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!