Business, Publishing, Writing, and This Blog

The other day, while thinking about business and what is and is not business and this blog and how it is and is not about writing, I came across the following quote:

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly, New Statesman

It crystallized many of my thoughts and tied them together for me.

I’d received an e-mail from a blog directory informing me that The Commune had scored a 6.3 out of 10 points on their ratings scale, which based on their system is a “Good.” I was invited to click on a link and add a little button to my blog informing the online world of this fact. Having never heard of the site, and knowing I never submitted The Commune to be evaluated, my first thought was that it was malicious spam and clicking on the link would cause bad things to happen. A little googling alleviated my fears somewhat. The site, such as it is, is legitimate, but still, I wasn’t prone to placing advertising for them on my blog just because they wanted me to do so. A little more research showed they had evaluated an older version of The Commune. It also says the score is based on “editorial” review but does not give me access to the review or tell me anything about who the editors are. There should be some degree of transparency on both sides, or at least provide readers a breakdown of the point system and a brief written review for the consumer, such as is found in movie and book reviews.

Beyond all that, the important bit, for the thought process I was experiencing at the moment, was that they had categorized The Commune as a blog about “writing” and that when I went to look for it in their listings I searched for it under “writing” without even thinking about it because I do believe The Commune’s tag line, that this is a place where people, life, and writing come together. And, yet, as I glanced at the other blogs characterized under the “writing” heading, I had to step back. Most blogs about writing tend to be filled with talk about publishing and getting published and the writing process and while The Commune did look at some such things in the beginning, it has evolved to the point where it discusses many things and most of them do not appear to be about the writing process or the writing life or the business of writing or the writing craft. For the most part, my posts are just turning the stones over and examining what I find underneath. Even so, I still consider The Commune to be a blog first and foremost about writing.

Why? Because, to me, writing is about life and life is about writing. Everything I encounter, everything I do, is fodder for an article or story idea. Writing is about turning the stones over and examining what is underneath and sharing it with others in such a way that they are entertained or gain a new perspective or both.

When I talk about the economy, I’m talking about writing. When I create a post about the other-worldy feeling generated by a snowstorm or the SciFi channel’s name change, I’m talking about writing. How so? The SciFi channel’s name change was about branding and respecting your readers. Without them, writers are nothing. They should never be dismissed out of hand as the SciFi channel has done their viewers. The snowstorm was about feelings we get in certain situations, about seeing the unusual in the usual, about how extraordinary the ordinary can become. There are possibilities in everything and it is up to we writers to see them and share them with others.

As for the economy, that is about the business of writing. What can people afford? What is happening to the world around us that affects our ability to make a living through our prose? It is about the writers’ ability to forecast the future and our responsibility to tell others.

About a year ago, I attended a sample class given by a PhD being interviewed for an associate professorship. His specialty was philosophy and business. It was an unusual combination. Part of his lecture has always stayed with me. He explained that when someone “went into business” there really wasn’t a definition of what that meant, other than they were going to try to make money, and why did business have to be about that? Why couldn’t the end goal of a business be about improving the community? Why was success only measured by the bottom line? I do not do his philosophy justice, but it made me think, which was the hallmark of a good professor, and one of the reasons, when all the sample classes were complete, I voted for him to get the position.

It leads to the question why is the hallmark of a successful writer only about getting agent representation and commercial publication? What if they were able to get readers some other way? Would the writer then be a success, even if they don’t have the name “Random House” or “TOR” on the spine of the books?

My friend Kristine Williams is already ahead of me on pondering the answers to that question with Midnight Reading. In an era when publishing is struggling to evolve and adapt to both economical and technological changes, she has taken her literary future into her own hands. While she still wants to be read, she has stopped considering traditional publishing to be the end all, be all goal. Instead, she has put her work out there where the readers are and invited select writers to do the same on her dime. She is in the process of creating a place that is not about how many books are sold, but about how many books are read. She is bringing fiction and readers together again without overt concern over the bottom line. As a result, she is building a future for herself and those she chooses to partner with. It’s commendable and interesting and an example of what it means when business is not just about how much money is made. It’s what writing and reading should be and were once, before those who published and sold books became so disconnected from the reader and the product in their pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I fully expect to see more such projects as the Depression continues to grow around us.