Thread: Is publishing insincere?

Hi guys,

I'm wondering if you feel the same way about the intention to publish. In place of self-expression, it seems, is a desire for recognition that impels the writer who intends to publish. Do you agree?

What is the difference between self-expression and a desire for recognition? Neither seems to have much appeal to the publishing industry which does not care why a writer writes. Publishers only care if a book can make money for them. Everything gets done for the wrong reason, but everything still gets done. C.M.

Is a shop? What a curiously phrased question.

Originally Posted by yumyumshisha

Hi guys,

I'm wondering if you feel the same way about the intention to publish. In place of self-expression, it seems, is a desire for recognition that impels the writer who intends to publish. Do you agree?

Writing purely for the sake of self expression is called a diary. All other forms of writing are communication and therefore meant to be shared (published in one form or another, even if it is simply a letter to a friend). The worth of any piece of writing is in its ability to effectively communicate the author's thoughts to a reader. So, I submit that any bit of authorship which is intended only as self expression and not intended to be 'published', or made available to others, is what is insincere because it denies the true purpose of the medium.

I think this has been said before in a similar thread, but anyone who wants recognition wouldn't be a writer. It would be easier for someone to appear on a programme like 'X-Factor'. Even if they made a fool of themselves and ended up on one of those specials with people who couldn't sing if their lives depended on it. It would still be recognition.

I write because it's the only thing I really want to do. Yes, I'd like to make a comfortable living from it (subsidised perhaps with other work) so that I won't have to spend the rest of my life doing a job that I hate. And I would take great pleasure from knowing that other people like what I have written. But even if I never get published, I will continue to write.

Originally Posted by yumyumshisha

Hi guys,

I'm wondering if you feel the same way about the intention to publish. In place of self-expression, it seems, is a desire for recognition that impels the writer who intends to publish. Do you agree?

Where is it written that the two must be mutually exclusive?

Everyone in the process pretty much has their own self-interest at stake. It's the constant that makes the business work.

• The writer sells their work (or inspiration or self-expression) at a price. They might want to send a message to the world, instruct people, become a big name (good luck with that) but their own self-interest is usually entwined with their self-expression.
• The publisher wants to make money.
• The reader wants to read what they want to read. They're not overly concerned with your self-expression but rather what they want to put in front of their eyeballs. After all, they're the ones spending the time and the money.

It's a business. If you want to write purely free of these motives, I'm with Terry. Your diary is a great place for that.

How do you measure your worth?

At work you, and others will do it by the size of your pay-packet.

Socially by the quality of your family and friendships

When writing? By the willingness of others to read your work - how do you get others to read your work? By publishing it of course - Friends and family don't count.

For a writer, the most objective way of having your worth as a writer valued is to hand it over to someone qualified to read another's work and pass judgement on it; and to most writers, the fact that somebody may be willing to publish it is as objective a measurement as you are likely to get. My tutor gave me a distinction, my poetry group at college in general praise my work.... but they may not wish to break my heart, they are not entirely objective; I certainly am not, I usually think it is great/crap/so-so in fairly rapid rotation, I am unsure as to the quality of my poetry; but if the New Yorker published one of my poems it would give me enormous confidence if nothing else. To write and not show is either cowardice, lack of confidence or a certain knowledge that it is not of sufficient quality to merit publication - Even diaries are supposed to be read, otherwise why write them - I don't entirely believe people who say that their journals are private.

As a writer of poetry I would be chuffed to think that in a couple of hundred years time some anonymous undergraduate will be asked to open their Anthology of English 21st Century Poetry at page 31 and read aloud, for the class, Sonnet XXIII by Bloggsworth... That is immortality.

Of course I want to publish what I write. That's because I want to eat and pay the rent. Is that so very wrong?

Writing in one form or another has been central to my life. Why do some people tell me I'm some kind of immoral jerk because writing also happens to be the way I have always made my living? What drives this attitude that your means of living should be something you don't like to do? Was my grandfather wrong to tell me I should find something that I liked to do that would make me a decent living, and do that?

Who wrote the rule that any craftsman, whether carpenter or writer, should not be paid for the product of his mind and hands?

The writer who intends to publish merely wants to share with others what he has labored hard to create, and perhaps make a buck at the same time. Nothing at all wrong with either of these motives.

Originally Posted by garza

Of course I want to publish what I write. That's because I want to eat and pay the rent. Is that so very wrong?

Writing in one form or another has been central to my life. Why do some people tell me I'm some kind of immoral jerk because writing also happens to be the way I have always made my living? What drives this attitude that your means of living should be something you don't like to do? Was my grandfather wrong to tell me I should find something that I liked to do that would make me a decent living, and do that?

Who wrote the rule that any craftsman, whether carpenter or writer, should not be paid for the product of his mind and hands?

Your grandfather was clearly not a Calvanist...

Interesting you say that. My maternal grandfather was an Irish Catholic atheist from Belfast. The girl he married had, indeed, been raised a Calvinist in the Scottish Kirk, from which she was promptly dismissed.

That concept of making a living by doing something you enjoy doing was central to his philosophy of life. I've been told so many times that I'm not a real writer. Real writers, they tell me, don't get paid to write.

My first newspaper article was published when I was 14. I wrote it with the deliberate intention of taking it to the newspaper office to offer it for publication. I do not apologise for that.

Originally Posted by garza

Interesting you say that. My maternal grandfather was an Irish Catholic atheist from Belfast. The girl he married had, indeed, been raised a Calvinist in the Scottish Kirk, from which she was promptly dismissed.

That concept of making a living by doing something you enjoy doing was central to his philosophy of life. I've been told so many times that I'm not a real writer. Real writers, they tell me, don't get paid to write.

My first newspaper article was published when I was 14. I wrote it with the deliberate intention of taking it to the newspaper office to offer it for publication. I do not apologise for that.

And neither should you have to.

Originally Posted by garza

Real writers, they tell me, don't get paid to write.

I've heard that, too. Strange, isn't it, that in most pursuits making money validates the activity.

Stranger still is that articles, newsletters, manuals, and other non-fiction written for money aren't looked on as selfish and wicked. Only fiction written for money is below contempt.

Nobody calls me a sellout for writing articles for publication or ad copy. The "sellout-not-a-real-writer" comments seem reserved for the bodice rippers and the fetish erotica.

RomanticRose - As it happens my field is non-fiction. My roots are in newspaper and broadcast journalism, magazine articles, and such. Over the past 20 years I've spent more and more time on writing for governmental agencies and non-governmental organisations. My favourite kind of writing is frontline reporting, and if I were a young man I'd be in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan, but I'm 71 now and preparing a policy paper on the support of agro-business in developing countries suits me fine. At heart I'm an old wire service hack, but lately I've made efforts toward learning to write fiction. Thus far those efforts have not produced any results worth mentioning.