A friend, a Polish emigrant and gifted writer, sent me an e-mail recently about an idea he has for an online literary venture.
It used to be that writers wrote and let others - newspaper barons, magazine companies, publishing houses - handle the distribution, marketing, and selling of their work. Many novelists and poets were notoriously sensitive, distracted, eccentric, impractical - in a word: artistic - and not suited for the clamor of the marketplace.
Today, writers need the very talent - a head for business - that has traditionally been seen as alien - in some ways, detrimental - to the process of creating art. No longer are we removed from the economics. Talking with a friend recently about the increasing difficulty of making money through writing, I remarked: "We're all poets now." But in reality, we're all entrepreneurs. How that will change what we write - and who ends up writing - remains to be seen.
Yesterday I received a rejection from a quarterly regarding an essay I had sent them months ago and which in the meantime had been accepted by a more prestigious publication with deeper pockets.
It strolled in on de-clawed feet.
Yesterday I bought a copy of the new travel magazine Afar and, reading the words "Premier Issue" on the cover, I thought: I hope it doesn't end up on the dresser in my bedroom.
That's where I keep two short-lived magazines whose births I watched with hope not just as a reader but as a writer.
One is Trips, which debuted in the Spring of 1988. It was published by Banana Republic, back when the company pushed its safari clothing with atmospheric stores that also sold travel books. It was the end of the last great decade for travel writing; a full page ad in the magazine featured six titles in Random House's travel book series, Vintage Departures (also now defunct).
It was a wonderful first issue, with interesting stories (a memoir by Richard Ford of growing up in a hotel in Little Rock) and beautiful illustrations, including the cover (a travel magazine without a cover photo!) which was a dreamlike montage of images of travel, including a ship and a bespectacled man with a little black mustache and matching cap.
It was also, sadly, the last issue, as the company decided to focus solely on clothes.
The other magazine on my dresser is Wigwag, which debuted in October of 1989. It was begun as a kind of answer to The New Yorker, and the first issue carried some big names - Edward Hoagland, Witold Rybczynski - and more wonderful illustrations. The cover featured a Magritte-ish man in suit and hat (what is it about men in hats?) walking with his dog through a park of falling leaves. The autumnal tone was appropriate, because the magazine never appeared again.
My dresser is where good literary magazines go to die.
Yesterday in the Herald a man was described as "a self-published author of self-help books."
Which got me thinking (a la Steven Wright): Shouldn't all self-help books be self-published?
Yesterday the number of people following me on Twitter reached double figures. This audience may not seem very big - in fact, it's embarrassingly small - but I still feel a sense of obligation to it. And I lead a pretty uneventful life.
I know, that doesn't seem to deter people, not in the age when the unrecorded life is not worth living. But when you're a writer the expectations for what you write are higher (even if they're only self-expectations). For six months now I've been concerned about blogger's block; now I'll have to worry about twitterer's block. I may just take up painting.
Spent yesterday waiting to hear from editors. I've lost count of the ones who could dazzle me with a reply. I realize times are tough, many can't buy - but can't they at least type? How much does it cost to send an e-mail?
Fed-up at six, I got on my bike for my evening ride. The first two people I passed - another man on a bike and a young mother pushing a baby carriage - I said hello to and got no response. Then the Jungle Queen appeared. I cruised over to the river bank and gave a big wave. No one waved back.