Ridiculous Literary Snobbery

I’m embarrassed when I look at how I used to act and thing about writing and publishing books. I can remember laughing about writers who didn’t write what I thought was “good enough” material. I also remember being very snobbish about writers whose aspirations were “lower” than mine. My goal was to be a nationally published professional writer who earned a living solely from writing. I didn’t think that earning money from anything other than sales of books counted. And I looked down on many local writers who were publishing with smaller presses, especially the local religious ones.

If you encountered me during this time, please let me offer you my deepest apologies for my snobbery. I sometimes tried not to show my disdain for others, but I wasn’t always successful and all I can say is that I’ve changed. I don’t believe that it makes me smarter or even a better writer to have had the limited success that I’ve had. I think there are many worthy goals in the writing world, including simply writing a clear account of your own life for your children and grandchildren, or leaving a record of your other work for future generations.

One of the first moments when I found myself questioning my ideals was when a writer who was far more successful than I was pointed out that some of the best writers he knew weren’t being published by the big 5 commercial houses. When I asked for some titles—and then read them—I was humbled. These were indeed some of the best books I’d ever read. Sometimes I could see the reasons why the authors or the books wouldn’t be popular. They were quirky books with unlikeable heroes/heroines or they were written at a literary level that isn’t often commercial. But other times, I couldn’t see any good reason that this particular book didn’t earn a million dollar advance and another book did.

I had already seen clearly that there were plenty of wealthy writers who wrote books I didn’t particularly value. I enjoyed making fun of them as much as anyone. But I’d told myself for years that the reason I was getting rejected was that I wasn’t good enough yet. I believed I had to write a book that was so good, no one could turn it down. I don’t know that I achieved that, but probably not. I just wrote enough books that I was essentially throwing darts at the wall randomly and one hit the target at just the right moment totally unrelated to me and my skill. That isn’t to say I don’t think I have skill, just that success has a lot less to do with skill than I originally believed.

It may be that I will never write another commercially successful book. That doesn’t mean that I don’t write. I have been given the gift through my divorce of being forced to find a new career that pays me regular money for my work. That means I have less time to write at the “book-every-month” pace that I was working at for years before that. But it also means that I don’t have to worry as much about sales and about the current state of the market or whatever trends are “hot” this week. I get to write whatever the hell I want, or rather whatever I believe would make the world a better place. So that is what I do. It’s not the goal I had when I began on this path, but I’m not unhappy about it, either.