Thanks for your thoughtful essay on the shortcomings of the publishing process and the painful and frustrating process of seeking an audience and getting past the gatekeepers.
I’ve been writing for a living for most of my professional life. I’ve written columns, documentaries, novels (unpublished), scripts, screenplays, marketing copywriting and more. I’ve studied writing at school, in workshops, and attended conferences. It’s fair to say writing has been at the center of my life.
Something I recognized in your piece about Mark Baumer was a sense of desperation and expectation that I see in myself and that I’ve seen in other writers.
The intersection of art and commerce is well-known as a source of frustration for writers. That's where agents and publishers live. But what is less discussed is the intersection of craft and the desire to be recognized, or even celebrated, that can torment writers. When we entangle craft with the need to be seen, we do so at our peril.
As a writer, I have the usual frustrations that come with craft. I’m always trying to find better ways to get a character into a scene or make dialogue feel more authentic. From sentence work to rhythm and endless editing, I strive to make my writing shine. When I’m fully dedicated to that pursuit, I feel great. A day at my desk spent on storytelling is a good day indeed.
But then there’s the matter of how my work will be received. The matter of audience, money, accolades, the desire for recognition. Fantasies in the shower of speeches and notable mentions in the New Yorker and reviews in The New York Times. With every rejection I receive, there is a growing feeling of being left out of a conversation, and an endless, clawing need to be invited to the party, any party.
This insatiable desire is really not writing at all. In fact, it has nothing to do with writing. This is the fantasy of getting in and out of limousines. If there is any defense of this thirst for fame, it’s the hope that it would provide an environment where I can dwell for even longer in the life of my fiction, and be less distracted by the mundane problems of making a living. But that’s not really what drives it.
The more I feed the endless need to be recognized and praised for my work, the harder it becomes to write. The more desperate I feel about my life, scribbling away in obscurity with little or no external validation, the easier it is to fixate on agents and publishers as my only possible saviors. They are no longer people who sell products, they are the cure for what ails me. This state of helplessness is built on the premise that I’m miserable because nobody is reading my work, and that if I had literary success I would be happy. This is the fatal lie, I believe, that drives writers to early deaths.
I already know from my limited experience with success that I immediately want more success. And I also know from watching successful people that their recognition doesn’t seem to have provided them the relief I seek either. Graveyards are filled with famous artists who died miserable. Hemmingway, David Foster Wallace, the list goes on and on. It might feel like I’m just one big book deal away from feeling whole, but that’s not how happiness works. Does that stop me from daydreaming of success or wishing I would sell my work? No, not at all. But it does provide me with just enough self-awareness to know that my craving for success is my problem, not my lack of fame.
And the solution to that problem? For me, it’s to once again get back to writing. Because when I write something that I think succeeds as a piece of art, I feel a satisfaction and a serenity that nothing else can provide. Writing, for me, is and always will be, its own reward. It’s OK to want success, and it’s OK to feel the frustration that comes with rejection. That’s only human. But to confuse it with what it means for me to be a writer is to enter into a delusion that only deepens my desperation and diminishes my work.
So, in answer to your question, “What killed Mark Baumer?” I posit that his misconception that getting a book deal would kill a pain that comes from elsewhere is what killed him. I want things too, desperately, but shutting that voice out and getting back to work is all I’ve found that works.
This is really important comment Sean, I appreciate hearing your perspective on this. Totally agree. So you're right, one needs to come to some sort of understanding of why to produce art. But the natural difficulty is that one writes to be read - personally, I don't write for myself, and it's hard to motivate myself using only me (it feels like lifting by my bootstraps to motivate this way). But the crazy thing is that, even post-publication, the same things are all still true - one still wants more readers, more attention, etc, for whatever work you've put out, and you're constantly afraid of it falling into anonymity given the short cultural memory. I'm not sure if this affects writer in some sort of uniquely powerful way. I definitely don't feel nearly as much "success anxiety" in my scientific career, however, so I don't think it's the same everywhere.
100%. I also want to be read. It's a drive, urge, compulsion. But I think that what keeps me sane is when I realize that this...affliction really is my problem. It's not for others to fix for me by reading my work, as much as I wish they would. Grounding it that way sort of, (mostly), keeps me from resenting the world for not reading my work. But I also love to read. I think the depth of communication that takes place when we read and write is part of a primal need for society, and for writers like me (and maybe you too?) it's a dial that was turned up to maximum in some squishy recess of our brains.
Sean and Erik, a great conversation and so much of it has come out of my own mouth at some point, to someone involved in writing. And inevitably, if it's another writer, they nod and agree and you can see, in their micro-expressions, their own longing and desire to be published. I've met one person, in the entirety of my writing world, in 40+ years, who was purely motivated by herself and for herself, and I'll be honest: I thought she was completely nuts. She is my aunt and years ago, when she was but a wee little lass, she started an epic fantasy novel. She wrote everyday for a bit, then the next day, she picked up where she left off and wrote more, ditto next day next day next day. And not once, not ever, not in probably ten years of writing every day, did she ever go back and edit or revise or anything else. She moved forward with the story and simply putting it down on paper and drawing a few doodle illustrations was more than enough to put a happy on her face. Me? Never in a million. I started writing fiction at 12 and 13 years old, took a detour through journalism for a while, and then came back to fiction writing. I've had some success, but on terms very different than those I thought I'd deal with back in my salad days when I truly believed the world lay at my feet. I'm now 54 and I do not write for myself. I need to be happy with it, yes, and I need it to work to whatever my artistic standards are, yes, and I need it to do this and do that but ultimately, because I have the ego of a writer, I need someone else to read it. I want them to think about it and I want it to touch them in some way, but more than even those things, I need them to read it...simple acknowledgment that comes from being read. Writing by itself is not the entire reward for me. At least part of that reward is being read. I've tried to change that, I've tried to-like Kirk Hammett of Metallica who frequently talks about this same subject and how successful is he?-subsume my ego out of the creation of art. I've tried to create for no other reason than creation, but that is not me. I need to be read and when I'm not, or when I see writers who are demonstrably less good than me (by whatever metric I happen to be using at the time), I veer between melancholy and anger like a drunk on the road trying to hit all the traffic cones. I understand Baumer's frustration and even his stunt. It's the same thing that leads writers to serve Reece's candy at their readings, or to dress up as their Pride and Prejudice-style characters...it's all about readers and being acknowledged. I wish I were different, I wish I had control of my own ego. I don't and probably never will so I try to co-exist with it. That's a tough game, one I rarely win.
Your deeply insightful piece made me think. Not merely of two or three, but many, truly many things about writing, writers, and the market. Above all and first of all, let me say this please. I feel very sorry for Mark Baumer. I drive often on the high roads (= highways), thus interstates, and, there, an autonomy of vehicles prevails. No place for men or women walking along for a longtime even in the very sideway. I hope his soul is in peace now and forever. The earth also has to stop warming itself up and up. Mark Baumer seems to me a sensible person in his essence.
Now, the market. Fist of all, my question to self and selves. Why do writers need readers? In the principle, sellers need buyers. The way of advertising and distributions matter too. There are pipelines on the market for products to flow. You rightly said of it as the industry, because it is the industry, in which duties and tasks are divided by professionals accordingly. If a writer-would-be wants to be properly acknowledged, he or she has to get into all of it in the industry, otherwise, let them stand at a street corner for readers-would-be to snatch up by.
Money matters, profoundly. Living is writing or vice versa. Otherwise, the existence of readers may not be crucial at the core. If I allow myself to state in oversimplification about visual artists, there are two types of desires. One is on the artists' life style, galleries, receptions, shows, parties, flashlights, magazine interviews, or, at least, possibility to say friends and relatives that "I'm artist". The other is creators who make arts and work in the same pace and ardency or naturalness of breathing air to live. The latter needs money to live, of course, but gallery receptions reside at no pivotal point.
I said of oversimplification. Well, actually, I suddenly realized I would be able to write on this topic (writers, readers, and the market) in my substack through an elaboration. I will, if that happens, mention this piece of yours about Mark Baumer's death. Thank you for your good writings as usual.
I really appreciate your honesty about the failures of the publishing industry to properly recognize and support unique voices and quality writing. Not only do the self-dealing policies of the industry negatively impact aspiring authors, but they deprive readers as well.
I was not familiar with Mr. Baumer before reading this piece, but my first thought is Sounds like he did not have the life he wanted and was running selfhood start-ups looking for something to pan out enough that the prestige cloud would funnel down and drop a preferred life on him. I’m a decade older than he was when he died, and still catch myself relating to the culture this way. Suspect it’s common among writers. Maybe some combination of our teachers loving us for our papers (because they were so different than our classmates’ papers), the decreased and decreasing cultural relevance of literature, all the hungry unmade writers being aware of one another via social media, and the systemic publishing world stuff you diagnose so well.
For most of us, this race will not be worth the candle. Pour that trying-to-get-published energy into non-transactional relationships and community instead, after a few years you probably don’t need to write as much (let alone publish). When you do write it’s probably because the relationships / community are limping and you have to puzzle out why, and in those cases an audience, at least a large one, is much less necessary because you’re trying to define a feeling or explore a problem you haven’t identified. And the stakes are people in your life, so you’re just trying to get it right.
Could even lead to better, more worthwhile work in the end.
Thanks for your thoughtful essay on the shortcomings of the publishing process and the painful and frustrating process of seeking an audience and getting past the gatekeepers.
I’ve been writing for a living for most of my professional life. I’ve written columns, documentaries, novels (unpublished), scripts, screenplays, marketing copywriting and more. I’ve studied writing at school, in workshops, and attended conferences. It’s fair to say writing has been at the center of my life.
Something I recognized in your piece about Mark Baumer was a sense of desperation and expectation that I see in myself and that I’ve seen in other writers.
The intersection of art and commerce is well-known as a source of frustration for writers. That's where agents and publishers live. But what is less discussed is the intersection of craft and the desire to be recognized, or even celebrated, that can torment writers. When we entangle craft with the need to be seen, we do so at our peril.
As a writer, I have the usual frustrations that come with craft. I’m always trying to find better ways to get a character into a scene or make dialogue feel more authentic. From sentence work to rhythm and endless editing, I strive to make my writing shine. When I’m fully dedicated to that pursuit, I feel great. A day at my desk spent on storytelling is a good day indeed.
But then there’s the matter of how my work will be received. The matter of audience, money, accolades, the desire for recognition. Fantasies in the shower of speeches and notable mentions in the New Yorker and reviews in The New York Times. With every rejection I receive, there is a growing feeling of being left out of a conversation, and an endless, clawing need to be invited to the party, any party.
This insatiable desire is really not writing at all. In fact, it has nothing to do with writing. This is the fantasy of getting in and out of limousines. If there is any defense of this thirst for fame, it’s the hope that it would provide an environment where I can dwell for even longer in the life of my fiction, and be less distracted by the mundane problems of making a living. But that’s not really what drives it.
The more I feed the endless need to be recognized and praised for my work, the harder it becomes to write. The more desperate I feel about my life, scribbling away in obscurity with little or no external validation, the easier it is to fixate on agents and publishers as my only possible saviors. They are no longer people who sell products, they are the cure for what ails me. This state of helplessness is built on the premise that I’m miserable because nobody is reading my work, and that if I had literary success I would be happy. This is the fatal lie, I believe, that drives writers to early deaths.
I already know from my limited experience with success that I immediately want more success. And I also know from watching successful people that their recognition doesn’t seem to have provided them the relief I seek either. Graveyards are filled with famous artists who died miserable. Hemmingway, David Foster Wallace, the list goes on and on. It might feel like I’m just one big book deal away from feeling whole, but that’s not how happiness works. Does that stop me from daydreaming of success or wishing I would sell my work? No, not at all. But it does provide me with just enough self-awareness to know that my craving for success is my problem, not my lack of fame.
And the solution to that problem? For me, it’s to once again get back to writing. Because when I write something that I think succeeds as a piece of art, I feel a satisfaction and a serenity that nothing else can provide. Writing, for me, is and always will be, its own reward. It’s OK to want success, and it’s OK to feel the frustration that comes with rejection. That’s only human. But to confuse it with what it means for me to be a writer is to enter into a delusion that only deepens my desperation and diminishes my work.
So, in answer to your question, “What killed Mark Baumer?” I posit that his misconception that getting a book deal would kill a pain that comes from elsewhere is what killed him. I want things too, desperately, but shutting that voice out and getting back to work is all I’ve found that works.
This is really important comment Sean, I appreciate hearing your perspective on this. Totally agree. So you're right, one needs to come to some sort of understanding of why to produce art. But the natural difficulty is that one writes to be read - personally, I don't write for myself, and it's hard to motivate myself using only me (it feels like lifting by my bootstraps to motivate this way). But the crazy thing is that, even post-publication, the same things are all still true - one still wants more readers, more attention, etc, for whatever work you've put out, and you're constantly afraid of it falling into anonymity given the short cultural memory. I'm not sure if this affects writer in some sort of uniquely powerful way. I definitely don't feel nearly as much "success anxiety" in my scientific career, however, so I don't think it's the same everywhere.
100%. I also want to be read. It's a drive, urge, compulsion. But I think that what keeps me sane is when I realize that this...affliction really is my problem. It's not for others to fix for me by reading my work, as much as I wish they would. Grounding it that way sort of, (mostly), keeps me from resenting the world for not reading my work. But I also love to read. I think the depth of communication that takes place when we read and write is part of a primal need for society, and for writers like me (and maybe you too?) it's a dial that was turned up to maximum in some squishy recess of our brains.
Sean and Erik, a great conversation and so much of it has come out of my own mouth at some point, to someone involved in writing. And inevitably, if it's another writer, they nod and agree and you can see, in their micro-expressions, their own longing and desire to be published. I've met one person, in the entirety of my writing world, in 40+ years, who was purely motivated by herself and for herself, and I'll be honest: I thought she was completely nuts. She is my aunt and years ago, when she was but a wee little lass, she started an epic fantasy novel. She wrote everyday for a bit, then the next day, she picked up where she left off and wrote more, ditto next day next day next day. And not once, not ever, not in probably ten years of writing every day, did she ever go back and edit or revise or anything else. She moved forward with the story and simply putting it down on paper and drawing a few doodle illustrations was more than enough to put a happy on her face. Me? Never in a million. I started writing fiction at 12 and 13 years old, took a detour through journalism for a while, and then came back to fiction writing. I've had some success, but on terms very different than those I thought I'd deal with back in my salad days when I truly believed the world lay at my feet. I'm now 54 and I do not write for myself. I need to be happy with it, yes, and I need it to work to whatever my artistic standards are, yes, and I need it to do this and do that but ultimately, because I have the ego of a writer, I need someone else to read it. I want them to think about it and I want it to touch them in some way, but more than even those things, I need them to read it...simple acknowledgment that comes from being read. Writing by itself is not the entire reward for me. At least part of that reward is being read. I've tried to change that, I've tried to-like Kirk Hammett of Metallica who frequently talks about this same subject and how successful is he?-subsume my ego out of the creation of art. I've tried to create for no other reason than creation, but that is not me. I need to be read and when I'm not, or when I see writers who are demonstrably less good than me (by whatever metric I happen to be using at the time), I veer between melancholy and anger like a drunk on the road trying to hit all the traffic cones. I understand Baumer's frustration and even his stunt. It's the same thing that leads writers to serve Reece's candy at their readings, or to dress up as their Pride and Prejudice-style characters...it's all about readers and being acknowledged. I wish I were different, I wish I had control of my own ego. I don't and probably never will so I try to co-exist with it. That's a tough game, one I rarely win.
Your deeply insightful piece made me think. Not merely of two or three, but many, truly many things about writing, writers, and the market. Above all and first of all, let me say this please. I feel very sorry for Mark Baumer. I drive often on the high roads (= highways), thus interstates, and, there, an autonomy of vehicles prevails. No place for men or women walking along for a longtime even in the very sideway. I hope his soul is in peace now and forever. The earth also has to stop warming itself up and up. Mark Baumer seems to me a sensible person in his essence.
Now, the market. Fist of all, my question to self and selves. Why do writers need readers? In the principle, sellers need buyers. The way of advertising and distributions matter too. There are pipelines on the market for products to flow. You rightly said of it as the industry, because it is the industry, in which duties and tasks are divided by professionals accordingly. If a writer-would-be wants to be properly acknowledged, he or she has to get into all of it in the industry, otherwise, let them stand at a street corner for readers-would-be to snatch up by.
Money matters, profoundly. Living is writing or vice versa. Otherwise, the existence of readers may not be crucial at the core. If I allow myself to state in oversimplification about visual artists, there are two types of desires. One is on the artists' life style, galleries, receptions, shows, parties, flashlights, magazine interviews, or, at least, possibility to say friends and relatives that "I'm artist". The other is creators who make arts and work in the same pace and ardency or naturalness of breathing air to live. The latter needs money to live, of course, but gallery receptions reside at no pivotal point.
I said of oversimplification. Well, actually, I suddenly realized I would be able to write on this topic (writers, readers, and the market) in my substack through an elaboration. I will, if that happens, mention this piece of yours about Mark Baumer's death. Thank you for your good writings as usual.
Love the distinction you point out Juliette between artist's lifestyles and actually being an artist - very true
Thank you, Erik, for your kind feedback. Your considerate stance and polite attitude to your readers are wonderful. Thank you again.
I really appreciate your honesty about the failures of the publishing industry to properly recognize and support unique voices and quality writing. Not only do the self-dealing policies of the industry negatively impact aspiring authors, but they deprive readers as well.
Thank you for a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. Much to consider there and plenty for good conversation at some point.
Thanks Zia - agreed.
I was not familiar with Mr. Baumer before reading this piece, but my first thought is Sounds like he did not have the life he wanted and was running selfhood start-ups looking for something to pan out enough that the prestige cloud would funnel down and drop a preferred life on him. I’m a decade older than he was when he died, and still catch myself relating to the culture this way. Suspect it’s common among writers. Maybe some combination of our teachers loving us for our papers (because they were so different than our classmates’ papers), the decreased and decreasing cultural relevance of literature, all the hungry unmade writers being aware of one another via social media, and the systemic publishing world stuff you diagnose so well.
For most of us, this race will not be worth the candle. Pour that trying-to-get-published energy into non-transactional relationships and community instead, after a few years you probably don’t need to write as much (let alone publish). When you do write it’s probably because the relationships / community are limping and you have to puzzle out why, and in those cases an audience, at least a large one, is much less necessary because you’re trying to define a feeling or explore a problem you haven’t identified. And the stakes are people in your life, so you’re just trying to get it right.
Could even lead to better, more worthwhile work in the end.
Tough sell though.