The Forgotten Masterpiece

I didn't know much about Vincent Van Gogh until I watched this episode of Doctor Who, entitled "Vincent and the Doctor." The information that had found a way into my memory stores was simply that he was a painter, he was crazy, and he cut off his ear.

New evidence suggests that Vincent was not the one who cut off his ear, by the way. But the way the actual story might go does not shed any more noble light on the man, so I digress.

Why go on about Vincent Van Gogh on a Wednesday afternoon when I should be committed to the task of rewriting a young adult time travel story that a small part of my psyche wants to believe will be the next Harry Potter or Hunger Games? Because I get this guy. 

I realize that I am comparing myself with a great artist and that sounds a little self-aggrandizing. I am not saying I'm the artist he was. But Vincent, in his own time and place, was little more than a joke. No one took him seriously. A quote of Vincent's sheds light on his inward reaction to the abuse:

"What I am in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. 

"That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum."

Human nature hasn't changed a whole lot since Vincent's time. Artists are treated as poorly today as Vincent was. It's easy to feel invisible, ashamed. Sometimes I feel like there is no one else in this world like me. No one that shares my interests, my passions. No one else that sees stories in the poorest dwellings and the dirtiest corners. No one else that has a mind driven toward those things with irresistible momentum. I struggle with guilt over giving up so much of my life to something that so far has been largely a solitary experience. It's easy to think it doesn't matter and I shouldn't annoy people with it.

I know it isn't true. The world hosts as many great thinkers, painters, writers and musicians as it ever did. Sometimes they are fortunate enough to be noticed on a greater scale in their lifetime, sometimes they walk silently through life and to their grave without a soul ever taking notice of the beauty that they left as a treasure map for the next generation.

I realize my last post was somewhat whiny and a bit of a rant. I don't feel that agents and book publishers are necessarily the enemy of my soul, as I may have made it sound. That post was frustration based on a year-long experience with one example of that breed that did not go well, leaving me back at the beginning and feeling like no one wants what I have to offer.

I suppose that's my point. I have to be willing to fling my soul on the canvas and reach down deep within me and find some version of the infinitely greater masterpiece God has revealed to me in secret places and quiet moments. I have to give my all, devote my energy and days to the creation of what he put within me, not because it will impress people, it will make money, or it will validate my passion to a scoffing, disinterested world.

Because it gives him glory. Because whatever I come up with will be placed in eternity's art museum as my best offering to my Savior.

That's enough.

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

I had my piano tuned.

How is this news? you may ask. It's not, really. But it's something new. I haven't had my piano tuned ... ever. I tried a couple times and had a hard time finding a tuner that would call me back. One asked me to come pick him up. I was scared away by the intimidating process of locating a piano tuner, and long story short - I haven't touched the piano in years because its sound made me sad.

Now it sounds lovely. I've played two hours in two days. And all this musical interluding has caused me to think back to different times. Times when I had voice lessons. Choir at school. Piano lessons. Piano practice. More piano practice.

I have always loved music, but more than that, I was born with an ear for it. I never had to try to hear music. To recognize harmony, to sing with others, to hear the pitch, to give my voice vibrato and tone - it all came naturally. I spent most of my piano practice time composing my own music and ignoring my scales. And so, I concluded that this ability was my calling.

Never mind that I almost failed Harmony 1 in college. Never mind that I could never quite get the power when I sang my opera song in french for my final exam in vocal studies. Never mind that all the while, between practices and lessons and classes in which my music professor urged me to apply myself - all the while, in every spare moment I was writing.

I started writing when I learned how to do it. I was five. I was immediately fascinated by words and stories and writing. As the years went on and I learned more about language and writing, I started writing stories. I would borrow characters I loved from books or tv or movies (because I didn't have enough time to develop them in the intricate manner I required) and I would write their stories. When I was supposed to be working. When I was supposed to be doing homework. When I was supposed to be hanging out with friends.

I wrote.

The thing is, writing was so entangled with my being that I never noticed I was doing it. I never drew attention to it. I never showed anyone beyond family the things I wrote. I just did it, like breathing, like eating, like sleeping. I had to do it or go crazy as the ideas and lines of prose built up within me and threatened to explode in a hail of literary bullets aimed at anyone near me.

When I was 26, married and the mother of a beautiful little baby girl, God tapped me on the shoulder. I don't remember why or when or how, but all of the sudden it was like my eyes were open for the first time and I could see what I had been doing for over twenty years. I could see that writing was thinking for me. And suddenly ideas and characters and plot lines started swirling in my brain. It was like a storm of electricity unleashed in my mind in the form of colors and senses and light. And I saw the things I had been writing for all those years, journals and short stories and vignettes and fanfiction and prayers, and I realized I had been created to write. It was my gift. And gifts are meant to help others. To strengthen and comfort other people.

I had been keeping my gift all to myself.

So over the next ten years, I started learning. Though it was hard for my brain to accept there were rules, I made myself start writing according to the advice and expertise of others who had been successful at using their gift to reach an audience. I learned about publishing. I read books about characters and plot development and habits of lifestyle and detailed lists of grammar and punctuation rules. I wrote eight novels.

I didn't think it would take over ten years. I thought it would be quick, because I thought God wanted to use my writing. I still do. I still feel guilty if a day goes by and I haven't written anything (though those days are rare anymore.) I still feel driven and almost panicked when I think about how impossibly impossible it is to be published these days. And to be honest, today I'm feeling pretty lousy about this whole thing. I wanted to accomplish more. I wanted to be used. I wanted to be that empty vessel filled up and useful to God.

The thing is, I'm starting to see how sickly the publishing business is. It's no longer a place for artists to come and get their creations out to the people who could benefit from them. I'm sad to say it's mostly crabby, busy agents and editors that want to dictate the terms of the art according to sales records and have already decided the writers they have to deal with are going to fail, and cynical writers (I'm talking about the true writers - the ones that get up every day and write for hours) that on their most successful day make next to nothing, that distrust everyone they have to come in contact with, feel ashamed to call themselves an author, and feel like the people standing anxiously in line for the Soup Nazi from the Seinfield episode, expecting at any moment of the day to hear yet another "NO SOUP FOR YOU."

It's a great atmosphere for inspiration and works of genius, let me tell you.

So what's the answer? Are all agents and editors bad? When I see them online and read their bios, I think they are very interesting, nice people with families and hobbies and dogs. They all seem to love books and the authors and projects they represent. But somewhere in the process, maybe in the power and control they feel holding other people's entire worlds in their hands and having the power to accept or reject them, some of them just lose the ability to be professional, to be logical, to be discerning enough to appreciate the craft above the drudgery of what the masses will buy. I'm not saying this because they've rejected me countless times. I'm saying this because what is being sold in the bookstores is not the best writing there is. You have to do a lot of sifting to find the good stuff. Much of it seems to be the same tired plot and characters, regurgitated over and over in a rigid formula, because, well, it worked the last time. People paid money for it.

The willingness of people to pay money for something does not make it art. Vincent Van Gogh could tell you that, just for starters.

I'm starting to think of Indie publishing.

I have writer friends who self publish or are in the process of doing so. My dad self published. He didn't make much, but what author does? At least now, after his death, his words are available to anyone in the world instead of lost on his computer or in a pile of manuscripts and rejection letters in the closet.

I know nothing of Indie publishing. I know to avoid vanity publishers, but I'm starting to wonder if there is a good alternative that does not feed the soup nazi line that seriously needs to change or go away.

All this to say, I guess I might be headed in a new direction. It's scary, it's confusing, it's not what I thought I wanted, but maybe God took me the hard way around to let me know what He has in mind for me.

Stay tuned. And anyone who finds this post who knows about Indie publishing and the basics of what authors need to know before they start, let's get a discussion going. Leave your comments!