So Sue Me — Since When Do Writers Have to Support Other Writers?

I’m too busy coping with Asperger’s and trying to pay the rent. And, besides, support for writers comes from readers — not writers.

About a month after arriving in America, I was sitting at a cafe in Ukiah, northern California, typing on my laptop. A gentleman from a few tables down asked me if I was a writer. I said yes. He promptly wanted to know what I was writing (a question that irritates the hell out of me), so I told him. He insisted on reading it, so I printed out a copy of my book and let him have it.

About a week later, he gave it back to me, alongside something of his. I was a bit taken aback and said, “What’s that?”

He told me it was his screenplay. I told him I didn’t want to read it.

“But you must. I read yours. Now you must read mine.”

I had to pick my jaw up from the ground before I said to him, “But I didn’t ask you to read my book. You insisted on reading it even though I was loathe to share it.”

To cut a long story short, he insisted that I take his screenplay “whether you read it or not.” Suffice to say, I dropped it in the nearest trash can on the way home, and that was that.

No writer owes another writer anything — nor does a reader owe a writer anything

I grew up in a different world to the one that exists today, so forgive me for my disinclination to buy into this concept of writers having to support each other. Firstly, this never happened in the world that I grew up in. Nor did it happen in my late father’s world.

There was also no such thing as a writing course or a creative writing course. One either went to university to do a degree in journalism, or you approached the editor of some publication or newspaper, and you asked him for a job. If he liked your writing, he said yes, and that was how you became a writer or a journalist.

So why do writers now have to support each other?

Let me give you some figures. In America, a poll done some years ago indicated that 84% of Americans wanted to be writers. Internationally, that trend is repeated. In my day, I was warned against becoming a writer because it was so poorly paid. Nor was there a particularly high regard for writers. Now it seems that it’s everybody’s dream to become a writer.

I’m going to define a reader as someone who reads at least one or two books a week, and someone who has done so for a very long time. I have been reading between five and seven books a week for most of my life. During my K12 years, I read between two and four books a day; that’s two during school time and four during vacation time. The library was around the corner from where I lived. I wasn’t scanning. I was reading. The more you read, the faster you become. Reading has to do with recognition of words. Practice adds speed.

So here’s another interesting statistic. Only 5% of the population reads. Most people never pick up book once they leave school or university. Or maybe they read one book a year, or they read a book every five years or so. Do you see the discrepancy?

There aren’t enough readers to read all the work of the writers.

The writing industry — making big bucks out of wannabe writers

If there’s one thing that a certain type of person is really good at, it’s spotting a lucrative market. For a while now, wannabe writers have been a very lucrative market. After all, if a writer is earning $26,000 a month just by writing a blog, and if everybody learnt (British spelling) to write at school, why wouldn’t everybody be able to earn $26,000 a month?

So it makes perfect sense to go and do a writing course, doesn’t it?

Well, no, it doesn’t.

Here are some things to think about.

Only .03% of people in America are published writers. Here’s another statistic. Only 1% of people are gifted. Here’s another little gem I read some years ago. All international bestselling authors are gifted. In other words, the fact that we all attained basic literacy at school is not quite the same thing as having the capacity to write an international bestselling novel.

And make no mistake, every person who is attempting to write has, deep within, the idea that they are going to write a novel that is going to make them millions.

It’s not going to happen. Maybe it is for one or two people who have the capacity to do so, but for 99% of us, no, it’s not going to happen.

Your first thought might be to ask why writers have to be so incredibly intelligent to write the good stuff. Let me ask you some questions in return. Why do you think some writers get writer’s block? Why do you think that wannabe writers keep asking successful writers where they get their ideas?

It’s because the brain of someone who is that intelligent supplies writers with ideas. It’s because the brain of someone who has that much intelligence is always thinking and contantly coming up with so much information that they have a battle to select which idea to use.

The brain of someone who is gifted is very different to someone who is not, and that is why they can come up with ideas, and they don’t get writer’s block. Do you see James Patterson, Christine Feehan, David Baldacci, and a thousand other writers getting writer’s block? Nope. They produce novels year after year.

So here’s the thing. You have all these teachers and coaches and tutors offering courses and degrees to wannabe writers. They really don’t care if these writers will never be in print. They are about the dollars they make teaching people who desperately want to learn something. They’re most certainly not going to tell their keen students not to quit their day jobs.

On that same note, I have a producer friend in London who runs creativity courses. He tells me that in a class of 50, after a morning, he wants to say “You three, stay. The rest of your pack up and go. You don’t have what it takes.” Of course, he can’t say that. They paid for the course.

In 1980, 60 percent of 12th graders said they read a book, newspaper or magazine every day that wasn’t assigned for school, one study found. By 2016, only 16 percent did — a huge drop, even though the book, newspaper or magazine could be one read on a digital device (the survey question doesn’t specify format). The number of 12th graders who said they had not read any books for pleasure in the last year nearly tripled, landing at one out of three. Source.

The day I attended a writing seminar.

In the late 90s, I paid for a very expensive week-long writing seminar. For me, it was more about learning how to get paid than learning how to write. I already knew how to write. I’d been doing it for a very long time. I didn’t realize at the time that this was not what these writing courses taught.

On day two, there was a fantasy workshop. It was attended by between thirty and thirty five people. The chairs were arranged in a horseshoe shape, and the professor’s table was at the intersection of the ends of the horseshoe.

The professor wanted us, individually, to craft an outline for a story. We had about five minutes to do that. Then she asked the first person, at the beginning of the horseshoe shape, to tell her story. I was a bit unimpressed. The lady (they were all women) had basically taken bits and pieces from other stories — like J.K. Rowling and Anne Rice. As each lady shared her outline, there was great applause for her. Yet I always recognized the kinds of characters and plots from the most popular books of the day.

And then it was me.

I shared my story — not a single bit from another famous author. All of it came from my head — my brain.

There was a dead silence.

Nobody clapped.

Nobody said anything.

And I felt a complete and utter fool.

Then it was the turn of the girl next to me, and, likewise, she grabbed characters who resembled those of other writers and similar storylines to their plots, and everybody clapped and applauded, and then it was the end of the seminar.

I never went back for day two. I was too humiliated.

Later that evening, the professor of that course approached me and asked me why I hadn’t returned. She told me she had selected my story for the class to work on as it was the only one that had any originality. I find it remarkable that she asked me why I hadn’t returned. Why did she think?

I left the seminar the next day — never completed the week.

Then there was the one day screenwriting course — also in London. Again, the professor gave us ten minutes to design a story. He listened patiently as everbody told him their plot. He didn’t say anything. And then it was me.

After I presented my plot, character, etc. he looked at me and said, “You would be welcome on any TV production set in the world. You have crafted, characterized, plotted an entire story in ten minutes. I asked for far less than that.” Actually, I did it in five minutes — not the full ten minutes he gave me.

Then it was break time. A little voice in my head said “Don’t go out, because they will talk about you.” And so it was. When I came back, the professor had a completely different attitude towards me.

It fucking hurts every single fucking time other writers screw me. And I’m a little bit tired of the statement “You think too much of yourself.” No. I’m repeating what many, many people have said to me for a lifetime.

One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college. 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. 57 percent of new books are not read to completion. Source.

I don’t owe writers any more support than they owe me

I started writing for publication very young — 10 or 11 years old to be precise. It started when my late father told me to write a rebuttal to something that I objected to. I did write it, and it was published, and that’s how I got started. It was more than three decades later when I had my first rejection. I’ve had three or four in my entire life.

Here’s what I also had — bitchiness and bullshit from other writers. I’ve had a lot of it. Let me share some stories.

I was living in London when I ran into a man who appeared quite excited to find out I was a writer. He invited me to join his writing group. I declined. He then asked me to send him one of my stories. From long experience, I knew he was going to demolish it to the best of his ability. So I sent him a story that had been previously published and paid for, and it had also been placed third in a national writing competition. Indeed, he did demolish my story. He sent it back to me telling me that everything was wrong from the names I used for characters to the storyline.

That was so different to what my writing tutor said about my writing — at the time, he was the editor of British Mensa (society of geniuses). He said to me ‘You’re remarkably talented, and very, very good. This story is worthy of publication (another one). Please submit it for publication.”

Well, I did, and it took six months for it to get a rejection. The note from the publishing house said, “This is an excellent story, and we submitted it to all the magazines in our stable, but it simply wasn’t the right fit.”

After I immigrated to the States, I decided to go to college. I took English writing classes because they were easy credits. I needed to understand American punctuation and so submitted a fictional book I wrote to my professor asking her about American punctuation. (The book had gained a placing in the Amazon book competition.)

Oh my god. What a jealous, awful bitch. Instead of seeing what I was doing and giving me a punctuation rule, she took a red pen and and put commas and periods every three or four words. There was no rhyme or reason for them. Later, I learnt about the Oxford comma.

I wrote back to her and told her that her response was a result of her resentment towards me. In class she had told me that it was all very well for me to say something because I was a published writer but none of them were (meaning herself and the rest of the class).

Oh, yes, then there was the time that I joined an online writing group in the late 90s. I submitted my stories and the owner of the site (he owned a British publishing house) told me that he had no doubt that he would one day see me as a published author because I had something very rare — the ability to tell a story. What a contrast to the bastard who returned my story to me — ripped to pieces.

I left the writing site. In those days I was still very much a victim.

Then there was the site which offered evaluations on ebooks, and where you could get critiques from other writers. The first critique I received was 1500 words long. The woman (anonymous, of course) told me I had no idea how to write, that my work was the worst she had ever seen. She insulted every bit of that story. I left as I was devastated. Needless to say, that story (or at least a stand alone chapter of it) won a competition when I submittted it elsewhere.

So, sorry, I don’t see any reason to befriend or support other writers. I leave it to them to approach me. I have had more than enough unwarranted nastiness and spite from writers.

Later, I discovered that writers were, as a norm, very jealous of other writers.

The reason writers are told to support other writers

Have you noticed that its writing tutors and writing professors who are telling writers to support other writers? That’s because they know that writers would soon discover that there’s nobody out there to read them. Writers would also soon discover that it’s really difficult to earn money writing. So, order to compensate for that, those who are teaching people creative writing are inventing a readership — that readership is other writers.

“Support other writers,” they say.

Let me repeat that. The only reason that there’s now this bullarkey that writers must support other writers is because there aren’t sufficient readers to read all the writing that is now being written. In addition, as a result of the change from direct sales to consignment status, publishers now publish fewer books than before, and they are loathe to take on new authors.

Writing, in my humble opinion, is a very poor choice as a career. It is over-subscribed, and unless you’re extremely lucky and very, very good at it, it’s not likely to pay the bills.

I’m an old school writer — I depend on readers — real readers

So here’s the thing. I’ve fallen on my face more times than I can count. I expect at any given moment for my readership to disappear. I’m used to that. One wrong word, and they skedaddle. It frightens the hell out of me, because if they do, my income stops, but I can’t help myself. I have to tell the truth. I have to say what come from inside. And right now, this is coming from inside.

“Stop this bullshit about writers having to support other writers.” No, they don’t.

I love to write. It’s not the only thing I love. I love dancing and swimming and walking and architecture and photography and decorating and travel and some other things. If I had money, I would divide my time equally, but I don’t, so I write mostly. I also love reading and I spend more time reading than writing.

I’m lucky that I have people who like to read me, and I’m deeply touched by that. They saved me from the despair I felt from all the abuse I’ve faced. There are no thank-yous that are sufficient enough to express the gratitude I feel. I am also overwhelmed at times by those who contribute to me through Ko-fi and Patreon. I often don’t feel worthy for that kind of support, but I am, nevertheless, grateful for it. Without it, I would be homeless and on the street. I wouldn’t even have enough money for food.

My Born-to-Write magazine is as far as it is going to go

I’m afraid I’m not going to ‘support’ other writers by clapping for them, or reading their stories, or buying their books, just because they are writers, just because now there’s this whole big belief system that if one is a writer one must support other writers.

I’m going to continue reading writers, clapping for some of them, disagreeing with others, and wholeheartedly applauding the work of a few. I’m reading them because their writing caught my attention, and that’s the reason I’ve been reading for a lifetime. It has nothing to do with suporting writers. So please don’t thank me. I’m not part of a community of writers who are providing support for each other.

I do, however, recognize that I’m nearing the end of my life and there are emerging writers. For them, I have my magazine Born to Write, and I share what I know about my craft there.

I wish you luck in your endeavours, and I really do hope you will be very successful. For me, it’s been a struggle, not because I lack talent or can’t write, but because I have had to deal with the fall out of life-threatening abuse and Asperger’s for most of my life.

Shit happens to all of us.

If only there was a force that could be with us!

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