“……….New reality: And the geek shall inherit the earth”

I saw this headline on Yahoo! news yesterday morning and had to laugh. I have no doubt that it is true.  When my daughter was a teen, I pointed out to her that one of her friends’ dads was a ‘nerd’ in our class at school - small, skinny, pencils in pocket, the whole nine yards.  He grew up to be a very handsome, successful man.  The jocks?  Not so much.  I advised her then -”marry a geek!”.  

When I decided to pursue writing, it was really for my own pleasure.  All I wanted to do was write. Then I discovered contests. Yay! Then I discovered friends who were actually published. Wow! I bought into all the television shows, movies, and yes, books, that described a writers’ life as being glamorous.  Yes, I saw scenes that depicted arguments with editors and publishers and issues with deadlines. But those were artistic challenges.

THEN, I discovered what it took to BE published. O.M.G!

You have to be a Geek! Like Hemingway and others, you might write with legal pad and pencil, or an old Smith-Corona, but at some point, you have to join the computer world. And you have to know more. Lots more.

 “The Beaver brought paper, portfolio, pens,

Those ‘strange creepy creatures’ are our computers, editors and publishers, and the pulse of that little cursor is the rhythm of their silent laughter as we try to figure out how to control the beast.

It’s not enough to prolifically produce poetry or prose.  What matters is being able to re-structure those pages that we struggled and labored long hours with before giving birth. We need to know how to format for particular publishing programs and for simple uploading for submission – how to fit the pages together, where to edit, and many other bells and whistles.  If we work with more than one, we need to know the idiosyncrosies of each.  In short, we need degrees in computer science.

The irony - Catch-22, if you will – is that when you submit a book to a publisher, you’d better be able to tell him you have one or two more waiting in the wings.  Do we need to write for years before we even attempt submission, so we have all our writing already done? Because we won’t have time to produce more after that.  I figure my brain will surely have exploded by then.

E-publishing is partly to blame, as more writers are bypassing the regular publishing route altogether.  So, like other industries, the publishing world is downsizing.  Publishers have to find ways to be more efficient.  And just like most workers, we are doing more work for the same, or even smaller, payoff. No wonder artists of all sorts are feeling slighted. We are being de-valued at a greater rate than many foreign currencies! 

Hey – all I wanted to do was write!  But, like Emily Dickinson, my work may be found in a shoebox under the bed long after I am gone, where I left it while trying to attain geekhood.

Had an experience with publishing?  Leave me a note in the comments!