So What Is It We Do Here Again

So What Is It We Do Here Again?
Before I started this blog, I thought it prudent to look at some of the many other blogs that exist on the internet that involve writers. I didn’t make an exact count, but I’d say they are about as numerous as dandelions in a junk yard. It turns out, however, that most of those I looked at actually concern poets (always the most sociable of literary creatures) and quite a few others are dedicated to beginning writers. Topics like How to Write A Story and How to Get Published. There were none that seemed to be written for, or by, writers like myself: that is to say (and not to put too fine a point on it) writers "of a certain age" who feel the literary world has totally forgotten them. Well, perhaps not totally. I do have a new short story in the Spring issue of that fine old quarterly, The Sewanee Review. But it has been an embarrassing number of years since my last novel was published, and it hasn’t been, I assure you, because I haven’t been writing them. Some time I’ll show you my rejection slips.

Anyway, the idea was to open a space on the internet where writers like myself could get together in a sort of cybernetic café to compare their hard-luck stories and air their grievances against that same literary world. So far no one has asked to sit down at my table. Now I know it’s early yet, but perhaps I misjudged the tenor of the times. Maybe the forgotten writers out there (I know you’re out there, forgotten writers!) would just as soon stay forgotten. Or maybe they’re so sunk in their morass they just don’t respond any more. Maybe some are so out of touch they don’t even own laptops, or know about the internet . . . but it is useless to speculate. Why should any of these folks want to talk to me anyway? In my first blog I promised mermaids, but have I produced any? I promised excursions across the vast wilderness of the Darkling Plain, but here we are back on the seashore again. So I’m rethinking my options. And, as usual, open to suggestions. Here are some possibilities.

1. Pedagogical. All of us probably have things we’d like to communicate to the younger writers of the world. These might consist of warnings, admonitions, promptings, imprecations, whatever. Whether these pups will listen to us old dogs is a matter of little concern–we’ll get what we want to say off our chests. If you have thoughts along this line, send them to me and I’ll put them on the blog. Expect some thoughts from me, soon.

2. Self-promotional. I, for one, find it hard to imagine that any writer, having written a novel or story, doesn’t feel some paternal responsibility for it. One wants to see it published, read, admired, and most important of all, preserved in print. Increasingly these have become all but impossible goals for writers "of a certain age." But here, at least, we could publicize our work, our latest efforts to escape the Darkling Plain. I, for instance, will soon have a brand new website I intend to link it to this very blog. Other links for other writers are indeed possible, subject to my approval.  I also have an unpublished novel (my best one, I’ve always thought) I’m hoping to release as a Kindle e-book, and another novel, still being revised, for which I intend to seek an agent.  These are the kinds of things this blog might well promote.

3. Creative. Though my own fiction tends toward the long side–too long for a blog, I would estimate–there remains the possibility of placing bits and snippets of one’s creative work on the internet via this or some other sight. Perhaps I’ll "publish" one of my own works here as a serial. "Tune in next time for the next exciting chapter of One Man’s Slush Pile, when we hear hard-drinking editor Brad Bologna say, ‘Bring me the starter fluid, honey, and a long match.’" Maybe we’ll see just how much this expanding cyber-universe really can expand when we start cloud-computing our novels. Can one overload the system?

Any of you have suggestions? Sometimes I get the feeling I’m back in the classroom again, trying to conduct a discussion of a story no one seems to have read. C’mon kids, help me out here. Where are the damn symbols in this piece of bogus profundity? Kids: blank stares, hostile smirks, yawns. Ever have dreams like that? Tell us about them.

Well, class over for the day. I’ll be off line for a few days, visiting family and friends in a place far removed from the Darling Plain. I expect to find lots of email in my inbox when I return.

Yours faithfully, Sinbad