Hum-de-hum
Down at the bottom of my blogroll I added some of my favorite writer-quotes. I’m feeling very writer-ly despite not having much time to write; I think it’s working on my book proposal.
I get a lot of review books for my job, which I absolutely love. But in the same way that working on a magazine has changed my view of magazines, getting review books changes my view of books. I know this isn’t exactly news to anybody but it turns out that the people writing books are just people. They’re not even necessarily the smartest people or the people who write the most beautifully. No, they’re just people with the impetus to get a book published who have a publisher willing to bet that the book will be riding some popular wave.
Many of the books are very bad. Some are so slick that you can see the marketing wheels turning. Some are so sincere that reading them just breaks your heart; you know no one is going to read it.
You have to have chutzpah to write books. It takes a kind of willfully ignorant confidence and cynicism. Even the people writing the feel good, empowerment books are marketing machines. Even the ones telling you to buy less, listen to your heart, etc. really don’t want you to do that until you’ve bought their book, attended their seminars and listened to them.
I guess I knew all that but now I’m really knowing it.
What’s worse is knowing that I want to write a book anyway, which makes me feel very cynical and snide. Besides it’s a little embarrassing to have my need made so public (look at me! look at me!) but then what did I think I was doing with this blog???
Dawn said, “You have to have chutzpah to write books. It takes a kind of willfully ignorant confidence and cynicism. Even the people writing the feel good, empowerment books are marketing machines. Even the ones telling you to buy less, listen to your heart, etc. really don’t want you to do that until you’ve bought their book, attended their seminars and listened to them.”
_______________________________________________
I’m not Jewish and my mother didn’t speak Yiddish apart from a few words, but she taught me that “chutzpah” is a good word and I believe it. You do need a certain type of ballsy attitude, confidence etc., or else how could you convince an agent, a publishing house, editor or even your “self” to take the economic and energetic risk it takes to publish? I’ve had a couple of agents and I have a couple of books coming out–if you want to write to my email address sometime we could chatter more about publishing, agent hunting, etc–I don’t want to take up a lot of space on the blog. I do have some well formed ideas on the topic though which might be helpful.
Best,
M & M