Forum / Writers Unite! Is a union the viable method for fiction writers to use in shaping the future of publishing?

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 01, 07:36pm

  You may want to look at the thread from which this derives:

  http://www.fictionaut.com/forums/general/threads/829

  Because the question is off-topic for that thread and because the idea took shape there, I thought I would start a new thread.

  Thoughts?

  Ideas?

  Volunteers?

  Who will be the fiction writers' Jimmy Hoffa?

  (and, no, I'm not joking)

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 01, 08:06pm

  I spent myself earlier today noting on the topic at the other thread (listed by James above); if this subject interests you, do visit there and see quotations by Bill Pancoast. Also the link to the Atwood video.

  I'll throw out the name of Eric Miles Williamson. He describes or at least used to describe himself as a Marxist. He has a blue collar beginning and legacy in Oakland. His books are about Oakland. He is very interconnected with other, especially men writers. The caveat might be that he is not politically correct in his literary criticism. His new book of literary criticism, coming out this spring, is called SAY IT HOT. He steps on toes in that! Ouch. But he may have the macho energy James is summoning in the Hoffa reference.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 01, 08:13pm

  Or else I'll do it.

  Like Lady Bird restoring wildflowers to our rest stops, in Texas, no less.

• 
  Carol Reid

  Mar 01, 08:19pm

  Harlan Ellison... (he's still kicking, right? although a defunct Harlan Ellison could probably still kick).

• 
  Carol Reid

  Mar 01, 11:26pm

  I have to admit I have a hard time taking this idea as seriously as it probably deserves.

  And I have an easier time expressing my problem with the concept if I make comparisons between writers and visual artists, who also struggle to be compensated for their labour. There are so many issues to consider....art as product, art as commerce, ownership versus appreciation. When a painter displays her work, should she charge anyone who views it? When a fiction writer presents her work in any form, should she charge anyone who reads it? Or must there be an element of ownership involved?

  The french fry technician who routinely produces burnt or soggy product finds himself unemployed at some point. Or does his union protect him?

  I am pro-union, I've lived almost all my life in a mill town and I know that the company gives nothing without a fight. But how do the union issues of safety,decent working conditions, fair wages translate to the writing life?

  I get paid as a technical writer because I produce a usable product. How does this apply to fiction andn art? Really, I'm asking.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 02, 12:12am

  Carol, I love the whole way you ask the question.

  Would you have become a technical writer if there had been a way to earn money at creative writing?

  I think there were five paying markets for a short story in the 1980s. I once knew a writer who sold short stories as personal narratives to in-flight magazines and made a living at it. I was disapproving of the hole in it yet approving of his quest to be a paid writer.

  We accept the idea of paying to be taught to write. We agree to its monetary value. Schools (public and private) pay writers to teach it. Writing in books and on the internet teaches as well. I pay less and less to read as I go. It is not only internet writers who write without income; print writers are losing income to ebooks. (That was in the Margaret Atwood address.) Yet, well-crafted writing has tremendous value, not less than art on the wall.

  On the thread that started this one, I wrote that I was investigating applied economics. I would ask economists how it came to be that writing is so devalued by comparison to other arts, why witnessing language (in reading or performance) is devalued by comparison to witnessing physical movement (dance or opera or theater) or musicianship (concerts) or sports (games). We do not own the dance or sound of music or game, but they enter memory in a way we expect to purchase.

  A union or variety of unions could enable writers to calibrate the value of writing en masse. There could be collective insistence on writing's and editing's worth.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 02, 01:42am

  I am not a painter.

  I am not a sculptor.

  I am not a photographer.

  I am a writer.

  As a writer, I have a vested interest in the issues that affect my art. To imply that my interests pale in consideration of the fact that there are innumerable issues that affect other artists, is to imply that I have not the right to address my own interests unless I address those of all the others as well. That is just one more reason to say, "Oh my God, it's impossible."

  You begin to change the world by changing your own corner thereof.

  It trivializes my work when writers belittle the value of any writer's work. I spent years working in trades that were dangerous, even deadly, and was well paid for doing so. However, I will guarantee that, without the efforts of previous generations who were willing to organize and stand up for the value of their labor, that I would likely have been paid little more than what french fry technicians make. I can guarantee that no industry will pay for the work of those who perform it unless the work force creates the expectation of compensation.

  Do you believe that my work as a writer has no measurable value in comparison to the work I did as an engineer or a ship builder? I say that it does.

  People who are unwilling to declare the value of a writer's work, even their own work, create the lowered expectation of payment for it. 'Art for art's sake' equates to the idea that only those who can afford to underwrite their own work by virtue of their material wealth should be allowed to participate.

  If you believe that, then you must believe that the arts are the sole premise and a privilege afforded only to the rich. Talk about an equation for really bad art...

  Don't trivialize my work as a writer by saying that it has no value. I give up a great deal in terms of material wealth just to pursue this art and, quite frankly? I believe that if it is good enough to be appreciated, published, and read ... then it has value that should be rewarded.

  Writers should be compensated for their work, but that will only begin to happen when they begin to demand that compensation en masse. The only way that will occur is when writers have the good sense and confidence in their own worth by banding together to do so.

  However, the first step in demanding compensation is to believe that your work has value. If you don't believe that, then I've nothing left to tell you.

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 02, 03:13am

  That writers may benefit from collective organization is an interesting proposition. I don't think a union is the most useful model to consider. Unionizing implies an adversarial relationship on the order of labor vs. management. But it's not clear who the adversaries are that we might be organizing against. The crumbling and nearly moribund and evidently clueless "publishing industry?" The indifferent public, whose interest in our work is what we try to gain?
  The editors of the little magazines who are in fact we ourselves and who offer the only vehicle receptive to our work?

  In any event, I think the adversarial model implied by a union is simply wrong for our interests. The model that makes more sense is that of the Cooperative, or Co-op, one we're all familiar with through numerous examples all around.

  For writers, who look to gain the rewards for their work that accrue through distribution and sale, that model is the Producers' Cooperative, where we, the producers of the commodity of value, our creative work, take collective ownership of all aspects of the production and distribution of that work, including its retail sales. Although she didn't quite say so in her talk, this model was plainly implicit in the principles Margaret Atwood was articulating.

  Interestingly, vaguely outlined in Fictionaut itself as presently constituted are some of the aspects of such a co-operative and it's not a stretch to see it evolving from what we have right here.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 02, 03:42am

  David, a cooperative is more pleasing than an adversarial relationship, but I like the word "union" better than the word "coop"! Could creative writers collude in a federated way? Hollywood has unions. In fact, Alternet reported today that Limbaugh and O'Reilly who are against public worker unions are in television unions.

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 02, 04:08am

  I'm not sure the name makes all that much difference. The screenwriters union is called the Screenwriters' Guild with its connotations of the craft guilds of medieval times. Still they're a union because they engage in collective bargaining with the industry that employs them. The last time I looked, nobody was employing me to write fiction. "For what I would do they will not give me bread," as my old pal Peter Thibault was wont to intone. But my point above had to do with what the underlying model and purpose of organizing for such as us might be and rather than bargaining with non-existent employers, it looks like we'd be better served by taking over the means of production and distribution. We could call it a workers' revolution if you'd like.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 02, 11:59am

  I agree with Ann. A cooperative, in my view - and I'm speaking as someone who was involved in collective bargaining for 15 years - 10 of those as a chief negotiator for a local teacher’s union – is the best way to go for writers… writers not already associated with unions in film, television, or radio. That would be great. But do make room for the occasional poet --- and here I’m thinking of Cats and Short Cuts. And yes Carver wrote fiction – off the charts - but I think he was an even better poet. One of the segments in Robert Altman’s film was based on a Carver poem. And Auden - I read once that one section of one of his poems used in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral generated more money than book sales during his lifetime.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 02, 01:31pm

  Names do make a difference, in the same way that a proper and artful selection of words make a sentence. The words 'co-op,' 'cooperative,' or 'collective' are happy, fortunate words, but metaphorically, referentially weak. They bring to mind a gathering of hippie farmers in Oregon, harvesting Granny Smith apples, or a small group of older fellows at the Grange Hall in Kansas discussing the price of soybeans.

  The word "union" has muscle. Writers could use a little muscle in today's market.

  But isn't this typical? Put a bunch of writers in a room around the concept of action and the discussion ambles over onto the refreshment table of arguable semantics.

  If I'm a writer, I need to spend my time writing, not in the acquisition of the business of printing, publishing, and marketing.

  God bless the 'little magazines,' and the editors thereof, but why would I want to band together with editors of those vehicles which have historically never offered compensation to writers, to join with them for the purpose of obtaining compensation? They are giving away priceless content online. Literally giving it away. When you give something away you render it valueless.

  If the editors of these 'little magazines' and webzines have the skills for marketing, if they are suddenly able to empower one another in 'collectives' with authors to generate real and measurable value for an author's work, then why haven't they done so already?

  Two things:

  1. Writers need to snap out of the dreamy world of compensation for their work in the vanity of 'applause' and begin to accept the fact that money is not the evil enemy of art, but can actually sustain and empower the artist.

  2. Writers who want to sustain themselves by receiving compensation for their work need to band together in a union in order to make it happen. You can argue how that's going to happen later, but if you don't organize, if you don't act ... well, it can't get much worse, can it?

• 
  William Trent Pancoast

  Mar 02, 02:58pm

  How is one identified as a "journeyman" creative writer?
  Through MFA programs? That is where the formal "training" takes place.
  Even most accomplished writers, because it is difficult, are hesitant to identify work from an outsider as great.

  Who will pay?
  There is a glut of creative writers. Will we limit the number of journeymen?
  We can give our work away now and still not get anyone to read it.

  I'm afraid not much has changed since Margaret Atwood put together her little volume of poetry in grade school.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 02, 03:03pm

  Interesting topic on this thread.

  "They are giving away priceless content online. Literally giving it away. When you give something away you render it valueless." I just can’t go with that view, James. But that’s just my opinion. I can’t just view editors as "giving away priceless content online". Maybe I can’t because I work as an editor. I'm not sure, though, why you limit this to online. There are plenty of print magazines that only compensate with a copy of an issue that includes the writer’s work. And many of the writers who submit to those print venues also subscribe to the magazine to which they submit. I can't agree with making it valueless either, but that's my opinion. And I realize there's another to view this. I just do not see it that way.

  I guess logic would dictate, then, that if a person believes editors are giving art away, making the art valueless, then writers shouldn't submit work there - whatever the venue. You can't give away what you don't have. Maybe if writers wouldn't submit work, then editors would either be forced to join with writers in such a venture or would be forced to devote more time to their own writing.

  I do agree, James, about #1. If a person wants to write for art's sake, write. If the writing is for compensation - be that applause or making a living - then write what sells, write what the buyer wants - write what makes people clap their hands. Write with that in mind, and only that. It's a Catch-22 - if you want art, do art. If you want to sell, do the buyer's art. It is a dreamy world of compensation - both cash and accolades - and it does tug at all of us. Yes. I do agree - the money/praise is not the enemy.
  I also agree with William’s point of the journeyman – “We can give our work away now and still not get anyone to read it.” Very true. Maybe that’s the freedom. Guy Clark – “Cold Dog Soup”:
  “Ain't no money in poetry
  That's what sets the poet free
  I've had all the freedom I can stand
  Cold dog soup and rainbow pie
  Is all it takes to get me by
  Fool my belly till the day I die
  Cold dog soup and rainbow pie”

  What would be helpful to the cause, if there is a cause, is for the Huffington Post to compensate financially - not just shareholders - but the writers who have placed work there. If no one submitted work - no 315 million dollars.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 02, 05:03pm

  The idea of 'who is the writing journeyman' is a whole 'nother smoke and not my point at all. I have more than a few ideas about that, but would be happy to discuss them on another venue.

  It's moot anyway, because writers do not collect and gather as a group to so define their art. MFA programs may well be part of the problem, the problem being that the vast number of writers cannot sustain their efforts with their 'product,' a term I use with hesitation.

  Yes, there is a glut of 'writers,' and therein lies their strength. As long as they support the institutions that make the 'product' valueless in terms of money, the longer we will see a decline in markets that pay for good writing.

  There is a marked disdain for 'successful' novelists, an unwillingness to accept the idea that anyone outside of the priesthood of literary benefactors could possibly tell the difference between what is quality writing and what is not.

  People say that literary magazines could never be financially successful, but the 'quality' of writing that I see in those magazines, for all their beautiful craft, for all the artistry, do not seem to appeal to the general reading public.

  Why?

  Again, another subject for discussion under another venue. If the writing produced by 'little magazines' and webzines is deemed unprofitable, no matter how many people read them, it may well be because the institution is isolated from the public taste. Or, it may well be that these venues have not really made an effort to serve profitability. Good or bad, these magazines continue to dominate 'literary' publishing, a marketplace that equates to what I have described as 'giving away priceless content.' Bread and circuses for the literati. If the expectation of the writer who is, by his or her own definition, an artist ... is that he or she does not deserve and should avoid the lure of 'evil, filthy money' for their efforts, if there is some sort of elan associated with the romantic majesty and supposed freedom of the starving artist, then my point falls on deaf ears.

  My point is this. Writers who continue to produce good writing deserve to be paid for it. The only way that will ever happen, the only way the current condition of the publishing industry will ever be changed is by the will and the collective power of the writers themselves.

  I am tired of the idea that good writing, by its very nature will never be worth the money it takes to buy the time to produce it.

  There is an alternative. Writers can sit idly by and wait for the market to come to them and say, "We've been reading your stuff for free for years. I think you deserve to be compensated. Here's a check."

  Suppose, just suppose that writers organized themselves into a unified voice that said, "We will, for six months, submit only to those markets that will pay us value in dollars for the time we spend in producing our fiction."

  How long do you suppose it would take for those who publish to begin to study the marketability of the good writing they've been giving away?

  Absurd premise? Maybe. From the feedback I'm getting here, I have to believe that people are quite satisfied with the trends and the institutions that perpetuate them.

  Either way, I yield the floor. I've made my point. I need to get back to my writing.

• 
  William Trent Pancoast

  Mar 02, 06:52pm

  Who will decide what writer is doing good writing?

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 02, 06:55pm

  The marketplace. A concept.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 02, 07:16pm

  Justin Bieber's hair just got a bid for $15,500. The money's out there.

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 02, 08:09pm

  Before you place your faith in the marketplace to determine the quality of writing, James, you might want to take a look at the occupants of the Best Seller lists and see if their work meshes with your own idea of what constitutes good writing. Knowing the high quality of your own work, and what you esteem in the work of others, I suspect you'd not be so sanguine about the worth of the marketplace's judgement.

  One thing more; if it had been up to the marketplace to determine the worth of literature, we'd no longer be reading the works of Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Osip Mandelstam, probably not William Faulkner, and no doubt the better part of the works we today call literature--much of which sold poorly, was publicly and critically ignored, or rapidly sank into oblivion in its authors' lifetimes.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 03, 12:11am

  David,

  A very quick scan of the Publisher’s Weekly best-seller lists over the past fifty years reveals the following names:

  John Steinbeck, Vladimir Nabakov, Boris Pasternak, J. D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, James Jones, John Hersey, Harper Lee, Henry Miller, William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, Bernard Malamud, Graham Greene, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, E.L. Doctorow, Anais Nin, William Styron, Umberto Eco, Norman Mailer, Salman Rushdie, and Joyce Carol Oates.

  Would I mind being counted among these mercenary panderers to publican appetites?

  You betcha.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 03, 01:59am

  This is all very interesting but the reason it's not going to fly is because "the writer" is at the bottom of the publishing food chain.

  "The Writer" who does the labor of writing, is the least important factor.

  Look at the books on the BS List: many by celebrities that are Ghost Written.

  Do you see much literary fiction or poetry on the BS list these days? Nope.

  Celebrities, Sports figures Politicians, Murderers, Addicts and Recovering Addicts are hot.

  Mainstream publishing doesn't even want well written books. Most good books today are published from smaller to very small presses.

  Agents are "stockpiling" fiction ms from their stables of fiction writers, in the hopes that the market will swing around.

  Well, it's horrible out there.
  Try placing a manuscript and you will see what I mean.
  Try getting an agent. People with 3, 4, 5, even 6 books under their belts have been dumped by their agents.

  This is the worst time in publishing history.
  Blame it on the net, reality tv, whatever.
  It sucks out there.

  And writers do not stick together. They don't buy their friends books, they don't even buy anthologies that their work appears in.

  Writers are solitary creatures, and that does not a union make.
  

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 03, 02:13am

  Someone's having a hard day.

  Susan? Can I sign you up? You get a card, a baseball cap, and a really neat button.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 03, 02:30am

  HA!
  Ok. See how easy I am. I'll take the card, cap and button.
  But only 'cause I like you, Jim Davis.
  I stand behind every word I wrote here.
  I could tell you stories that would make you weep-- and you're a big guy!
  

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Mar 03, 12:48pm

  Publishing is in flux. All the more reason to consider something like a union. But it'd have to be about more than getting people paid in conventional/existing channels. It'd have to be a political organization in the sense of lobbying to get more funding diverted toward people who make stuff, arguing for the importance of people who make stuff and what they make in more-than-markety ways.

  For example, the blah blah blah you hear from the right about austerity and all that follows from their refusal to countenance the dismantling of the national security state. There is no reason for that legal or institutional space to continue to operate as it has since 1948. Military expenditures that are on the books account for about 28% of annual outlays from the federal government. And on the books means not counting either war. It's obscene on it's own. Imagine how much money could be freed up by forcing a reconsideration of the nature and scale of military procurements. It's better to spend money on ways to make peoples' lives better than on ways to track, imprison or kill them dont you think?
  All this to say that a union would have to be politically oriented.

  Because it's pretty clear that art in general is not a capitalist mode of production; it doesn't fit anywhere into the logic. So it requires other types of patronage. A writers' union would have to take on questions of making more funding available, and making information about it more accessible.

  And it could act on its own to, say, create spaces for people to make stuff or develop new ways to present their work or distribute it.

  Or maybe to underwrite more presses or develop new types of performance spaces or innovative practices or collaborations or intermedia approaches.

  Or maybe work to develop other ways to disrupt (without necessarily replacing) the monopoly on patronage still enjoyed by the (increasingly corporate) university system.

  Or it could work to make the material lives of adjuncts better, since they are the people who in the main teach writing.

  Lots of possibilities. Lots of reasons to explore them.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 03, 02:01pm

  Stephen, you make perfect sense in pointing out the political function that a union of writers could serve. Unions are political in nature and a writers' union would be a force for change in the industry and for sponsorship of initiatives for grants. The union, as a political force, would also serve as arbiter in disputes, but more importantly, would provide advocacy for the writers' role in the changes that are inevitable, changes that will be decided in the near future, changes that will drastically alter the industry as we know it today.

  Thank you for recognizing this and pointing it out. I believe that too many people have a view of the function of unions that is warped by films and fiction and I should have anticipated their response.

  The publishing industry is staggering with the burden of poor marketing decisions, a downward-spiraling demand, and utter disregard for the R&D aspect of publishing, which involves meaningful development of talent and aggressive promotion. The publishing industry seems to have lost the desire and even the skill needed for marketing their product, relying instead on the name recognition of perennial best-sellers.

  Change is inevitable and if the fiction writer wants a voice in how that change will be accomplshed in a way that will benefit him/her in the near future, collectivization into a union is a powerful tool and one that people should seriously consider.

  I have to say that I am a bit surprised by some of the responses I've read here, even disappointed. Thank you for recognizing and pointing out this important aspect of the role of unions, Stephen.

  Let's talk about this, people.

• 
  Barry Friesen

  Mar 03, 03:05pm

  James, I'm not sure how relevant a union is in the context of the current supply-demand equation. The pre-condition for the existence of a union is that the labor involved is of market value to someone, such that the union's withholding its labor forces a response in the marketplace.

  There is no market demand for the vast bulk of short literary fiction, which is why writers give it away for free to litmags who make it available for free. In most cases, it's only other writers reading this stuff in the first place--it's not as if ordinary people have any inclination to settle in at Starbucks or on the couch for an evening at home and read flash fiction. No one's interested in the product except writers themselves.

  Twenty-five years ago, there were only 70 university writing programs out there. Now there are 800--because although there's no market for the writing, there's a big market for people willing to pay big bucks to get writing training. In the next five years, those 800 MFA factories will generate another 160,000 writers.

  If writers were writing stuff people actually wanted to buy, they'd "only" have the problem with competing with all the other arts and entertainment media. However, writers aren't--they're only writing stuff of interest to each other, so it has no real monetary value in the larger marketplace.

  If a writers' union threatened not to produce anymore flash, who, exactly, would care? What does it matter to anyone if craftspeople making buggy whips go on strike?

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 03, 03:31pm

  One has to realize, to follow on Barry's cogent summation of the problem, that this situation is not new. When has there ever been a "demand" for creative writing? Someone quoted George Gidding in the 19th century with words to the effect vis writing; Who awaits with bated breath your next word? Who will suffer if you don't write? Even devoted fans of particular writers easily find replacements if the supply of the favorite dries up from disapointment, dissipation or death. We provide a product for which, as individuals, there is no demand in the economic sense. Fiction and poetry and all creative works are in that sense totally gratuitous. It would be far more realistic to get over this sense that there is anything to be gained by somehow "depriving" anyone of that which they don't even know they might be interested unless and until it appears. Someone asked Flannery O'Connor once why she wrote fiction and she replied, "Because I'm good at it." If you can't find your satisfaction in the doing of it, the getting good at it and whatever readers and appreciation you can glean by any means available, you are doomed to terrible disappointment that neither union nor the the marketplace will allay. Better to take up a more satisfying trade like bread-baking where the rewards are immediate, palpable and nourishing since you can always eat the product.

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Mar 03, 04:55pm

  The question of how values are constructed for art objects is a sociological matter.

  Art acquires value because agents with specific types of cultural power say it has value. There's nothing intrinsic about value--for art or anything else for that matter.

  Social power in the field of art production lay with control over the processes by means of which statements about value are generated and distributed. There is no direct relation between what any artist produces and the assignment of value to what is produced.

  The quality of work isn't that important. Neither is craft or conceptual rigor. What an artist says about his or her own work doesn't matter either. Nor does the process. Nor does the person of the artist.

  Cultural intermediaries generate value for artworks by generating the distinctions and hierarchies that enable it. Critics, curators, academics who insert x or y into the Official List of Stuff that Is Liked and, depending on the social position of the intermediary, that insertion can make or break someone.

  This system is geared primarily around the social power of the intermediaries, for whom art objects are just things that circulate as types of symbolic capital. If an artist isn't dead and benefits from that traffic, fine. But it's not necessary. Actual artists in any form are superfluous, really.

  The whole system that was built around this model is coming apart. So we are in a position theoretically to impact significantly on the way in which these field of cultural production operate.

  But I suppose we can do nothing.
  I mean, look how well that's worked out.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 03, 05:41pm

  Nothing motivates me more than negative conclusions about an idea that are based upon the 'way things are.' There is an even more serious problem when writers are willing to declare and accept the idea that no one wants their work.

  My training and experience is not academic, but grounded in engineering. Countless times in my life, I've seen problems and offered solutions only to be told by others that they cannot be fixed.

  "Not feasible."

  "Can't be done."

  "Won't work."

  "Why bother?"

  It never stopped me before, only fueled my efforts to disprove impossibility. It's the way things get done, the way things got done ... through action, through study and implementation of viable tactics, often applying solutions that altered the fabric and the foundation of the 'way things are done.'

  Organizations of writers exist but not like the one I am proposing. Chances are that the way in which a union can have an effect on the industry has yet to be imagined. However, I propose that these solutions will never, repeat ... never ... be found until people unite to identify the problem and propose and implement solutions.

  The examples of how it could work, the ones that I've offered are not the idea I'm proposing, only possibly means through which the collective force of writers united in a common cause could be applied.

  Again, forget the Jimmy Hoffa reference. Forget the idea that a strike is the answer. Such ideas may be totally wrong, but don't tell me that there are no solutions.

  I don't accept that. There is always a solution.

  I'm proposing a union for the purpose of harnessing not only the unified voice, but the collective creative energy that exists among us ... a union devoted to the advocacy and the promotion of our art.

  Stephen says, "...we are in a position theoretically to impact significantly on the way in which these field(s) of cultural production operate."

  He is so right.

  He also says, "But I suppose we can do nothing. I mean, look how well that's worked out."

  Amen, brother.

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Mar 03, 06:19pm

  All I really mean to say here is that it makes no sense to think in such narrow terms about what an organization of cultural workers (I like that phrase) could do, the kinds of issues it could take on.

  Particularly if that narrowness of view follows on the use of the word "union"---
  the American trade-union model was built on the basis of a fear of politics. Sector-monopoly was about, in part, reducing the space for radical political language--particularly Marxist language (gasp!)---in industrial organizing. The contrast with the trade-union pluralism in Western Europe is pretty stark on this. So for that matter is the history of trade union activity in the United States before 1945...

  The advantage of the breakdown of the old models for publishing---which are a lot like the breakdowns in the old model of music distribution--creates opportunities for new actors to redefine the game. But individuals are not actors on this level---collectives are.

  That's why this idea appeals to me in principle, even as I haven't much sense of how it'd move from an interesting idea to something with flesh and bone yet.

  T

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 03, 06:30pm

  Barry thanks for sharing your cogent insights. Twenty, thirty years and further back, people used to "talk books" at cocktail parties. It was considered gauche not to be reading the latest Updike novel, or Hemingway, etc etc. Books were a big part of the culture. Today they are not discussed at any parties I go to-- and who even has parties anymore? Maybe at the holidays but that's about it. The book is a dying thing, people are reading on kindle, etc. And the internet has simply speeded up the death. I'm not blowing wind here, I have pretty constant contact with a number of long-time literary agents who are my friends, and they know "the scoop."
  And they talk about it all the time but it's their business. The biggest agents are selling almost NO LITERARY FICTION.
  But if you want to continue to discuss this, do so by all means.
  These are my last words on the subject.
  Am I going to quit writing lit fiction and poetry? Of course not. It's what I do. But I have no real allusions anymore.
  Five years ago, I had 2 novels circulate HarperCollins for 3 years, went through 4 editors and ultimately the books came back to me unpublished.
  Why?
  Because my editors kept getting fired!!!
  So what you're saying is great in theory.
  But that's about it. In theory.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 03, 06:43pm

  I've spent $830 playing FarmVille since September 2009. That's $46/month. A few months after I started, I wrote an essay about it:

  http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/ann-bogle/exchange-rates-for-zynga

  The game is cooperative and calls upon our highest intentions toward one another, in a peaceful, virtual farming setting. As one friend put it, "Virtual farming causes REAL fat asses."

  I'm grateful for the friends I have met playing the game. I've noticed that some of them -- Tranq Jones, Lorian Hemingway -- concern themselves with hazardous issues in real life: impolitic sex and conditions for prisoners in the United States.

  As I write in my essay, there is no way to earn actual money playing FarmVille where there are various types of pretend currency and points; there is only a way to spend (or not spend) real money. Competition and cooperation drive the game. Zynga, the makers of FarmVille, give away some of their fortune as well -- to Haiti, for instance. When I wrote the essay, there were 65 million players worldwide. The inventors -- I looked into this a bit -- are all men.

  We at FarmVille pay to play. We are not thinking of organizing to get a share of the strasberry pie. (A hybrid crop). We tend our massive gardens for what it might seem to our fellows -- including children -- if we did not.

  An invention for writers might be a game in which we pay to play but share in profits on a rolling, merit basis.

• 
  Linda Simoni-Wastila

  Mar 03, 10:32pm

  I have a dream... where writers, editors, publicits, artists, publishers all come together and form a collective to fine-tune, publish, promote, and market our collective work. We all share in the rewards --- and the costs. Not sure how to get there, requires some venture capital, but the talent here... hmmm...

• 
  Jürgen Fauth

  Mar 04, 03:24pm

  Related: "According to The Wrap, Arianna Huffington told unhappy bloggers 'Go ahead, go on strike' at a conference yesterday–arguing that her site employs 183 journalists and that 'no one really notices' the strike."

  http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/arianna-huffington-responds-to-huffington-post-strike_b24754

• 
  J. Mykell Collinz

  Mar 04, 05:28pm

  I read the forum today, oh boy! Where's the picket line? I wanna join. I'm not a journey man yet but, so what? Can't an apprentice join? I'd pay dues to sing the blues.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 04, 05:50pm

  So, here's the story from an interesting perspective:

  http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/huffington-post-makes-a-profit-all-hail-the-new-feudalism/6019

  "Let them eat cake," said the queen.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 04, 07:51pm

  In graduate school at Houston, I took a course called Cultural Criticism. In it we heard -- learned -- about "cultural capital." We
  laughed about it (at the time). A few of my classmates had had stories in The New Yorker, had been paid for their writing, but most of us were content with writing for its own sake or with receiving a contributor's copy as payment. The professor -- John McNamara -- assured us we were acquiring "cultural capital" with our work. It seems Huffington Post has realized the majority of its workers will work for cultural capital and that it has the power to bestow it.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 04, 09:44pm

  Cultural capital, another name for institutionalized vanity, is the opium of the post-Warhol generations. Cultural capital will not feed us, will not clothe us, nor does it shelter us from the elements.

  Cultural capital will not even buy us a latte or a microwaved muffin ... on a cold winter's day.

  Cultural capital will, however, ensure ... that beneath Arianna's bed, there will be always be Guccis, Manolos, and Louis Vuittons.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 05, 12:10am

  I'm not against Arianna Huffington making money BECAUSE she's a woman, if you know what I mean. I am in favor of the writers earning money at it -- it seems most of them, thousands of them, didn't insist on it before writing for Huffington Post.

  Cultural capital is fav's, like's, and publication in small magazines. Cultural capital is number of books published, how much they paid, by whom. It is valued higher when the artist or writer is paid. Bowlers and karaoke singers may have fun, but their pastime carries less cultural capital than literary publishing.

  I have sympathy for people who view writing as a hobby -- an intimate one -- considering many poets and writers would rather NOT be paid. But it is a hobby of ARCH proportions.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 05, 12:33pm

  There was a class-action suit against AOL. I volunteered for AOL as an online tutor and classroom teacher in 1998 or so. The terms were four hours per week in exchange for free membership which at the time cost about $25 per month. As I worked, I noticed that other online teachers were gung-ho (a great word, one worth looking up: http://www.answers.com/topic/gung-ho) about helping students online. Most of them were working secondary school teachers. Some were academics. As time passed, I felt a pressure to work more than four hours per week -- some of it coming from the other teachers -- some of it imposed by deadlines established by the management. I began to write emails to a vice president at AOL. For a while we had a correspondence about volunteer working conditions. I decided to limit my time to fifteen hours per week and to do that for one year, at which point I stopped. I was glad because I had gained experience in online teaching. Years passed. I received legal notification of a class action suit filed against AOL by the online volunteers. More years passed. Then I received notification that I would be awarded $3,500 for my effort, twelve years after the fact. In the end, I received a check for $1,600. I don't know if that case set a precedent (or not) for contracting to work without pay then collecting pay after the terms were set.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 06, 02:29am

  Ann, I'm not against Arianna Huffington because she's a woman, hardly.

  I'm giving up the notion of trying to stir anyone here into collective action for the purpose of self-determination for writers.

  Have to admit I've been a little shocked at the reaction I've read here, but it's been interesting to say the least. I can walk away from it in good humor. I've even been called 'sanguine' here, a lifetime first. I was in the military, worked in construction, heavy industry, and in the shipyards on both sides of the fence, as worker and supervisor and have been called many things, but this is a first, being called 'sanguine.' A good word that. A gentler notion of the word gung-ho, which I have been called once or twice.

  I think you have a good point when you talk about "people who view writing as a hobby..." It occurs to me now that it may be the reason why so many writers have no expectation of trading their work for dollars, although I am sure that there may be some element of altruism involved.

  If the people who are being published are hobbyists, then the apathy toward payment is understandable, but as you have mentioned, it seems to be huge.

  I am certain that, merely given the AOL settlement that you mentioned, there is enough precedent on which to base legal action on the part of HuffPo bloggers, but that's another thing entirely. I have no interest there.

  Anyway, I'm done here. You certainly can't force anyone to stand up for themselves, and it's quite obvious that few, if any, can be convinced for whatever reason.

  I believe it's a good idea, but that's just me, not dreaming, but remembering ... that solidarity in action and unanimity of purpose really does work.

  fin

• 
  Jürgen Fauth

  Mar 06, 06:21pm

  I do hope this isn't the end of the conversation. For our part here at Fn HQ, we do believe that writers ought to be paid -- after all, somehow, there is still an entire industry built on their work. As I mentioned before, we're playing with ideas that might make it possible to pay Fictionaut writers.

  So, stay tuned, and send ideas our way if you have them -- we're looking forward to talking about this more in the near future...

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 06, 07:02pm

  Andre Cordrescu said on FB back in January that he was leaving FB and that Zuckerberg owed him a million or so. He didn't say anything about Zuckerberg's suits. I guess Zuckerberg has made billions and Huffington millions on free content by way of paid advertising. I see that Cordrescu's cultural capital is estimable in a machine that banks on it. For me, it's less a matter of cultural capital -- though also that -- and more a matter of energy, motion expended in keeping wheels flying and turning, in performing services, editing and writing, that NOURISH reader and writer. At least we are not paying to provide free content! As Bill Pancoast asked, who will pay to read what we write?

  I remember a time before the internet when I tried not to write (for other reasons), tried to quit writing. I think part of my brain slowed with that decision. Expending energy on the internet seems to keep that part of my brain alert and may seem like its own payment. We pay to join and expend much effort to exercise our muscles at the gym, and improved condition is our return.

  I breakfasted this a.m. with an ad executive. I asked beginner questions. He drew an analogy to sports. Millions nationwide participate in a sport but only a fraction of athletes are paid, and those relative few are paid a lot. So with writers and actors, he said.

  James Franco will begin his Ph.D. in creative writing at U of Houston in the fall, and in my interpretation, his undertaking will increase the value of my degree, yet I will pay him nothing for it. So the light shines both ways.

  I recommend Lewis Hyde's book The Gift for understanding the gift economy.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 06, 07:27pm

  I was posting while Jurgen posted -- mine is not a reply to his post. Codrescu, that is. Thanks, Jurgen.

• 
  Jürgen Fauth

  Mar 06, 07:29pm

  Another data point -- the case of Amanda Hocking, with her response:

  http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer
  http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2011/03/some-things-that-need-to-be-said.html

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 06, 08:13pm

  Thanks, Jurgen, these links are interesting.

  By the way, Fictionaut is what I would call an amazing springboard for the unknown and a great refinery for serious writers who need feedback they're not getting elsewhere. I owe you guys a lot.

  Ann, comparing writers with athletes and actors is downright scary, but there may be an element of truth in the stretch.

  Codrescu's da' man. But even Codrescu's not going to make a dent in Zuckerburg's wardrobe.

  Maybe it's time to start another thread, drop the semantically and sociologically disturbing 'union' talk, and begin to discuss 'collective self determination for writers and poets.'

  You think?

• 
  NE

  Mar 06, 08:47pm

  Hello!

  Since 2008, I have been a member of the freelancers union. It is a place which offers freelancers of varying craft varying advocacy. More info on this union can be found here: http://www.freelancersunion.org/
  I would found a writer's union though. Further, I know a ton of out of work freelance editors in need of advocacy too.
  No idea if this suggestion is helpful!

  Best,
  nic

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 07, 10:13pm

  Thanks, Nicolle, for the link. James, whatever one calls it -- as David Ackley suggested earlier in this thread -- the point seems to be to raise the value of our unpaid content. As Bill Pancoast suggested, to do that would require a willingness, even on the part of already-paid writers, to withhold content to leverage its value.

  Tenured professors are giving away their writing for free -- a movement such as the one we are discussing might require their participation as well. I imagined a variety of unions not one. For one thing, source of income (as it stands, not from writing) follows certain patterns but depends.

  About gender bias, I think it's important to spot it early in our campaign. We know that women underearn men in their lifetimes by a lot. That is widely reported regardless of race/ethnicity. Racial/ethnic inequity is mostly intragender. I consulted Susan Faludi in Harper's. It is not simply that women earn less money per hour but they are in the workplace fewer years. Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of paying caregivers and homemakers or with regarding those (intense) gestures as work. I think our writing falls into a similar category -- as acts and labors by, of, and for love.

  I have underearned my male contemporaries by about 60% since school let out. That is, they have earned into the millions as professors, whereas my highest earning year of twenty was $18,000 as regional wire editor at a Gannett News Service newspaper. Friends broke off ties with me when it seemed I would be rescued from poverty by a loved one -- the dissenting friends are women who believe or said they believe that income must come from one of three sources: paid work, divorce/marriage, and parental inheritance. I guess creative grants also count -- institutional patronage. It was amazing to me the strictures the women place on finance, rules of it, stricter than men's, even though the women still lag in pay behind the men, most without direct complaint.

  When I started, I thought the paycheck would come from teaching and windfalls from writing.

  Do readers here know about the WPA? That was an amazing government program that paid writers and artists in the 1930s. Writers wrote guides to cities -- the New York one is still available and is a work of art. That would be a tremendous boon to any movement to get writers paid -- a renewal of the WPA.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 08, 02:32am

  Ann, the WPA, or a contemporary version thereof has not much chance of being funded by our government, given the mood of our Congress. Besides, who would oversee the endowments?

  The fight over control of the money alone would probably forestall any meaningful contribution to those artists who might need and deserve it.

  Patronage is much less democratic than the marketplace. Patronage, either of a public or private nature is hardly a means by which funding would ever reach the most deserving, but would, instead, serve writers with superior social skills.

  Why would academics even be motivated to join a writer's union for the purpose of getting monetary compensation when their interests are probably best served by the 'cultural capital' you mentioned earlier?

  Why would financially successful writers consider helping in the movement of self-determination for writers in general, when that would, in all likelihood produce competition that would break their present monopoly of access perennial marketing budgets from publishers who place their faith in the value of their names?

  A writers union would, by its very nature, be inclusive of everyone who is willing to practice the solidarity of a constitutionally determined effort, but I doubt that effort would serve the interests of either academics or, say, someone like Dan Brown or Nicholas Sparks. Does that mean they are not useful, or would not join a union? Absolutely not.

  Motivation can be altruistic.

  I have no doubt that there would be many successful writers and academics who would join such a union on principle alone, because there are many such people who already and generously devote their time and effort to helping other writers.

  In promoting the idea of collectivisation, of a writers' union, I am not your enemy, nor am I inimical to the success of little magazines and webzines. I would like to see them succeed financially as well as artistically. When that happens, they'll be able to pay the writers, the poets, the photographers, and the artists for their work.

  I truly believe that most of them want to do just that.

  If we don't know who would ever pay us for what we produce, then maybe it's time we found out. Otherwise, let's just call ourselves hobbyists and dilettantes and leave it at that.

  Profit is not a dirty word. Money is not the enemy of art. It is, ultimately, what keeps artists alive.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 09, 09:28am

  The first time someone suggested to me that writing was my hobby, I felt that I had swallowed a whole fish and had to extract its skeleton from my throat. We were at Perkins, dining, and he (the 2nd-ranked Harley salesman in the country) was trying to determine whether I could afford to move in with him -- to pay rent. His wife (in the past) had had equity; I would pay rent. Is there a parallel to payment in the arts? Many years passed. How does this happen? Years go by. That writing might be a hobby bothers me less than it did that day. It does or doesn't pay anything or enough. Enough is great. Sufficiency, enough.

  James, the magazine editors I talk to are almost taken aback by discussions of remuneration, as if it rarely occurs to them as a serious thought, as if there were a large whale (representing natural forces) blocking its way.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 11, 03:58am

  Ann, the idea of writing as a hobby may seem acceptable to some, but I believe it's more of a lifestyle when done properly. A lifestyle is not a hobby.

  On another note. Because I didn't seem to be generating any significant positive interest, I didn't want to keep going with this thread. However, I read a few things, beginning with an interesting article:

  http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-07/huffington-post-and-aol-why-the-deals-a-mess/

  Then I read this:

  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aol-cuts-20110311,0,2887963.story

  My thought was, after reading these articles ... as HuffPo folds into the AOL conglomerate, its unpaid contributors are helping to eliminate jobs within AOL. Of course, the greater majority of those jobs were in India, where the wages are considerably less than here in the States, but it creates a magnificent irony. Americans working for free have the effect of eliminating AOL paid employees in India, men and women who were working for much less than paid American counterparts.

  It's even more curious when you consider that AOL pursued the merger in order to acquire more access to, or 'hits' from readers on the net, which is a measure for the value of it's advertising content. So, the HuffPo content providers will obtain a measurable increase in advertising revenue for AOL, but nothing for themselves ... just as before.

  Ironic, no? Maybe even obscene.

  It gives you some idea of the curious trends abroad in the world today. So, I'm not finished with this idea of a Writer's Union in some form or another. I know that there must be some of you who think your work deserves more than just exposure. But I'm not hearing that expressed with any conviction in this thread.

  Am I wrong?

  Common sense and business experience tells me that a good product can be sold ... but it never will be ... as long as so many people are happy to give it away.

  Think about it.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 11, 04:01am

  Ann, the idea of writing as a hobby may seem acceptable to some, but I believe it's more of a lifestyle when done properly. A lifestyle is not a hobby.

  On another note. Because I didn't seem to be generating any significant positive interest, I didn't want to keep going with this thread. However, I read a few things, beginning with an interesting article:

  http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-07/huffington-post-and-aol-why-the-deals-a-mess/

  Then I read this:

  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aol-cuts-20110311,0,2887963.story

  My thought was, after reading these articles ... as HuffPo folds into the AOL conglomerate, its unpaid contributors are helping to eliminate jobs within AOL. Of course, the greater majority of those jobs were in India, where the wages are considerably less than here in the States, but it creates a magnificent irony. Americans working for free have the effect of eliminating AOL paid employees in India, men and women who were working for much less than paid American counterparts.

  It's even more curious when you consider that AOL pursued the merger in order to acquire more access to, or 'hits' from readers on the net, which is a measure for the value of it's advertising content. So, the HuffPo content providers will obtain a measurable increase in advertising revenue for AOL, but nothing for themselves ... just as before.

  Ironic, no? Maybe even obscene.

  It gives you some idea of the curious trends abroad in the world today. So, I'm not finished with this idea of a Writer's Union in some form or another. I know that there must be some of you who think your work deserves more than just exposure. But I'm not hearing that expressed with any conviction in this thread.

  Am I wrong?

  Common sense and business experience tells me that a good product can be sold ... but it never will be ... as long as so many people are happy to give it away.

  Think about it.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 11, 04:13am

  Seems that one posted twice, but that's okay. It's just like a two-for-one Popeil pocket fish whistle, a one-time internet offer.

  Order today! Operators are standing by.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 11, 07:00am

  James, thanks to your posting (above) about AOL, I checked my account settings. I wondered whether I might be one of the unsuspecting, loyal customers being milked for paid service when it might be free. It turns out my $11.99/mo. membership fee gives me access to live customer service 24/7 and pop-up blockers. The free service doesn't offer those. I felt sorry for the AOL employees in India who'd now lose their jobs due to the merger. I feel sorry for Americans without jobs, too. Outfoxing numbers on the free internet -- to win hits -- is the tune they play. It's dry and boring. And they don't want to teach it. I worked unpaid for a magazine that had received 3.5 million visits in two years. The publisher, who grew tired of publishing, simply folded one day without figuring out how to harness revenue from a site so active. I wonder if HTML Giant will sell its site. I wonder what their economics are ...

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 11, 12:08pm

  Ann, publishers who are unwilling or unable to turn the marketable value of their web site or their print magazine into a revenue stream that will allow them to reward their contributors are not, repeat, not advocates for the artists they supposedly celebrate.

  Many may not even be aware of the possibility that revenue is available or even care that it exists. And it does exist.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 11, 01:04pm

  The point I am trying to make is that the apparent motivation of the publishing medium that focuses on what we call literary fiction does not include development of revenue by which they can become genuine advocates.

  For whatever reason, the medium has become a place where 'quality' is dictated, not by the force of maximum public interest, but by the preferences and tastes of the people who control the medium. Some may argue that this is their right, since they put forth effort to maintain that medium, and so it may be ... but then again, they are not giving their contributors anything but access.

  If the public at large has lost interest in what we call literary fiction, perhaps it's because the medium that produces and defines literary fiction has developed a place where motivations are skewed. One reason could be the fact that 'access,' not financial reward is the medium of exchange that's offered for the product itself.

  Little magazines were always the vanguard of trends in literary fiction. That role, the medium for literary fiction, is moving forward in webzines. If the development of a revenue stream were included in the motivation of thius new medium, not for the sake of profitability so much as for the sake of rewarding the contributors of content, then perhaps the quality of the medium will not stagnate and the entire publishing industry will benefit as a whole and the big news in the trades will not be 'who is the next Dan Brown,' but 'who is the next John Steinbeck.'

  Don't be cynical about the tastes of the public at large. That can happen in a closed environment. The literary community is becoming a closed fraternal order defined by burgeoning MFA programs. Writing is an art that needs to be inclusive of all perspectives and universal in its appeal. It should not become an academic playground. Its energy has the power to influence the public at large, to transform that interest, to define its taste. Once upon a time, it did. It can again.

  Think about it.

• 
  Kim Conklin

  Mar 14, 07:13pm

  I am late to this thread, and an unfrequent visitor to the forums, but James, I hear a lot of sense in what you've just said.

  I'm not at all cynical or fearful about the tastes of the public at large. Some of the literary fiction I admire most was part of a mainstream publishing environment, inclusive of all perspectives and universal in its appeal.

  Things are different today, with so many entertainments competing for people's time, and that has to be taken into account. But I've been struggling with this question myself, lately: Do I write for other writers, or for readers? I hope we, as writers, can find our way back to that kind of connection with a larger audience. It's not only great for the audience, it's probably great for us as well.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 15, 02:26am

  Kim, you've made an interesting point. If writers turn inward, targeting other writers rather than the readership at large, then they will gradually become provincial by default. If their work is laden with esoteric references, however cogent, clever and appealing they may seem to the 'literate' audience, the average reader will lose interest quickly.

  Such writing may feel intelligent, but what is the purpose of writing? You must connect with the reader. What is quality in writing? Is it necessary to be convoluted to be expressive?

  Some of the most successful authors in the not so distant past, managed to balance the writer's tendency and natural love for the merciless sentence with a lean clarity that is both expressive and stunning. There were many such authors back in the day when they earned their bread by writing and I see their names included on 'favorite author' lists from many on this site.

  If we, as authors, fall into the trap of 'playing' with prose in exclusive perspectives beyond the ken of the masses, we may earn the envy of those who are willing to work to see the essence of it, but that's a small group, finally. Are people writing for MFA's or for my neighbor who really really liked 'The Grapes of Wrath.'

  Literary fiction is still ... fiction. You can create whatever your mind can imagine. But if we seek only to please the literati with our fiction, then we can forget the idea of perpetuating the appeal of our art, of expanding that appeal to the point of marketability, a quality that it once enjoyed.

  As you mentioned, the competition for attention out there is fierce, but we have something to offer. We just have to remember to proselytize. You do that by writing to the largest audience, even if you have to stifle a little.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 15, 02:30am

  Kim, you wound my clock. I was going to walk away from this thread and ... you wound my clock.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 15, 11:13am

  I hear all this - and can't let go of an earlier post from James - "Writing is an art" ... That includes prose and poetry.

  Yes.

  And for this reason, I can never view writing as profession, hobby, addiction, job, need, propaganda, crowd-pleaser...

  It is an art. That's the core.

  Since this is true - A writer, either as the lone wolf or as part of a solidarity, should never write for an audience, for the masses, even for fellow writers, or for a cause.

  The cause may come, may be part of our writing. But, that can't be the reason to write. If it is, we can never move past the superficial.

  Writing is art.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 15, 02:20pm

  Sam, I respect your writing and appreciate your opinion. I don't for a moment believe that you mean to insult me or anyone else, but you have. Maybe you don't know why you insult me, so I'll explain.

  I spent at least fifteen years of my life working in steel, the bending of steel, the cutting and the welding of steel into shapes, into buildings, into ships. I truly believe I was one of the best steel fabricators in the US, if not THE best, to my way of thinking ... and you know why? I considered myself an artist in my work, not merely a tradesman. The idea, however, that I would do my work for nothing, climb up there in the high steel, or down there in the belly of the whale in peril of my life to pursue my trade, my art? Alien, absurd. Subsequently, as a writer, the idea that I should not expect or want to be paid for my efforts? Equally alien, absurd.

  But you speak as though this 'motivation' business is the plebian curse, the passion of some sub-species known as "the masses." Sam, you said, " A writer, either as the lone wolf or as part of a solidarity, should never write for an audience, for the masses, even for fellow writers, or for a cause."

  I'm sorry, but even if you believe that the 'artist' is a higher species, a demigod whose motivations derive in some unknowable 'other,' why would such a privileged and gifted class not be willing to communicate from Olympus to the rest of humankind, we, the unfortunate, intellectually impoverished 'masses,' if for no other reason than to lift us from the mud of our quiet desperation?

  A man or a woman can be an artist in the driving of a car, the baking of a pie, the running of a touchdown pass, or the navigation of a sailing ship. Art is not the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies accessible only to the priesthood of believers, the artist, celebrant and prophet, ordained to approach the muse sans sandals on bended knee.

  Sam, your statement suggests you believe that any other motivation than 'art for art's sake' is vain, superficial, and crass. Maybe you don't really believe that, but either way, you miss the foci of my point in this forum, which are simply these:

  1 - writers deserve to be paid for their work and the only way it will happen in the current mood and mindset is through self determination.

  2 - self determination is best achieved through unanimity of purpose in action through an organized union of writers working to ensure that they receive what they deserve.

  That's all.

  If you want to debate the proper motivation and meaning of art, that's an entirely different discussion, but one I am willing to carry in another venue.

• 
  Kim Conklin

  Mar 15, 02:33pm

  Sam, and James, I agree wholeheartedly that writing is an art, and that a cause should not be a purpose or driver of a piece of art.

  One project I've been working on for some time is about living next door to a nuclear plant. My interest in the project is not to proselytize, but to capture something about human beings trying to live a "normal" life in that set of circumstances.

  Every artist has to choose what definitions of art ring true for him or her. For me, some of the definitions that ring most true are that art is an attempt to create or capture beauty, including flashes or moments of truth. Another is that art can challenge or shift perspective in some way. But one of my favorite definitions of fiction, from a well-respected writer, is that it's "writing letters to the world." However, that doesn't mean that an artist who chooses to write pages and put them in a drawer is any less valid. He or she is just on a different artistic journey than I am.

  Another thing that I think rings true for me as an artist is that an understanding of the audience I'm trying to talk to is a part of the form of the piece. Am I writing a drama or a comedy? A children's story? Or a reflection of a visual artist's work and thought?

  But back to business and art. That's been a struggle artists have always dealt with. We have an opportunity to re-think it now, because of new technologies, but maybe we won't. And maybe we don't have to. It might just happen, just as theatre evolved. As a science fiction writer I know often says, "If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing for television." Or maybe now, it'd be YouTube.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 15, 02:44pm

  James, I didn't mean to insult you, nor do I believe that you mean to insult me.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 15, 03:10pm

  Insult, no. Let's call it hyperbole. Hyperbole is a ditto device, but an action that will cause an equal and opposite reaction.

  Again, these are my points:

  1 - writers deserve to be paid for their work and the only way it will happen in the current mood and mindset is through self determination.

  2 - self determination is best achieved through unanimity of purpose in action through an organized union of writers working to ensure that they receive what they deserve.

  Time and again, these points have generated arguments here that the purpose of art is not served by money.

  Perhaps not, but the purpose of artists are often served by money, and to take the viewpoint that money should not be offered, serves the result that art will be limited to and served primarily by those who can afford to do so.

  I passionately disagree with both the premise and the result.

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Mar 15, 03:57pm

  I like the idea of organizing. I don't think the conversation has been well served by the references to collective bargaining for reasons that are pretty clear by this point. I see a potential union as more a political group or a collective umbrella organization that advocates for more funding and maybe sponsors more venues and/or provides means of support for cultural workers to make projects and/or see them through the production and distribution processes. An organization that will loose money, that will not be and cannot be a capitalist undertaking.

  Maybe something on the order of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago on the South Side, which was easily the most important collective in post-Coltrane, post-fire music jazz, instrumental in encouraging new hybrid forms of composition/improvisation that opened space for the notion of "jazz" to become irrelevant. When I got to Chicago in 2007, I expected the AACM to be super-visible. But they weren't really. Instead, they development music programs for schools in the South Side and opened a music school of their own--and worked to go beyond providing basic training to encourage kids to produce innovative new work, to take on the craft of composing and that of improvising and to make new stuff.

  Because who needs copies of what already exists? What's the point?

  On the other hand, who needs exclusively radical new things? If everywhere was saturated with new stuff what would the results be? Is being underground an aspect of innovative work? Does it have to be that way?

• 
  Frank Vander Rasky

  Mar 15, 04:17pm

  This is the first time I have posted a comment in this forum.

  I see flash fiction as an exciting new genre and enriching literary experience than can be viably marketed to worldwide readers.

  Flash fiction will not get the rewards of readership and public recognition it deserves until flash fiction writers: assign value to their work by seeking payment for it; write intelligible stories of universal meaning, enlightenment, entertainment and wit for readers who are not just other indie lit writers, editors, and publishers; distribute their stories selectively via those webzine and print publishers who have the ability to combine art with commerce; work collectively, perhaps under the banner of a Flash Fiction Writers Guild, to promote the craft of flash fiction to a much larger mainstream audience.

  Full disclosure: for decades I have earned my livelihood as a paid writer.

  Damn right proud of it.

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Mar 15, 04:29pm

  I've been following this thread since it started and it strikes (no pun intended) a nerve with all of us. Writing is one of the few, damn few, areas where the standard has become a non-paying position. "Write for yourself" we've been told, which is silly. And yes, it's an art, but dancers, painters, musicians, all do not work for free.

  On the other hand, now that the field's been laid out, it's near impossible to change, or even bring back to the old days (Poe, Shelly) when writers and poets were indeed paid at least something for their work. 1) Online zines would need to close down except to subscribers or advertisers. 2) Print would find it increasingly hard to compete for the same reason, plus higher costs. 3) Many, many of the hundreds of zines that opened on a weblog and possibly free site won't make it. 4) There are more and more writers "published" or who consider themselves published who will still be willing to work for free.

  Writing seems to be the poor uncle of the art family.

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Mar 15, 04:35pm

  Another thought, while the line of prestige is blurring between print and online, what if writers reset the tiers of publications as paying vs. non-paying?

  I throw this out because in checking out grants recently, I found that often one of the requirements was to be published by three PAYING publications.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 15, 05:43pm

  Stephen, thanks. Whatever benefit writers may derive from joining together, beyond the benefit of the power of solidarity and voice, the greatest would be the chance to bring out ideas as to how their art and their well-being can best be served. The industry is in flux. This is an opportune time for writers to be a self-determining force.

  Frank, 'paid writer' should never be a disparaging phrase. Is not, should not, never should be. And writers who are willing to expect compensation are the force that will change the status quo. As always, the question becomes, 'How do we get there from here.' First, you believe.

  Susan, you don't have to go so far back as Poe and Shelley to locate writers who are compensated for their work. Hopefully, if enough of us are willing to put forth the effort, it could be a reality again.

  It's time to change the standards and the expectations ... and who is going to do it, if not the writers themselves?

• 
  Kim Conklin

  Mar 15, 06:03pm

  I like the idea of working together, too. And I agree with some of the needs to be filled by an organization as posed here: 1) to help build value in the work, and 2) to help connect with an audience.

  Dancers have companies, artists have galleries and so on. Does anyone know of a successful working model for writers?

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 15, 08:16pm

  Why look for a model when you can build such an organization from scratch, one that will respond to the current and changing environment?

  Fictionaut is a beautiful platform from which such an organization could spring, blessed as it is with a remarkable abundance of excellent writers and with editors who are already ardent advocates for the art of writing.

  Therein lies a challenge.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 15, 11:11pm

  So when are we striking?

• 
  Frank Vander Rasky

  Mar 16, 12:17am

  Some amplification on my earlier post advocating the formation of a Flash Fiction Writers Guild:

  The publishing industry is rapidly changing and the pre-existing rules of the game no longer work.

  Forward-thinking flash fiction writers should thus not rely on pre-existing writer unions as working models of what may potentially enhance the flash fiction writing industry. You only have to look at the shrinking newspaper industry, and futile attempts by unions to save the jobs of journalists, to understand you must move with the times and retool.

  Facetious comments about when we are striking undermine the goal of working together to create a new future.

  Nobody is better equipped to know what is needed to form a Flash Fiction Writers Guild, and establish the guiding principles, than unpaid flash fiction writers seeking to connect with a much larger audience – the one that exists beyond the confines of indie lit webzines and print publications hosted by those unable, or unwilling, to apply innovative marketing techniques to extend their audience reach.

  Having said that, I acknowledge the efforts of the dedicated, hard working indie lit editors and publishers devoted to publishing their perception of what constitutes art. I also acknowledge the efforts of the dedicated, hard working indie lit writers devoted to writing only what they perceive to be art, regardless of whether anyone else will want to read it.

  I may enjoy some of what they write and publish – but my view of writing in relation to art and commerce is different: a writer without a large appreciative audience for his stories is the sound of one hand clapping.

  I believe that in the flash fiction community there is room for both schools – the culturally cool and writers who rule mainstream marketplace. Writers who don’t want the opportunity of perhaps being paid, and are happy with minimal exposure of their work to a small readership composed of other indie lit writers, editors and publishers, are always ‘free’ (pun intended) to go that course.

  As a potential supplier of flash fiction to indie lit webzines and print magazines, my preference is to be published by editors and publishers who see me the top – not the bottom – of the publishing food chain; show respect for my work by paying me a reasonable negotiable fee; and demonstrate the capability of presenting my work to as wide an audience as possible. They are now motivated because they have an investment in me and – because they are purveyors of flash fiction AND entrepreneurs running a business – they will do their best to get a return on their investment.

  I know from cross-media marketing experience in various platforms what techniques work to leverage ROI. There are many, but don’t ask me to prepare a full-scale report here; the audience I address must support change if changes are to drive increased web traffic, print circulation, flash fiction sales, industry recognition, and other positive goals.

  Of course, if you are an entrepreneur thinking of creating your own publishing house, always looking at the possibility of things, and have the courage to grow, you will have innovative ideas of your own.

  Names that make it easy for an online audience to access whatever product or idea you want to sell is one of the desirable elements in a web marketing campaign.

  For example:

  http://FlashFictionWritersGuild.com

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 16, 12:34am

  Frank, relax.
  Jim, when are we striking? I want to be on the front line with you, you're my man..

• 
  Frank Vander Rasky

  Mar 16, 12:48am

  Susan, chill.
  There is no need to go on strike.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 16, 01:40am

  Oh, thanks for explaining Frank. I was ready to suit up and grab my sign and jump in my Jeep and head out. Now I feel much better. Whew!

• 
  Frank Vander Rasky

  Mar 16, 02:22am

  Thank you, Susan! I’m relieved that at last you see I’m trying to be helpful. I will be all eyes and ears if you choose to discuss the ideas presented in my 555-word post.

• 
  Frank Vander Rasky

  Mar 16, 05:01am

  I have presented the quintessence of what I believe are the challenges, and possible future directions, for forward-thinking flash fiction writers, and thus have decided to sign off this thread. Make room in the forum for others, I say – especially if they are driving a Jeep! ;-) I look forward to learning from the views of others, particularly those with whom I may initially disagree.

  In the event collective action is taken by flash fiction writers to form a Flash Fiction Writers Guild, this is my pledge to donate the domain name http://FlashFictionWritersGuild.com.

  The domain and associated service pointing it to this page site have been pre-paid for one year. After that, if no group representative of a newly formed Flash Fiction Writers Guild comes forward, I will let the domain expire and someone else, if they chose, may acquire ownership.

  I currently may be reached via the Fictionaut messaging service. I also can be contacted via http://twitter.com/TourdeFrank. I return the follows of fellow artists, regardless of whether they are paid or unpaid writers and poets.

  As I sign off this thread I’d like to leave you with a quote. It is one of my favourites and, I believe, relevant to the topic under discussion.

  “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.” –Soren Kierkegaard

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Mar 16, 12:02pm

  There's one challenge here that I don't think has been mentioned, and it's a biggie: where is the money coming in to the publications to be able to pay out to writers?

  Many have already started charging for submissions and at this end, the writers have complained (since they don't get paid). The only source of income for a magazine is submission fees, grants and academic funds, donations, or advertising.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 16, 02:20pm

  Susan, the question is a big one. It deserves an answer.

  Any takers?

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 16, 03:23pm

  On the other hand...

  "The only hope for a Golden Age, anymore, is being ignored. Bluntly, the novella is in its Golden Age as a form right now because no one is beating it with a stick until the nickels fall out...look let's keep the novella for ourselves, the adults. We deserve something, don't we? Let's free the novella of prizes and awards and citations and all manner of gold star. Let's fail to educate our students about the novella, fail to convince them of its charms. That way we need never be nostalgic for the Golden Age of the novella. We've got something they don't want, a noncommodity, and we need to look out for it."

  John Brandon[Sunday NY Times Magaizine, March 6th] from his essay "The Three Day Weekend Plan" in "The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books.

  I agree entirely with John Brandon. The Worst thing that can happen to art, any art, is commodification, which is a sure formula for the entrenchment of mediocrity. Not that I don't wish well those of you who would like to get paid for your work. Keep banging the big pinata with those sticks, and keep both hands out. Be careful it doesn't come at the cost of being printed on the backs of cereal boxes. Sure you can make money writing: change your name to Daniel Steele or James Patterson and write accordingly. You too can be rich, pathetic and instantly forgettable.

  As for the rest of us, we'll keep banging out those novellas and poems for the love of the game.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 16, 03:49pm

  I don't know how to respond to that, David.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 16, 03:50pm

  I'm done here.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 16, 06:26pm

  @ answer Susan Gibb's question about where does the money come from:

  Good Question! It comes mostly out of the pockets of the poor souls running the small presses and trying to publish small press books.
  Grants have dried up.
  Few writers buy other writers books.
  The general public buys few small press books.

  Writers want, but many are unwilling to give back.

  For instance, if you get published in a print mag, you should take out a subscription or buy some extra copies to give as gifts. Many writers take their comp copy and walk away.

  How can the small press continue to survive under these circumstances?

  So, Susan, there is no money. A lot of small press folks are almost bankrupt trying to keep going. If they run a contest, or ask for a reading fee, it's not going to make them rich. It's used to pay for the next book they make, and the next...

  And for writers of literary fiction and poetry, the small press is your only lifeline to print. Commercial press doesn't want first time authors of literary fiction. And they sure don't want poetry. Try it, and prove me wrong. I'd be happy to be proven wrong. The time for all that has dried up. It's a different world out there now in publishing.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 16, 06:37pm

  Ps-- Wait! There are some first time authors of lit fiction who still get commercial book contracts. But don't be fooled-- they are "connected." BIGLY.

  My very first writing teacher told us: "It's not what you know, in this business, but who you know."
  And that was 16 years ago!!

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 16, 06:45pm

  Here is a personal anecdote.

  Over 10 years ago, I sent my first novel to a big NY agent. Big.
  He liked my manuscript a lot. He called it "smart, funny, perceptive writing."
  He said other nice things.

  Then he said: "What do you have to separate yourself out from the rest of the worthy first time authors?"

  I was speechless! I'd been an actor. Did he mean the "casting couch???"

  What he meant was: do you have a platform. Are you a columnist? Do you have a radio show? Are you a celebrity?

  I was none of those things. He did not take my book. But he did take the book of another woman around that same time period. She happened to be a screenwriter in Hollywood.

  BTW, her book got published and came to nothing. I don't think she got another book published.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 16, 06:50pm

  Finally: I write all this not to digress, but to expand on Susan Gibb's question about money. And to emphasize our need for the small press. Which is currently out there. And, somehow, still functioning. Publishing new writers every day.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 16, 07:00pm

  But if you do get a union going, I'd certainly give it a try. Hell. I want the big book just as much as the next guy. But I don't expect it anymore.

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Mar 17, 02:24pm

  Susan, thank you for taking the time to clarify an answer to the Big Question.

  Though I still believe writers deserve to get paid for their work, I can well understand how nearly impossible it would be to overcome the standard non-payment. Galleries are willing to showcase artists' work because they'll be getting a huge cut if something is sold. Unless there be sponsorship of literary endeavors it's just not going to work here.

  I've put together a few magazines in my time, broke even or suffered a bit before I had to bail out. It's a labor of love and commitment to the arts to put out a magazine today. Unless a real marketing structure and mentality forms to overcome the artistic tendency to share, I doubt anything can be done.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 17, 02:41pm

  @ Susan Gibb: Yes, writers most definitely should be paid for their work. Also painters, sculptors, and all the other "fine arts" should be paid as well.
  And many are. Most aren't.

  The rub is, that over eons a mentality of the "starving artist" has evolved and is ACCEPTED AS THE NORM by the general populace.

  So if we enter this "arena" those are the current rules. In this DISMAL PUBLISHING ENVIORNMENT, it's doubtful that will change any time soon. I don't expect to see artists showered with money and commissions in my lifetime.

  Plus, everyone blogs. Bloggers consider themselves "writers." Even the illiterate ones.

  Horrible? Of course. But we can't f

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 17, 02:45pm

  That was meant to say:
  Horrible? Of course. But we can't force the system to change to our requirements.

  We artists are an unruly bunch (that's why we make art). Which makes the idea of unionizing kind of speculative at best.

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 17, 03:13pm

  Like most artists, most people in fact, I spent years working at a number of jobs, first, for the money to live,to support my family, to survive. And second with the hope of eventually buying time to write. Time was the coin, the value I really coveted. When it came about that way, and the accumulated time was mine to do with as I would, I was able to begin again to write. I felt incredibly lucky to get what I wanted and to be able to come back to writing. I still feel that way, and to paraphrase Ray Carver, the rest, if there is any, is gravy. "It's all gravy." I only meant to say that I think it's a mistake to make saleability the measure of worth for writing or any art. We do art because we deeply want to, or we have to. It's the doing that satisfies that want or need, not anything beyond. But this, after all, is only one person's opinion and it was probably a mistake to demean the views of anyone who feels differently, or to slight worthy efforts to improve the lot of writers.

  For which, if anyone was offended, I do sincerely apologize.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 17, 03:22pm

  I am deeply offended. You have to send me chocolates and roses or I'll never talk to you again, David Ackley. And money. SEND MONEY.

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Mar 17, 04:03pm

  it's really a problem that organization is being thought of only in terms shaped by trade union action and so seems mired in imaginary collective bargaining arrangements and/or imaginary forays into the streams of mainstream entertainment (mainstream art=entertainment) and critiques of these imaginary collective bargaining arrangements and forays into mainstream entertainment streams.

  i'm more familiar with the situations that obtain in different cities with experimental music. in response to the collapse of distribution channels then smaller labels then the whole bidness model that once controlled the legitimation of music/musicians in that field, people have organized themselves in many different ways to build scenes, figure out new production and distribution networks, create performance opportunities and get work out into the world. it's organize or die, really. the problem is that sound work is necessarily more abstract that textual work and experimental music operates outside the legitimation systems. so the basic rule is: don't quit your day job.

  the other problem is that there's very little money available to be gotten. for example, the nea seems mired in some reactionary nationalist-preservationist mode that streams grants at organizations that provide people the opportunity to perform copies of other peoples' performances in the interest of some goofball notion of heritage (don't get me started---and i'm not hostile to traditional music, either. i do a lot of work on a bluegrass/traditional music festival where i live every year no less---so i know all too well the differences in resources available for music based on traditional forms of repetition as over against other forms)

  the music is a labor of love--which is the upside.

  but at the same time very few people are in the position to make the projects they could have maybe been had resources been available to allow the artists to buy themselves more time to work on them.

  this because there's no social value placed on either artists or their work.

  and there are no arguments about that value that are being advanced in a sustained, coherent way.

  because the organizations that are out there--many of which are very active--are small, underground affairs that do innovative work within significant constraints. and as often happens, in order to be among the more successful of these you end up in non-profit world and your time is spent trying to maintain yourself as a non-profit and, secondarily (too often) continue doing what you set out to do when you became a non-profit.

  so there's no overarching organization that can argue for the importance of the music or its value or for the importance of supporting artists to do that work even though the entertainment system is not interested and is unlikely to ever really be interested in this sort of sound work.

  unless you really believe this capitalist nonsense that value in all spheres is a matter of exchange value. and no-one believes that. you don't believe it. not really. think about it.

  writers have all kinds of advantages over those of us who work in experimental music. to begin with, the medium is necessarily more accessible, less abstract.

  second there's more money to be lobbied for.
  a LOT more money. recall, for example, that the Poetry Foundation was left somewhere between A HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS a few years ago by ruth lilly. that's some significant ching---where the hell is all that going?

  i would imagine that a coherent organization that advocated for the interests of writers across genres, a primary objective of which would be to figure out ways to enable writers to spend more of their time doing the work that moves them than they are now able to do might be able to get some of that dough. it could support small presses, do microcredit for new ones, develop and support distribution systems, encourage the development of new networks for the legitimation of new work.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 17, 04:27pm

  Good to see this thread continue. Nothing will change if people believe it's impossible. Nothing is impossible.

  Good thinking, Stephen. Sounds like a viable plan. It could begin with the development of, as you put it, 'a coherent organization that advocated the interests of writers across genres.'

  Count me in.

• 
  Frank Vander Rasky

  Mar 17, 05:08pm

  A coherent web organization that would advocate the interests of writers across genres, and take action to ensure writers with fresh new ideas do not live in a virtual community of exclusion, would appeal to me.

  Count me in.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 17, 06:41pm

  I appreciate reading this interesting thread, and in particular (among what is here lately) what Stephen Hastings-King and David Ackley are writing, all others, too.

  The system, as Susan Tepper calls it, as I see it, seems to be a one- or two-per-cent society and everyone else. It's similar to our economic system. I estimate, given my endorsements and training and track record, that my chances for mainstream publication would finally not be worse if I _were_ illiterate. I fall inside the large mainstream publishing "NO" category. I could try harder at it. The upper numbers seem fixed, and many of those writers do not earn a living at it. Some of them are not the best at their craft.

  Susan Tepper, there are blogs more brilliant than any book on contemporary poetry for sale at Borders. I refer you to the great poet and anthologer's website, Jerome Rothenberg's Poets and Poetics. For Rothenberg, who came a little later than many others to blogging, the blog offers a unique form. I have used my blog as a way to write a mixed-genre book online. It has had many followers and has helped to create a platform. There are other bloggers, including Sina Queyras, Johannes Goransson, Nick Piombino, Ron Silliman, Mark Wallace, Lorraine Graham, among many others. It's fashionable for _writers_ to fault blogging, but, as I was reminded at a cnfic conference over the weekend, publishers do not look askance at blogging. It's useful to understand why. They may use successful and quality blogs as guides in deciding whether to risk publishing someone. Perhaps they pay for marketing information extracted from blogs.

  I realized a while ago that how one writes -- how well, in what forms, what, when, to what ends -- is what matters for everyone in a two-per-cent literary society that officially recognizes so few of its workers. With 4,000 M.F.A. graduates per year, and 40 openings in teaching cw at universities (one per cent again), in ten years' time, 400 creative writers emerge who have found and must maintain mainstream forms of recognition, including at established independent presses and schools. One per cent of writers graduate trained in ten years at programs = 400. (Ron Silliman is my source for 4,000 M.F.A. graduates per year.)

  I believe in a free internet. I believe in access to ways to make speech. I believe in grammar, too. And neologisms for non-represented words.

  If we begin to form Stephen Hastings-King's "coherent web organization for writers across genres," -- cwofwag -- we need a name. (I picked the name Oisseau for a program I wanted to start for Occupations in the Schools.) We need officers. We may need a text. I nominate myself for secretary or treasurer. Resume and references available upon request.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 17, 07:00pm

  I like the idea of a coherent web organization for writers across genres. Yes.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 17, 07:15pm

  Let's light this candle.

  We need members first. Organizational name and officers come later ... through nomination and election by the membership. There could be an interim secretary and if Ann has the time and the inclination, maybe she would be willing to take names and email addresses of those who are interested. If people are serious, why not begin here?

  Ann?

• 
  Kim Conklin

  Mar 17, 07:32pm

  Count me in.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 17, 08:26pm

  Here's what I'll ask you to do. Send an email to me at AnnBogle1@aol.com. Put cwofwag in the subject line. The name of the group will emerge, as James says, but for now we want to keep the idea intact: "coherent web organization for writers across genres". Include your contact information -- as much as you'd like to include but minimally your first name, last name, middle name or initial if you sign by it, your email address, your city, your affiliation (in our case, Fictionaut), your website if any. You may wish to include the url for your Fictionaut profile. An entry would look like:

  Ann Bogle
  AnnBogle1@aol.com
  St. Louis Park, Minnesota
  Fictionaut
  Ana Verse at http://annbogle.blogspot.com

  I'll keep a directory of these entries as they roll in.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 17, 08:48pm

  Done.

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 17, 08:51pm

  How about just WAG=Writers Across Genres?

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 17, 09:04pm

  David, I love that: WAG

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 17, 09:23pm

  @ Ann: I obviously wasn't referring to bloggers the likes of Jerome Rothenberg or the others you mentioned. I was referring to every tom, dick and harriet who blogs about their kids, their mealtimes, their dogs, their personal events, their ultra-boring lives. Many consider themselves to be as legitimate writers as you, me, and Jerome Rothenberg. I don't agree that they are. They are not in serious pursuit. They are bloggers, period. Jerome writes, blogs AND gets books published.

  I meant those who just blog but will come to a book forum and CHALLENGE THE PANEL OF WRITERS (yes, I have seen this several times). Challenge and say: why should I buy your book, I'm a writer, too. When asked if they ever send out work, or do any of the "writerly stuff" the answer is almost always NO.

  That was my point. Not to disparage anyone who is a legit writer and also happens to blog.

  I do try to share what info I gather. Not to show myself up in any special light, but to honestly try and shed some light when some occassionally rolls across my path. Today I had lunch with my former literary agent. I got a ton of information because she is a very open and giving person. But I feel reluctant to share it because I feel my intentions are being distorted. Not my "fool around intentions" like the roses and chocolates. But my serious desire to share information, those intentions.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 17, 09:26pm

  Having said my piece, I am going to bow out. I feel uncomfortable going forth on this thread so I won't.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 17, 11:17pm

  Ann, I wonder if you could start a new thread for people who may be interested in the group along with the information on what to include and where to send the information.

  That way it will be the first post in the thread and won't get lost in the flow, something with a header like, "Join a new group forming to serve the interests of writers across genres."

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