Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Year of Fucking Angry Writers

Just went downstairs to go to the toilet and noticed that the spring copy of ALCS News had arrived. I picked it up and casually flipped through it. Wendy Cope making a fairly reasonable point about copyright etcetera. And right at the back... Joan Smith invites writers to get angry. Invitation gladly accepted.

On the 17th of February, I posted a clip from the film Scum to illustrate what I'd like to do to the publishing industry. Sometimes I can barely contain my seething fury.

Because I think Wendy Cope has a point, I do try to credit any writing sources that I use on the blog, though I'm afraid I haven't actually paid anyone. The thing is, I really want people to read what Joan Smith has written, but doubt they'll go out and buy a specialist magazine like ALCS News that's not generally on the shelves in shops. So, I hope she will forgive me if I extract a little of that article below, because I'm behind what she's saying one hundred percent. And here it is:

What do I want for authors in 2008? That this should be the year we get angry and stop beating ourselves up. No one likes us much: the general public imagines we're all earning as much as Dan Brown, and if we aren't it's our own fault for not being popular enough. Publishers don't like us because we're not Dan Brown, and they don't know how to sell books by writers who aren't already bestselling authors. Bloggers loathe us because they desperately want to be writers themselves and envy the small success we've acheived by managing to get published at all.

Envy of authors is a widespread and corrosive phenomenon, which means that genuine greivances - and we have plenty of these - are dismissed as whining. No one wants to hear about all the things that have become standard, from barely civil rejections of manuscripts by editors who've loved previous books to incessant demands that books should be easier to read and make fewer demands on readers.

Damn right. Preach it, sister, if I may be so bold thus to address you. If I can get in touch with Ms. Smith and gain permission to reproduce the whole thing, or post a link to it if it exists online in some form (can't find it), then I shall. I love this woman.

Labels: angry writers, Joan Smith