101 Reasons to Stop Writing

Paul Riddell gives us a window into his own book buying habits, with this assessment of nonfiction shelves that are creaking with an oversupply of awfulness.

Just because the intrepid staff of 101 Reasons To Stop Writing finds so many examples of the site’s thesis in fiction doesn’t mean that we only need to focus on convincing wannabe, beginning, and established writers to quit writing fiction. Beating on poets is easy, and you really have to question the sanity of any mainstream publisher who continues to publish poetry from musicians and movie directors as if anyone’s actually going to buy it. We can all agree that the universe doesn’t need another Star Trek or Star Wars novel, and that the best way to stop their production is to feature their writers in a syndicated TV show much like comedian Bill Hicks’ aborted project Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus.

“A discussion on unnecessary and pointless publications is one where everyone has an opinion, and unlike discussions of literary merit, everyone’s usually right.”

However, bad writing, bad editing, and publishing decisions come from all over the place, and not just from the Vassar and Columbia twerps who figure that the world simply needs one more book about a lonely Ivy League graduate turned slushpile editor who finds love at her publishing house. Nope, it’s all over the place, and it’s up to the informed consumer to closer the sewer line.

A discussion on unnecessary and pointless publications is one where everyone has an opinion, and unlike discussions of literary merit, everyone’s usually right. This is because for every genre, subgenre, and passing trend in publishing that might be worth retaining and passing on to future generations, twenty or thirty could use a good stout cleansing, preferably with fire. Almost everyone is going to have a list of particular categories of nonfiction that need just as much discouragement of their writers as for fiction, but let’s start with some of the particular offenders that make my eyes water every time I walk into a bookstore:

Books about rock bands: Any rock band. Unless the author has incontrovertible photographic evidence that Elvis Presley is alive and hiding out in the Roy Orbison Celebrity Rehab Clinic in Sheepdip, Wyoming (where he practices on the small arms range with John Lennon and Kurt Cobain, flies ultralights with Buddy Holly and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and conducts charm school classes with Sid Vicious and G.G. Allin), only one somatype is going to give a damn about a book on any musical act of the last fifty years, and that’s the music critic wannabe. Thanks to the iPod fragmenting normal music distribution channels, there’s no demand for books on the latest international superstar because there’s pretty much no such thing any more. Fans who want to know about a particular musical act usually find all the information they really need online, and they also won’t be embarrassed in twenty years at a friend or spouse finding the definitive biography of Hanson or Phil Collins on a hidden bookshelf in the closet. The Sex Pistols are all turning 50 and the Ramones are all dead, so don’t waste your time on books talking about the punk revolution because it’s not going to happen again just because you’re wearing Butthole Surfers T-shirts to the mall. I almost forgot: Kurt Cobain really was the voice of a generation, and that voice said “Oh, they’ll be sorry for calling me ‘Snivels’ when I’m gone.”

Chrestomathies of newspaper columns, articles, and reviews: Just as with collections of political cartoons, Webcomics, and “the best places to go on the Web”, almost anything ever printed in a newspaper goes flat the day after it comes out. Even some of the best newspaper columnists ever to write are barely worth collecting (Mike Royko, the greatest American newspaper columnist this side of H.L. Mencken, had two posthumous collections of his columns come out through the University of Chicago Press because no non-university press could justify the expense compared to the interest). Political columns are invariably dated before they’re printed in the paper, so putting out massive volumes of political commentary signals an editor interested in a bit of starfucking instead of an actual interest from the reading public. This doesn’t stop every last weekly newspaper film critic and “humor” columnist from attempting to get a collection of their “best” works into print so they can get to work on the all-important signing junket. One quick question for these geniuses: if the only response you get to your work in the paper is a regular cry of “Shut up and die”, why the hell do you expect a different response just because those bad music reviews to albums forgotten years ago are now in book form?

Garden porn: Any horticultural section of any bookstore has two types of books: informative guides and garden porn. The guides are usually for all stages of gardening enthusiast, from beginner to expert, and they’re always full of information that can actually be used to complete a particular project. Garden porn, though, is like real porn: it’s intended to catch the eye in lieu of one actually performing those activities. Go through a used bookstore’s gardening section, and it’s the same depressing list of overpriced orchid guides purchased by a local rich twit who didn’t want to appear dumber than normal at Desperate Housewives functions, collections of “101 Gardens You Need to See Before You Die” to remind everyone of what can be done with their little suburban back yard if they have unlimited time and funds and a crew of indentured servants, and “How to Garden” guides. The last range from the hippie dippie “Turn your lawn into a food garden” manuals that encourage the reader to break laws on grey water use that exist for a damn good, to “How to make your grocery bill stretch further with gardening” pamphlets that can’t seem to get across that depending upon a back yard garden with a family of six is a surefire recipe for cannibalism. Those guides to growing marijuana are as much garden porn as the ones on raising legal herbs for fun and profit, because this implies that the ADD recipients reading them can remember to pull down their pants when taking a crap, much less remember to water and fertilize their charges. These books aren’t intended to be read for legitimate ideas and inspirations: they’re a literary sedative intended to get the purchaser to buy more resource material for the far-off “one of these days” when they’ll have the time to do these projects rather than kvetch about them. By the time that happens, they’re usually too old to enjoy the effort.

Children’s dinosaur guides: The one genre full of more idiots who KNOW that their manuscripts are genius than science fiction is children’s literature, and the one section in children’s literature more overloaded with unnecessary books is the dinosaur section. I realize that not every author of a child’s dinosaur book can be a Robert Bakker or a Louis Jacobs, and not every artist can be a John Sibbick or a Luis Rey, but still. Kids are just as savvy as reasonably well-informed adults, and most of them love science books of all sorts that don’t talk down to them about dumbed-down subjects. The only individual who buys one of the typical children’s dinosaur books, usually a book with information plagiarized from another children’s book written in 1952 and illustrations by an “artist” who paints with his phallus, is invariably a grandmother or other family member who buys it because it’s the first one seen on the shelf. Taking the time to check for scientific inaccuracies, as well as obvious typos, should be a no-brainer, yet I constantly see books on dinosaurs that read as if the author and artist might have heard about the film adaptation of Jurassic Park.

Home improvement guides: Much as with garden porn, anyone who plans to be serious about home improvement, home restoration, home construction, or home demolition has one or two good books on the aspects that aren’t covered with hands-on experience, and the rest are dross. Tie-ins for classic home restoration and furniture construction TV series such as This Old House and New Yankee Workshop aren’t bought by aficionados of the show, because they’re too busy doing instead of reading. Instead, they’re bought by family members who hope to connect with Dad or Uncle Phil during the few moments when they aren’t in the workshop. Likewise, the gigantic piles of discarded Trading Spaces guides in the used bookstore help demonstrate that this little publishing fad is over and that anyone wanting to revamp a bad kitchen or living room should never ask an interior designer for advice: congratulations to former Trading Spaces host Paige Davis and her own mountains of the remaindered autobiography Paige on Paige, for demonstrating that Edie Brickell isn’t the only horsefaced Southern Methodist University brat who parlayed her two sole and perky talents into inexplicable if short-lived fame.

Nonfiction guides to fiction series: The only thing in the universe more pathetic than a novelist famed for writing Star Trek and Star Wars novelizations trying to rationalize how they’re writing great literature while “playing in George Lucas’s and Gene Roddenberry’s universes” is the person writing the “nonfiction” background guides to science fiction and fantasy franchises’ peoples, languages, and technology. Oh, there might be a demand now for a quick guide to the latest bad skiffy show or movie, but take a peek on eBay as to exactly how much of a demand there is for Babylon 5, Farscape, and X-Files nonfiction tie-ins, and those shows ended not all that long ago. And while we’re at it, the authors who continue to crank out “unauthorized” guides to TV shows and movies haven’t been sued for a reason, and that’s because big media companies don’t waste time on pissants and pillocks who call themselves “Treksperts” when they have agents in the afterlife to deal with those issues. If they’re going to demonstrate their skills at jamming their tongues up William Shatner’s ass, they can do so with any number of fallen angels who haven’t had a good dingleberry removal in eons.

Well, that’s a start. Anyone considering other additions is perfectly welcome to take them, print them out on good paper, wad them up, and use them for toilet paper. The idea here is to stop the writing in the first place, not to start further writing by discussing how someone else should take the recommendations to heart. We all hear stories of writers who started because they read a book or short story so bad that they figured “I know I can do better,” so avert that crisis and refuse to buy the offending volume in the first place.

– Paul Riddell used to write, but then he got better.