N. Frank Daniels talks literature and N.L.'s response - By N.L. Belardes

What is a literary movement? (Read about a riotous dead generation movement) What do writers fight for these days? Just to get published or for the right to be themselves? Today, N. Frank Daniels of RiotLit.com and LitPark.com wrote a very important literary piece that I'm going to print in part, here.

Are We WRITERS Or Are We Amoebas? By N.Frank Daniels

The latest celebrity memoir—this time by the “ugly” girl from 90210, Tori Spelling (can you say ‘nepotism’?)—has proven once again that despite any scandals involving the memoir genre this year, the public thirst for it has not at all slaked. We must be an instrument of change in the public taste. Younger people are reading more now, they are the readers of tomorrow, and if they see that a lot of what is being written is still of interest to them—even moreso than the latest tell-all memoir—we have a fighting chance to save the life of the serious writer.

If you’ve been reading my posts here, then you know by now how I feel about memoir. For the sake of any newcomers, let me reiterate my position once again. Memoir is a bullshit genre that takes the food out of real writers’ mouths, and forces us into ever-smaller boxes where we must fight to survive, even going so far as inventing whole personas in order to maintain a fighting chance in the ever more vicious publishing world. Now, let me be clear here: I’m not saying that everyone who has written a memoir is not a “real” writer—many of my writer friends have written memoirs that I truly appreciate and in which I find great worth. Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s memoir, I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS, for example, just has some incredible, beautifully written passages within. But I think his book would have been even more effective had it been sold as a novel. When a writer is forced to prostitute himself in order to fit the latest marketing trend, everybody loses.

I was reading over an issue of Poets & Writers the other day. There was an article within by Azita Osanloo called The Pressure To Be Exotic. Osanloo asserts that, with the unfortunate emphasis on memoirs these days, many writers feel the need to ratchet up their own real-life credentials in order to be at all marketable. She says, “Current marketing trends that stress the importance of the writer’s star quality can seduce a writer into stretching the boundaries of his identity, allowing it to fit neatly into an attractive publishing niche. What’s the fallout? Little by little, as editors become marketing experts and novels become memoirs, writers will increasingly become sales technicians, and the artists themselves, along with their art, will be lost to posterity.”

She hits the nail on the head here. And what’s possibly even more interesting is that in response to this same article, yet another disgraced writer from 2006, one Nasdiij (Tim Barrus), wrote in to the magazine the following level-headed diatribe: “Azita Osanloo’s thoughtful article on the writing life is the first I’ve read that ‘gets it.’ Almost everything written up to this point—especially in blogs—dealing with the ‘literary scandals’ of 2006 has been so vitriolic, personal, and mean that any balance or shift toward the bigger picture has not simply been ephemeral, it has been nonexistent. All of this, with the exception of Osanloo’s article [he obviously hasn’t been reading my posts on the matter], has only reinforced my own perceptions about publishing as a business. I am not what threatens publishing. What threatens publishing is the idea that it is fast becoming irrelevant.” Needless to say, you know I think he’s right. And we’d all be better off if we started realizing this very genuine reality.

(Read N. Frank Daniels full article on litpark.com)


Here's my response from the comments of litpark:

It’s really interesting how both of us DIY guys gravitate to the controversial artist, Blanksy. He and his axiom, “If you want attention, start a fight.” I think there’s a reason we both have written about the numbness of our generation, and both have a DIY hard-working attitude. I don’t think we’re lazy (I’m the busiest person I know with a full-time job and a triple full-time blog). I just think we represent writers true to ourselves, and we're aware of the transitioning of the publishing world… yet, though we would accept being published on a greater scale, we’re very wary of how actively seeking can skew a vision of ourselves.

So we go Indie for starters and seek a little, or not at all.

I was at a punk rock show (the Briggs, The Living End, Tripline)the other night and one of the tribal chiefs from the local newspaper, The Bakersfield Californian was in the house with a literary friend of his from Fresno named “Doc” (The Bakersfield Californian is a small newspaper and one of the last family owned left). Although the local paper here started a big social networking blog community on their homepage and niche market sites (Bakotopia, Mas Magazine) and been granted press in lots of journalism sites and magazines, and been influenced major papers with their community blog platform, Participata, he introduced me as "Bakersfield’s top blogger”. He spoke about how much I write on my blog, the books I read, yada yada…

I was blown away.

That means my grassroots tactics are getting a message out (although my blog leaps from lit topics and also covers news stories and more).

Hell, I’ve got more hate mail than N. Frank Daniels has dreads from all the small town controversy on my site. But then, so does Blanksy, right?

So what’s the next step?

I guess we (literary folks with an aggressive vision) all have to make sure we’re not preaching to the choir.

That means expanding audiences: marketing our blogs to new groups of people, not just literary folks, but people who just plain read (yes, literary folks are important!) and getting press for our blogs, and crossing over with blog articles into print.

Print may be dying, but it’s not dead by any means.

Our blogs are a form of media. I live by the standard, “Be the media”, which is really a take on Dan Gillmour’s We The Media. And so I go out and serve the community, cover events, report hard news here and there, and became a natural ally of the local online media, which is crossing over (and in some cases have already) to print.

A grassroots blog can reach into people’s homes, can connect in great ways globally. But you, as a writers, as literary representatives of sorts, and novelists, can influence the media in your own home town. You can make an impact in cities like LA and New York, but you can’t change the LA Times and the New York Times attitudes and their relationships with the vastly influential big publishers of the literary world. Not yet. But in small towns where the Borders and Barnes and Nobles reside and creep over the last remaining Independent Bookstores, there are media who will listen, and allies that can be made with someone who is a simple novelist who fits into a bigger literary vision. Bakotopia.com is going to print as an alternative newspaper. It may just be one small town in Central California of 400,000 folks, and one marginalized from the literary world, but so what?

Literally, one voice makes a difference. I’m a top blogger somewhere, a tiny fish elsewhere for sure. And that’s cool. I’m proud of my little town, and proud that a respected newspaper man said such kind words when he represents a company that has likely spent millions on developing blogs.

Everyone with a blog has the potential to be a citizen journalist of sorts. I guess you just have to ask yourself: what’s my vision and how far do I want to take it?

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Saturday, December 09, 2006. You can leave your response.