<< Pirates aren't very funny | Main | An ode to my desk >> January 18, 2005 >> I'm a little bit of nothing I like when days have themes. It adds a little bit of order to the world, a pattern that's just too blatant to be coincidental. And all you can really do is smile, shake your head and say to yourself "Oh God/Fate/Zeus/Nebulous Spirit Thing, what the fuck kind of tomfoolery are you up to today?" Today's theme was "You're not going to be a writer, you bastard!" and made me feel somewhat more irate than whimsical. Kind of an anomaly. It started when I was sitting in the library, reading a tattered course pack for the express benefit of my Politics of Writing and Publishing class. The very first article informed me that 85% of all trade books (read: popular novels) fail miserably under the iron fist of the publishing conglomerates. It's all about the promotion, and the promotion is all about the profit. If you aren't a big juicy marketable name like King or Atwood then you're basically screwed. And there's not too much room for the new guys to scrabble their way up the food chain. Well that's nice. Then I moved onto Canadian publishing, which is in even worse shape apparently, and I learnt that being a Canadian author is somewhat similar to being a new fish in a double-max federal prison. Unless you want to write on the indie circuit (for free). Oh, and the average Canadian fiction book sells less than 2000 copies. Yay. So I come home, open Maclean's and here's a pretty shitty article from some kid about my age who just finished teaching English in Japan. And if you know me, this is exactly what I wanna do. And if you know me well, you'll deduce that the article wasn't really shitty but I'm calling it that because I'm mildly jealous. Finally I was told by Andrea that originality is dead, that everything is a rehash of something that's been done before and the best I can hope for is a fancy twist on a tired tale. A shoeshine. It's not really depressing, but it's also not really the daily theme that I would've picked, given a choice. I would've picked Nasal Penetration Day! Posted by Chris at 11:11 PM >> Commentations (2)
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