What I Learned Today

How it feels to be hit in the face with a 2x4.

Lesson learned - duck.

Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth

I've been following the growing alarm of alt-weekly cartoonists regarding the impending demise of their livelihood, dudes like Tom Tomorrow, David Rees, Ted Rall, Derf and others. Tom recently posted a long message of doom by the creator of Red Meat - Max Cannon. He writes:

If, indeed, the humble $10 or $20 that I generally get paid for a RED MEAT strip is going to bring the whole (alt-weekly) operation tumbling down, then the alt-weekly industry is already dead on its feet...

Heh, indeedy. The couple of C-notes alt-weeklies spend on cartoons every week (if that much) was likely axed by accountants who don't even read the paper. That's wasted space which could be generating revenue, instead of consuming it. Or something. Who knows what they're thinking, or even if they're thinking. But thus it has been and ever shall be when accountants and artists butt heads - the accountants have infinitely harder heads, bigger horns, and mightier buttocks with which to propel themselves at us, helter skelter.


Although I agree with much that Max says, I take issue with one part. He writes:

...we (artists)...make our rent and feed and clothe our families exclusively on the humble (I repeat, humble) amount we make from revenues we get from subscriber publications. When that dries up, most - if not all - of us will no longer be able to financially justify the continued production of our weekly comic strips for your enjoyment. That means no posting of new strings on the web site either...

Maybe it's just me (and I don't think it is just me), but whether or not I receive a paycheck has almost nothing to do with whether or not I create. If every magazine in the world were to stop publishing short fiction, and every novel publisher were to suddenly fold, I would still write and I would post my stories over at Big Bamboo, where you can already read several of my previously published stories, which are really quite good, even if I say so myself. If you haven't read them, you know what to do - just click here.

I don't support my family with my writing. I have a full time job and a full time family with young children, yet I still write - every day. Quitting isn't an option for me. Not every artist works for the same reasons, but I suspect that if their entire revenue stream were to dry up tomorrow, many of these artists would find new places to publish. If I were them, I'd be looking for those places now. In fact, I'd be talking to my fellow artists about starting an online subscriber-based autonomous collective. Or something.

Who Do You Want To Be?

This goes a long way toward explaining why I have such a difficult time with this whole publishing bidness sometimes. These are not the queries I would have chosen.

Many years ago, when I was first getting into this nut house, I was but a naive young student of creative writing at the University of Mississippi. Actually, I was a computer science student about to change my major. The English department held a poetry contest, free to anyone to enter, so I submitted my three best poems because, at the time, I was a serious poet, not a fiction writer.

A guy named Iggy who lived down the hall from me decided it would be fun to enter, too. Iggy was an original skater dood. He wore pajamas everywhere - to class, to dinner, to the bars on the square, even to bed. Iggy's intention was not to win - it was to satirize the pretentiousness of academic poetry, which he hated. He did so by writing a short poem about a black woman drinking at a water fountain (Ole Miss, with it's history of racism, was the perfect venue for this subject), which was actually blatantly symbolic of a woman giving head.

None of my three entirely forgettable poems even received an honorable mention, but Iggy's suck my dick poem won third place.

I should have known then how difficult this career path was going to be.

WATB

Do the world a favor and grow up.

Or shut up.

The Moment is Gone

Why does any blogger use Haloscan? Yet all the big ones - Atrios, Digby, Peskyfly, use haloscan.

I just typed my magnum opus of political theory over at Digby's crib, only to have Haloscan go down in the middle of my post, losing an essay what might have saved this country from impending disaster. It's like Patrick Henry calling up the printer and saying, dude, where's those tracts I sent you to print up, and they're all like, dude, what tracts? Sorry. Our typesetter was like sick and stuff and his wife used the transcript to bung up a mouse hole. Can you give the speech again? No I can't give the speech again! Haloscan lost it! Goodbye Revolution. So long America! I hope you enjoy life under King George the Third, because Haloscan sucks pony!






I keed, of course.

Update: This will have to do.

Buggy Whip Sales Down

When a writer reads such stories of the continuing decline in reading, said writer cannot help but feel like a designer of buggy whips round about 100 years ago, or a monastic scribe some 550 years ago.

What a rotten time to be a writer, the writer whines to the gods of grape and grain. What a rotten time to be born. Just as those before him, the whipsmith and the tonsured pensman of old, he wonders what will become of his art. For a thousand years heroic stories like Beowulf have been written on vellum, parchment and paper, with ink and pen or press. Why is it only now, in his lifetime, that the technology that drives his art is dying? Even as universities crank out more creative writing graduates than ever, and more books are printed than have ever been printed before - more and more writers and books are competing for the attention of a smaller and all-too-mortal audience. To be sure, a hundred years later the world will still need buggy whips - well, maybe not so much the world as a small corner of Pennsylvania and Ohio. But who wants to end his days writing for the literary equivalent of the Amish?

But then, he thinks, wasn't Beowulf originally told by storytellers, who saw their own art wither as writing and reading took over? Who needed a bard when he could get a book?

So who needs a book today, when he can get the bard? There's just one problem. Recorded stories have been around for a while now and they aren't exactly taking over the publishing world. Even with Podcasts and Youtubes, are young people any more likely to invest six hours listening or watching someone read a book? Fiction died as a performance art about the time people stopped sitting around open fires beneath the stars, and poetry wasn't far behind. When was the last time you loaded up the kids in the car to head down to the local Poetry Slam?

We can keep making buggy whips and hand-lettering vellum sheets and die a slow, agonizing death by dry rot, or we can embrace the technology and find new ways to tell our stories. It seems to me that movies are the medium - but either the costs or the audience's expectations must come waaaaaayyy down before video storytelling can ever replace the book. Honestly, I don't know what the new medium will be, I just know that someone needs to invent it, and quick. Because when I see it, I'm there. Unless I invent it first.

Egads, I've just written a "Print is Dead" post! See, there's nothing new under the sun. It's all been done and done and done.