‘They just can’t help themselves.’ (We’re doing this for their own good, really). My friend Sarah has been talking about this – which suggests that writers who can be put off should. That real writers are compulsive and if you can stop… you’re not a writer.

I see. Writing is like heroin addiction.

Now Sarah and others expounded already on the falseness of the idea that quality relates to how fanatical you are. If this were true Iran would be the world’s leader in Atomic weaponry instead of having to borrow and steal. Let’s face it, you can learn. And if you’re driven and work hard, you can write something an audience will read, even if you have no talent to start with.

There are two little details in this. AN audience. Not everyone. And just as if I was driven and worked hard, I could win a running race… if I chose my venue and competition very carefully… (like sober at midnight at the Oktoberfest, with two fall-down drunks who would take three miles to traverse a 100 yard straight course. I’ll win. Well, probably. Ok, possibly.)

Usain Bolt at 10 years old would have out-run anything I could ever get to. And yet if you took a great runner like that… and made him compete at weightlifting or rowing against the best in the world… he’s going to come last. Not as far last as Fat Frannie the computer geek, but still last. Usain would lick fat Frannie at anything unless it was drinking soda or programming in C++. This too is true of writing. It’s as broad a field as ‘sport’ — so if anyone tells you ‘to be a writer you need to xyz…’ Tell them to talk about something they actually know something about. In writing there are soda drinking champions, sprint champions, marathon champs, and weightlifting champs and programming champs. And many small segments of audience. And somewhere there is the midnight at the Oktoberfest for the worst of us, even if the rewards are puke on your shoes.

But wait, wait, what we meant was like, you know, everybody. Or a lot of them, at least. Everyone important anyway.

Hmm. Really? I might suggest that it is possible to be a broad winner… and there are some bigger niches. I like reading Georgette Heyer. And I like reading Sir Terry Pratchett. They have quite broad appeal. And in their core niche, they are Usian Bolt in a sprint race. At anything close enough they are still good. And if TP wrote regency romance, and Heyer a funny fantasy… it would still be readable. Would it be best?

I’ve a feeling that the one effect of the Internet is going to be that we start having writers who excel at a niche… pitched to audiences who like those niches. And that will become more precise. Which means the best-seller list… is toast.

But back to the heroin (you can’t stay away). You know, this may be true for some writers. But it’s still entirely wrong for readers…

And while this has bypassed a lot of authors and publishers… that’s what we’re really talking about. Writing may be addictive. It may be a compulsion.

Writing may be.

WRITING FOR THE AUDIENCE’S PLEASURE IS NOT.

And that is what writing for publication is. Writing to appeal to the audience –the reader. If you can’t resist writing… you can write, and write and write. Publication makes not one squat’s worth of difference to the compulsive writer… unless you expect to paid for your habit. And here is where I REALLY take offense at the writing is a compulsion meme. Because it lies at the heart of everything that is wrong with the modern relationship between the writer and the publishing industry. You see, if you’re a compulsive writer, an addict needing to get those words out… We’re doing you a favor, Joe Author. I mean if I was a compulsive editor, I’d be happy if you paid me something. Anything. I’d have been delighted to ease the burden on my long-suffering spouse, or mummy, or social security, or the other paying job I hold down, just so I can edit. And if I was a compulsive distributor, or compulsive retailer… oh I just have to go and sell another book. Sometimes I can give it up for days while I flip burgers to pay the rent.

If I’m writing a book to please an audience beyond myself… you’re NOT doing me a favor. You’re not helping literature blossom either. You’re engaged in business. And yes, there is a vast body of evidence: many great writers who have appealed to large number of readers… have written a book, or three or 10… and walked away, sometimes never to return. THEY DID NOT FAIL AS WRITERS WHO PLEASED THEIR AUDIENCE. The meme that they can’t be writers and walk away is crap. Pure unadulterated crap. By in large, it was publishing that failed them, failed readers and, if you like, failed literature. We have no idea if William R Burkett could have gone on to eclipse RAH. Because the wrote ONE very popular book age less-than twenty… and then left the world of sf in 1965 for other pastures for more than 40 years. SLEEPING PLANET was still a great read.

So: let’s kill that meme. You may be a compulsive writer. That does not make you a great writer as far as readers are concerned. It makes you a desperate soul looking for some way to feed your habit. That’s actually irrelevant. What is relevant is that READERS like your writing. If they do, then it’s a normal commercial transaction, and it’s in the publishing industry, and readers, best interest to make sure the reward is sufficient to enable the writer to write, and to encourage them to make the choice to write if they have choices.

So: reward a writer who writes to please readers today. Me, by my preference, but seriously, any writer who does that.

On the subject of persistence I have to congratulate Melville House on keeping up the tradition. It’s odd: they claim to be a far left wing publisher… following so well on the advice of Hitler in Mein Kamf.
“But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.” I believe this origin of the ‘big lie’ misquote given to Goebbels.

A philosophical friend of mine, one PI Bolg, contends that politics is a circle rather than a line, and if you go far enough left, you come out at the far right (or vice versa), or at least a situation that was indistinguishable from it. He also thought that filling swimming-pools with Jell-O would prevent drowning, so I’d take his wisdom with a shovel of salt.

Anyway: to quote the chap from Melville House: “Barnes and Noble, saying to the Department of Justice, um, you know, we don’t feel very colluded against by those publishers you say were trying to screw us …” we’re informed with great glee.

Did I miss something? B&N are a CONSUMER? (Oh, I know, to publishers they are, and to kissed up at all costs, because access to retail space is what keeps you in NY even if the demographic representation of readers with your tastes is microscopic.) Yes, validation from… one of the big chains that stomped independent booksellers to pulp. Let’s imagine this war-crimes tribunal… Charles Taylor: “My friend Robert Mugabe will tell you that I am a good man.”

Then repetition of the same line we can’t have heard more than 10 000 times from this lot… “if agency pricing was so bad for competition, how come, um, it worked so well to encourage competition?”

Hmm. Imagine the scene as a water-suppliers fight. Having had an oligopoly on bottled water in a town without alternative water supply, the big six bottled water suppliers found this dratted incomer was trucking bulk water to the Smith’s house. They got together and hired a hitman to blow up the road into town and put a stop to it. Only they were too penny-ante to hire a professional, so they got Sam’s nephew… who spent all the money on explosives and blew himself up on his way to plant it, making a frigging great hole in the field next to the road, and opened up an artesian well. Their lawyer stands up: “Your honor you can’t possibly find my clients guilty. Why, the Smith’s don’t have to buy water any more, and Mazon trucking are still selling foreign bottles to them. It’s my clients who have suffered. You should prosecute Mazon.”

Incompetence does NOT equal innocence, and is no proof of the same. The charge is collusion, not successful collusion. The fact is they lost because the publishers lost market share… because independents filled the gap.

Anyway, there is source of publishing information from NY which I regard in the same light of accuracy and reliability as Comical Ali. Don’t try and comment, he doesn’t tolerate even the politest of dissenting views (there were several pointing out that he was shooting the messenger with his little exercise in sarcasm. He took them all down.) Very Liberal.

But all is not lost, dear Moby – according to one award winning author, books – on paper – will survive as status symbols. (You simply have to read this unbelievable crud. I really am rushing to buy her status symbol. Not). And if she’s got a Kindle _I_ know what she reads on it! And seeing as status seekers displaying them don’t have to read them, publishers can get compulsive writers to do it for a pittance.

There. A happy ending.