4 ms·
"Here's what the back of the jacket said: Gretchen Peabody, fortyish and only just a bit frowsy, has decided to abandon the comforts of Manhattan for a new home
by CamperBob 17y ago
"Here's what the back of the jacket said: Gretchen Peabody, fortyish and only just a bit frowsy, has decided to abandon the comforts of Manhattan for a new home in Tula Springs, Louisiana, having been swept off her feet by Frank Dambar, a fetching widower she has happened upon in a New Orleans souvenir shop. ... While Gretchen is baffled by the small town's provincialism, it pales next to the weird household her new hsuband has assembled, which includes a handyman/mystic and his arthritic niece, and a stolidly Tueutonic housekeeper determined to keep the first Mrs. Dambar's memory alive...."
When you bring the camera in that close, discarding heroic romance and other popular tropes, you find yourself competing with some insanely good writers. That may be his problem; Wilcox's work is lost in the noise floor not because of an unfortunate choice of genre (or lack thereof), but just because he's not that great. Can you imagine the blurb above on the back of a book with Alice Munro's name on the front? The truth is, most writers need some kind of genre schtick to identify themselves to the market and sell books. No shame in admitting that.
Writing is like any other field of endeavor: the more replaceable you are, the less money you make.
- jseliger 17y ago"you find yourself competing with some insanely good writers." Not only that, but you find yourself competing against writers who were alive centuries ago (Jane Austen, Melville) or decades ago (Fitzgerald, Hemingway). You also find yourself competing against many, many novelists in a fragmented marketplace, as I described in response to an agent's blog here: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/25/literary-fiction-and-the-current-marketplace http://jseliger.com/2009/07/25/literary-fiction-and-the-curr... . Note in particular that you're also competing against a used book marketplace that's got decreasing friction. That's not to say I'm complaining: but it's also how it goes, and people who don't understand the structure of the publishing industry or the forces acting on it might find some very unpleasant surprises as they wade into the riptide. One nice thing about Greenspun's comments about writing is that they're realistic and readily accessible. A lot of people who write about writing, especially on blogs, seem more romantic than knowledgeable.