Now that the Girls have made their way to Twitter, we here at Plain & Simple Press are being treated to a carnival of tweets, chatter, strangeness, exuberance, commercial crassness, and Insight. Has it only been four days since the Camptown Ladies hit Twitter? The little pistols already have 113 followers…and counting. Every time we check in, lo! the count has grown.
Here’s something to share from one Mark Rubinstein, who introduces himself as a psychiatrist, Huff Post columnist, and author of several books with intriguing titles. Says he: “Some writers won’t admit it, but it’s a treat to walk into a bookstore and see your books on a shelf.”
You got it, brother!
Some years ago, a rococo shopping center in Scottsdale hosted a Shakespeare and Company franchise (remember back when books were sold in structures built of bricks and drywall?). The friend who accompanied me on a junket to that mall was only vaguely aware that I spent eight or ten hours a day in the employ of various regional and national magazines and newspapers, hacking away on a contract basis. And without doubt, she had no clue that I’d published several books by then. Not on Amazon, either. 😉
Aimlessly puttering from store to store, we wandered in to that once august boutique bookstore. While she browsed, I cruised the magazine racks and then passed by the nonfiction book section. Three of my books were on Shakespeare & Company’s shelves…and wasn’t that nice? Mm hmm.
About the time she came back to collect me and suggest we find a place for lunch, it occurred to me that my byline appeared in over half a dozen publications the bookstore was peddling.
LOL! Talk about your ego trip!
Over a lifetime, I’ve vacillated back and forth between higher education and journalism or Writing with a Capital W. When people learn that I’ve been a “teacher” (which is what they think academics are), they love to natter on about how “fulfilling” teaching is. (These generally are folks who never have worked for minimum wage and who do not know what is involved in trying to live on $1120 a month generated by a contract joblet that adds up to the equivalent of a full-time teaching load.)
It would be altogether too cynical to tell you (truthfully) that “fulfilling” is seeing your name on the “Pay to the order of” line of a check from a magazine or book publisher.
But I will say this: There is something deeply satisfying about holding a book in your hand and being able to say, “I made this.” Same is true of a magazine: when you are part of an editorial team, a special pleasure resides in picking up an issue of that rag and knowing that, even though it will fly into the recycling bin before the end of the month, you made that.
That is not true of teaching. Eventually, yes: you will get some satisfying feedback, long LONG after the fact, when some former student finds you on the Internet and e-mails to say you made some difference in her or his life.
But that feedback comes so slowly, at such a far remove, that “satisfying” is hardly le mot juste. Yeah, it’s good to think you might influence some young person’s life for the better, maybe, somehow, some way. But as a practical matter, the day in and day out of overwork, exploitation, hopelessness in the face of a student body largely comprised of people who are not now and never will be prepared for college-level work, raised-in-a-barn manners, and piddling pay: all that tends to override any sense of “fulfillment” or “satisfaction.”
Yes, indeed. It is a treat to walk into a bookstore and see your books on the shelf.