I promised myself I wouldn't start off with a rant, that I was going to be nice and talk about the coming spring or puthy cats. I can't do that. My Muse won't let me.
Author Harlan Ellison did a couple of commentaries on the Sci-Fi Channel's Sci-Fi Buzz in which he talked about the state of the writing business. Now, for you three teens in the back row with popcorn in your ears and a VR helmet permanently affixed to your dried-out orbs who have never heard of Mr. Ellison, he is writer of some sixty some-odd books and hundreds of short stories, plays, scripts, you name it, unless it's a Star Trek novel, he's written it. He is also a very outspoken individual and, while I am not really a fan of his fiction, I love his essays because they are full of so much fire. He writes like a man possessed, creatively weaving stories from his personal life with some of the more randier expletives and an occasional dollop of Yiddish slang.
Anyway, Ellison talked about how writers needed to find some other way of promoting themselves, instead of getting banished to the dreaded mid-list, a literary and marketing no-man's land where there is little hope of return. He talked about some writers he knows, some good ones, who were literally slinging hamburgers to make a living. Having worked in a hamburger place, I can share in his distaste. The writers who don't go this route take to writing what is considered trash fiction. You know the kind: endless Star Trek and Star Wars novelizations, and works by the likes of John Grisham, Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy. I know many people like these books, and I won't take that away from them. In my youth, the only SF I read was the PocketBooks Star Trek: The Next Generation paperbacks that came out every month, but the reason they are frowned upon is that they are based on a television show and the characters aren't allowed to grow.Mr. Ellison askes what they can do without writing dreck and "selling out." Well, I don't really have an answer. As a beginning writer, I would probably do it for the experience, not to mention the money. I like Star Trek. But I might do it under a pseudonym. What is the answer? It's a complex question, one which delves into the age-old problem of starving for one's art. Ellison frequently champions the writer and his craft and expresses the idea of the writer-as-unsung-hero, the one who doesn't get credit for his work, the one whose lines get credited to the actors who say them, the one inevitably forced into the shadows while others of lesser merit take the credit. While the "creative typists" (Ellison's own term), the Grishams and their ilk, reap all the rewards, financial and otherwise. First and foremost, publishing is a business. Publishers are out to find someone who will sell millions of copies and make them a king's ransom, and they all have stories about the one who got away. Let's say they publish a book by Joe Money and it sells a million copies. His next book will have to do just as well or better for him to remain in print. Well, if this is the case, maybe the fault lies at least partly with us. You. Me. The readers. The constant viewing public. They couldn't sell it if we weren't buying it, people. Similarly, we can't buy it if they don't give it to us. But we can get out of this slump, people. By demanding more for ourselves, and from the people who bring us our entertainment: the TV execs and publishers. Now, in my 23 years on this planet, I have become somewhat disillusioned; convinced by my travels that the majority of the population, at least in my neck of the woods, are stupid. With a capital DUH. Why, in an average weekend afternoon of driving around, running errands, I will encounter on average about ten different kinds of idiot. People who are rude, or lack either average intelligence, or the common sense it would take to see themselves as an encumberence to the rest of humanity and blow their brains out. Like the two separate groups of people who, one right after the other like lemmings over a cliff, walked right out in front of my fiance's moving Thunderbird without bothering to look. Like the woman who complained while I was working at Burger King that her coffee I gave her was too hot and burned her mouth, or the woman who clearly demonstrated that she had no concept of ordering at a drive-thru window there, or at any other establishment. I live in Gainesville, GA, a place where I sometimes find it hard to find intellectual nourishment. This is a region of the country whose idea of high culture is going to a stock car race or watching "wrasslin" (you people without Southern accents will have to figure it out for yourselves). Now, if you have ever walked into a convience store crammed with NASCAR collector tins or special commemorative Bic lighters with Richard Petty's racing number on them, you understand my pain.But I know that everyone isn't so mentally impaired. You owe it to yourselves to demand more from the publishers.
In closing, I said that it was hard to find intellectual nourishment. It is hard, but not impossible. There are a few bookstores, mainly B. Dalton, but there is a pretty good used bookstore I frequent that can order anything B. Dalton can, as well as carrying a nice selection of "oldies but goodies." I picked up a collection of Bradbury stories and John Wyndam's "The Day of the Triffids," considered a classic of SF, on my last visit.
So be good to yourself, and don't go with the crowd. Go buy a wonderful book that will envigorate your spirit and teach you a thing or two. Don't sit idly by and let the Powers That Be shovel garbage into your open skulls.