Anis Shivani.Writer, anisshivani.com
Huffington Post, January 16, 2011
These "rules" totally go against every prescription for writing success you'll hear as a young writer from all quarters: the conformity-driven MFA system, the publishing industry's hype-machine, successful writers who act either like prima donnas or untouchable mystics, the marketing experts who seek to impose advertising rules on the writing product. Overpaid editors, illiterate agents, arrogant gatekeepers, and stupid reviewers want you to bargain away your soul for a pittance -- the bids in the market escalate downward, a reverse auction where you compete with the lowest of the low to be acknowledged as an entity that counts.
Why take part in the game at all? Who has ever come out of it alive, able to set up tent and build followers on the other side? Why not accept the reality that writers aren't forged in social harmony and peer input and obedient fellowship, but in a region where madmen and insomniacs find no comfort?
To get you started on a regimen designed to pull you away from the mother-teat of the writing industry, here are the ten commandments:
1 comment:
Right about everything: the corrupting influence of a tired, corrupt system.
But it's not enough for writers to do it; readers have to help.
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