The Archives

One of the frustrating things about blogs, as a reader, is their short shelf life. Their electronic throw-away quality. When one finds a great blog, it's overwhelming to see that the person has already been online a year and you want to know what cool stuff they've said already. As a blogger, you know that even the most amazing, brilliant blog entry will eventually get buried in the archives. (Of course you write brilliant blog entries. Why else are you online?)

A month or so ago I discovered MJ Rose's blog. Actually, this should be titled "The Equivalent of A University Course on the Publishing Business With More Stuff Added All The Time." She comes up with constant, non-stop ideas for promoting books and reforming the publishing business, and she thinks out of the box. Just reading this thing is a full-time job; I don't know how she keeps up with it. Every time I read it I come away with my brain buzzing with ideas. It makes me want to get published just so I can start promoting. (Alas, I yet live in the Land of Not Even Remotely Close.)

Same with Paperback Writer's blog. She's prolific, popular, outspoken. There's a lot of stuff to read here, so check it out. God knows how many hits she gets; my stats would probably make her laugh. Of course, my stats are nearly unintelligible to me, so maybe she could just explain them.

I originally started my blog, actually, after reading agent Nadia Cornier's blog. Let me make a disclaimer here, that I don't know Ms. Cornier, have not queried her, don't intend to query her, and thus am not sucking up. I just got reading her blog one day and couldn't stop. It was just so breakneck, breathless, and unselfconscious, and I thought, "I want to do that." This particular entry from the archives is one of my favourite blog entries I've ever read:

There are a lot of writers who will never be able to live off their books, without the help of a supportive significant other or a fabulous trust fund. Now - do I consider these writers failures? Fuck no (pardon my verbiage), but FUCK no. Ok. Wanna chat stats? 95% of Americans talk about wanting to write a book. 95%!!!! That's a whole lot of people. only 30-something % actually start a book. ONLY 3% finish a book. Out of that 3% there is an equally small percentage of people who ever get published.

Now - this is a really weird number to grasp. The fact that if you are published - you amongst the elite. Shit - if you've FINISHED writing a novel you are amongst the elite!!! You ARE NOT A FAILURE IF YOU CANNOT LIVE OFF YOUR BOOKS. You only fail by NOT TRYING (aka, get your ass back in your chair and stop reading this stupid blog).

Reading this was a big relief. Also this:

What else do I think (now that I went on this entire rant?) -- I think that this is the MOST AMAZING BUSINESS EVER... THIS IS AMAZING. Making movies, music, art is amazing -- but this is MORE amazing because it's done entirely with words... Like -- that's so freakin' cool. If you ever start feeling like it's NOT cool - GET ANOTHER JOB. I repeat, GET ANOTHER JOB. When you lose your love for writing. When you lose your NEED to sit down and create a story - GET. ANOTHER. JOB.

Such a cool blog entry. I don't have any that cool yet, but I'm working on it. She's slowed down a little bit lately, which doesn't surprise me, since whenever she outlines her workload I feel ill. Does she even sleep?

Later,
Abby