What Are We Gonna Do Now?
If you're a professional writer, or were hoping to become one, the future is more uncertain than ever. But it's what we've got to work with, so.
Sandy takes a break from social distancing to judge me up close.
It was just over two weeks ago that employees at Hachette Book Group forced their bosses to cancel a book deal with Woody Allen, who was attempting to get his memoir published. At the time, the commercial opportunism of Hachette executives reminded me of a line I’d read in a recent blog post from Christopher Schwarz, the publisher of Lost Art Press: “Money is easily made if you want to make it some ways.”
Sure enough, the top brass at another publishing house decided they had no problem publishing a credibly accused child molester’s explanations for everything anyone who’s been paying attention to his story has seen with their own two eyes (and, one presumes, a fair amount of what we haven’t). Arcade Publishing, the “prestige” division of Skyhorse Publishing, released Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing, on March 23. There was a fair amount of to-do about it in social media’s publishing circles, but if this is the first you’ve heard about it, that’s totally understandable. There’s a lot going on these days, after all.
As it happens, Skyhorse (where, in the interests of full disclosure, I should concede that I interviewed for an editorial job five years ago) had ceased to be of interest to me when they arranged for noted Trump apologist Alan Dershowitz to write an introduction to their edition of the Mueller Report, so I can’t really start boycotting them over Woody Allen’s book. I wouldn’t even necessarily call it a boycott, really, since it’s been a year now and I’ve never really talked about it before. It’s just that life is short, and there are a lot of books out there, and I’ve got more than enough I could be reading without giving any of my mental energy or financial support to people who publish the likes of Alan Dershowitz and Woody Allen.
(Now that I think of it, though, I’d forgotten that they own the science fiction imprint Night Shade Books, so I probably have looked at some of their stuff in the last year, although I’m not remembering anything beyond possible cursory glances. Which is another point in favor of having kept this not-really-a-boycott close to my chest, I suppose.)
Sure, as was the case at Hachette, there are undoubtedly some good people at Skyhorse who were not thrilled with the decision to publish Woody Allen’s memoir; perhaps some of them aren’t exactly proud of being Alan Dershowitz’s publisher, either, just as I imagine there are rank-and-file people at Henry Holt who aren’t proud to be Bill O’Reilly’s publisher. (Note: I could be wrong!) On the other hand, while I’m sure he doesn’t bring in as much revenue as O’Reilly brings to Holt, I’m sure Dershowitz is a solid earner for Skyhorse, and, well, weighing the discomfort of lower-level employees against the potential for big, big sales isn’t really much of a consideration in book publishing, unless you get a substantial bloc leaving their desks and protesting outside your corporate headquarters.
Money is easily made if you want to make it some ways.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of other writers who have books coming out now, or in the immediate future, who are understandably worried about how *waves one hand at the world* all this is going to affect their sales. John Scalzi is one of the handful of people who are actually able to support themselves as a full-time writer without a day job or a teaching gig, and he’s just as concerned as everyone else. His advice?
“Don’t beat yourself up this year about how your work does, or doesn’t, do. This is nothing we could have figured into our plans. Do what you can to let people know your work is there, and be happy for the people who find it. But this year is not like other years. Be kind to yourself (and your work) when you think about it.”
(Full disclosure: I’ve known Scalzi for more than two decades, and I’m a huge fan.)
He also notes that he’s expecting “a recession of 2008 proportions” for the future, and he wrote that before Trump began insisting we should all go back to work by Easter and make each other sick and die at our workstations so at least the corporations won’t have to suffer too much too long. So he’s planning on whittling down his expenditures, but he’s also planning to funnel some of the money he saves into local businesses and into supporting creative people (not just other writers, but musicians). I like that idea: It’s pretty much where a lot of my thinking has been headed in recent months—thanks in no small part to the aforementioned Christopher Schwarz—even before *waves hand again* all this.
It’s also worth mentioning that, as a writer, he’s reacting to the upcoming economic conditions by stepping outside his comfort zone:
“I’m still going to try some new and different things, both to find out if I might be good at them, and also (although a lower priority, for now) to see if I might be able to make money from them... Things won’t go back to exactly the way they were before, so it makes sense to me to be using this time to look at other things and see what I think of them. They could pan out! Even if they don’t, I’ll have learned things, not least about myself. It won’t be wasted time.”
On that note, I’d like to share this excellent advice from literary agent Kate McKean:
“Maybe this will be a time for the sloughing off of bad habits for you, not because you have to be productive in this time, or you have to emerge from this a new and improved person, but because all this incredible, horrible shit around the world is a much needed dose of perspective. Do what serves you and humanity. Stay home for others, and yourself. Write or don’t write. Finish that novel or not. When this is all over, and it will be over one day, I want to look back on this with open eyes and a better understanding of what I’m doing with the rest of my days.”
If you do carve out some time to write in the days ahead, pay close attention to where your thoughts are coalescing. I know that I’ve been learning a lot about what matters most to me over the last ten days, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I can give voice to those concerns. On the other hand, I’ve spent a lot of time playing games on my iPhone. But then again, I’ve been reading fifteen or so pages of War and Peace every afternoon, as part of an online book club, and that’s been helpful, too.
(Like, not only does the online book club aspect of it force me to look out into the world and maintain connection with people, the reading itself has given me some useful insights into scene construction and character dynamics.)
Beyond the writing, if you’re not part of the essential workforce, stay home as much as possible. For your own sake, and for the sake of your neighbors and loved ones, and the strangers we all would encounter in our ordinary daily orbits.
More soon.
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