Whip The Horses' Eyes
From time to time when I was in junior and senior high school, we used to take interest surveys and aptitude tests, presumably to help us discover what we would likely be when we grew up. You know the kind I mean: a swollen packet of multiple answer statements and questions designed to help you uncover your hidden strengths and interests and, in turn, your true calling in life. The survey would ask you to answer Yes or No or require you to decide between Strongly Agree, Agree, Somewhat Agree, have No Opinion, Disagree, Somewhat Disagree, or Strongly Disagree with such penetrating queries as "Do you enjoy presenting yourself publicly, playing roles, showing off?" "I prefer to work with others," "Do you enjoy thinking up or seeking new solutions to problems?" "I prefer to follow guidelines precisely and meet strict standards of accuracy," "I like to write," and "I like to work with numbers." Many of the statements and questions would be repeated several times throughout the survey to the point where you began to wonder if the individuals who wrote the survey were even paying attention themselves. I always figured they were trying to catch me in a lie or a contradiction:
Do you like to communicate with different types of people?
Depends. I like to show off in class and make the others laugh; I like to be the one with the right answer and correct everyone else. I like to be the center of attention.
Sure, I'll . . . Agree
Do you enjoy listening to other people's viewpoints?
Wait a minute. Didn't you just ask me that a few questions ago? Okay, fine. No, not really. I mean, I know I have to let the other person have his say, but really, what matters to me most is making my point and convincing him that I'm right and he's wrong.
So, no . . . I Strongly Disagree.
When you finished the survey you turned it in to the teacher and a week later or so you got the results of your "test." Then came the moment of truth: you wanted to be a musician or a professional baseball player, but your survey revealed you were best suited to a career as a C.P.A. or an insurance adjuster.
Well, not me.
I knew from the seventh grade- maybe even earlier -that I wanted to be a fiction writer. And every single talent and strengths survey I ever took revealed that what I ought to be doing with my life was something in the creative arts, most profoundly, writing. My teachers and friends all said the same thing. Validating what I intuitively already knew.
I really, really, REALLY wanted to write short stories and novels. So I did. Eleven books so far, most fiction, a couple of non-fiction.
Why haven't you seen any of these on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles or your local library? Because they're well written and well constructed, that's why. Because they have interwoven plots and themes that require you to think a little. Because I don't deal in popular drivel.
Because despite what literary agents say and print publicly, the truth is that unless you are a known commodity, virtually guaranteed to bring in a profit, you are as valuable to the publishing industry as grass clippings. The relationship between unknown authors and literary agents is the same as start-up business entrepreneurs and bankers. Which is to say, adversarial; oppositional; capitalism at its absolute stingiest.
Sour grapes? You bet. But I'm not the only one. I hear this lament from talented writers all the time. How is it, they ask, that crap like Fifty Shades of Grey and the Twilight series ever see the light of day? How can spares like Danielle Steele and James Patterson throw their literary shit at the fan and come out with chocolate cake, and so many other far more talented writers throw chocolate cake at the fan and get sprayed with shit?
The answer, I think, was best stated a few years ago by Peter Miller, a prominent agent and founder of PMA Literary & Film Management in New York at the Texas Writers Association annual conference in Austin. A panel of mostly well-known agents was conducting an informal symposium, as it were, before the general assemblage of conference attendees when someone in the audience asked Miller quite simply, "What are agents looking for today?"
What the questioner meant was, what genres are selling now? What categories of writing are you, the agents, looking for? But Miller missed the questioner's intent and went right to the heart of the matter. Looking over the top rims of his fashionably cool sunglasses, he checked up and down the panel, as if to verify his impending response would represent the consensus, and said with a grin, "Well, I think I speak for us all when I say we're looking for the next John Grisham."
Not, We're all looking for fresh new voices, new ideas, a wide variety of stories that touch on all aspects of the imagination and what it means to be a human being on planet Earth. No, what Miller said was, in essence, We're all looking for the next writer who can put 15% of a train load of money into our bank account.
Which reminds me of the Spanish conquistadors who came to the New World, not with altruistic intent, but for the express purpose of finding untold riches and fountains of youth at the expense of the native populations. People remember the language and religion the Spanish brought to the Americas and say, "This was a good thing," yes. What they forget is that such contributions came about only after the invaders wiped out all traces of the indigenous cultures and languages first.
I'll tell you something else they did: in times of storm as they crossed the Atlantic, the first ballast the conquistadors tossed overboard were their horses. The equivalent of going to war and throwing your infantrymen overboard. And when these powerful animals spooked? The Spanish soldiers whipped the horses' eyes.
My message to the literary agents and publishers, then, is this: You may think you have conquered the literary world because you have found riches, but look at the landscape. Just as most if not all of the countries the Spanish conquered are now in the throes of poverty and corruption, so are the literary territories you have conquered. The people deserve and cry out for more.
Your response? Whip the horses' eyes.
