The Man Who Ineffectively Gave Up Everything to Be a Writer
Upon arriving in Laramie to visit my good friend, she
thrust at me a book and said, “Tell me what you think of this.”
Let’s be honest. When I’m asked that, what they’re usually saying is, “I want you to rip this a new one.”
Let’s be honest. When I’m asked that, what they’re usually saying is, “I want you to rip this a new one.”
But I, constantly oblivious to the cynical light my
friends put me in, looked at it with an open-mind, the cover being actually
interesting, unique, yet professional looking. I didn’t realize it was
self-published until I started to read the back. As I looked through one of the
least informative summaries I’ve ever seen, my friend started to tell me the
story behind the book.
The author was married to a beautiful wife whom he loved
and who loved him. He had several kids with her, a good paying job, and a great
house. According to him, his life was perfect, but he was not happy. He had
always wanted to be a writer, to travel across the states peddling his book.
So, one day, he decided to give it all up. He told his wife he wanted a
divorce, quit his job, printed many copies of the novel, and left California to
seek his fame, traveling across the states. He wanted to get to the East coast.
He had stopped in Laramie, Wyoming, for no other reason
than because it was there. It wasn’t as though he had a signing or reading. If
you know anything about Wyoming, it is a state predominantly inhabited by cows.
While being one of the bigger land masses, there is less than a million people
in its boundaries.
I don’t understand this man.
My experience is predominantly in theatre and short
stories, so I can’t give advice to selling novels, specifically, but I will say
that I have attempted to promote myself, and my biggest successes comes not
from the internet or functions, but rather personal, one on one connections,
which is clearly what he’s trying to do. And it worked to some extent. He gave
my friend the book for free, but her boyfriend, interested in writing, bought
one too, and it was through her word of mouth that it came to me. If it had
been my genre and the back hadn’t contained so many errors, maybe I would have
stolen if from her. But I believe that you don’t need to travel across the
country to do it. What’s on the east coast specifically? Why couldn’t he have
started closer to home where his children and wife were, the one he complained
about missing so much? Why did he need a divorce instead of just going out to
the bars in one town over and doing the same thing?
I mean, sure, I understand why it is easier to pitch to stranger than people you know; I feel that. But even still, go two hours over and get your name out in a specific town. What you want is for a core group of people to start talking. It’s better to be the big fish in a small pond than to randomly grab random fish from different ponds. Having people talk about your book, two people who know something about it, is incredibly useful.
I think the obvious answer here is that he wanted to do a
road trip. I know I do. I want to grab a motorcycle and ride cross country ala
King style. I don’t blame him for that. So why does he need to divorce his wife
to do it?
Couldn’t he have just talked to her, said, I need to do
this for me? Give me six or eight months to try and sell my book? According to
my friend, he didn’t have that discussion, but just informed her he wanted out.
“Sounds like a mid-life crisis to me,” I said.
Perhaps he wanted to start over. He regretted his
decisions and thought this would make him happy. Maybe he was lying, or there’s
an issue of miscommunication. Maybe his wife said, “If you go, I will divorce
you.” Who knows? Something is off here.
The whole strategy seemed desperate and poorly thought
out. It’s like when you get rejected by literary journal and think, “Well, if
only the readers could see it, they’d like it!” So you take to self-publishing
to find no one else cares either. Or, in my case, when I couldn’t find
producers, I produced myself. You can’t make your friends buy your books, so
you turn to strangers. You can’t write because you are too busy, yet when you
find yourself unemployed, you still can’t work. These are not bad decisions.
It’s just that we often, when most lost, will seek out big changes in our
situation to help us only to find that it didn’t change the results at all. And
in his case, he risked everything, putting all of his energy into misguided
places.
I want him to succeed. I can’t be angry with him (though
I kind of want to be) because I honestly don’t know the whole story, why he
left his family like that—maybe it was their idea. Maybe he thought he’d come
back with more money. I have a feeling his happiness there was a lie, or a
“grass is always greener” reflection on the past. But he put a lot into his
work, and that is too be admired.
I just think he put it in the wrong place.
His summary needs work.
He has a few (albeit less common) grammatical mistakes.
He inadvertently criticizes his own cover by negating the childishness of it
and spelling out for the audience the book is for grown-ups. He spends the
entire summary describing the kind of book it is, vague, “deep” thematic
connections, and making promises of emotional investment and payoff that he
can’t necessarily keep. He misled me into believing it was nonfiction by
claiming it was a “faithful documentation” of… insert winding and vague
description here.
The reason he never explained what the plot was because
it turned out to be disjointed short stories with characters of hugely
differing ages, different time periods, and no real through-line. Keeping in
mind that random, unconnected tangents tend to be the ineffective work of an
inexperienced author. This didn’t give me anymore faith.
I wish I could follow his story. Perhaps if I examined
the book better I could find a blog or something detailing his experience. It’s
certainly something I’d be interested in. But it was a lesson for me in a big
way. Not only do we not have to give up so much to be writers, sometimes it’s
not in our best interest. It’s possible if he, instead of handing books to
random strangers in random places, had been more precise about his audience,
attempting to pick his location better, studied effective and non-effective
book backings, and had realized that changing his scenery wouldn’t necessarily
change his outlook, it’s more likely his energy would have achieved more than—or
as much as—the depression he felt drinking in that bar that day.
It’s difficult for all authors to know where to direct
their effort, what will be fruitful, and what sacrifices will result in
success, but I will remember from now on that the harder and more effective
venture is often about working with what you have and not running to the other
side for greener pasture.
If you liked this post, want to support, contact, stalk, or argue with me, please consider...
Liking Charley Daveler on Facebook
Following What's Worse than Was
