We mean it Ma'am.
The first I heard about punk rock was in about 1975 when some kid handed me a pamphlet on the street. It was a manifesto of sorts. It had the chord diagrams for C, F and G drawn on it and, underneath, the words, “That’s all you need to know. Now go and form a rock band.” There was some other stuff too about taking popular music back out of the hands of the elitist establishment. I was 20 at the time and already too old to get excited about wearing bin bags and big boots but the message resonated with me all the same. Music didn’t have to be handed down from above. It was time ordinary people took control of their own artistic expression.
This memory came back to me today when I read a blog post by Nicola Morgan. Now I think Nicola is great, and full of sound edvice about how to get published. As someone who wants to be published, I read Nicola’s blog - along with several other excellent blogs offering similar advice from other credible professionals and industry insiders – and I try to learn the lessons they contain. I accept completely that, if being published is your goal, you should definitely pay close attention to people like Nicola. She has certainly earned the right to give advice. Check out her website to see some of the many books she has published.
Yet what she wrote today left me feeling unsettled and uneasy. In particular, this paragraph (emphases are Nicola’s.)
“And here’s the thing: all the agents and publishers who rejected me during my now well-documented and shameful 21 years of failing, were RIGHT. And I am even grateful to them. … See, I believed I was good enough a writer – which we have to believe, in order to keep going, don’t we? And yet at the same time, we also need to recognise that there’s something about what we’re doing that isn’t yet good enough. That’s the dilemma, the razor-edge we have to walk along. And all that is why I’m deeply grateful (and not even through gritted teeth) to all of them for not publishing my substandard stuff.”
What disturbs me so much about this is the way Nicola seems to have rejected her own assessment of the quality of her writing completely, in favour of the assessments made by agents and publishers. On the one hand, I can see that it is absolutely necessary to do this in order to be published (since agents and publishers are the gatekeepers.) On the other, the disturbing thing is the degree to which she seems to have internalised the industry’s judgement of what quality means.
The quibblers among you might think I’m exaggerating the case and that all Nicola is saying is, “do what publishers want and you’ll get published.” But she’s not. Look at that bit right at the centre of her paragraph, “we also need to recognise that there’s something about what we’re doing that isn’t yet good enough.” She could have said it was not yet “to their taste”, for example, but she used the words “good enough”.
You might also say, “Well, maybe Nicola’s writing really wasn’t good enough and she’s just stating the facts.” And, of course, this may be true. It is probably true that the publishing industry has a ‘normative standard’ for writing quality, a certain level of quality that most agents and publishers would agree, most of the time, was the appropriate standard for a publishable book. I say ‘probably’ because there is only anecdotal evidence for such a consensus. I am unaware of any scientific studies of the notion of ‘good enough to be published’ that have ever been conducted.
I probably wouldn’t have been so unsettled by Nicola’s post if I hadn’t seen so many others just like it from writers, agents, and editors. Here’s another quote, this time from Jane Smith, another of my favourite bloggers, on the subject of how to get published.
“There could be all sorts of reasons why good writing gets rejected. But if it’s good enough then it’s almost certainly going to be published eventually, so long as the writer (or his or her agent) persists.”
And there’s that phrase “good enough” again! And again the implication that it is the agents and publishers who have the right to set the standard.
I could go on quoting authorities on the subject (and I’m sure you could too!) who all have essentially the same message, expressed in very similar language. And that’s where the punk rock memory comes in. When the people with the power to publish books set the standards of quality and when the people writing books internalise those standards to the extent that everyone involved even uses the same language to talk about it, it smacks of the kind of entrenched elitism that the punk rock movement was rebelling against. It feels like EMI and Sony and Warner telling musicians what is good and what is bad and musicians doing their best to live up to those judgements. It feels like we should be fighting it, taking a stand against it, starting a ‘punk write’ movement. Here’s a three-act plot, a website, and an iPhone. Now go and write a book.
And who knows, maybe all this blogging is the punk write movement already underway, maybe it’s been and gone already on Twitter, and maybe the great surge in self-publishing going on right now is part of it. Maybe punk write was always just looking for an ideological basis to put the skids under it.
And it didn’t matter that most punk rock – the kind I used to hear in the pubs and clubs back then – was utter crap. They weren’t doing it for me. They were doing it for themselves. The lunatics had taken over the asylum. And, for a while, it made them free.
G, you are on a good thing here. I also read those blogs and felt a vague unease over those statements but could not identify what was at the heart of my disquiet.
I believe a writer has to look at their work and say (after many, many edits) “Damn, this is good stuff. I’m really good at this.” If you can’t say that about your own work when you write then perhaps you should give up.
As for looking back and saying the work may have been poor – that is also understandable but should not root one’s sense of current worth. At this point in time a writer must feel that their work is good; this decision does not negate a future feeling after one’s craft has improved with time and practice.
Practice – probably the key failing for the punks, bless ‘em.
Keep sharpening that mind, mate, we need you.
I agree with portions of what you’ve said here, Graham, and disagree with others (all respectfully, of course).
In some ways I do agree that blogging is almost writers punk. Occasionally I will go surfing blogs to read short stories, flash fiction, etc, and most of the time I don’t get past the first few sentences. But I do understand the urge for writers to get their work out there, to want people to read it, and I recognize that posting something on a blog or website is an outlet for that. I’ve posted a couple pieces of flash on my blog also, but those are pieces I’m not particularly planning to get published. That being said there are some excellent community blogs that post/publish excellent short fiction – but finding them can be a little difficult, just like finding a good punk bad
.
And while I agree that we definitely need to have confidence in our writing and our ability to write, we also need to counter that with acknowledging the need for improvement and being able to take advice and rejection on the chin and learn from it. If we don’t acknowledge those needs, then our confidence turns into bitter arrogance and our chances of making it as a writer lessen dramatically. And I agree with terry – looking back at something we wrote several years ago and saying it wasn’t very good doesn’t reflect on us as people or on our writing now.
I do a fair amount of critique on the Absolute Write forums (or at least used to, and still browse the critting areas) and there are a lot of instances of people who have finished a novel and are shopping it to agents, but whose work is nowhere near publishable quality. The sad thing is, though, that when that is pointed out to them they are more likely to react in a huff and disappear, rather than taking the advice and learning from it.
And I also agree with you that in many ways ‘good enough’ is subjective, but I think in both of those quotes – and particularly Jane Smith’s one – the ‘good enough’ refers more to the basics of writing (prose, plot, pacing and characterization) than to subjective industry standard (though I don’t disagree that the industry standard is subjective and can change plenty in a short time, but businesses are like that and publishing is a business).
Anyway, interesting post. Thanks for posting it
Thanks Terry and Isaac. I recall an article by Peter Ackroyd (one of my all-time favourite writers) who (to paraphrase) said that all university Eng. Lit. departments should be shut down because there is no objective basis for judging literature and therefore all they are doing is providing an opportunity for individuals to peddle their prejudices. I have a suspicion that the publishing houses and literary agencies are largely staffed by Eng. Lit. graduates.
I’m actually quite conflicted about this topic. I know good writing when I see it and I strive to make mine better all the time. So I clearly have my own standards for what constitutes ‘good’ in this arena. It is the idea that the publishing industry is the arbiter of quality that really worries me though. Publishing is a business. It isn’t the English language equivalent of the Academie Francaise (please forgive my lack of accents – this software is too stupid to let me put them in.) Its standards are designed to maximise sales (if not, why not?) not to maximise quality. If the average reading age of its customers is 12, that’s the level they will want us to write at. If their readers are so illiterate that they can’t cope with unfamiliar words, we must leave them out. If their readers can’t ease into a narrative through exposition and discourse but have to have everything start with action and excitement, then that’s how we must write. If their customers want to be shown everything through action and dialogue – as if they were watching TV – then woe betide us if we use words to tell them things.
And that’s fine. If you want to be published, you have to make a product they can sell. There is no point in wasting their time with anything else. But, even if you want to be published, you don’t have to swallow the line that the publishing industry is the only arbiter of what is good writing and what is bad. ‘Good enough’ when said by a publishing insider, only means ‘Good for us.’
[...] different take on the same scenario is Graham Storr’s excellent ‘Punk Write!‘ which considers the authority of traditional publishing: When the people with the power to [...]
Wonderful piece. Linked:
http://ebooktest.blogspot.com/2009/04/very-dangerous-post.html
Jack, Mike, thanks for the links and your fascinating pieces on the subject. ‘Creative democracy’ is in deed a very dangerous idea – for some.
As an aside, you might have seen the announcement today that a Self-Published Book Expo is being organised. It will happen in New York in November. More details in the Publisher’s Weekly post here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6651681.html?rssid=192
I too found her comment disturbing – because I feel that there is far too much blurring between what is of “publishable standard” and what is “commercial” – a writer can be a great writer, but be rejected by the industry because they don’t think they will be able to sell the book. That is one of the first criteria a book is held up against, and for me, just because something sells in its thousands, that doesn’t automatically make it good writing. There’s a certain YA vampire series that proves this point beautifully: appalling writing (imho) but huge commercial success.
What muddies the waters for us as aspiring authors is that it is so hard to know whether our writing is good or not. We evolve, we grow, we improve, so it’s natural to like early writing less. Also, it’s ultimately subjective once you get past the easily measurable standards such as grammar and nuts and bolts construction of a novel.
Hrm, I’m starting to burble aren’t I? Suffice to say, great parallel you’ve drawn here, and yes, I like to think of self-publishing as the literary punk movement, if only to be able to think that there is some way to push against the system that might never let me in!
P.S. I saw the book expo thing – and nearly wept when I saw the site. Honestly, surely the first way to give it some credibility is to create a professional looking site? It gives the impression of being cheap, homespun and amateurish (in all negative connotations of the word) which is exactly what reputable self publishers want to change, surely?! Ooh it makes me mad!
Oh come on now, Em. The site isn’t that bad! Not exactly good, I’ll grant you, but not total drech.
I think that, for self-publishing to be the literary equivalent of punk, it needs to take an ideological stance of some sort. ‘Publish it yourself ‘cos nobody else ever will,’ won’t be enough. Self-publishers would need to offer something more and be doing it for a reason that wasn’t just desperation.
Some self publishers really do believe they are taking a stand against a system that is failing them (like your chum Darryl Sloan) and these are the kind of people that a punk write movement could nucleate around. But I think that in itself won’t be quite enough either. The books they produce would need to be different – more energetic, more literate, more fun, more intelligent, more *something* – before people started to take notice.
Anyway, you’re always welcome to burble on my blog.
I think that’s a great point – forming a movement around people who just can’t get into a club and so form their own only has so much mileage. I like this idea of truely radical people being at the centre of the movement.
But I stand by what I said about that site! I guess that being in the internet industry as my non-heroic secret identity, I’m a very harsh critic.
Believe me, I’m a harsh critic too. In another life I used to be a user interface consultant (usability specialist, customer experience consultant, HCI specialist, pick your title) and spent my time tearing other people’s designs to shreds – scientifically, of course.
Oddly enough, given all the talk of literary DJs and John Peel on Paperback Jack’s post, I came across this quote on the About page of Interzone – an SF magazine:
“When I first sold a story to Interzone I tried to explain the feeling to a non-genre friend. ‘It’s like getting a Peel Session,’ I said. John Peel’s Radio 1 show – irredeemably British but with an extraordinarily International passion – still seems like a good analogy to Interzone. Peel of course is sadly RIP, but Interzone is not, and long, long may it continue.” Daniel Kaysen.
Maybe mags like Interzone are more like The Cavern than they are like John Peel, but clearly the need for this kind of gig is felt by many writers.