A few days ago I received a response from an editor who offered the following comment on one of my humor submissions: "Sorry I don't have a place for this one . . . but I appreciate your honesty. Wish more would write like this." Honesty. Well, it's a rare thing, evidently, even among writers . . . and I'm not talking about truth vs. lie here. I'm talking about openness . . . the willingness of a writer to put the guts of his or her life and thought radically upon the page.
I know what the editor is talking about.
Most of the books I read today (particularly "religious" ones) lack this crucial element. I read voraciously, but most often I come away from a book, whether fiction or non-fiction, with the feeling that the writer hasn't really said what he or she wanted to say from the gut, but was writing from some artificial center.
But perhaps publishers are to blame, too. Today, every publisher wants a "formula" success. And if a writer is going to get published, there's a growing tendency for editors to lump writers into specific genres or marketing niches. Many writers feel they can't write what they want to write, but what the marketing department at the publishing firm believes will sell. Most of the books I read fit into this latter category, I'm afraid.
The older I get, the greater my proclivity to write what I want to write, to say what I want to say (whether humor, religious, satire, fiction, or history). I do strive for honesty and openness above all.
I guess I get this from my wife. She's always telling me what she thinks. According to her, I'm generally a good man, a guy who cooks decent soups, somewhat of a work-a-holic, a weirdo, a frustrated father, and a writer who continues to fail forward and write for nothing, having not had a single "success" in thirty years of work. She's right, of course. And honest.
And she's not even an editor.
No comments:
Post a Comment