A new rule – no posts in the blog will exceed a reading time of five minutes.
So why the need to be published? I have been published once in a magazine in the UK called Aesthetica and have sent a few pieces of my work to other outlets. However their feedback time is always over two months. Publishing gives confirmation to the writer that their work is of a standard. It allows work to be read by a wider audience and it increases the chance of being picked-out from the crowd by a publishing house with the possibility of a book deal. But of course there are plenty of examples of writers who never saw success in their lifetimes – the majority of Emily Dickinson’s works was found in a desk drawer when she died, Franz Kafka worked all night for posthumous success, James Joyce struggled for ten years to get Dubliners published in the form he demanded following lengthy battles with censors, poverty, terrible eye-sight and help from Ezra Pound and WB Yeats. What they would have all given for a blog! Perhaps not hermetic Emily.
So I’ve decided to go the whole way. Let the audience find the writer. Dead or alive. That’s my latest news – I’ll be posting all my writing here. Good, bad, indifferent. The rules of my former posts – I and This Be The Verse – still apply.
Unrest
If you accept that love is all
We leave then what is left for us
If at the end love’s not enough?
A truth? I glimpse one almost
Every night unresting as I lie
Asleep; awake; alone.
And here’s the link – Among School Children, by WB Yeats
The Irish Giant of poetry, and here’s a really good Harvard lecture on the poem which might help you get even more from it.
Thanks for reading.
When you read about authors’ lives, the kind of poverty and discouragement and despair endured by writers like Joyce and Kafka, it certainly gives one pause, doesn’t it? How could they go on and, not only that, prevail (even posthumously, in Kafka’s case). Robert Penn Warren called writing “the pain I can’t live without”. Great authors write not because they want to but because they HAVE to. I hope you will be able to display similar courage as your career progresses. I’ve been at it 20+ years and it’s still a struggle…one that I wouldn’t give up for the world…
Thanks Cliff, and I think this applies to all writers, great or otherwise. Which is why I was making a point about the ‘need’ for publication: a very real need but one that doesn’t exist without an earlier need to write. Which is where you get into all sorts of concerns about where creativity comes from, how to stimulate and support it, the needs of an artist, the market’s value of creativity etc. If you haven’t read a book called The Gift by Lewis Moody – http://www.canongate.net/The-Gift/Hardback – it’s worth a look.
Thanks for reading Cliff – you are the first to leave a comment and I feel I should award you with a badge, or a bookmark!
Anthony:
Pleased to know you. I have the GIFT book–can I recommend two titles by Annie Dillard that are incredibly inspirational for those who are obsessing with the printed word? LIVING BY FICTION and THE WRITING LIFE. Amazing tomes and should be available for ordering…
Thanks Cliff, I will have a look at these. I read your piece on responses from publishing houses as well as your latest post. I wish you well with your writing and look forward to reading more. Keep at it!