There has been much written about the current state of the publishing industry: Huge publishing house mergers and the proliferation of mega-bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders have seriously hindered the ability of new and unconventional writers to enter the marketplace.  Furthermore, it has created a paradox where more people than ever are buying books, while concurrently publishers are making less and less of a profit.  The biggest losers so far are the small and yet-unpublished writers, who must struggle on the periphery of this battle, and the public, who have little chance of finding experimental and esoteric writers on the bookshelves of their favorite large bookstore.  That, at least, is the view from the outside.

The view from the inside is a little different, as those of us who are striving for recognition have come to find out.  And for those of you who are just beginning to look for outlets in which to publish your novel, poem, or short story, I would like to share what the last few years have been like for me.  I don’t pretend to have any special knowledge that would apply to everyone everywhere, but these are the truths that I have discovered along the way.

For every writer, the creative process itself is different.  Some might write on a crowded train on the way to work, while others prefer seclusion, typing away in the predawn darkness on their own homes.  Some pay the bills as lawyers, some as dishwashers, some as high school teachers, and some hardly pay them at all.

In my experience, though, writing itself is not really so complicated.  It's about listening well to those you come across, about noticing the differences between the way people act and the way they are, about simple observations of the physical world we all share; it's about exploring how emotions color our worlds, our truths, our intellects, even those aforementioned simple observations.  It’s about reading everything you can get your hands on: the classics, the moderns, and everything in between.  It's about writing as often as possible, perfecting your craft until it comes easily and joyfully.  And as all writers discover, it is about finding the time to sit and write, in solitude, for some considerable amount of time, each and every day.

It was a few years ago, during my last year of college, when I decided, full of a rookie’s wisdom and with the rather unimpressive sum total of two semi-completed short stories, that I wanted to be a professional novelist.  I was thus relegated, almost immediately, to very strange, very often low-paying jobs wedged into the odder parts of the evening.  As the years passed, I have been able to slowly branch out and build up a freelance writing career, doing some advertising and Web-related work.

These last years have been the most difficult and the most rewarding years of my life, and I doubt there is any activity or occupation which can balance that maddening combination so perfectly.  The writing itself, at least for me, is not so complicated; it is the lifestyle required to sustain it.  Problems arise because writing takes time, and lots of it, and when you are working on your first novel and your first collection of short stories, you are clearly not getting paid for your endeavors.  Taking large parts of the day to pursue something that pays nothing for your efforts and only offers vague assurances of any future money can create financial and emotional difficulties, to say the least.  It doesn’t help that in America today, in the midst of the largest economic boom in history, conventional wisdom holds that if you are unhappy or struggling in the least you need to change your goals to something that involves acquiring more possessions, money, status, and the ensuing ‘power’ that comes with those things.  People will tell you it is time to start living in the 'real world', the world of the 8 to 6 work day, of rush-hour commutes, of mortgages and suburban homes and vacations spent at the shore. 

Living somewhat outside of conventional society has its benefits, and one of them is a more objective observation of the conclusions so many of us have drawn about what is important in life.  When one looks at the quality of life instead of the quantity of objects in it, it does not take long to begin to see some very serious problems with American conventional wisdom.  If money and power led to happiness, then it would follow that we would be the happiest nation on earth, but somehow I think we are, despite our wealth, a nation of discontents, a nation whose soul has atrophied, and whose people, stranded between empty materialism and a consumer culture on one side, and narrow-minded religion on the other, feel only the oppressive hand of time on their backs.  Perhaps that is why we Americans always seem is such a hurry to do everything, from hurrying to work to hurrying to retire to hurrying to our few precious weeks of vacation. 

That bit of perspective comes to many who seriously pursue creative writing; it can come at a high cost, though.  Most writers wage a long and protracted battle with self-doubt and self-inflicted poverty, and I have been no exception. I received over 200 rejection letters from agents, publishers, and magazines—216 to be exact—before I was finally published by a New York-based literary magazine.  A contract from a reputable literary agent followed shortly thereafter, although we have yet to secure a publisher.

The fact that I only toiled for a few years before receiving that small amount of professional acknowledgement makes me very fortunate; other, far more talented men and women have written largely to themselves for many more long years.  Hawthorne was in his late thirties before anyone published any of his brilliant works; in a moment of desperation and anger over rejection by a publisher, he burned an entire volume of his short stories.  Suffice it to say I can very easily relate to his exasperation, and am happy I do not have a fireplace anywhere in my house—somehow throwing stories on the grill seems to lack that dramatic and self-important touch.  Hawthorne was vindicated in his own lifetime and while relatively young; there have been many others, now famous, whose lives were marked only by difficulties, and whose work fell on the deaf ears of an indifferent public.

As Herman Melville slid into poverty and obscurity after the release of Moby Dick (it was a commercial and critical disaster, and when he died some 40 years later his obituary listed his name as Herman Melver, making no mention he had ever been a popular writer), he wrote to Hawthorne, “Dollars damn me.”  It seems that is often the tension many writers feel at some point in their lives, if they are very lucky, or throughout their lives if they are not.  My first real lesson about being a writer was that to choose to write is, almost always, to choose material poverty and risk professional obscurity, and each man or woman must decide for themselves, as their careers and efforts unfold, if the effort is worth the risk.

There was another, more profound lesson to be had, though, beyond money and the temptation to write a ‘popular’ book or story that could be easily sold to and understood by the public.  (I always liked William Blake's quote on this.  He said, rather bluntly, “That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.”)  This final lesson remained hidden to me as I struggled to keep motivated through the growing pile of rejection slips and debt.  Those were the days when it seemed the only thing that was going well was my writing, the rest of my life was in some sort of tangled purgatory.  While working jobs I hated, I sometimes found solace and inspiration in Thoreau, even though it was he that said something like If a laborer gets merely the wages he is paid, he is cheated, and cheats himself.  That is true, I suppose, but food still has to be bought, and bills paid, for real estate prices near Walden Pond these days are enough to make even a developer blush.

Thoreau, though, was good to me.  His “Life Without Principle” is a mendicant’s bible, and by the time I would finish rereading that incredible essay, I would be able to confront the seeming ignominy of my life with a smug embrace.  When the pressures of living, working, and writing broke through Thoreau, there was always Whitman’s eloquent and moving Song of Myself waiting to be reread, for poetry finds and caresses those hidden recesses of the soul that prose scarcely knows exist.  If the termagant inside of me still would not be placated, and my resolve grew tattered around the edges, I would seek out the clear voice of the noble Emerson.  It was not lost on me that not one of them—Thoreau, Whitman, or Emerson—mention the art of making money, nowhere is there a sentence about how to pay that overdue utility bill, never once are we instructed on the value of a good credit rating.

Thoreau observed that no one seems concerned with how Plato got his living, that the Greek’s employment was secondary to his philosophy, to what he created.  Of course Thoreau is right, and indeed, does it matter if Whitman waited tables while writing Song of Myself, scratching out the lines on the back of a guest check, or if Emerson at times had trouble paying the local taxes, having to take on jobs he found distasteful and mundane?

By the fall of 1997, I had a completed novel and a collection of short stories behind me, and the occasion was marked by a growing pile of rejection slips, increasing debt, and something new and soon to be paralyzing: creeping self doubt.  By the onset of winter my internal doubt had grown so strong that inspiration could no longer be found in any novel, poem, or essay.  The borrowed thoughts and passions of others were no longer enough to keep me focused, and I seriously considered, for the first time, mothballing everything, giving up on writing, and going out and getting a full-time job with things like paid vacations, health care coverage, and the promise of checks deposited directly into my bank account, week after week.  What I needed, I realized, what I craved, was steadiness and security, something I had not tasted since the days of childhood.  Writing had become an almost unbearable burden, arrears were everywhere, and it seemed my dream of becoming a published novelist was foolish and arrogant.  It was time, I told myself, to join the pack and get a real job, perhaps coming back to writing in a few years when I could more afford to pursue such a financially precarious undertaking.  After a long, tortured week, one that I will never forget, I decided it was time.  In early March of 1997 I began a letter to a sympathetic friend in a dolorous mood, meaning to vent my anger and frustration, and to tell of my desire to remove myself from the field for a few years.  Yet as I began to write, I found the letter going in a most unforeseen direction, and when it was finished, I read the words and realized something intensely profound had occurred.  Inspiration, efficacious and powerful, had burst unexpectedly from deep within me.  With each mental reason for stopping my writing, I rebutted myself on paper powerfully, even harshly, at each point arguing against my own objections with my own observations and beliefs.  As I reread my ‘letter’, I found inspiration not with Whitman or Thoreau or Emerson or from old quotes or poignant biographies, but rather where it had been all along: within.  Since that intense realization, things have never been the same – I no longer doubt my abilities or my courage to see them through.

I realized that in America today, from kindergarten through college, there is a vast, unconscious conspiracy of mediocrity at work.  As children and young adults, we are admonished to listen well, do as we are told, and to please only ask questions that can be easily answered.  We are exhorted to do all of these things because in the end they lead to modest success; a job, a spouse, some children, maybe a nice house in the suburbs.  And in truth, this is not such as bad lesson, for all our educators are saying is “Our lives are steady and secure, this is how you too can achieve the same.”  Steadiness and security have their place in our lives, but also their price.  No one has achieved greatness, espoused genius, without first foregoing security and steadiness.  Our educators tell us to study Shakespeare and Newton and Wollstonecraft and Hemingway and Picasso, but never to write our own Hamlet, our own Principia, our own Vindication of the Rights of Women.  Writing, creating, is difficult, prone to failure nine times out of ten; remember, Melville died impoverished and obscure, as have legions of other writers and poets whose names and reputations died with them, and whose works languish in dusty books long out of print.  Studying, reviewing, editing, journalism, criticism, are safer, more sheltered and secure, an easy regurgitation of someone else’s genius.  Academia, in which I briefly considered a career, battles the same problems, but is compounded by arrogance and myopia.  I recently read that Stephen Greenblatt, a Shakespeare critic, is more venerated by many professors than Shakespeare himself, for the whole notion of ‘genius’ has fallen into disrepute among the guardians of our institutions, who speak with disdain about the very use of the word.  If a writer does not believe in genius, in greatness, than I can tell you with one-hundred percent certainty they will never have the perseverance to see their dreams grow, mature, and become reality in the face of so many obstacles.  These professors get lost debating semantics, what is relative, what is absolute, congratulating themselves on killing genius, and hiding their mediocrity behind smug obfuscation and banal intellectual discourse, leading easy, tenured lives far removed from the front lines of life. 

The hard-won philosophy of the sage, the musings of great poets, the rich canvases of novels, the probing insights of the essayist; these things provide a map of our interiors, of our potentials as artists, as citizens, as human beings, and are indeed worthy of emulation and study.  But even at their best, the most profound review, the most knowledgeable scholar, is no more than a well-trained parrot, disseminating that which they’ve heard over and over again.  No, we must experience those truths for ourselves, moving away from security into the sometimes fearsome, sometimes terrifying landscape of uncertainty, the area out of which insight is born.  It was coming to this understanding that finally convinced me to continue, to keep writing, even if it meant—or means—a lifetime of poverty and recognition that will never arrive.  It was my own voice, not that of another, speaking from the depths of my soul that gave me the courage and wisdom to persevere.  All I had to do was listen.

That which you create, that which exists outside of whatever ways you make the material ends of your life come together, is what is primary, what your tiny voice is, even now, admonishing you to do.  It is telling you to raise up your goals, from security to greatness, and see where it is you might fall. Genius, greatness, may not be within the reach of you or me, but all of us may strive to reach it, and, perhaps, it is that quest which is the most ennobling of all.  To sit around and wait for the right time and the right circumstance seems to me dangerous and foolish, betting on a tomorrow that is under no obligation to unfold.  The right time is now, this day, this hour, this very moment.

Keith Martin-Smith
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

June 1998