These days, how many ways are there to a fiction
writer?
An insurance broker, Corissa Stuckey responded,
"I get the majority of my fiction from Indigo
(mega-chain). I use word of mouth and browsing.
Oprah doesn't affect my choice at all. I
have just finished reading,
The Boy in the
Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (a book my
sister in the UK lent me). It is written in the
first person from the perspective of a 9 year
old boy who is the son of the SS officer than
runs Auschwits. It is heartbreaking and
nerve-wracking and even though I had a million
things that I had to do, I couldn't stop
reading."
IT consultant, Ashish Kabir responded, "The last
new fiction author I read was Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. I picked it up
because my sister had the book for a while and
said it was very good. I learnt that, for a
while, the guy in charge of one of the states of
India was someone called Nambodiripad. Cool
name, huh?"
"I recently read a
crime thriller called
The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver. I
enjoyed this book because it was a very fast
read, and there were more twists in it then a
pretzel. My brother picked it up at the airport
on his way to Aruba and read it on the plane.
He recommended it to me after," from Robert
Gupta, a records officer for government
pensions.
Bookstores, Oprah, maybe a journal subscription
and a lot of word of mouth. These days, getting
found by a new reader is either a creative or
fateful process. Even critically acclaimed
author Yann Martel told the
BBC News
in 2004 that prior to winning the Booker Prize
his first two novels didn’t get many readers
despite having their own good reviews.
"For all the effort I put into them, they didn't
have much of an impact. I would write no matter
what, but you do want your book to meet a
reader," Martel said.
I found
Bruce Holland Rogers’
work through the Internet. Rogers’ is a writer
who chooses to live and write according to what
fits his needs as a writer. Lots of writers do
this but few manage to make it work for them.
Even fewer writers make their form of
publication as original as the fiction itself.
Although, Rogers’ has produced various ways to
his writing, the most unusual path is Rogers’
email subscription called
shortshortshort.com.
The email subscription delivers
Rogers’ short-short stories into the inboxes of
over 700 subscribers for $10 a year. Rogers
gets props for marketing his work to more
readers than some lit journals and creating an
accessible way for fast people in fast times to
make regular doses of fiction a common part of
our media mix. Unlike lit journals, Rogers’ new
and renewed subscribers are interested in
receiving his work alone. There’ll be a day
when his readers say things like, "I haven’t had
any Bruce today."
Writer or not, few people ever
choose to actively direct their own lives –
either because we don’t care to, are afraid to,
don’t know how to or our current paths suit us
just fine. Those who prefer a more customized
life (and most creative artists do) require
strong conviction and self-awareness to pursue this.
Roads not taken are not paved, don’t have
restaurants, washrooms, etc. Before setting
off, Rogers packed himself with a heavy body of
work and educated himself on the advantages and
pitfalls of each road available to him. In his
literary community, Rogers was discouraged from
any form of self-publishing.
"In self-publishing, the writer
risks not being taken seriously. When I was
starting
shortshortshort.com,
one creative writing professor tried very hard
to talk me out of it. He felt that I would
damage my reputation by looking desperate for
readers. It's possible that the subscription
service would not have worked at all if I hadn't
already won some significant awards for my work
by the time I started offering stories by
e-mail."
Though, Rogers is proud of his
marketing project, he warns other writers to
plot their own courses carefully. He doesn’t
specialize in self-publishing; he maps his next
course by whatever best suits him. What works
for one writer will not work for everybody else.
Although, once a person finds a way that fits
his/her needs, what happens after that is
secondary.
"I'm a writer who works best in
response to deadlines. If I offered my stories
by e-mail subscription, I'd have regular
deadlines. I also like to give readings because
I enjoy experiencing an audience’s response ---
the laughter that follows a funny exchange of
dialogue, for instance. Sending stories by
e-mail would not be the same as reading those
stories to an audience, but I would at least
feel that someone was reading the stories as
soon as I wrote them, and perhaps some readers
would respond to the stories by e-mail."
"Finally, as a writer, I am all
over the map, writing stories for women's
magazines, science fiction digests, and literary
journals. I wanted to have an audience that
could read my work regardless of market
category. So as soon as I started thinking
about the subscriptions, I could see lots of
ways in which they would be a good fit with my
writing and my personality."
Although, many of us aren’t
capable or willing to try any form of
self-marketing, most of us are catching on to
the potential of the Internet. Online
portfolios with a list of our accomplishments
and samples of published works are becoming more
common but these pages remain static and
unobtrusive. They don’t invite readers and
don’t lobby for speaking or reading
opportunities.
"I definitely encourage writers
to try their own thing but not to the exclusion
of more traditional publishing," Rogers
advised. "Writers can work both sides of the
street simultaneously. The traditional
publishing industry can give writers access to a
much larger audience than any of us is likely to
reach through self-publishing. The problem is
that someone else decides whether or not the
writing is suitable for that audience.
Self-publishing gives some power to the
writer."
Other stimuli in Roger’s writing
career has him physically reaching out to other
writers and artists. He is a motivational
speaker in creativity and practical problem
solving and has taught creative writing in
various institutions such as University of
Colorado and the University of
Illinois. In 2005, he joined the
faculty of the
Whidbey Writers Workshop
MFA program.
"Helping other writers
just feels good. If I can see a hazard in
someone else's path --- a deep hole that I know
about because I fell into it --- it feels good
to tell the next writer coming along, "Look
out! Deep hole!"
"Helping writers is also
an antidote to the isolating nature of our
craft. Writing is all about communicating
something with other people, but most of us
compose in isolation. It can be lonely.
Helping other writers makes the pursuit of
literature seem less lonely."
"Finally, I think that
helping other writers keeps me from developing
poisonous attitudes about the success of other
writers. Another writer's success doesn't
diminish me, but it's true that all of us can
feel under-appreciated when someone else is
getting the big advances and starred reviews.
Helping one another enables us to think of
writing as a project that we're all involved in
together."
All career-analyzing aside,
let’s get back to what really matters when
discussing any writer: how’s the writing?
Rogers provides a diverse sampling of
shorts in his own website. Since he is also
widely published by other online journals,
typing his name on any major search engine will
draw you to more of his stories. Another
novelty to writers -- being described as
Google-able.
On Rogers' short-short form, one can
read a story in the amount of time that it takes
to download new software or a music file. They
begin and end clean and sharp. Though short –
for a short -- they still manage to firmly place
singular and sensual images and ideas that can
be carried and massaged in the back of the mind
after the file has been downloaded. Examples of
such images or ideas are: a couple agreeing to
fall to their deaths together, a checkered clay
pot without a neck, two bodiless voices
discussing the difference between good and evil,
etc. The sharp endings can leave the reader
feeling prematurely cut-off but effectively
creating a curiosity for more. The length also
means that the characters don’t have a lot of
opportunity to develop as in a novel or longer
short story. I found I compensated by putting
more of myself into the characters. I had to
be these people during the story to get a better
sense of them. This exercise can be refreshing
in between the monotony of a multifarious day.
Rogers’ characters, sometimes being a little
disturbing, can make this an exceptional
experience.
"Some readers
think that I am a pretty dark writer," Rogers
said in another interview with Carl O Roach for
Infinity Plus. "Even my
humorous stories have a dark edge to them. I
guess I can't write without that constant
awareness of mortality. However, I think that
knowing ourselves to be mortal allows us to
delight all the more in our existence, and to be
grateful for it. I hope that delight is salient
in my writing, along with the unease. They are
two sides of the same coin."
As some of his credentials,
Rogers has won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebula
Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and nomination for
the Edgar. Despite his accomplishments, Rogers
is wary of being concerned about ‘success’.
"It's okay to fret some about success. It's
fine to crave success and to do reasonable
things to pursue success. But success ---
whether you think you have it or not --- can be
a dangerous distraction that saps your writing
time and energy. What are the average writer's
chances? Those aspiring writers who need
reassurance on this count should probably stick
to writing as an avocation."
As an example, he asked, "If you
write a book that ten thousand readers thought
was wonderful, but you can't make a living on
the proceeds from that book, are you a
failure?"
In his interview with Carl O
Roach, Rogers said, "Fiction is never
irrefutably validated. For the single reader
who says, "That story didn't speak to me," the
story fails."
He continued in our interview, "What matters is
not the destination, but the journey. That's
not because it doesn't matter where the story or
novel is published or how it is received. Of
course it matters. But once I arrive at such a
destination, whether I like where I've arrived
or not, it turns out that every supposed
destination is a temporary way station. The
journey continues. There's the next thing to
write. And the next. Goals, whether I reach
them or not, are just scenery. Putting one foot
after the other is what matters."
Currently, Rogers is producing
up to 36 stories a year for his email
subscribers. Rogers still provides readings and
motivational speeches and is working on a novel
called Steam. Like his
shorts, he has tapped into the resources and
support available to him through peers, friends
and subscribers on the journey to his next
destination.
Copyright
lyw
August 2006
