Dr. Ramani Durvasula got me thinking about the toxicity of pursuing Fame in America and how it ruins lives.

 

I've been reading a book called Don't You Know Who I Am?: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. It is written by Ramani S. Durvasula, PH.D. It's one of those books that I'm progressing through rather slowly, at a pace of about 20 pages at a time. This is mostly due to the fact that I want to think about what I just read. It's also because a lot of what Durvasula talks about in the book are things I've witnessed first hand. Additionally, it's kind of fun to be the armchair psychologist and think..."Oh yea...this describes my family" or "Oh yea...this describes that narcissistic friend of mine to a tee. What an asshole they are."

And speaking of "asshole," there's a great definition of this term that I'm going to tell you about. I'd never thought of defining the word in this way. Apparently, an asshole is a "person who allows themselves to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes them against the complaints of other people." It's a mouthful, but it kinda makes sense.

There is way too much to talk about in Durvasula's book that warrants attention (or that could fit into one blog post). But one thing did stick out in my reading last night, and that is what I'm going to blog about today. It's about fame. I'd never really given much thought to what fame actually was, but Durvasala defines it in a way that seems more meaningful than a catchphrase or a kind of force of nature/personality. Interested? Please read on.

Dr. Durvasula writes that "we humans want and, in fact, need social belonging and connection...the drive for fame then is largely our need for social belonging. Perhaps fame implies permanent social belonging, because the person will be recognized everywhere they go." Then she goes onto cite a personal example of someone who desperately wanted to be famous. When she asked this person why, they responded with, "So I am never lonely again."

When I thought about this example, I put down the book and was suddenly struck with how lonely some people must actually be. One particular example that pops into my head is Gabby Petito, the late (murdered) Instagram woman who went on a trip to see national parks in the United States with her fiancée, and their van life (though very instagrammable) was obviously a nightmare, and she was murdered by someone she trusted and her body left to rot under the sun. I wonder if she was driven to that kind of life because she was lonely. She was trying to pursue fame, and it just led to a toxic mess of abuse and violent crime.

And it got me thinking about how toxic our culture is. Americans are really good at walling off people, ignoring people, canceling people, and being mean to people. It's kind of like a super power that Americans all have. The idea of having fame seems to be a salve for that. If you are famous, then you can open closed doors. You can be invited to parties on the other side of the wall. You can feel welcome in places that are largely unwelcoming to everyone else. You can even rise above and profit from negative criticism that would destroy someone that wasn't protected by fame. So fame and fame-seeking seems to go hand-in-hand with the hatred that pollutes our country.

The more people hate, and the more people build walls to keep people out, the more important it will be for a person to have access to something that will allow them to move fluidly through all of those boundaries. Fame appears to be that "something," and it may be the most desirable commodity of all among America's youth these days. That (I think) is a bad thing for our country. For example, I can't imagine what it would be like to try and have a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with a famous person. How would they ever have time to emotionally support you when there are so many people clamoring for their attention? I think it would be a fertile breeding ground for massive insecurities unless the famous person took steps to create really firm boundaries with the public and put you at the center of what was important to them. Unfortunately, we see this kind of thing play out over and over again in the media. Those who are excellent with the boundaries have relationships that survive. Those who aren't good at boundary setting end up decimated by the public that worships them. There are so many bad things about America now though that it's honestly hard to keep track of them all. So it's just adding one more sociopolitical catastrophe onto the steaming garbage heap.

Anyway, I appreciate the thought exercise that Dr. Durvasula gave me regarding fame. And since we're on the topic, do any of you who are reading my words now hunger for fame (or do you have kids who are fame obsessed)? If so, care to share why? I'm a very non-famous person who legitimately wants to know.

Out of touch with reality

One of the blogs that I read is written by Anne R. Allen. It's a big blog, and she has this lady named Ruth Harris who comes from an editing position with one of the Big Six Publishers.  Anyway, it like a hundred thousand other blogs out there--it seeks to pass on writing advice. In other words, they tell you how to write so that you can get agented and published with the Big Six.  I assume that, in a perfect world, if you supposedly followed exactly what was said verbatim, you would find yourself with a product that would get 1) agent and 2) book deal and 3) some sales before your career was over.

Why do I say #3 with snark?

The specific piece that Ms. Harris talked about was the things that you shouldn't do to introduce your protagonist to the world.  Another of these was to excise the prologue.  Now, I agree...in many cases, a prologue is unnecessary.  I agonized over mine and decided to get rid of it in the end.  It is now a short story that may help me market my book in a year.  But I made this decision on my own, and not because I took "professional" advice.

I have some strong opinions about the industry professionals snobs (those that pull-down more than $250,000 a year and have education equivalent to that provided by Ivy League schools--Stanford and Berkely and U.C. Irvine are examples of "Ivy League" equivalents).  But more importantly...those that are snobs because of their attitude.  And yes...I'm using the word SNOB.  You may know some in your life.

I think industry professional snobs are out of touch with dung--with crap.  I define "crap" as being anything that isn't a Pulitzer prize winning/ Nebula award winning/ Hugo garnering (you get the picture) piece of written fiction.  I (for example) write crap.  So does Stephanie Meyer and so, for that matter, does George R.R. Martin who by my definition, lost his Hugo to J.K. Rowling (who obviously doesn't write crap because she won an award). 

Okay... so industry professional snobs are out of touch with crap.  Maybe that's because it smells bad and they want to represent future Nobel Prize winners.  They also want these award-winning novelists to make them a lot of money.  But you very rarely get both.

CRAP SELLS. PERIOD.

CRAP, quite frankly, sells rather well.

And I think that industry professionals are ashamed that crap sells well.  I think that it makes them mad.  And they want people to stop writing crap so that they don't have to represent it and that maybe...just maybe...someday better books will be published and the crap will all be cleaned up and flushed away.

But this won't happen.  And, they shouldn't be providing advice on how to win a pulitzer with your prose anyway.  Why try for an "A" when stuff that gets a "C" gets published and makes more money?  They shouldn't be providing advice on how to be the next J.M. Coetzee.  Industry snobs sound a lot like college professors (and I know some) who sit back and speak of things that they think is true...but the high school dropout that has three kids at Wal-Mart who buys romance novels knows nothing about.  And I'm talking LEGIONS OF THESE PEOPLE who smoke pot and have sex for a six-pack of Keystone and draw down welfare like it's nobody's business.  These people BUY books.

In the blog post I linked above, an industry professional has "testimonies" from other industry professionals pointing out how a prologue is bad.  Maybe it is.  But here's something that I find VERY interesting...it was only this year that even Nathan Bransford decided to read the Harry Potter books. Don't believe me? Go check out his blog. And he's a middle-grade writer.  How could you not read the work of the best-selling writer in your genre until after you started to work on your second book?

My point is that the industry professionals are late in the game when it comes to buying books...yet they have all of this advice on how to write one for the masses so that it will sell?  J.K. Rowling's career by the time Nathan Bransford even bothered to look at it was bigger than Jupiter.  In other words...he only read it because EVERYONE ELSE in the world had read the books.  How come no one ever has testimonies from Joe Martin...the bum on the street corner that has a copy of James Patterson's latest published 'fiction-factory' CRAP?  Ask him..."Hey...do you read prologues?"

I could ask my friend Melissa...she has a high school education and works in a call center and reads vampire books.  She reads everything in the book...EVERYTHING.  That means she reads the prologue, the epilogue and the author's notes in the back.  I do too.  I read all fifty pages of Neil Gaiman's epilogue and I read every single one of George R.R. Martin's prologues.

Was I asked if I read a prologue? Nope.  But if I had been asked I'd say "Yes I do!"  But they like to quote things like, "No one reads a prologue." Hmmm...I must be a no one then.

But industry professionals were asked, and their opinions solicited.  My question is why?  THEY ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE MASSES.  The only star on their resume is that they are in control.  But being in control does not make you a sample of the general population.  President Barack Obama is in control of the United States.  But is his lifestyle the same as yours? As mine?  I'm thinking he probably lives a lot better, has better healthcare, has some...I dunno...RESOURCES and probably doesn't have to worry about trying to afford medicated shampoo for dermatitis.  It's like having a black person on trial and then selecting a jury of all white people and saying "THESE ARE YOUR PEERS" to the black person.  Like WTF?! Really?!

Listen here, Vick!  We dogs are your peers. We know WHAT
IS BEST FOR YOU AND WHAT YOU LIKE TO READ!
WE ARE THE PROFESSIONALS and make a living doing
this so you'd better darn listen to us or you'll be sorry.

So yeah...publishing is a catch-22.  Crap sells.  But if you write crap that people like...it won't make it past the gatekeeper who is ashamed of your BAG OF DUNG.  So, somehow in all of the stuff that you've got to keep straight...you need to slip past the gatekeeper with your crap by making it good enough for the snobs, yet have it still be appealing enough to those that buy the crap enmasse.  I wonder how many vampire manuscripts are being turned down simply because the agent "Is tired of seeing vampire stories" when in fact, my girl Melissa wants more and more and there are tons of girls just like her out there wanting more.  They want hot, sexy vampires with perfect bodies willing to sink their teeth into them.  But yeah...there are some "industry professionals" that are turning this down because supposedly "the trend is over".  WHATEVER.  They just want it to be over and are hoping that because they are in control, that they can influence mass opinion and prove themselves right.

Interesting AND a headache.  I have just five words for all of that advice:

OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY.

Horse of a Different Color

In the world of publishing, it's no secret that having a literary agent in your corner is an amazing thing.  However, finding one can be difficult for some (I use myself as an example of this).  Criticism, rejection letters, etc. don't really phase me...basically par for the course and as a co-worker once told me, "Mike lets stuff roll off of him like water off the back of a duck". 

I read a ton of blogs and try to comment on a ton too and I've noticed that there seems to be a disconnection with the idea that you need a big publishing house and an agent to simply "be read". I wanted to make a distinction that you actually don't need any of these things if you want people to read your work. "¿Qué pasa?" you might ask...allow me to elaborate.

I'm a member of this wonderful website called Gay Authors where I post stories for free and people read them.  Do I get paid?  Not one bit. But let's put it this way, my story has probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 to 7,000 reads (from the first time I ever posted it and counting the Nifty Archive) and I got probably 60 comments and or reviews on it over time from people that read my story and either liked it or had great constructive criticism.  For someone that really doesn't have too many real life friends that read, this was awesome.  Disclaimer:  all of my friends spend most of their free time on Facebook, World of Warcraft, or socializing.  Reading is an "alone-time" thing and most people I know, really don't read that much because they cannot stand being alone.  But anyways, I digress.

Finding G.A. was a wonderful breath of fresh air for me.  It also allowed me to connect with like-minded people who are intelligent, concerned about writing, and love to read.  And...my experience is based on my first story ever posted on the site.  It wasn't complete when I started posting.  Rather, I did so a chapter at a time and I only partially storyboarded it but I knew where I wanted to go with it.  So you can imagine...a first draft just going up on the web, no one to edit or beta-read it, and bam...tons of people are suddenly involved with it.  I had great writers that go by the name Nephylim, Anytasunday, and KingdombytheSea who took time to read my story and throw me a comment or two.  It's great.

But my readers and reviews pale in comparison to true hard working writers on the site.  My good friend Andy (who's a lawyer and having a baby via a surrogate with his partner and blogging about it) has probably over 20,000 views on his story and hundreds of thought-filled and provoking reviews (some an entire page in length).

Now, Andy's story that I've linked above called "Second Shot" would be considered basically "unpublishable".  It's essentially an on-going soap opera that is over 230,000 words in length and still going (publishable being essentially 120,000 words or less by most outfits).  I've seen stories on G.A. approaching half a million words...does that mean they're bad?  Well they've got people devouring them up.  All it means to me is the author has a different way of telling a story and that if it went to print, an entire forest would die.  But in the digital age...this happily doesn't need to happen ever.

So my point is, that if you're a writer, you don't need the trimmings of a big publishing house and an agent to be "read" which is what I see a lot of writers saying.  "I want to be read."  I think the distinction is, "I want to have fame and fortune and a prestigious publishing house."  If this is what you want, then yes, you need to go the traditional route.

And there's nothing wrong with that either.  I too seek fame and fortune with a prestigious publishing house.  I think it'd be cool to see my books featured on a Barnes and Noble bookshelf with cover art and some marketing done by a publisher and a humble book-signing.  I also believe that everyone that writes should also get their dream of this.  But realistically, it all depends on whether or not what you write appeals to the people that have enough discretionary income to buy your book.  That's what the agent is...he's a person trained to know whether or not your writing can fatten a bank account for a publisher since publishers no longer print stuff that doesn't put money in the bank (did they ever?).

Horses of a Different Color!

So anyway, I think that if your dream is just to have people read your stuff...then I'd advise just finishing your manuscript because there's a world of people on the internet that would love to read it.  You just won't make any monies.  :(  However, they'd reward you in other ways with thoughtful praise. But don't be confused that wanting to 'be read' means you need an agent, publishing house, and book deal with all the trimmings.  That's "fame and fortune" and a horse of a much different color.