Am I publishable?

Recently a friend suggested to me that instead of stressing myself with the long slog of trying to find an agent, I should self-publish online.  It was a useful suggestion, in so far as it helped me to clarify why I don't want to do that.  This may sound odd, because goodness knows I don't write with any expectation of making my fortune, and fame isn't much of a stimulus to me either.  I write for love; the love of writing, the love of story-telling, and the love of words, and so on the surface the suggestion I should self-publish electronically was not unreasonable. 

But it is the second of those three loves that gives me the clue to my answer.  I am a story-teller first and foremost (or at least, I think I am! - but that's another question...).  I don't mind if I have to have a "day job" for the rest of my life, I'm not in this for the money.  But if my writing is published, I want it to be read.  I want it to be available to anyone who might enjoy it - and I mean available in a genuine rather than a superficial sense; I want people who enjoy reading to be able to find it, obtain it and read it, through straightforward and familiar routes and normal outlets, and via channels where there is a certain guarantee of quality.  At the moment, that still means conventional publishing and conventional bookshops, and the online equivalents such as e-book sales as offered by conventional publishers.

In twenty years' time it may be different, but at the moment, as I see it, that's the state of affairs.  Indeed, I find it hard to imagine it changing significantly for a long time, if ever.  I don't mean that I think electronic publishing generally is going nowhere - that obviously isn't the case.  But online self-published material comes without the safety net (from the readers' PoV) of having received an objective assessment; anyone can stick their writing online, and if it's no good (or even absolutely NBG) that is no impediment to them.  At the moment, I can't see how a framework can ever develop, within the field of online self-publishing as a whole, for guaranteeing the quality of the writing.  Perhaps eventually there will come to be recognised "better" online self-publishing outlets, alongside places where anything at all can be issued.  Yet any system administered by the writers themselves has many possible problems and weaknesses.

In conventional publishing that framework for assessment already exists, and has done for years.  It may be flawed in places (is any system devised by and administered by people truly flawless?) but it's there and by and large it works. 

So if I want to be read, by more than a handful of people, I need to be published, and so I am left with the slog. 

Dear XXXX, I enclose the synopsis and sample chapters of my novel blah for your kind attention... Followed by a three month wait (or longer) to get another polite "No".   And this is when I find I am asking myself again if maybe I am unpublishable.  I simply don't know if what I write is sellable.  I think it's readable (I know I would, but still, trying hard to be unbiased, I think it is).  But is it commercially viable?  Because that remains the bottom line for the conventional publishing industy.  It was in the nineteen-fifties, when my mother worked at the Bodley Head, and it still is now.  Will I ever get anywhere, or am I wasting my (& everyone else's) time?  My lack of self-confidence drags me down into another patch of mild, insidious depression at the thought.  And I give another sigh and then I plug on, because in the end there is nothing else I can do.

Wednesday evening (after work)

I've re-read some of my earlier ramblings and am rather embarrassed; I veer from saying how tough and combative I was as a child to whingeing about my total lack of self confidence, a pretty odd segue; another time I manage to have a moan about the people in the Creative Arts group, when I want them to feel appreciated, not moaned-at! Maybe this blog has become too much of a spleen-venting already. Apologies if so. On the other hand, just wait until I get onto "stories of stroppy customers I have known"!
It's been pointed out to me that I began a little history of the reasons for the site a while back, and then left it with an image of myself looking round a lecture theatre at art school in the spring of 2000 and thinking "How do I get to carry on making art, then?"
Basically, what happened then was that I began looking for any and every tip and trick and piece of advice on the problem that I could find. I asked anyone who would listen to me if they had any suggestions (except those whose opinions I didn't respect in the first place - most of whom funnily enough gave [completely useless] advice even so!).
I realised that one of the key problems was lack of time when I saw that within a matter of months most of my college friends were saying "I simply haven't the time for art, I'm too busy/too tired/my job is too demanding". So I refused to solve my student debt problem the obvious way by getting a decently-paid full time job, and instead worked part time and painted in my spare time.
One of the best bits of advice I received came from an art teacher I modelled for. She had recently been given the chance to put a piece in a small show and was rejoicing that she had been doing some painting recently, and so had something to hang. She told me "Most of my fellow-students from Royal College days are still showing their degree show work if they get an exhibition opportunity, because they haven't done anything since, and I know how much it depresses them every time they drag the old stuff out." That stuck with me, as I'm sure you can imagine. They "drag the old stuff out". YUK.
Another thing I noticed a lot of people from college doing was rejecting possible chances to exhibit their work for reasons that were essentially snobbish - "I can't exhibit with Whitstable Art Society, they're all kitten-painters!". Mostly they are, kitten-painters that is; but they still have an annual Open Exhibition for local artists. I shamelessly exhibited with the kitten-painters and the Sunday painters. I even ended up as Acting Chair of the local Art Society for a year (after the chairman was thrown out of office for trying to defraud the society's main sponsor!). If it works, don't knock it, as the saying goes. It got me exhibited and it got me sales, and all the satisfaction of knowing some of my work was hanging in someone's home or office, instead of sitting propped against the wall in my mother's garage.

It seemed to me that the big hurdles I had to get over were
1. keep making art work
2. get it shown - somehow, somewhere
3. keep in touch with other artists
4. don't give up!
So I focussed on those things.

More tomorrow... Going home.