by David D. Horowitz.
“Gee, thanks, Famous Writer X, for telling me and your other workshop students they have no chance to succeed. ‘What glamour,’ you purred sarcastically. ‘Ten million MFA in Creative Writing students want what you want. You have virtually no chance.’ Easy for you to say, Mister Famous! I’m out $145 for nothing! Some workshop!”
This fictional blog entry mirrors some actual ones I’ve read over the years. Ambitious aspiring writers, believing the mantra “failure is not an option” envision a writer’s life of television interviews, readings in auditoriums packed with worshipful fans, #1 rankings on Amazon, and adoring reviews in prestigious journals. But then the cynical, not-quite-successful writer disabuses the ambitious aspirant dreaming of 72-city tours, luxurious hotel suites, fortunes accruing from book sales, and interviews everywhere and anywhere. No, he sighs: expect three-town tours you have to organize and promote; cheap motels where a four-day-old cheese Danish pastry and a chipped mug of lukewarm drip coffee are deemed a continental breakfast; your event attracting twelve people on a drizzly night, eleven of them there for the community college instructor whom you asked to read with you; and two books sold, which is better than sales at your reading of the night before. What glamour!
Surely, though, a reasonable mean exists between stars-in-your-eyes naivete and sarcastic, deflating pessimism. Yes, the over two hundred creative writing MFA programs in the United States and Canada produce far more writers than could ever succeed big-time. Yes, almost all writers need a time-consuming job to survive. Yes, getting gigs at prestigious bookfairs and writers’ conferences and workshops is difficult. Yes, competition to get work published in elite journals—especially those deemed “refereed” by academic tenure committees—is intense and frequently means about one in five hundred submissions ever grace such a journal’s pages.
Yet, writing, editing, publishing, and promoting one’s reading can be exhilarating! And many good bookstores love to host aspiring writers, as do many galleries, cafés, schools, and museums. And sometimes success does come. It just tends to take a few decades, not years. It means the aspirant might need to frequently submit writing to lower-tier literary journals; self-publish a chapbook or two; publicly perform in many diverse venues, including open mics; and help organize and promote events. It means the aspirant needs to cultivate the humility of the life-long learner, not the arrogance of the self-proclaimed genius: in other words, one needs to work hard, consider thoughtful criticism, and continuously improve one’s writing.
And sometimes there is a bit of glamour. Fifty rather than fifteen people might attend an event. And fifteen, not two or three, books might sell. And a radio show host might have a wonderful half-hour interview with you. And an admired local literary journalist might publish a laudatory piece on a popular blog or in a respected newspaper. And now and then, a breakthrough happens. The writers who read for the auditoriums full of worshipful fans are real people, too. So, yes, Cynical Writer X: sometimes glamour does happen. But rarely, Ambitious Aspirant, does it happen overnight.