June 2002

Before I begin ranting, a few introductory notes about me and this website. I live in San Francisco and work as an attorney to support my writing. I have been writing all my life but more seriously - with an audience in mind - for the last four years. The purpose of this website is to allow me to share my work with a wider audience, including friends and family who have asked to read or see my work. A note about my photography: all pictures were taken with a 35mm camera and were scanned in from the original prints. Please feel free to give me feedback. I think that's enough for now. If you want to know more, simply ask.

It is better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.

Welcome to My Rant! This is the first of, hopefully, many such diatribes/tributes/monographs. After just a little thought, I have decided to publish rants at the admittedly unambitious rate of one per month. I'm sure they will vary in length and subject matter, but I will try not to make them so long or tedious that they cannot be digested in one short sitting.

Since this website was born of frustration from the lack of traditional publishing opportunities, I dedicate this - my inaugural rant - to the corporate publishing world that gives us the formulaic and the unimaginative, the prosaic and the predictable. If one poorly written spy thriller about Russia hoarding nuclear warheads will sell ten million copies then ten variations of the same spy thriller might sell 100 million copies. And that's the publishing biz, kid. Oh, yeah.

If you are unfortunate enough to wear the moniker "literary writer," meaning those who write pieces that are odd or quirky or self-indulgent or downright esoteric, you will likely never be published. That is correct. I'm sorry for the bluntness, but the stinging unguent of truth is just the medicine you need for the wound of publisher rejection.

Getting published has never been easy for two reasons: the level of competition and the capitalist impulses of for-profit publishing. I'm sure Gutenberg received hundreds of manuscripts the day after putting the finishing touches on his invention, but luckily he didn't have to worry about looking out for the next Danielle Steel. Today, what is published is what sells the most and what sells the most is what is intellectually accessible to the greatest number. The growth of non-profit and vanity presses has helped only marginally because of the obvious limitations of smaller enterprises: insufficient staffs, fewer distribution channels, fewer publications each year, and the peculiar characteristic of such endeavors tending to start out as cults of personality dedicated to a particular style of writing rather than just good writing.

We've all heard the too-tiresome-to-be-inspirational story of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (how many rejections was it? 80? 90?). But for every Robert Pirsig there are hundreds of good, if not great, writers who have passed into oblivion whose stories, sadly, we will never read. I think of John Kennedy Toole and how, if not for a fanatically determined mother, the reading public would never have had access to A Confederacy of Dunces. If you've never read the book and don't plan to read it (although I encourage you to do so), at least read Walker Percy's foreword. While a professor at Loyola, Percy was instrumental in getting the book posthumously published. Most telling, his attitude about new works by unknown authors is, I'm sure, shared by most editors in the publishing world, that is, an unknown writer's work is probably bad and maybe really bad.

Few literary writers have enjoyed commercial success during their lifetimes. And perhaps that's as it should be. Since each writer is a product of his or her era, it takes the subjectivity of the distance of time to truly evaluate the impact that a work has had. If we are still talking about a contemporary book a century from now, then that is an important work.

So here's to the writer of the book in which nothing happens, the slow, the plodding, even the ponderous. I salute those who are trying to write something that has never been written before and those who write in the second person or in phonetically related obscure dialects. Congratulations to those whose works contain no explosions, car chases, extortion, international intrigue, courtroom drama, excruciatingly detailed grisly deaths or any other substitute for good writing and character development.

Believe in your writing even if no one else does. Self-delusion can be a sustaining force. So long as you can reconcile yourself to the reality that you will likely never be published, write with gusto. See the lack of publishing opportunities as liberating. Write in whatever direction your imagination takes you and never look back. After all, if you are a true writer, then you must write and therein lies the reward.

Adam Lovingood