Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. – Mark Twain
If it had been possible, I would have accompanied the attached article with pictures of our shelves stuffed with books, magazines, songbooks, photographs, Playbills, CDs and DVDs, and of my trunk stuffed with letters and postcards going back to my childhood. I still buy the tangible varietal of written, aural and verbal entertainment and am convinced my own personal poverty will result from my inability to completely bow in homage to the digital world. My husband, refusing to accompany me into the Dark Night of Destitution, has switched to a Nook.
Easy reading is damn hard writing. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Do I really need to subscribe to the Sunday NY Times, sections of which end up under my bed in a pile, and to Rolling Stone, copies of which end up in a pile under my bed next to the Times? Do I really have to indulge in the bound version of Vanity Fair when I could just as easily succumb to its online pleasures? This is part old-fashioned stubbornness – whatever I buy is mine and I can loan it, bequeath it, horde it or display it howsoever I please.
It is also an insistence on separating the individual from the group. A bound version of Here is New York lies on my nightstand, proof that E.B. White is E.B. White and no one else. Easier to do with books than with magazines I’ll allow, but in the days of Christopher Hitchens, I bought Vanity Fair almost entirely to read his words rather than those of some other writer.
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. – Ernest Hemingway
As a young girl my love affair was with magazines first – Life and Look and National Geographic – which took me out of my life and set me down somewhere in another part of the world. Gradually my affection shifted to writers themselves, who seemed to me like artists or dancers or musicians, painting the pages with words rather than notes or footsteps.
Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon. – Maya Angelou
So I get cranky when reading about Condé Nast’s new writer/author contracts, which lay claim to a significant portion of future film and television revenues resulting from any article, essay, story or excerpt that appears in one of their magazines. For If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage, goes the famous theatre adage, attributed to film and producer Fred F. Finklehoffe.
Yes, the publishing and magazine industries are on their knees. But it isn’t their writers’ fault. Don’t punish your talent. They are not chattel. If there were no writers, there would be no words. And if there were no words, there would be no books or magazines. Or songs, or poems, or plays, or television shows, or films or journalistic exposes.
And my bookshelves and my husband’s Nook would be empty. Support your favorite writers today. Buy a book or download an e-Book, buy a magazine or subscribe to one digitally, for…
The starving poet business is no good nowadays. – Henrik Ibsen
#authorship #writing #publishingindustry
January 16, 2013 at 1:41 pm
i would plus 1 this multiple times if i could. thank you Giselle Minoli for sharing something of importance to me at least and for doing it so eloquently as well.
January 16, 2013 at 1:44 pm
You are most welcome stuart richman and thank you. Equally important to me. I was shocked when I read this. The effort to take an unfair portion of a creative person’s output is everywhere. It took such a long time for writers to get credit for screenplays. We are so focused on the stars of movies and television shows it’s almost as if we have come to believe that they are making up the words and story lines as they go.
January 16, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Giselle Minoli i used to create sculpture ( why i stopped is for a different discussion) and after creating it some pieces i would sell or try to sell and some i would give away. If I sold a piece i had no problem with the gallery taking a fair and reasonable commission that we had agreed to before hand but i objected to them changing the rules so to speak in the middle of the game and taking a larger commission without notifying me in advance to see if i agreed to that. I know this is different the the situation with writers but since i am not a published writer it is the only comparison of getting credit for artistic endeavor i can think of. As an aside, as for writers, i went to college with someone who is now a mega star of late night television; in college he was naturally funny at thinking of and telling jokes, if a bit odd, whereas now he has a roomful of writers to create jokes for him and in my opinion he is no longer funny. And I still refuse to read newspapers or magazines online, i guess i am old fashioned but if i can not feel the paper and smell the ink it just doesnt seem “real” to me.
January 16, 2013 at 2:04 pm
stuart richman A conundrum is presented to the buyer. Does one now stop buying these magazines because of the pressure being put on their writers? Of course not because that would hurt not only my favorite writer(s) at a particular magazine, but also hurt the magazine. There are many others I buy, The Sun and Creative NonFiction being two others I love. And I still have a subscription to The New Yorker even after reports came out last year that they percentage of work published at that magazine by women writers was significantly less than for men. The solution isn’t to further hurt the writers, but to voice an objection to the practice and remind everyone that the talent is key to the success of the magazine, the art gallery, the dance company, the music label. It would be a shame to see everyone venture out on their own in order to get out from under such contracts. Vanity Fair is a great magazine IMO and I want to see it survive. I want to see its writers do well, too.
January 16, 2013 at 2:08 pm
I don’t really understand your conclusion, Giselle Minoli .
“Support your favorite writers today. Buy a book or download an e-Book, buy a magazine or subscribe to one digitally”
It’s certainly important to support writers, but as the article illustrates, buying media content supports shareholders and CEOs, not writers.
People are starving for alternatives to bloated media companies that wage war against creators and consumers alike. DRM-free games work beautifully, as the humble indie bundles illustrate.
And their latest experiment with offering e-books DRM-free was certainly an interesting step in the right direction.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/28/humble-indie-bundle-ebooks
If customers and writers do not realize in time that (a) they are on the same side and (b) that their problems are systemic, then we will slide seamlessly from a dominion of oligarchic media tychoons into the brave new media world of Amazon, Google and Apple.
January 16, 2013 at 2:21 pm
As I mentioned in an above comment, Ranjit Singh if we boycott the magazine we hurt the writers. I personally don’t believe in doing that. It’s hard enough for a writer to make a living as it is. I can’t tell anyone else what to do. But I do believe that buying books and magazines, as well as e-Books and any other route toward a writer’s work, including visiting their own websites is important. That is my view and I realize it may not be yours.
January 16, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Giselle Minoli The Mark Twain quote you started with reminded me of a comment a professor made in a writing course I took years ago:
There is no such thing as great writing, only great rewriting.
January 16, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Scott Wilson that is hilarious. What is your beverage of choice when you’re Sick-A-Bed surrounded by your car mags??? Personally I was never able to get into car mags…but I sure love cars…and driving fast! Long live the car mag…
January 16, 2013 at 2:32 pm
Yeah, John Skeats there are so many of them it’s tough to know where to start and how to choose. My husband has a favorite saying, “Half the world claim’s it’s Italian, the other half wishes it were.” I could say the same thing about writing, but with a twist, “For every person who claims they actually are a writer, there is another person who merely wishes they were…because being one is a lot of work and heartbreak.”
January 16, 2013 at 2:32 pm
Giselle Minoli If you pay kidnappers, you might save a person but at the same time you keep the kidnapping business going. That is basically the structure of the media business today: We pay to save people we love (due to their work) but all we do is feed their captors.
I’m not saying that we should stop reading or download books/music/games illegally. I buy tons of books. But paying for content from traditional media companies is not a helpful act of charity. Instead we should support authors, organizations and initiatives that try to break out of this system.
January 16, 2013 at 2:40 pm
There is nowhere that I have written that I don’t believe in supporting writers who break out of this system. I do both, Ranjit Singh. If you read the article you’ll note that plenty of agents are not letting their writers sign these contracts. It is a dilemma for precisely the reasons that seasoned writers are pointing out. It’s easy to leave if you have a reputation you can take with you. If you don’t it is very difficult to get a toe hold. A byline at a major magazine matters and it isn’t easy to get one.
If you personally think the solution is to boycott traditional media then you have to go with your own conscience. I don’t share that view. My own protest is in the form of posting about it, drawing attention to the problem in the first place and continuing to support writers in all formats, including here on G+. The jury isn’t out on this yet. If there is enough written about this it can change. If and when a list is published of my favorite writers who are leaving these established brands to go elsewhere, I might very well follow them, but we’re not there yet..
January 16, 2013 at 2:45 pm
Wow Scott Wilson the Magical Mystical Word of Car Mags. Who knew? (Actually, a lot of people, I think.) You sound about cars “authors” the way my husband sounds about Mike and Mike and sports. Honestly, they are hilarious and sometimes I close my eyes and imagine the entire world glued to their early morning TV show hypnotized by the sound, sights (and smells?) of sports stats. Long live the sports writer! And pundit!