The ad I saw looked interesting and sought a writer interested in a monthly column. So I dropped a note to the supplied e-mail and, when I got a positive response, checked out the site, which was actually pretty awesome. I looked over some of the articles and pitched to the editor an idea I’d been kicking around for a few months (and still am).

The editor was encouraging and liked my style but thought the topic to specific and narrow, too relevant to writers and not relevant enough to their readers.

Ah, the dichotomy.

Look around online, visit Facebook or Twitter, and you’ll see lots of “articles.” Basically blog posts, except back in the old days blogs used to be web logs, and they used to be personal and on Live Journal and . . . was it Zingo? No, Xanga!

And then, of course, there was MySpace. I missed Live Journal and Xanga, but boy did I find MySpace. I started posting blogs there in August 2005, just when I was starting to consider graduate school, and the people I met through MySpace became very much a part of my experience of Los Angeles and USC.

Back then, the blogs and the posts . . . well, no one word applied to them. Lots of writers were posting poetry or microsays or short fiction. Some serialized novels and such. Some just wrote about life and pop culture.

I bring all this up because while I know that still exists, it seems there’s been an interesting transition over the past few years. We used to be a culture of consumption but are quickly becoming, instead, a culture of creation. Many of the people who read blogs decided to start blogs of their own (myself included) to write about whatever was important to them.

Readers became writers.

Do readers even exist any more?

***

Maybe my uncertainty is because I’m arguably closer to the publishing side of writing than many people are. I don’t know if readers, in general, can name the big 6 corporate publishers off the top of their heads, but I know many of the people I follow and who follow me on Twitter probably can. So I fear some of my view is too insular.

As in chemistry, where like dissolves like, when you get to a social networking medium, like tends to attract like. Writers attract other writers; it’s a support system, in a lot of ways. Collectors attract other collectors. Fans attract other fans.

Readers, one would think, would attract other readers, but perhaps by nature of the medium, something strange starts to happen; readers start becoming writers themselves. Readers sit down at their keyboards and review books online and become book bloggers, who become so great in number they actually have a convention to complement Book Expo America, basically the largest literary gathering on the East coast.

Communities gather. It’s what we do. We gather around the things we know and care about, the things that drive us and motivate us.

So, when readers who have begun blogging about books they love come together, they start talking about things like ethics and journalism and professionalism.

Often, when writers begin to build a so-called platform, they begin to talk about the sorts of things they care about and are interested in. The sorts of things that new writers are so concerned about. They produce the sorts of articles I put in quotes just up above: they talk about the best ways to build a platform. They talk about great ways to market cheaply.

Now don’t take me wrong: I’m not claiming there’s anything wrong with this.

It makes a lot of sense. In fact, a lot of what I’ve posted to this site has concerned the publishing industry, and problems with it.

Maybe what I’m driving at is that Jesus Christ, sometimes I bore even myself. And given that I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you want to make readers cry you have to make yourself cry first, if I’m starting to bore myself, you’re either well on your way to bored or relatively far beyond it already.

***

When I pitched to that editor, I received similar feedback; it was a neat idea, but the site wanted something more reader-centric, rather than writer-centric. Reading over more of the site to see the sorts of articles they were posting on a regular basis, I realized I had no idea either what that meant or how to pursue the relationship further. It may not have been professional that I simply gave up; I probably should have engaged the editor in a dialogue about what would have worked and what wouldn’t.

The thing is, though, that I sometimes think engaging editors is precisely–and especially lately–the wrong way to go about it.

Over the past year, I’ve begun to use Twitter more. It’s fun and fast, and can be as informative as it can be a complete waste of time otherwise better used elsewhere. It’s another like-attracts-like venue, but it’s also one where friends of friends of friends can jump easily into ongoing conversations. One useful catalyst for that bit is the hashtag, of which there are many. Among the hashtags I keep in a saved search list are #1b1t, #supernatural, and #pubtip. I’ve seen lots of others; one agent founded an #askagent hash by which aspiring authors can ask agents pretty much anything about the querying process.

One regular one is #followreader, wherein it seems like publishing professionals discuss amongst themselves . . . er. To be honest, I don’t quite understand what the #followreader discussion aims at. I know a lot of people I respect take part, and they talk about interesting things.

The thing about #followreader, though, is that it doesn’t, actually. You’d think that one would follow the reader like one would follow the leader, and it seems it even has its own site here. At the time of this writing, the most recent post is “What’s the RIGHT way to e-Read?” (Which I think prompts the question: er. Is there a wrong way to e-Read? Surely, if I’m reading, however I’m doing so has to be right. I’m the reader, after all, which makes me the customer, who is always right.) Others include “What’s Good About Traditional Publishing?” and “Networked Bloggers Sell More Books.”

And don’t get me wrong: I see the value in that sort of discussion. Although asking people who’ve been involved with the traditional publishing industry since manuscripts were sent hard-copy by Fed Ex what’s good about said industry strikes me as somewhat analogous to asking Paul McCartney what was great about the Beatles. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because Hell, he’s Paul McCartney, after all. I don’t even much like the Beatles but I’d still ask Paul McCartney what was great about them, and maybe ask him to play “Let It Be” for me, because Fuck, how awesome would that be?

But there’s a giant disconnect:

There’s a lot of talk the publishing industry needs saving. Everyone wonders what will save it. Publishers and editors and agents continually go to book fairs and conferences and every available media opportunity they get to note how things are uncertain but books remain strong and all this stuff, but there’s one major person nobody seems to ever think to talk to:

You.

Follow the reader? Are you burning to know what’s good about traditional publishing?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe readers aren’t the point of #followreader. Maybe it’s publishing professionals talking amongst themselves to better figure out how to sell more books and survive and thrive in a new economy and acknowledging they have to do so by serving readers.

Maybe. But in that case I think of those damned writing manuals you see in any bookshop you go to. Not the Writer’s Market but the other ones like those mentioned in this Atlantic essay. I’m obviously not against workshops, studying craft, and reading about how to write better. I think writing better has perhaps become my main driving goal. I can’t exactly disparage How to Write a Better Plot when Robert McKee’s Story is half the reason I took a class with Syd Field, who literally wrote the text book on screenwriting and plot, both of which helped me become a better writer and storyteller. Ditto Sid Stebel’s Double Your Creative Power!. Sid was my adviser at USC, the guy who read, gave feedback on, and then signed my thesis.

Obviously, I think instruction is valuable. I think discussion is terrific.

But I think, ultimately, both neglect the most important aspect of writing and publishing in general, and that’s you.

I can’t speak for every writer, but I wouldn’t do it if not for you. To communicate with you. To say something to you. Writing is, first, communication from one person to another (or, hopefully many others). But always communication.

I see a lot of those hashtags. #askagent. #pubtip. #scribechat. All these writers and editors and agents and publishing pros talking amongst themselves.

Where’s the #askreader?

I see a lot of aspiring authors using the #askagent tag to ask questions like “What’s the hot trend now?” or “Do vampires still sell?” or other such questions.

Why aren’t more people asking readers what readers want to read?

More importantly, why aren’t I?

Why aren’t more people asking you how you want to read a book? Why aren’t publishers asking you what books you’ve been enjoying? Why aren’t agents asking you what sorts of books you’re dying to read so they know what to pluck from the 1000s of slush manuscripts they’re always complaining they receive but don’t have time to actually reject or even respond to.

Is it just me, or does it seem like #followreader is really all about trying to lead readers somewhere, rather than following where readers might like to go?

***

Which is not to say I’m not guilty of narrow focus. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’ve posted so sporadically. Maybe I got so wrapped up in trying to be an author I forgot why I was writing in the first place.

I’m starting a new hashtag: #askreader. So far as I can see, it’s not been used before, and I think that’s a shame.

Because I want to know: what do you want to read? What makes you visit a site? What made you visit mine? If you bought my book, what made you do so?

Once upon a time, I was writing about pop culture but doing so inconsequentially. I burned out on MySpace because I didn’t feel what I was writing was really any good. I think I burned out on posting elsewhere, at least for a while, because I got so caught up in things like “platform” and “readership” and “online presence” and “marketing” I forgot to be a writer.

So, a promise: if you read this, if you comment, if you tell me what you want to read, I’ll write something and post it. Depending on the response, it might take a while, though I doubt it; since I stopped posting regularly, readership here has dropped rather significantly.

But I think I’m done worrying about readerships in favor of wondering about readers.

Again, simple: what do you want to read today?

From it, Mediabistro’s Galley Cat pulls that only 2% of bloggers cite blogging and their blogs as their primary source of income.

Which sounds about right.

Mainly because: isn’t that about the same as the number of writers who make their living at writing?

I’m not. Once upon a time, I hoped to be, but then again in recent years I’ve realized that I don’t think writing is all I’d want to do. I love to write, but when it starts to become all I do, I think I feel like there’s imbalance in my life. The whole “all work and no play” thing, to some extent. I mean, I go back and forth on it, because I think that writing is playing, to some extent, but I guess what it comes down to is that writing is a largely solitary activity, and I can’t very well be in the world if I’m being all solitary and such.

via Only Two Percent of Bloggers Can Make a Living – mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Wired‘s Paul Boutin notes that “blogging is so 2004.” Basically, Boutin seems to think that Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook have not so much rendered blogs obsolete as taken their thunder. Why blog when we can micro-Twitter and Flickr to our hearts’ content? His first paragraph indicates I need to quit blogging, because it just ain’t worth it, and I’ll never reach a level of, say, Gizmodo, the popular gadgets blog with a team of writers producing dozens of posts per day.

He’s probably correct. I think I hope he’s correct, in fact. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with blogging, I’ll admit, for personal reasons; while I do love to do it, and I love the instantaneous and often-collaborative nature of it, I feel like . . . well, I feel a lot like it takes away from my real writing. And I hate to say this isn’t my ‘real writing,’ but I’ve never thought of it that way, probably because I use different writing ‘muscles’ to blog than to write . . . well, pretty much everything else. I’ve been discussing with my students the idea of frameworks in writing, and I’ve always thought blogs have a different framework than anything else, probably because everything has its own framework.

Then again, that may be just me.

All I know is that I write blogs differently than I write fiction, whether a short story or a novel, and even mostly differently than I write longer essays, even though there probably should be some overlap between blogging and essays.

It never feels that way, though, does it? I don’t think it does. I’ve been using the “more” WordPress function more often lately, and I’ve been using 500 words as the mark for its use; any longer posts get their own ‘page,’ because otherwise I think everything tends to run together. Visit a blog and posts merge and blur and the posts become part of the overall blog itself.

But sometimes it’s more than a post, isn’t it? One of the reasons I’m not sure serialization of novels in blogs or podcasts really works is because it’s simply not what novels are. I forget who defined novels as long stories with flaws, but it’s a similar concept to iTunes versus albums. iTunes parses CDs into buck-long chunks and makes it easy for someone to buy ten tracks out of the White Stripes’ overall discography, ignoring the actual CDs themselves, but there’s a form to an album, isn’t there? It’s probably most apparent in something like the Beatles’ Sgnt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Led Zeppelin’s IV, but can you imagine either broken down? I’m sure people enjoyed the individual songs (especially “A Little Help from My Friends” and “Stairway to Heaven”), but both ultimately are more than the sum of their parts.

And aren’t novels? I’ve often considered blogging the first act of The Prodigal Hour, maybe posting a chapter every Friday, but that’s not how I thought of the book. When I wrote the book, I meant it to be one big story readers could choose how they read, and serializing it seems like it would defeat that purpose. That’s not to say that no story should be serialized, but serialized writing is a form and framework unto itself, isn’t it?

I think serializing a story that wasn’t conceived for serialization fragments it, in a way, which is one of the hesitations I have with blogging and digitization; the brain is a sensitive organ with extraordinarily adaptive reflexes, and reading online can quite literally change not on the way we consume information but even the way we think. A little scary; sure, everyone’s reading blogs and online news stories and etc., but those use different muscles than even just books and magazines. Can you read any blog post/online article without clicking all its hyperlinks (did you click on the ones above?)? Because you can’t do that in a magazine, can you? It’s more active thinking, perhaps, but also more fragmented reading, no?

Which might be why there may never be a substitute for a book. Sure, digital downloads are great; my collection’s been downloaded hundreds of times. But the download is not the book, and even the people who’ve read it on their iPhones experience it differently because there’s something in the background. A call might come in. Or you . . . is this particular tab one of many you have open? You’ve given this post half attention while you’re downloading a song and maybe even writing an e-mail in other tabs and windows, perhaps.

Which is sad for me. I want all your attention. Not constantly, of course, but at least when I’m talking to you.

I bring all that up because I’m thinking about it all in terms of Twitter and Facebook, neither of which I’ve been much impressed with. I’ve signed up for both, and I’m on both, in fact (and back on MySpace, too, with a placeholder page), and maybe we’ve gone from the blog age to the Twitter age, but then again I look at Twitter and I just don’t get it. I know that we all have different ways of thinking and reading and writing, and I wonder if I simply don’t read and think and write in a way that really ‘gets’ Twitter. I mean, I understand it, and I even, to some degree, see why it works for some people, but in a way it’s kind of like when I attempt math or business; sure, I can do it, but there’s a reason my bachelor’s degree is in literature and my master’s is in writing. I like science, but moreso in theory than in practice.

Thing is, I’m a writer. I like to write, and most of all, I like to be read. Which means I have to pay careful attention to the ways people are reading and why they’re reading in those ways. Which is why I ask: what about you? Those are my thoughts so far, but I’d like to hear yours. Do you read books differently than blogs? Do you multitask? What are your preferences?

Literary agent wunderkind extraordinaire Nathan Bransford noted it, along with several other terrific links (especially the ones to Swivet) in his routine This Week in Publishing roundup.

Dani Torres mentioned essay and collection both in Reading Notes over at A Work in Progress.

I discovered that my former classmate and fellow writer/blogger the illustrious Mister John Fox was actually there, that day, as well, when he mentioned it over at BookFox. Funny, that; John and I both taught in the same writing program and studied with John Rechy, and yet it never once came up between us.

Over at Book Addiction, Heather, who was a high school senior that day (no, I don’t feel old. Why do you ask?) mentioned it.

Besides the interview he ran over at Lulu Book Review, Shannon Yarbrough, author of Stealing Wishes, which is just flying up the charts at Amazon, mentioned it on his personal site.

Chartroose posted the essay in its entirety at the sublimely named “Bloody Hell, It’s a Book Barrage!

Trish, whose birthday is Dec. 7th, another day of infamy (I see you opening Wikipedia in another tab. It’s the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack) wrote about it at “Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?” and she’ll be happy I got the punctuation right.

Chandler Craig maintains Fumbling With Fiction and mentioned it in a post concerning book memory. She called me a nice aspiring writer, and she’d know; she’s one, as well, who writes Young Adult fiction and whose novel, Scout, just landed her representation with Daniel Lazar. If she weren’t so damned enthusiastic and didn’t totally deserve it, I’d be batshit envious about it, but I’m not, because it couldn’t have happened to a sweeter gal.

And finally, I’m mentioning this one last because it prompted some thought on my end. World Fantasy Award nominee Will Shetterly mentioned it at It’s All One Thing, (the WFA nom is for The Gospel of the Knife, and meanwhile, in a fun turn of events, his wife Emma Bull is also nominated this year, for Territory) and in the same breath noted some issues with the United way– that it’s not the most efficient charity out there and that it’s famous for paying its executives a whole lot of money.

I chose the United Way because I, personally, go way back with them. My father used to work at a local Mobil refinery and volunteered with the United Way when I was a kid; I remember, some summers, he used to get to use a van for a few weeks, though I realize now, thinking about it, I haven’t a clue why. Also because it was one of the reasons the Boy Scouts of America began to change its policies regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation. For a long time, the BSA denied membership to anyone gay, but some units actively began to defy national tenets in favor of keeping United Way funding.

That means a lot to me. The Boy Scouts was one of the most influential organizations in my life, and I value that every bit as much as I hate their discrimination policies.

Anyway, that was my mindset going in. And this is the mission statement of the United Way NYC:

United Way of New York City creates and supports strategic initiatives that address the root causes of critical human care problems in order to achieve measurable improvement in the lives of the city’s most vulnerable residents and communities. Throughout our work, we partner with neighborhood agencies, government, business, foundations, volunteers and others so that collectively we can achieve more than any one organization working alone. By leading programs that get at the root causes of problems in these five key areas, United Way of New York City creates lasting, systemic change: homelessness prevention, access to healthcare, education, building economic independence, and strengthening New York City nonprofits.

But now that I think of it, really, I realized I should put the question to you. Because it is, after all, your money. Is there somewhere else you’d like to know it went? I’m wondering if donating it to the American Red Cross might not be a better idea, as that would actively help other people affected by very similar tragedies, and Lord knows it seems to come up every year anymore.

Thoughts?

And to everyone who mentioned it (I went by WordPress’ incoming links widget, so if I missed yours, let me know, or put it in the comments, please): thanks again.

So I’m experimenting. I’ve written and rewritten it several times already, not counting previous drafts.

I’ve been hesitating to continue posting about it, though. One of my favorite Hemingway quotes, and perhaps the smartest (not to mention: most sober) things I’ve ever heard he said was: “Fuck ‘em. Let ‘em think you were born knowing how to write.”

Or something to that effect.

Which is why I’ll admit I sometimes struggle with blogging (and probably why I take so many breaks from it), not just as an activity but as a culture. With blogging and MySpace/Facebook and now with Twitter . . . just how connected do people need to be? How much do I really need to know about people? Do I care what you’re listening to? More important: do you care what I’m listening to?

The thing is, many regard it as the answer or solution for writers and publishing, which they see as “in decline.” Oh, whatever will we do, peepul dont reed no morez11!! You’ve heard the lamentations. You’ve seen the YouTube videos, and if you haven’t, there’s this one, which caught on in the blogosphere a while ago:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxschLOAr-s]

Yeah.

The thing about it is that I think it’s pretty uniformly utter bullshit (and I like that that video highlights that). Book trailers? Book videos? Lulu has some marketing package thing that includes bookmarks and, like, postcards or some shit.

I can’t believe readership is down, or if it is, not for the reasons many suspect, like the “ADHD Internet culture”; the utter and nearly spontaneous proliferation of blogs seems to me to demonstrate otherwise. It took, what, nearly 20,000 years or something for the human race to reach the 1 billion mark, while blogs reached double that number in, like, two hours or something (I’m using hyperbole here, obviously, but only just).

I think it’s more about a signal-to-noise ratio, because I think readers thirst for content. I think our culture is starved for it, in fact. I think one of the reason for this proliferation is that people are starving for something they are looking to such 2.0 stylistic hoodoo to provide.

If readership is down, I think it’s because there are too few writers, and I mean real writers out there actually doing their job. One of my other favorite quotes, which traces back to a pseudonym used on the Well many moons ago (but possibly still in use), was “You’re an author! Fuck off and auth!” How many writers with popular blogs have actually managed to write good books?

(and yes, I realize that begins to get into the subjective nature of “good” and such, but I’m not tackling that here)

One of the major points I think all this examination of web 2.0 and its relationship to writers and books has summarily and utterly missed is that you can market the hell out of a mediocre book and it doesn’t actually make the book any better. And readers know that.

The thing is that it’s focus on two disparately different things: the writing of a book versus the selling of it. Two completely different functions and activities with, I’d argue, very little in common. And yes, I would be among the first to note that it’s no longer enough for writers to simply write their books, that proactive energy is necessary, but while it may not be enough, that’s where it starts.

The other thing is that the Internet and its numbers don’t translate. I learned this personally, on MySpace; I established a rather substantial readership of nearly 4,000 friends and 1,200 subscribers to my blog. My blog had nearly 3,000 views per day when I realized I wanted to publish my collection. And I won’t say it was summarily ignored (far from it), but those numbers certainly didn’t transfer from one situation to the other.

I think Entrekin has gotten about as much attention as it ever deserved to; some, certainly, because I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t thought it was good, but not a lot, because it’s certainly not a great book–it’s a book collecting a bunch of stories by a writer discovering his voice in the process of telling them. The order of the pieces is very nearly chronological (which, I think, demonstrates said evolution), to culminate in the first two chapters of my novel. It’s not perfect (and even the novel chapters have since changed rather markedly), but it’s a record, and concerning the people in whom it does manage to strike a chord, it seems to do so deeply. What negative response it seems to provoke has less to do with the book than it does with people’s perception of me, as a person.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to digress and really have no idea how I ended up where I now find myself, but that’s my story. An ironic call to arms, probably, from a guy who maintains (roughly) three separate blogs, but I hope a call to arms nonetheless, if to no one else but myself. Because, really, it’s time for me to finish a good book.

I’m left wondering why, precisely. Was someone wondering if I had one, or hoping for a date, or what?

For the record, there are certain things I’m just not comfortable blogging about. I’ve mentioned previous relationships at certain points in the past, but never current ones, because doing so feels, in a way, ungentlemanly.

So I won’t be.

And besides, seriously, who cares?

My interests have always ranged pretty much all over the place; being an English lit major with a second major in science was no accident. I chose a Jesuit college not just because they offered me the most money but also because their approach to education seemed so attractive; their liberal arts sounded intensely liberal, and not just in a “versus conservative” sense. My theology class was one of the most formative of my life, and one of the things it taught me was not only to be open to all ideas but also to explore them. I took that philosophy deeply to heart, and my background reflects that; I took a job in commercial production after I graduated, then became a personal trainer and a subsitute teacher, and then an editor for a clinical psychiatric nursing journal.

One of the things people most often note about my collection is that it’s very diverse. I entered Writer’s Digest‘s self-published book of the year contest last year, and one of the judges commented that the collection is basically all over the place (more on that later). He (or she) was right. I’ve never been happy with one genre, or one subject, or one anything, mostly.

And lately, I haven’t been satisfied with one medium to work with.

Which was why, when I created the account for this blog, I also created this one I decided to name Imagery. Because I’ve gotten, lately, into photography, and I think I also want to create short films (I never stopped being a commercial producer, really), not to mention commercials for my books. I did want to keep the two separate (I won’t post photography/videos here, for the most part, or at least not mine), but also concurrent.

So long story short, this will be my main blog, but I plan to post daily to either one or the other (if not both).

I posted the first picture today. You can click that link up above to check it out. It seemed a propos for this week, and resonant with my current mindset.

Today, he posted about his thoughts on blogs and bookselling. Scalzi is a blogger who blogged before ‘blogging’ actually existed as a word (I believe the word dates back to around 2001. Neil Gaiman is another); which, coincidentally, was before Scalzi actually had anything to sell. Nowadays he’s a multiple nominee for multiple awards (and has won several, including one for best new writer), but I loved his last paragraph:

“Personally I think people think about all this crap too hard. The reason to do a blog is because you want to. If you do it for any other reason, people will be able to tell, and it’s probably going to fall on its ass. The reason I think Whatever does well is because I like doing it, and I’ve liked doing it all the time I’ve done it. Simple enough.”

That’s why you’re here, actually. I haven’t talked about it much, but by summer of last year, I’d basically had a MyMeltdown; blogging on MySpace had become akin to my years in corporate America, or perhaps more accurately, my years temping. The site seemed to have become about either bashing or the relentless pursuit of more popularity. When I got the letter accepting me into my lectureship, I realized that I needed to learn how to reconcile my teaching life with my writing life. I realized I’d be standing, soon, before a group of students and attempting to play a very particular role, and I wished not to deviate from it. I didn’t want them to think of me as pretty much anything besides their professor, because I never did until I was well out of college.

The other thing I’ve already alluded to; Rupert Murdoch’s already bulky pockets. For my second assignment last semester, I guided my students through a prompt on journalistic integrity; what does it mean, who has it and how did they earn it, and can blogging fill the same role. Many explored the idea of conglomeration; that having a certain company behind you can help your credibility, but it also creates problems if it’s the wrong company, or if said company is concerned almost solely with ratings, as many seemed to be. Most noted that they didn’t believe anything they saw on Fox News.

That assignment helped prompt my decision to start this up. I learned as much through that assignment as they did. And now, it’s good to be back. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t realized what I had until it was gone so much as I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I came back.

Thans for coming back with me. I missed you.