you gave in to your lesser impulses. I'm so disappointed.

I read the article. Okay. I scanned it. I can barely tolerate my own whining, the author doesn't have a chance of sympathy from me. I don't know him. He's not my friend, or my lover, or my child, or family, or even my favorite author. He needs to shut up and stop complaining.

And I wish ... we'd be honest with ourselves... us writers. We refuse to accept the facts of life. People who choose a salary or a 9-5 accept reality. They (usually) aren't always hoping, wishing for something else.

If Mr. Blogger Dude wanted to be a writer, he's done that. If he's unsatisfied, it's because it was something he wanted in addition to being a writer.

If he wants to be a best-selling author more than he wants to be a writer, then that particular thing has a different skill set and also a different set of interests--a different FOCUS. Also, probably some luck. Luck is always good to have. Still, luck not withstanding, he's dishonest because he's not coming right out and saying, "I wanted to be a best-selling author and I didn't make it. This makes me sad." Instead, he's prettied up his rationalizations with phrases like 'the golden, anointed'.

The truth is, he cared more about his art than about his pocket book or whether the world considered him successful. He's made a choice. Maybe what he's afraid of is that if he made the less idealistic choice of writing to make money instead of expressing himself, or exploring a theme, or whining prettily on Electric Lit, then he might still failed and .. what might that mean?

I get it. I've been known to care more about my 'art' than any of the rest of it. But you also won't see me whining about my fate. I chose this.

I'm so tired of listening to writers talk about how hard it is. For some people, going to the grocery store is hard. Or, speaking in public. Job interviews. We're doing something we love doing. We're lucky and need to shut up with the complaining already.

Oh .. and you know you're my favorite person in Spain @Rich. I would never think anything bad about you.

 

[Amber]

That's a very sad story, Richard Yates. He could have had a hanky for the snot though.

He was a Hermit, wasn't he? The Hermit walks a solitary path, hears things, notices things, can light a way along a path but few seek him out. Or her when it is a her.

Maybe it was the joylessness. Unlikeable, unheroic characters But he seems due a revival:

View attachment 2464

I've always liked the hermit card. I used to get it all the time when I was reading my own cards .. which I know you're not not supposed to do but they're so pretty. Also, the hanged man showed up pretty frequently.

 

[Magicman]

Students in creative writing at Temple must be trilled with that post.

I write because I enjoy writing. In addition, the art of writing advances skills that are valued in everyday life - the ability to communicate with clarity, the ability to respond to mail/email in a professional manner, etc.

I believe any individual trying to compete in a high profile occupation (actor, writer, musician, athlete, etc.) will feel tortured if their target is set to high. Set a realistic target and if that target is met, you will be pleased, if surpassed, you will be thrilled. My target is to finish the next novel.

Smiles
Bob

 

[Laura Lee]

"If my work has a theme," Yates said, "I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."

Wow. Powerful quote.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I've always liked the hermit card. I used to get it all the time when I was reading my own cards .. which I know you're not not supposed to do but they're so pretty. Also, the hanged man showed up pretty frequently.

I'm not fond of the Hanged Man, he once meant the very worst he can ever mean. But he has his part to play and it's a very great part. Life often IS like that, lulls and stasis, and sometimes no matter what you do, the thing has to germinate organically. Of course one reads one's own cards. Of course one is supposed to. It demands a certain steeling of yourself at times, and self honesty, but why would you not use it to help yourself? Load of hippy dippy claptrap. Take no notice. Like the necessity of cleansing the cards with sage under a full moon... hahahahaha....

 

[Rich.]

So close to wisdom and then you gave in to your lesser impulses. I'm so disappointed.

Don't worry, I'm pretty sure the line that offended you was satire.

I'm so tired of listening to writers talk about how hard it is. For some people, going to the grocery store is hard. Or, speaking in public. Job interviews.

Worthwhile things are hard.

We're doing something we love doing. We're lucky and need to shut up with the complaining already.

This (while, perhaps, acknowledging that it's only human to complain – and, dare I say it, often fun cathartic, albeit temporarily).

My target is to finish the next novel.

Isn't this always the target?

 

[Carol Rose]

I've been debating whether to comment on the blog post because I've said so many things on this very subject countless times on here. But what the heck. I'm in a mood to post.

If you're not writing for the sake of the craft - for the love of it, because you have to, because it's your passion, because the voices in your head won't shut up, because it feeds your soul, or for any reason related to that, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

Writing to "succeed" at it - whatever that means - puts it on par with going after a high-paying job in a lucrative field. Stiff competition, long hours, usually some schmoozing with others in the industry, maybe a bit of back stabbing in private, and generally selling yourself, whether you're the best person for the job or not.

Yeah. Okay. That shit goes on out there in the writing world. We all know it does. We can all point toward best sellers that are not well-written books. We can all point toward classics that wouldn't get past an agent in today's industry because people wrote differently 100 years ago. 50 years ago. 25 years ago. We can all point toward shady dealings where authors manipulated numbers on Amazon to reach the rankings they did. If there's a way to exploit something, humans will find it and use it.

However...

There are legit authors making boatloads of money without any of the underhanded stuff that goes on. They write well. They have a solid following. Human nature being what it is, and this business being subjective, no matter how many books one sells, not everyone adores those authors. So what? Do you think they care? Hint: they don't. They aren't writing for the people who don't care for their work. They're writing for their fans and for themselves. But they wrote for themselves first. It's easy to lose sight of that fact.

We all know the stories of J.K. Rowling's and Stephen King's humble beginnings. They didn't know they'd be world famous. They simply wrote the stories they had to write. Every writer started out that way. Writing because they had a story to tell.

Sure, some people (a lot of them, actually) had pie-in-the-sky dreams of hitting the NYT best sellers list their first time out, and becoming an instant overnight success with movie deals and merchandising rights. The smart ones quickly realized we all have those dreams starting out, but rarely does that happen in real life. And they kept writing anyway because of the reasons listed up there in the second paragraph of this post. And they were happy doing it because they write to write. Not to become someone else's ideal of successful.

So it comes down to how you define successful.

If you define it like the author of the blog post, you will never be happy doing this. You will never be happy writing for the sake of writing.

Personally, I had dreams, too. I also had unrealistic expectations about the publishing industry. Coming to this forum - in its former manifestation and again in this one - helped ground me in reality. It also taught me my own limitations as a writer. And of course we all have those. But not all of us can see them or are willing to acknowledge them. Doesn't mean I won't stop trying to write a better book each time, but I'm also enough of a realist to know my own limits in terms of the craft.

So I had to make a decision. Keep doing this for the wrong reasons and continue to fail at that, or do it for the reasons I've been doing it since I was eight years old. Because I love to write stories. I love to create worlds. I love to create characters. This is my passion.

Am I saying I've settled? I don't know. Maybe. Sometimes I believe I have. But mostly I believe I'm in a comfortable place with my writing career, where once in a while I turn a phrase that surprises even me. Where once in a while a story comes to me so strongly and so completely that to *not* write it would be akin to cutting off an arm.

Am I tortured soul? God, I hope not. I'm just a wife and mother, a nurse, a wannabe percussion player, a wannabe cello player, a dabbler in things like Tarot cards and balancing my chakras, who wishes she had WAY more time in life to do all the cool things she still has yet to do. In other words, I'm a writer.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Loneliness, yes. Some can use it for good, some can escape it when it isn't being good for them. Some don't know how. This poor fellow was apparently a nuisance, a liability to other folk and that was probably at least part of his problem, even before social mmmmeeeeejiaaa.

The Hermit is a wonderful archetype and stands for the sign of Virgo too. There is a bit of Hermit in me, Virgo rising. If a client wants to know when something seems most likely to happen and I draw the Hermit, we're looking at a likelihood of late August -late September. Likelihood. I don't deal in prediction, only forecasting. I know nothing, I don't know. I only say what I see when I sit down to look and I don't always want to...see or say. But that's me job, no one made me do it and it is a great privilege, reading for the people who come through the door or over Skype etc. I hear many fascinating things, and often very moving things.

Owls apart from just being spectacular, fascinating birds are symbolically are messengers of Hecate. There is no card as such, though owls do feature in some decks. Sometimes The High priestess is shown with an owl, as here in 'The Legacy of The Divine Tarot', illustrated by Ciro Marchetti. (warning: lengthy Youtube presentation of all 78 images.)

It's a thriving publishing industry in its own right. The Hermit looks very different in this deck...tired but rather glamorous


View attachment 2465

'To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.'

Charles Caleb Colton

 

[Amber]

I'm not fond of the Hanged Man, he once meant the very worst he can ever mean. But he has his part to play and it's a very great part. Life often IS like that, lulls and stasis, and sometimes no matter what you do, the thing has to germinate organically. Of course one reads one's own cards. Of course one is supposed to. It demands a certain steeling of yourself at times, and self honesty, but why would you not use it to help yourself? Load of hippy dippy claptrap. Take no notice. Like the necessity of cleansing the cards with sage under a full moon... hahahahaha....

I know people who use quartz and some people prefer no one else touch their cards. I bought my first deck about twenty years ago. My grandparents always had a deck and my mother, grandmother, and three aunts would go get readings all the time. They used to tell me I needed more life before mine could be read.

I was intrigued by the Hanged Man because he hung by his ankles and if I remember correctly, was suspended between two worlds. But sorry he meant something bad once. I kind of thought he meant ambivalence.

 

[Carol Rose]

Aren't the cards very personal? In other words, they mean something different to each person, in the context of the question being asked? I know they each have a general meaning, but depending on the question and the reading one is doing, those general meanings can have specific connotations. Is this correct?

 

[Katie-Ellen]

He may well mean ambivalence, amongst many other things. Exchange, barter, meditation, sacrifice etc. The figure in the Tarot hangs upside down in reference to Odin hanging upside down on the World Tree, Yggdrasil. He gave his eye for all knowledge, because nothing is for nothing, and received the the knowledge of everything in exchange, contained in the runes.

But the reader is never to be constrained by book meaning. It is the reader who does the reading, not the Tarot or whatever other system is being used. Whatever you feel it means is what it means. Imagery trumps everything else in hitting up so called psychic insight, which may or may not accord with book meaning for a card (though it will never flatly contradict book meaning) But, over time, you find you expand and customise your own personal library of possible meanings.

The Hanged Man may in real life mean death by suicide, even though many (or most) sources might not include that interpretation. It was this card that on one occasion alerted me that someone was contemplating suicide, and another card showed me where he was thinking of doing it, and he recognised it as the very place, and on on another occasion it alerted me to the fact that the client was deeply troubled about a friend's suicide. The extremes of interpretation of this card, real enough, and happily rare though not rare enough.

 

[Carol Rose]

Thanks, @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine!

 

[Laura Lee]

I've been debating whether to comment on the blog post because I've said so many things on this very subject countless times on here. But what the heck. I'm in a mood to post.

If you're not writing for the sake of the craft - for the love of it, because you have to, because it's your passion, because the voices in your head won't shut up, because it feeds your soul, or for any reason related to that, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

Writing to "succeed" at it - whatever that means - puts it on par with going after a high-paying job in a lucrative field. Stiff competition, long hours, usually some schmoozing with others in the industry, maybe a bit of back stabbing in private, and generally selling yourself, whether you're the best person for the job or not.

Yeah. Okay. That shit goes on out there in the writing world. We all know it does. We can all point toward best sellers that are not well-written books. We can all point toward classics that wouldn't get past an agent in today's industry because people wrote differently 100 years ago. 50 years ago. 25 years ago. We can all point toward shady dealings where authors manipulated numbers on Amazon to reach the rankings they did. If there's a way to exploit something, humans will find it and use it.

However...

There are legit authors making boatloads of money without any of the underhanded stuff that goes on. They write well. They have a solid following. Human nature being what it is, and this business being subjective, no matter how many books one sells, not everyone adores those authors. So what? Do you think they care? Hint: they don't. They aren't writing for the people who don't care for their work. They're writing for their fans and for themselves. But they wrote for themselves first. It's easy to lose sight of that fact.

We all know the stories of J.K. Rowling's and Stephen King's humble beginnings. They didn't know they'd be world famous. They simply wrote the stories they had to write. Every writer started out that way. Writing because they had a story to tell.

Sure, some people (a lot of them, actually) had pie-in-the-sky dreams of hitting the NYT best sellers list their first time out, and becoming an instant overnight success with movie deals and merchandising rights. The smart ones quickly realized we all have those dreams starting out, but rarely does that happen in real life. And they kept writing anyway because of the reasons listed up there in the second paragraph of this post. And they were happy doing it because they write to write. Not to become someone else's ideal of successful.

So it comes down to how you define successful.

If you define it like the author of the blog post, you will never be happy doing this. You will never be happy writing for the sake of writing.

Personally, I had dreams, too. I also had unrealistic expectations about the publishing industry. Coming to this forum - in its former manifestation and again in this one - helped ground me in reality. It also taught me my own limitations as a writer. And of course we all have those. But not all of us can see them or are willing to acknowledge them. Doesn't mean I won't stop trying to write a better book each time, but I'm also enough of a realist to know my own limits in terms of the craft.

So I had to make a decision. Keep doing this for the wrong reasons and continue to fail at that, or do it for the reasons I've been doing it since I was eight years old. Because I love to write stories. I love to create worlds. I love to create characters. This is my passion.

Am I saying I've settled? I don't know. Maybe. Sometimes I believe I have. But mostly I believe I'm in a comfortable place with my writing career, where once in a while I turn a phrase that surprises even me. Where once in a while a story comes to me so strongly and so completely that to *not* write it would be akin to cutting off an arm.

Am I tortured soul? God, I hope not. I'm just a wife and mother, a nurse, a wannabe percussion player, a wannabe cello player, a dabbler in things like Tarot cards and balancing my chakras, who wishes she had WAY more time in life to do all the cool things she still has yet to do. In other words, I'm a writer.

You sure are a writer. Thanks for your post.