Is It Where We Write or What We Write?

I have been thinking about writers and what and where they write. There are so many sites available online. Some go here, others go there. Some return to their first site, others never return. Some create their own site, others keep writing for long periods of time on one or two writer sites.

There are even writers who do not write online. They still write on paper and send off (often by snail mail, which is the mail Meadowbrook Press seems to prefer) to the small zines and other publishers. All this is well and good, though maybe a bit on the primitive side these days. Much of it has to do with preference and taste.

I remember how we students/disciples in university writing class in Atlanta, Georgia, were anguished over the fact that we had not been published or over our ‘need’ to be published soon. One of our profs, who is now Poet Laureate of Georgia (heady stuff there!), made a statement one day that still rings between my ears. He said we’d get published if we wrote something outstanding and/or extraordinary. Those were not his two adjectives, but they come close. And, of course, he was absolutely right. This was a little before, by the way, our common practice of publishing ourselves online with or without an editor’s ‘kind’ assistance as we do here on AD. (I have trouble thinking favorably toward editors for some reason I’ve yet to fathom.) And our own flash fiction critic here at AD, G. Hogan, said as much recently when he mentioned in one of his many helpful writings concerning the creation of literary fiction that we needed to hold off posting/submitting so quickly and to go over and over our stories umpteen-dozen times (my figure, not his) and THEN post with coherence, no punctuation errors, etc. And who can solidly challenge what he said? I think no one. My response was that since I was older, I didn’t have as much time as the young writers. However, after reading the article, I silently vowed to try to write better and better (One’s limitations vis-à-vis brain matter must be considered, etc.).

As to one having her/his own website, what’s wrong with it? Nothing, of course. But we must remember, if we have a weak name as a writer, we will in all likelihood experience ‘weak’ visitation by the public on such a website. An pure example of a weak name as a writer is Debbie J. Hawken. Ever heard of her? No, you haven’t and I haven’t. That’s because I just made the name up this moment. But if you are surfing or whatever and you see that this writer Grisham, Suess, Lawrence Sanders or dear Ann Rule has a site, you guess you’ll check it out. This example, however, does not mean that just because a writer isn’t famous internationally or even nationally that she/he will not be ‘discovered’, found on the web or read. There are other approaches. For example, if you want some info on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and period and you begin your research (google.com, etc.), you will come across names of good writers such as aberjhani of Savannah, Georgia.

So, now we see we have talked briefly about writers and what and where they write nowadays. We have mentioned one or two media in which their writings can be displayed/read for the public. We have understood the need for each writer to write something truly outstanding and that will have high ‘public appeal’. This last point is without any doubt the most important. If we can, through arduous practice and persistence, bring ourselves to produce a quality piece of writing on the level of Stephen King’s novella “The Body”, for instance, then we will have succeeded as a writer and our name will be ‘weak’ no longer. We must never forget that all the well-known writers of today, such as King, Grisham, and Alice Munro, were once ‘unknowns’.
Just think--how many of us had heard of Annie Proulx before 2005 or 2006?

Thanks for reading.