101 Reasons to Stop Writing

This the final article in Paul Riddell’s A Farewell to Writing trilogy, and a fitting eulogy to his writing career (see his previous articles, Slushpile Freakonomics and The Aspie Dilemma). The memory of his literary achievements will live on, though, at least for the next few weeks until 101 Reasons runs out of steam, or the Paul Riddell who writes for The Scotsman decides to write a book.

If you take the time to ask a wannabe writer why it’s so important to keep on plugging away, don’t believe any reason other than the important one. It’s not about telling a good story or changing the world: it’s all about getting one’s byline on a cover. If the wannabe is slogging away on a NaNoWriMo atrocity, it’s because s/he wants to walk into the local bookstore and see a stack of books with his/her name (and maybe a severely Photoshopped picture, with all of the string warts and lamprey scars removed, as well) on the cover. If the wannabe is trying to break into magazines or newspapers, it’s to see that byline on the front cover. It’s every writer’s real motivation: if it weren’t, then why do established writers get so angry when their names are missing or misspelled?

Nothing works better at crushing unjustified hubris than making a quick trip to the remainder bin.

I’ve suspected for years that the real reason why so many writers get drawn into drink or drugs isn’t because they’re weak: it’s because nothing offers the high of seeing that byline. It almost compensates for the incessant “So how does it feel to be published for the first time?” from neighbors and co-workers when you’ve been slaving under that addiction for the last decade, and it almost compensates for the boss seeing your work for the first time and laying you off because “you have something to fall back on.” Every writer is writing for some form of attention, and the likelihood of even a ghostwriting novelist telling a reporter “I don’t want an interview! I already got my pay, and I don’t want the extra attention!” is right up there with Whitley Strieber’s “Deliverance: The Next Generation” anal rape fantasies becoming required reading at NASA. Why else do you see Star Wars novelists screaming about how “Nobody can take away the fact that I’m a New York Times bestselling author!” as if it means something?

Well, let’s look at the other side. Just as no high matches that of the first byline spotting, nothing works better at crushing unjustified hubris than making a quick trip to the remainder bin.

If you really want to understand how the publishing industry works, take some time to go digging through all of the discards.

For this trick, you’ll have to go to a big bookstore at first. I’m not talking about the local hole-in-the-wall run by that mousy fiftysomething who snarls at customers who ask her questions when she could be Websurfing, but a big store. It can be an indie, like Powell’s City of Books up in Portland, Oregon, or it could be your neighborhood Borders or Barnes & Noble. For a concentrated dose of humility, find one of those “75 Percent Off Books” outlets. Either way, you’re looking for the “Bargain Books” sections, where the store bought huge pallets of books that publishers didn’t sell and they’ve marked down to ridiculous prices.

The Bargain Books section is the Land of Misfit Books. If you really want to understand how the publishing industry works, take some time to go digging through all of the discards. You won’t see many paperbacks: generally, the final fate of a standard paperback if it doesn’t sell is that it ends up at a recycling plant. (Appropriately enough, those paperbacks generally get chopped up and pressed into industrial-grade toilet paper; those specks of color in gas station or fast-food restaurant teepee are probably the back covers of Robert Jordan or Piers Anthony novels.) However, you’ll see lots of hardcovers and trade paperbacks, and wandering for a while will make you ask one question: “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?”

Flash-in-the-pan bestsellers and utter flops, they all have one thing in common: they didn’t sell, so the publishers sold them in lots, usually for pennies on the dollar, to anyone willing to pay to haul them away.

See, it’s not just a matter of quality. Good books end up in the Bargain Books because they came out at a particularly bad time, or because the publisher went under before they could be distributed. Crap books end up there not because they didn’t sell, but because the publisher figured that doing ten printings would work for a book that only sold through three. You’ll see ill-advised books by television comedians that were nothing but ego projects instigated by social-climbing editors, books attempting to capture a buying niche that never existed (between trying to remind GenXers of past glories and the latest attempts to harness “Harry Potter Fever”, you’d think that these publishers would just run their money through a tree mulcher and save themselves the embarrassment), and lots of masturbatory volumes by television journalists who assume that anybody cares about how they market the news. Flash-in-the-pan bestsellers and utter flops, they all have one thing in common: they didn’t sell, so the publishers sold them in lots, usually for pennies on the dollar, to anyone willing to pay to haul them away.

Now that you’re done getting hit with the sight of your favorite and most hated authors being one in literary death, go back to Frumpy Fiftysomething’s Used Books and Quiet Desperation Emporium. Here’s where you’ll really get a good dose of publishing reality. Since most of these little stores are started with the same motivation as comic shops (namely, “I buy a lot of books, and I know I’d be just as good at selling romance novels as I am at buying them”), they’re usually financed by a windfall inheritance or a divorce settlement, so they’re dependent upon people bringing in new inventory because they don’t have the money for new books. This means that they get the real WTF books:

• Six copies of the same PublishAmerica novel because the author lives down the street, and his co-workers took the autographed copies he gave them and traded them in for something readable
• Thirty years of Star Trek novels, still wrapped in plastic bags to “protect their value”, dumped there by the sibling of the shut-in whose cat finally took natural selection into his paws and ate her face
• The vanity-press published chrestomathy of the local weekly newspaper “humor” columnist, published as a favor by his favorite strip club because they wanted to reward one of their best customers
• Lots and lots of poetry chapbooks that couldn’t be given away with the promise of free beer but that continue to be hawked by senile hippies so “the truth can get out there”

If it was of any value, it would have been snapped up years ago, and some of the stuff coming through the door was so foul that the owner left it in a box outside for people to grab for free. Even then, a lot of that ends up in a dumpster at the end of the day, because there’s only so much crap you can read.

The important thing to remember is that this is every author’s ultimate fate. No matter how successful, no matter how profound, no matter how “important”, any author who starts writing will ultimately find his/her work on its way to being composted. It may be seeing that novel in fat stacks in the Bargain Bin section when nobody could find it when it was in print. It may be seeing that newspaper cover story that required a year of research being used to housebreak puppies. Either way, it’s all on its way to becoming soil, and any hope of living on in literary immortality has to deal with the promise of mildew, silverfish, and the occasional bored toddler.

Every beginner talks about what s/he plans to do once that new novel becomes a bestseller, but is that author really ready for having to pay back the piddling advance, getting tapped by Inland Revenue or the IRS for deductions for promoting a book that went nowhere, and then seeing his/her face staring back from the “Free to a good home” box at the next garage sale?