One of my facebook friends was lamenting today that those writers who are the most persistent, the loudest, the most aggressive (personally, not in their writing) are the ones who are getting published, who are winning the prizes, who are earning the plaudits.
That is probably true, because it is true in most fields and most walks of life and there’s no reason to suspect that writing should be any different. Well, actually, there is. You’d think the arts would be different because talent should shine through, people should be interested in looking at the paintings which are the greatest paintings and reading the books which are the best books and watching the films which are the best films but we no more do that than we always insist on eating only gourmet food and never watching crap on TV.
There are many factors which come into play and one of them is that often as not we will look at, eat, listen to, or read whatever is put in front of us because we are too lazy to have our internal editors working 24/7. Maybe I’m being too hard on people when I say “too lazy.” If we were constantly looking for only the best in every aspect of our lives, like Uncle Oswald, we would a) go nuts and b)cut ourselves off from the lower levels of human culture, which has certain joys of its own.
Still, that leaves the power with the publishers, and the critics, and the promoters, and it means that those who are most aggressive about pushing their own work will have an advantage in the fame game.
What to do? Well, I suppose there are two choices. Become more like them, and spend more time and effort on self-promotion. I know I don’t really want to do that. Writing is hard work but it’s work I enjoy doing (i.e. not work). Self-promotion is pain in the ass, depressing, humiliating work.
Possibility two is to try and become such a brilliant writer, such a skillful weaver of words, a blender of sounds and meanings, a master of metaphor, and an expert evoker of emotions, that you can’t be ignored.
That’s what I’m going for.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
