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The Artist Way

Writers workshops, conferences, editorial services…there are definitely enough activities out there to help a writer write, network, get onto a “platform” and published.  The road to success is attainable.  Maps and guidebooks are available for purchase.  Attending a writers conference is like visiting a place of hope, where you can learn what’s hot in the industry, how to write a best seller and turn it into a money-making series, how to “connect” with fans and keep them, etc.  The glory to be the next discovered talent is just a snap of the fingers away.

But the way of the artist goes on a different paradigm.  The urge to create supersedes fame, recognition and money. Attractive and perhaps necessary as these elements are, they cannot replace the continuous need to explore, break through, find the voice within the voice that is the artist’s job.

They say today’s artists have to do everything to make it happen.  It may very well be the case.  Turning artists into businessmen, the world may not understand that artists are best when they are left to do what they do.  But as artists, we must not forget.

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Writers, Not Beggars

Creacion de las Aves by Remedios Varo

Publishing is a big business.  Writers know that.  Agents know that.  In this age of Internet most submission is going electronic, and with it comes an attitude—the demand for pristine manuscripts with specified margins, spacing and formats.  With it comes threatening remarks of deleting queries that are formatted incorrectly, and a writer’s chance of being snickered at if the agents deem you incompetence in following their simple instructions.

I’m sure agents are swamped with queries to the boiling point.  Otherwise they must not forget that writers are artists and their work is a creation of art.  To discriminate and incriminate based on their own guidelines is to exclude the possibility of discovering some true talents who are not wired to follow instructions or go online.  Some writers are too poor to spend $600+ to go to a writers conference.  Others work in obscurity and don’t have time for a “platform”.

You may say too bad for these writers.  They’ll never see the light of day.  But I say the publishing industry is the loser.  Long ago it was the emperor who set out into the mountains to seek the advise of a hermit.  Writers are not smoochers, least of all beggars.

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