So much very subtle and quiet hype about the end of the bound stack of paper sheets known as 'the book'. There have been many books over the years, and I think everyone can agree that they were not always perfect, nor ever had an overwhelming reputation for improving the world. But there's a certain something to books and even if they are dying, take heart: our generation will be able to come by books cheaply for the duration of our existence, unless they begin burning bales of books.
If the global stock of books is significantly destroyed in the next twenty years, or publishing is severely repressed by economic or colluded forces, then at the very least books will have predicted that. Basic reading and communication skills will not likely be replaced, so language will continue, and the flow of ideas will merely take on another, potentially better form. Or our eyes will atrophy from an unmitigated hegemony of digital screens, flashing lights, and confused information.
Maybe there will be a tidal-wave of information in the future which will overwhelm us. Maybe it will get the better of us. We could be changed forever.
Or the book could go on well into the future, as some type of elitist symbol that nobody understands. Probably this view of the book's future is already some cliche that has been analyzed and exploited in hundreds of books. Maybe the book will suffer a renaissance in a few years, or maybe all the news sensationalism and existential dawdling will come to naught, and the book will be as ubiquitous and burdensome as ever – perhaps forever.
In the end, if it goes, the memory of the book will either be exterminated, merely forgotten, or enshrined by some freakish bibliophilia committee as the centerpoint of some futurist, knowledge-based cargo cult. And however it goes, the book will remain as at least a symbol.
But in the meantime there is all kinds of mawkishness about books and print media in general. It seems that the publication industry gets more fatalistic while the technology industry fills with empty hype. There is no real confrontation between the two industries. Largely, the recent history of the matter is that the print industry has had to accept and learn to work with tech, gadget, and electronics industries. It's not really the same as the music industry and the internet, though there are similarities.
So these publishers and maybe even some bibliophiles are very worried and the internet is very unconcerned. That's basically the gist of the story. In my mind television, the postal service, and radio are the real danger zones, and they're still around more than ten years after the internet. Writing killed or perverted most oral tradition anyway, so whatever happens at this point is fair and not unprecedented.
Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
12/21/11
11/8/11
The Unpublished Writer
There's really no worse type of writer. There are hack writers, there are pretentious litterateurs, there are boring scholarly writers, there are award winners, there are profound writers, there are dead writers, there are exciting but empty pulp writers, and there are amateur writers who fund 200 copy runs out of pocket and sell most of them to friends and family and get interviewed in small town newspapers. All of those writers are doing what they love and are not worried about tomorrow: they produce, sometimes they get published, often they are the victims of overrating and hype. For the most part they are just adding to the colossal pile of wasted paper that represents literature in situ.
Then there are unpublished writers. Like cockroaches, they are headless survivors, unable to feed on their aspirations, often orphaned from inspiration, hiding in the shadows and mostly consuming (when they can, headless and all) and producing filth. It's impossible to really understand how many unpublished writers there are, or what drives them. Beyond merest subsistence, this type of writer has few goals that are concrete. A poem-a-day work quota, three hours of prose/day, or half a screenplay each night are not unbeknownst to the unpublished writer, but they are better acquainted with day-jobs and drinking binges and hopelessness. When they set down to work on half-forgotten characters and plots, these poor souls get caught in a vicious cycle of re-reading and compulsive editing. They are procrastinators, and in fact their relation to cockroaches is facile and untrue.
The cockroaches, at least, get published and exist in the tedious middle-ground of writerly success: readings, signings, 10-15k a year plus some royalties if they're lucky, and maybe some articles and exposure pieces to round out the old portfolio. They could go into television or radio writing. They could go into various types of copy writing. Marketing and advertising are the prime escape vectors, but times are hard. Sometimes they're shortlisted for a prize and their cachet goes up for a while and they entertain visions of success.
Compare this to the spider that is the unpublished writer: day job madness, late nights, drugs, hair-pulling typing escapades with open source word processors. They see themselves as hopeless moonlighters. Somewhere in an immense tangled web of wasted promise, these writers slowly produce tortured works that are blurred with self-revelation and inconsistent style. Then silence for weeks or even years. Inspiration comes brightly and passes quickly and leaves no marks. No, the unpublished writer is wretched, and each year passes without a printed work or anything noteworthy for the portfolio. Queries are shot down in flames, credentials are nonexistent and mocked, routes to success are suggested, and the book is closed.
And another year passes, and with it any hope of true and honest publication. All they ask for – these withered shells, who write from their soul, who wouldn't use a vanity publisher if they were paid to, whose every word is wearied and grim – is a spot at the corpse-crowded table where the hacks drink greedily and pontificate about saleability and audience, where the old guard hoard awards, where the bright new prodigies bullshit openly, and where the eyes of the reading public are focused like the glimmering eyes of wolves in the dark... yes, the reading public, waiting for their three or four inspired works per decade, habitual readers who yearn for something new – something, perhaps, that has been overlooked, a supposedly worthless bauble in the cold, dying grasp of the unpublished writer.
Then there are unpublished writers. Like cockroaches, they are headless survivors, unable to feed on their aspirations, often orphaned from inspiration, hiding in the shadows and mostly consuming (when they can, headless and all) and producing filth. It's impossible to really understand how many unpublished writers there are, or what drives them. Beyond merest subsistence, this type of writer has few goals that are concrete. A poem-a-day work quota, three hours of prose/day, or half a screenplay each night are not unbeknownst to the unpublished writer, but they are better acquainted with day-jobs and drinking binges and hopelessness. When they set down to work on half-forgotten characters and plots, these poor souls get caught in a vicious cycle of re-reading and compulsive editing. They are procrastinators, and in fact their relation to cockroaches is facile and untrue.
The cockroaches, at least, get published and exist in the tedious middle-ground of writerly success: readings, signings, 10-15k a year plus some royalties if they're lucky, and maybe some articles and exposure pieces to round out the old portfolio. They could go into television or radio writing. They could go into various types of copy writing. Marketing and advertising are the prime escape vectors, but times are hard. Sometimes they're shortlisted for a prize and their cachet goes up for a while and they entertain visions of success.
Compare this to the spider that is the unpublished writer: day job madness, late nights, drugs, hair-pulling typing escapades with open source word processors. They see themselves as hopeless moonlighters. Somewhere in an immense tangled web of wasted promise, these writers slowly produce tortured works that are blurred with self-revelation and inconsistent style. Then silence for weeks or even years. Inspiration comes brightly and passes quickly and leaves no marks. No, the unpublished writer is wretched, and each year passes without a printed work or anything noteworthy for the portfolio. Queries are shot down in flames, credentials are nonexistent and mocked, routes to success are suggested, and the book is closed.
And another year passes, and with it any hope of true and honest publication. All they ask for – these withered shells, who write from their soul, who wouldn't use a vanity publisher if they were paid to, whose every word is wearied and grim – is a spot at the corpse-crowded table where the hacks drink greedily and pontificate about saleability and audience, where the old guard hoard awards, where the bright new prodigies bullshit openly, and where the eyes of the reading public are focused like the glimmering eyes of wolves in the dark... yes, the reading public, waiting for their three or four inspired works per decade, habitual readers who yearn for something new – something, perhaps, that has been overlooked, a supposedly worthless bauble in the cold, dying grasp of the unpublished writer.
2/5/11
The Postmodern Option
Every day I wake up, do some 'real life' things that I think are important (like texting people to ask them if they want to see me, and texting resumes to potential employers, breakfast related chores) and usually after a few hours I am forced to go to the internet to try and see if there's a soul in the entire world. Most of the time my doubt still exists after I close my browser and hide.
Using the internet to escape life has become a chore, because in a way you have to trade your life for an internet life, even if you only want to escape into the internet. There are people who never signed up for Facebook, and they have healthier social lives than anyone who ever did join that devilish network. The point of YouTube is to 'create, share, etc' or some other thing, but at least 50% of users are passive and only want to find decent videos to while away time. Then there are internet power users who do more than post racist shit in comment sections; these people form communities and post video responses and get sweaty about views per month and always badger everyone to subscribe or rate or leave a racist comment.
So it seems that the internet draws you into the nonsense labyrinth of pointless, infinitely recursive information.
Yes, I am clearly attempting to add to that luminous festering mess of so-called 'information' by blogging. I know that I must be doing something right, because I am not an internet millionaire by my blogging. It's hard for me to know if anyone even reads anything I post here that doesn't directly address them or their concern, so I am always asking myself "is it possible to circumvent public interest and still gain some mediocre type of fame?"
The answer is that, no, it is impossible. I do my best to write clear, amusing, somewhat advanced and mostly pointless blog posts, and I am proud of being a sloppy blogger. Most blogs I visit are quite professionally done. I don't even have gadgets or extra pages to hook people into checking my website regularly.
I am caught in the 21st century catch-22. I want to be anonymous in the era of internet disclosure, and I want to be a respected slacker in the era of the power user, and I want to maybe make a living writing. All of these I'm stupid to hope for, but I chase these dreams and attempt quality – and really, if one person benefits by it or smiles because of it, that is satisfying. Single-digit blog statistics are also depressing, but a satisfying depression is better than just sitting around and trying to create the ultimate manuscript.
Of course it's stupid to criticize the banality of the internet by using the internet, and that's why I don't do that so much. Media criticism is not going to get me anywhere, no matter how sharp an insight I provide on the late-night talk show scene, and there's really not much I can do that hasn't been done, and done better, by someone else. And. And. And. But. However. Furthermore. Good luck.
Using the internet to escape life has become a chore, because in a way you have to trade your life for an internet life, even if you only want to escape into the internet. There are people who never signed up for Facebook, and they have healthier social lives than anyone who ever did join that devilish network. The point of YouTube is to 'create, share, etc' or some other thing, but at least 50% of users are passive and only want to find decent videos to while away time. Then there are internet power users who do more than post racist shit in comment sections; these people form communities and post video responses and get sweaty about views per month and always badger everyone to subscribe or rate or leave a racist comment.
So it seems that the internet draws you into the nonsense labyrinth of pointless, infinitely recursive information.
Yes, I am clearly attempting to add to that luminous festering mess of so-called 'information' by blogging. I know that I must be doing something right, because I am not an internet millionaire by my blogging. It's hard for me to know if anyone even reads anything I post here that doesn't directly address them or their concern, so I am always asking myself "is it possible to circumvent public interest and still gain some mediocre type of fame?"
The answer is that, no, it is impossible. I do my best to write clear, amusing, somewhat advanced and mostly pointless blog posts, and I am proud of being a sloppy blogger. Most blogs I visit are quite professionally done. I don't even have gadgets or extra pages to hook people into checking my website regularly.
I am caught in the 21st century catch-22. I want to be anonymous in the era of internet disclosure, and I want to be a respected slacker in the era of the power user, and I want to maybe make a living writing. All of these I'm stupid to hope for, but I chase these dreams and attempt quality – and really, if one person benefits by it or smiles because of it, that is satisfying. Single-digit blog statistics are also depressing, but a satisfying depression is better than just sitting around and trying to create the ultimate manuscript.
Of course it's stupid to criticize the banality of the internet by using the internet, and that's why I don't do that so much. Media criticism is not going to get me anywhere, no matter how sharp an insight I provide on the late-night talk show scene, and there's really not much I can do that hasn't been done, and done better, by someone else. And. And. And. But. However. Furthermore. Good luck.
12/11/10
2010 Retrospective, pt. 1: Seanbaby vs. The Internet
I've been thinking, now that it's December and I don't know if I'll even attempt to travel for the season, that I might as well think back on the year that has almost passed, and bring up some of my favorite moments, or outstanding creations, people, or anything you can stick a noun to that have actually impressed me, and not just the talking heads who make trends and kings.
Most of the time when I read things on the internet I think, "Shit, even I could do better than this." and it really makes me a bit sorrowful to know that someone got paid to write something so flat and unconvincing. Granted, a lot of the time I look back on things I've written and think similar things, except that I know nobody else will write about them. When I read good things on the internet I take note, because I'm A) trying desperately not to be ignorant, and B) not afraid of becoming an hack. Grammar before assonance, folks.
For years now there has been one internet comedy writer who has not changed his approach, his perspective, his looks, or his medium – and we should all give him a television series so that he breaks down and turns into an unfunny hack. This man is responsible for more than 33 percent of the internet's funny quotient. YouTube is afraid of him, toys inexplicably melt and explode when he approaches, and whenever he posts on cracked.com hundreds of people tell him that he is right, his lines are infinitely quotable, and "Good Work!". He will be the first president of America to disarm opponents with snappy one liners and irrefutable logic instead of multilateral embargoes and cooperation.
As far as internet comedy writer metaphors go, most writers are a bunch of kindergarteners, and Seanbaby gets held back in K every year, because the administration doesn't know what do with him, and he keeps making better jokes to kill the time, because nobody around him even understands how to be consistently funny or what consistent even means. If you compare how long he has been funny (since the days of Old Man Murray, which is something knowable only to actual nerds) to how long he has been writing on the internet, you realize that he is the veteran of internet comedy writing, and either his approach was always good or he buried all of his failed attempts in the 90's as if they were Atari cartridges in the 80's.
For a long time ('04-'10) I didn't even know that Cracked.com existed, but a friend recently told me that Seanbaby was writing there, and I took a few hours off to read everything they had. I laughed, on average, twice an article. And I don't mean half-assed laughing: no chuckling, but the stuff you feel in your abdomen. Since then I've been reading Cracked.com mostly for Seanbaby's articles, and you can do the comparison yourself. I mean no disrespect but almost everyone who is trying to be outright funny on the internet looks like a shoddy '80's joke told by a teenager compared to Seanbaby.
Description fails me, but I encourage you to look up one of the only funny people on the internet. I try to be amusing, but I understand that I am as dry as sawdust, and dumb, and don't use interesting photos or graphical elements. I don't do those things out of respect to Seanbaby, because I'd have to follow his lead and risk his displeasure.
Most of the time when I read things on the internet I think, "Shit, even I could do better than this." and it really makes me a bit sorrowful to know that someone got paid to write something so flat and unconvincing. Granted, a lot of the time I look back on things I've written and think similar things, except that I know nobody else will write about them. When I read good things on the internet I take note, because I'm A) trying desperately not to be ignorant, and B) not afraid of becoming an hack. Grammar before assonance, folks.
For years now there has been one internet comedy writer who has not changed his approach, his perspective, his looks, or his medium – and we should all give him a television series so that he breaks down and turns into an unfunny hack. This man is responsible for more than 33 percent of the internet's funny quotient. YouTube is afraid of him, toys inexplicably melt and explode when he approaches, and whenever he posts on cracked.com hundreds of people tell him that he is right, his lines are infinitely quotable, and "Good Work!". He will be the first president of America to disarm opponents with snappy one liners and irrefutable logic instead of multilateral embargoes and cooperation.
As far as internet comedy writer metaphors go, most writers are a bunch of kindergarteners, and Seanbaby gets held back in K every year, because the administration doesn't know what do with him, and he keeps making better jokes to kill the time, because nobody around him even understands how to be consistently funny or what consistent even means. If you compare how long he has been funny (since the days of Old Man Murray, which is something knowable only to actual nerds) to how long he has been writing on the internet, you realize that he is the veteran of internet comedy writing, and either his approach was always good or he buried all of his failed attempts in the 90's as if they were Atari cartridges in the 80's.
For a long time ('04-'10) I didn't even know that Cracked.com existed, but a friend recently told me that Seanbaby was writing there, and I took a few hours off to read everything they had. I laughed, on average, twice an article. And I don't mean half-assed laughing: no chuckling, but the stuff you feel in your abdomen. Since then I've been reading Cracked.com mostly for Seanbaby's articles, and you can do the comparison yourself. I mean no disrespect but almost everyone who is trying to be outright funny on the internet looks like a shoddy '80's joke told by a teenager compared to Seanbaby.
Description fails me, but I encourage you to look up one of the only funny people on the internet. I try to be amusing, but I understand that I am as dry as sawdust, and dumb, and don't use interesting photos or graphical elements. I don't do those things out of respect to Seanbaby, because I'd have to follow his lead and risk his displeasure.
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