Writing, Not Even for Peanuts, in the 21st Century

“My greatest and yet most horrible gift is the selfsame one vouched Cassandra: I read the writing on walls waaaaay before the fact. I see, smell, taste what is coming. And I respond, react, acknowledge, notice, witness. Sometimes, I even get out of the way of oncoming buses.” Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

TEANECK New Jersey—(Weekly Hubris)—5/14/2012—Recently, I tried to get a group of writers to pay for their own columns to be published on a weekly basis, to the tune of $7. per column.

I did not even insist that they pay, or publish, weekly; only that they send our mutual webmaster (the only one on our staff who is paid) $7. for each piece posted . . . whenever, whatever.

Paying off medical bills to the tune of $10. each month, I can no longer afford to carry a roster of writers, most of whom are better-heeled than I. As it is, as publisher and creator of this online magazine, I have never taken a penny for my own work as editor, which eats up a wide chunk of time every week. (Not to worry: I don’t see myself as angelic/deserving of kudos for this “work”—it’s just what I do, what I’ve done, since I could write. Write, edit; write, edit. It’s who I am.)

I was willing to write for “nothing,” and edit “for nothing” to produce “something.” (At least, I hope it’s been something, this now-two-year-old, online –zine.)

I built it and, amazingly, they came. Sometimes, a thousand “unique visitors” per week showed up to read some or all of what was on offer at WeeklyHubris.com.

Mirabile dictu. (Not that any of you reads Latin any longer. And I don’t blame you. Really. I admit I’m a dinosaur.)

For the past two years, my husband and I who, together, do not bring in $50,000. per annum, have paid to publish the work of an entire group of columnists. But now, it was, I felt, high time these grown-ups grew up, and dug into their pockets to help.

In response to my pleas, however, I got the most astonishing—to me, at least—array of refusals . . . IF I heard back at all. And some of these writers I have known for nigh onto 30 years.

No: they would not “pay to be published.” They had their scruples. If I would not pay to publish them, thank you, they would go silent, mute, after two years of developing a readership.

Does the adjective “gobsmacked” resonate with any of y’all?

After beating up the ones I know spend $28. per month—at the very least—on good bottles of wine, and after accepting the fact that I would never again communicate with the one or two I’d really given a shellacking via email, I began to think hard about why it is that I, at 60, get how things-in-the-arts have changed, irrevocably, over the past three or four decades; and why most of these other writers, my age or older—hell, even much younger—do not get it.

Be paid to write? Be paid to write essays? Be paid to write essays online? Have someone else carry you so you might be a columnist on an online –zine with thousands of readers? Perhaps, even, thousands of thousands of readers, given five years or so?

Nope, they said. We have to draw the line somewhere.

True, one or two had a think about it all, and came back to me saying they’d changed their minds. I rejoiced.

I rejoiced because . . . I hand-picked these writers for their unique voices, their unique styles, their unique messages. And I knew, if they did not, that several, perhaps all, of them would never publish, be published again, in their lifetimes, if they did not publish here.

They’re too idiosyncratic, too rarae a group of aves (Latin, again: sorry), to find perches, let alone paying perches, in the 21^st century. Frankly, in certain cases, they’re too old and way too White. Literally and figuratively. Like me, in some ways. But very, very, very unlike me in others.

My greatest and yet most horrible gift is the selfsame one vouched Cassandra: I read the writing on walls waaaaay before the fact. I see, smell, taste what is coming.

And I respond, react, acknowledge, notice, witness. Sometimes, I even get out of the way of oncoming buses.

In the early 80s, I taught myself word-processing, and then dragged all my (then) university students to the small screen and keyboard. I knew, by the mid-80s, that publishing, that books and periodicals and newspapers, as we had known them since the early 1900s, were doomed. Dodos.

I saw the Kindle coming. I felt the Nook approach. I heard Twitter tweet. In c. 1985.

And I also knew no one, but no one, was going to publish me again if I did not begin jumping up and down, screaming, setting my own hair on fire, hustling . . . creating places-to-publish out of thin air.

I published my first book of poetry—which sold pretty well in my tiny demographic—at the age of ten. In the interim, over the past 50 years, I have founded, on average, one publication a year; published one book a year. One of the publications I conjured out of thin air was a prestigious journal; one, a tiny community newspaper (which turned a neat profit); one, the first online guide to Greece; and one, www.WeeklyHubris.com, whatever it is.

The books—some 15 of them—comprise travel guides, children’s books, collections of poetry, and, finally, this year, an erotic novel. Some of my books were self-published through a press I founded and incorporated; most were published by “real” publishers; none has made me more than peanuts in sales (though that may change with the latest book: hope and idiocy spring eternal) . . . but being paid to write was never, as I saw it, the point.

As I wrote, this week, to one contributor: “Veronica, we live to write; we do not write to live.”

We write because we bloody well have to write. We teach, or care for patients, or work in a dentist’s office, or survive on our pensions, or play the trumpet, or outsmart the stock market . . . in order to write.

And, more and more, we must pay some price to write; pay to publish; pay to have our voices disseminated.

More and more, in the arts, that is the shape of things.

I also write for The Huffington Post’s blog. For free. Arianna read my memoir about Greece, and “hired” me: in this century, being hired, working, often involves no remuneration.

But hey, if readers, lots of readers read me, then that attention can only help my books, my various literary sites, my progress—till the grave silences me—as a writer.

How did one of my former contributors, one who won a fat little $$$ prize from WeeklyHubris, phrase her refusal to continue writing for free? Thus: “Like many ‘creative writers’ in our culture, I lament that what we do is regarded by the public, generally, as something we toss off in a couple of hours on a weekend, just for our own entertainment—and therefore no payment is needed. I have done most of my writing under that philosophy, and every year I pay out far more than I take in, to support my writing. It’s not that I can’t literally afford $7. a month, for your worthy effort, but in principle I just can’t do it. Not your fault.”

See, to me, to Cassandra here, that just seems so antediluvian (look it up).

This woman, whose voice is utterly unique—so very unique that, perhaps, only a handful of our readers could even perceive what she was up to, but whom I cherish like a three-winged-butterfly, will not, on principle, give my webmaster, Tim, $7. to put up a column a thousand unique readers will read. Readers she will, otherwise, never reach . . . because there are very few crazy people such as Yours Truly out here who “get” her.

On principle.

So . . . if you’re wondering why WeeklyHubris, which once comprised some 20 contributors now publishes fewer writers than the fingers on one hand, it is because most of us, most of them, have not faced the reality that arrived in the mid-80s and is now here to stay.

They’re still playing by the old rules when, in fact, it’s not simply the rules that have changed, but the entire game.

Going forward, the big TV networks will be gone, along with the analog newspaper, the literate and well-trained editor, the careful fact-checker, and most “real” books.

The world, as we writers knew it, is being pulped.

And here, for the curious, is what Cassandra predicts:

1) Readers of fiction, non-fiction and even hard news will get through a headline, a sub-title, and a lede; then, move on, UNLESS the writing is stellar (or the accompanying photo features boobs).

2) ALL of us will own a Nook or a Kindle, or whatever the next wave of i-thingies is named, within three years’ time.

3) Bookstores will continue to close. Even online bookstores.

4) As we have seen with The Hunger Games, “young adult fiction” will be, more and more, consumed by adults-who-really-cannot-read so-called “adult fiction.”

5) Only writers and authors and poets willing to work perhaps two day-jobs to support their filthy habit (writing) will rise to the fore. Self-published iBooks will become the fast track to publication and readership. Wait for agents to answer? Wait for a gaggle of 20-year-olds to reject your mss? Nope. Writers will write and hand their work over to their readers, sans middlemen.

6) If a writer is really good (and Boy, we had a few here at WeeklyHubris), AND has a great, free editor, AND a place to publish, he or she should get down on his or her knees to The Great God Pencil.

7) No one, ever again, will be permitted to rest upon writerly laurels. Writers will have to hustle all their lives (as musicians and actors and dancers always have). If they write/get out to readers one masterpiece, well, yes, they may dine out on that creation till death. But, for the most part, from the moment they sit down at the keyboard, till they draw their final breaths, writers will be acting like the ingénues of yore: hustling and clawing and climbing and hollering (and/or sleeping with the publisher).

8) Most writing, worldwide, is going to be more ephemeral than ever before in history. The exceptions to this rule will make all of us in the business catch our breath; weep; scream with envy and/or delight. But most, most, most everything will be here today and gone, forgotten, 10 minutes from now (like everything you posted or shared today on FaceBook).

9) Poets will always have their followings, and poetry may even flourish in this arid coming era. Whodathunkit?!

10) And last (because a list of 10 is all readers, self included, can handle): everyone is now a writer; considers herself or himself a writer. THAT happened in the late 80s, as well. And THAT single simple development turned the entire playing field upside down.

The writers among you, and former contributors to this –zine: please read just that list-of-ten again, and absorb it. If it doesn’t resonate, take a quick look in the mirror: you’re a T-Rex. Your arms don’t even reach the keyboard.

But, enough now.

Gentle Reader(s), it’s now on to the words of other writers. I know you’re insatiably hungry for “input,” though only capable of taking in mouthfuls at a time. So, hie thee hence.

But thank you, thank you, thank you for dropping by. In 2012, if you’ve made it to this final paragraph of mine, a true miracle has occurred. Look up in the East for a star!

Author Photo: Dionisis Tsipiras; Banner Photo: Doris Athanassakis