If Loving You is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right

You finally get to the point in your life where you can seriously start chasing down that vision, the one that’s fueled your dreams, kept you going.  You turn

in triumph to embrace it, grab its shining golden ring – and it’s gone.  The dream hasn’t gone, the target has.  It simply doesn’t exist anymore.  What then?  What now?

I have wanted to be published all my life.  Now it’s called “traditionally” published, a rapidly vanishing dinosaur with only a handful left hanging on, relics that are barely even conceivable to approach anymore, much less gain entry.  Everything I’m told of the writing industry is mortally depressing.

There’s now this shortcut, an instant gratification route called ePublishing,

“independent publishing.”  In my excursions into the writing world – conferences, organizations, groups, books and journals – it’s all that’s discussed.  They say this is the only way to go, the only viable way left to get a book published.  So the writer’s life must now be devoted to learning the machinations of the eUniverse. 

I wonder about what is lost, the implications.  I understand the pitfalls of big publishing industries, the worthy works that never got there, the politics.  But

what have we traded that for?  Have we settled for dull, trendy shades of grey vomitus and forgotten the vibrant spectrum of actual literature?  Will “Literature” become like Latin, Ancient Greek, to our future generations; something to be studied in school, a lost quaint art?  How will we ever know again what “good” writing is?  How to find that in the infinite whorls of a worldwide web?

Writing requires a life, a soul, commitment and sacrifice; a lifetime of learning, growing, improving, always reaching deeper and deeper, scouring the abyss of

the soul and mind, bringing those hard-won discoveries to the surface and light, to expose them on the page for all to see – our commonality that binds us, our differences that shape us, our struggles, our humanity.  Those that endure this journey cultivate our craft, live the writing for the writing’s sake.  The deserving, the lucky, got published.  And forever their words endure.  Official, through the gauntlet.  Ordained. 

But now, anybody can “publish,” can scribble something on an iphone, press a button and have a “book”.  There is no quality control.  Unedited, poorly edited,

poorly written, poorly formatted, raw pieces abound, alongside those that are truly good but never made it to, or approached the publishing process.

I may never get published, may never be enveloped in that dinosaur’s final warm dying breath.  I may never gain entry to a legendary Camelot, the very idea of which gave my life meaning.  But I find I don’t want to learn any more about ePublishing, about how to rise in the ranks and

ratings by machinations that have nothing to do with the quality or worthiness of the work; how to make deals – you “like” me and I’ll in turn “like” you and we’ll inflate each other – we’ll look good online.  Join my club and I’ll join yours and we’re in.  We’ll put together a platform that extols our own virtues, copying the review aspects of “traditional” publishing until nobody can discern the difference.  I can’t remember the last time I attended a workshop or conference or group that didn’t focus on the “e”.  Where are the talks of the Masters, of literature and quality and how to recognize it, strive for it, to improve and continue improving, on what authentic writing really is?

I understand the public relations / marketing necessity, I do.  And I’m not naive

enough to pretend this same necessity doesn’t exist in traditional publishing.  But it’s the exclusive focus on the technology, on joining the right platforms and clubs; all that energy devoted to boosting the numbers and ratings that make the hairs round my bruised and already battered right brain aquiver.

I’ve seen works go out with egregious errors, and the readers responding in reviews being the ones to catch them.  The general public now a de facto

editor.  That work then becomes labeled an “advanced reader copy.”  And it stays out there like that until it can, if ever, be properly edited.  A dead rat in the well.  And without any gate keepers the whole water supply gets diluted and polluted.  In the long run I fear this will hurt us all.

Or, we evolve past the expectation of exceptional quality, weaned out by sheer force of numbers.  It’s dangerous.  We’re breeding whole new generations of readers who have no other expectations.

So no, I have not joined this eRevolution.  … She says, as she hits “Publish” and these words join the “e” in the ether.  But I want to resist.  I hold on to, yearn for, a time and community in which I was never included and is now

fading away into another dying era’s sunset.

I just want to write.  I want to be able to touch that magic that touched me so many years ago.  I want to learn and continue learning the craft.  I am not

ready for this to die.  Too much will be lost.  We’re not burning our Great Library of Alexandria; we’re burying it like masses of cyber-ants, each with its own bits and byes to pile atop the edifice until it’s vanished, until it won’t even be remembered.

Maybe I’ll actually attain Nirvana someday.  Maybe I won’t.  Maybe I’ll convince myself ePublishing isn’t so bad or is the only option left to me.  Maybe it literally

will be all that’s left by the time I try to publish.  Mine may be the generation that has front row seats to the final demise.  But I am not going to waste these final moments.  I’ll grab my fiddle and write my heart out and then write some more, as if the golden ring is still there, a warm glow on my page.