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 I’ve written columns, documentaries, novels (unpublished), scripts, screenplays, marketing copywriting and more.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.
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.
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.
Thank you for a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. Much to consider there and plenty for good conversation at some point.
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.