NANDINI NAYAR
May05 Enid Blyton II
Apr05 Enid Blyton I

PENI GRIFFIN

Mar05 Last Column
Feb05 What's In Your Notebook?
Jan05 Read A Little Louder
Nov/Dec04 Creativity IV
Oct04 Creativity III
Sep04 Creativity II
Aug04 Creativity
Jun/Jul04 Social Angst and All That
May04 Reading In Public
Apr04 Elephant In The Living-Room
Mar04 Literary Synchronicity
Feb04 The Most Important Thing in the World
Jan04
Year-End Wrap-Ups
Dec03 Editors... They Ain't Want You Want, They're What You Need
Nov03 The Secret Formula for Originality - Revealed!
Oct03 An Incoherent Message Concerning Narrative Structure; or 'Reality. What a concept.'
Sep03 Preaching to the Choir
Aug03 FanFic

on ACHUKACHAT, the website discussion board...

Louder
by Peni Griffin

If they can't hear you

READ A LITTLE LOUDER!!!!

That this doesn't work is plain to anyone tracking the decline of the independent bookstore and the publicly-expressed habit of reading from print media. (I will not go into the lack of data on literary activity in a newsgroup culture; but it would be an interesting topic to see developed.)

At the same time, the reluctance of writers to toot their own horns is not just a dysfunction. That advertising affects us all is evident through scientific study; but that it affects us all in the intended way goes against experience. An individual may be repelled rather than attracted by the high-intensity, all-pervasive, relentless advertising that surrounds us daily. My mother would not buy Wisk detergent because of the cheerful nastiness displayed in "ring around the collar" commercials. A high school Sunday School teacher boycotted Charmin toilet paper because she "couldn't stand Mr. Whipple." I resolved the first time I ever saw an Old Navy commercial that I would never, never, never enter one of their stores.

A modern publicity campaign apparently is worthwhile for designer clothes and perfume and other fundamentally unimportant sweatshop-produced merchandise; but if we assume more readers to be like my mother, my Sunday School teacher, and me than like the hypothetical person who is attracted by Old Navy commercials, it would be counterproductive to market books in that way.

I wish I could tell you that the solution, or a portion of the solution, or the barest glimmer of the start of the solution, to this problem was revealed to me by my recent activities; but it would be out of character and it is not true. My role is to phrase questions in a way that may potentially lead to enlightenment, not to pull magical answers out of my Stetson. Some things I saw this autumn worked, or might have worked, or almost worked, or looked promising. Where we look in vain for answers, we may successfully find reasons to carry on.

The first event I attended, the Mid-South Bookseller's Association, was small to the point of coziness. I was one of three featured speakers at a luncheon on Saturday, followed by Donna Jo Napoli, talking about her Chinese historical/Cinderella novel Bound, and Pulitzer Prize winner Diane McWorter, with a slide show about her YA follow-up to Carry Me Home, A Dream of Freedom. Diane, rightly, was the star - an all-too-rare occurrence for non-fiction authors. What effect the event will have on our sales will probably never be known, as data collection on the topic is haphazard, not enlightening, and not passed on to authors in any usable form. However, we all schmoozed as hard as we could during the luncheon, and got free books, bandanas, and stickers off the Free Stuff table in the corner without a thought of where we would put them when we got home.

The blessings of airplane schedules netted me most of a day to cruise the dealer's room, scoring more free stuff than I could carry. I signed a stack of ARCs, which had a sticker bearing a laudatory quote from Jean Auel covering up the Grandmother Mammoth on the front cover. It is typical of my approach to this business that I had rather it had covered up my own name. It's barely possible that my name would attract more interest than a mammoth - but I don't believe it. Anyway, the floor featured a "Reader's Lounge," which all such conventions ought to, with chairs and refreshments and scheduled readings.

Alas for the scheduled readings, the Lounge was merely a curtained-off area of the floor and the acoustics were dreadful. Most of the featured authors that day write for adults, and for the most part their readings sounded like "mumble mumble Suddenly! Mumble mumble with a melon?" They might have been audible if they'd looked up and projected more, but as it was they hadn't a hope in heck of being heard over the echoing casual din from the floor.

Then in came Miz Salley, retired librarian, literacy activist, picture book writer and character, iconic New Orleanian. She wore a caftan with a block print of lizards in primary colors and a yellow fez with a big red fake rose on it. She sat down and started reading to us Why Epossumondas Has No Hair on his Tail ("Hair" and "Tail" are two-syllables words when Miz Salley is reading.) She read out loud and strong and clear, but the noise from the floor got louder, too, as a group of people set up shop beyond the curtains, jabbering about something or other. Miz Salley read louder; they talked louder. Miz Salley read louder; they talked louder. Suddenly she stopped and, without stirring a hair, addressed the world beyond the Reader's Lounge:

Y'ALL MIGHT WANT TO TAKE THAT VERY IMPORTANT CONVERSATION SOMEPLACE ELSE. I'M SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD AND I CAN'T BE STRAINING TO BE HEARD OVER Y'ALL.

It may not be significant that the readers who witnessed this and followed Miz Salley were audible in every portion of the lounge; but I wouldn't take any bets.

This was the highlight of my trip. The French Quarter cannot compete with a sincere, experienced, and confident children's librarian. Remember that. We mustn't be afraid to call for respect when it's not shown to us.

The next event involved a certain amount of mental re-ordering, because it wasn't about the Paleo-indian book. See, The Ghost Sitter won the William Allen White Award. This is the oldest state award in America, and the cool thing about state awards is, that they're voted on by the kids. (From a list of nominations made by teachers and librarians; which is why J.K. Rowling hasn't swept the nation in state awards.) The uncool part about state awards is that you don't normally know if you've won them.

This is not a flaw of the WAW, however. They flew me to Kansas on a plane that served hot chocolate chip cookies, put me up in a hotel that had a recliner in the room (all hotels should have recliners!), gave me three hours of signings and a day of school visits, put me in a parade, and brought out cheerleaders.

Okay, it wasn't all for me. I won for the third through fifth grades, and Andrea Warren, author of Surviving Hitler, won for the sixth through eighth grades. Moreover, the subject of Surviving Hitler, Holocaust survivor Jack Mandelbaum, is from Kansas City, so he came too, and he and his wife were the ones riding the red convertible in the parade. Normally I regard The Ghost Sitter as a serious book, but compared to a Holocaust survivor, I was the comic relief. People like Mr. Mandelbaum deserve cheerleaders and parades just for the accomplishment of growing old.

The parade was primarily a device for getting large masses of children from the University across town to the city auditorium. The streets of Emporia on a Saturday are not exactly thronged, and I'm not sure there was any real risk of a traffic snarl if the police escort had been skipped. But these are details. The core fact is, I was a guest of honor in a parade (walking behind the convertible). I did the princess wave, and I taught the girl who was presenting the award to me to sing "Marching through Emporia," though I'm not sure we could be heard over the chant of the school behind us: "We're from Fowler, couldn't be prouder, if you can't hear us, we'll YELL A LITTLE LOUDER!"

On the one hand, it was exhausting. Despite the recliner, a day of school visits does a number on your feet. The dinners thrown in our honor ran long, and on Friday night we also did a reading at the sleepover for the out-of-town kids - some of whom must've been zonked themselves, with a six-hour bus trip behind them. It was harder on Andrea, whose personal life involved health crises at the time, than on me, but I don't sleep properly in hotels and - well - it's kind of a strain to accept a bunch of attention you don't deserve.

I don't know how or why I internalized the notion that I don't deserve positive attention, but I have; and what's more, an awful lot of writers I know have internalized it, too. I've been told it's primarily a female problem, since despite all the advances over the past century or so, we are still socialized by people who were socialized by people who assumed that women existed to serve the needs of other people. I cannot believe that I am important; I've tried, and I've failed. The stories I write are important, though, and the children of Kansas thought The Ghost Sitter deserved all this attention, and I got through it, and enjoyed it, on that basis.

And it was fun to be at the heart of the celebration, and to be treated as if I were important. For that one weekend, in Kansas, all I had to do was indicate a desire and it was met; sometimes at what I would have thought was considerable trouble. A casual mention that it was a shame I wouldn't be able to make it out to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve to go birdwatching was pounced on by a person I hadn't known existed 24 hours earlier; and I had to put my foot down to be allowed to blow $11 on breakfast for us both on the morning she took me. That was the only money I was permitted to spend all weekend.

A portion of the strange tangled nest of human factors that inhibit the relationship between readers and writers was laid bare for me on that trip. There often is a disconnect between the person who is an author and the ideas that people innocently have about authors. In their zeal to celebrate us, the organizers set up a schedule that was - bluntly - brutal, though they adapted as rapidly as they could when we could bring ourselves to mention our human weakness. Yet, in conversation over that $11 breakfast, my birding chauffeur expressed the belief that authors are "too busy" to be "disturbed" by people calling to talk to them about their books. People have to work up their nerve to talk to us; then, we have to work up the nerve to talk back.

Certainly, a popular author like J.K. Rowling or Jane Yolen may reasonably be expected to get too much e-mail from kids who want someone to do their book report for them - but writing is a business, and we're always happy to get business calls. School visits, draining as they are, are an important source of revenue for many authors, and awards must be known about to be exploited. We may turn down the gig if it doesn't pay enough to cover our labor, if we have other committments, or if we're dying of Alzheimer's, but that's true of any speaker you could schedule.

Also, the number of authors who are regularly badgered by fans is minuscule. If you can find an author by using directory assistance, it's a safe bet that she won't be disturbed by someone calling to say her book was good.

My pointing these facts of life out in this venue will not, alas, end the popular perception of writers being as privacy-starved as rock stars, and it is up to book people to end this perception any way we can. We must find ways to make ourselves into semi-public figures, despite the naturally isolating nature of our business.

In addition to the economic benefits of publicity, we should not underestimate the benefits to ourselves of being publicly valued. Writing is a satisfaction and a pleasure in itself - but dropping a book down the black hole of a non-responsive universe and never knowing what mind it might have cast light into is draining and debilitating. Rock stars may well be hassled in their off-hours, badgered by demanding fans who want too much - but they also get the waves of energy generated by fans in concert, putting their hands in the air and dancing, feeding the energy that feeds the music that is given back to them, magnified. We feed the audience; they must feed us in return. The Circle of Life is a psychological phenomenon as well as a biological one.

I have bad, bad, bad habits. So does the industry. A convention is a natural venue for pushing a book, since booksellers are in the firing line of connecting books with readers; ditto library conventions. But sending an author to a bookselling or library convention does nothing to assist booksellers or librarians in getting new people into their venues, which is easily the biggest problem we face.

Again I think of Miz Salley, with her colorful public persona and her foundation, created for the purpose of getting new authors into new schools - of hooking lower-income children on reading before life beats them down and tells them they're not smart enough, elite enough, nerdy enough to be readers. She's got the right idea, I'm sure of it. So far, results are small - but results are always small.

They're even smaller if you don't put the work in. Habits must be changed - habits of thought as well as of action.

Submerged in the daily grind, I didn't think of sending a press release to the local paper when I won the William Allen White Award, until I got home. Then I chided myself, and vowed to do better. But I didn't - I never thought of contacting the paper about my signing at the local indy until the book editor started playing telephone tag with me; and we never heard each other's voices until the deadline was past. I badgered the local SCBWI to publicize our group signing at the megabookstore better; but all I came up with to do on my own was post a flyer in the elevator at my office, which as far as I could tell generated not one additional sale. I have a long way to go, little advice to give, and no call to judge others who instinctively hide their lights under bushels.

It all makes me very tired, and I hear my weariness echoed all around me, though not everybody is as inept as I am and I sometimes get good advice which for whatever reason I am not diligent enough in following. Writers and artists (and, I have reason to believe, plumbers and programmers and mothers, anyone with a serious vocation) feel disenfranchised and helpless in the face of overpopulated, overincorporated, oversaturated modern society. The choices we most want to make are consistently denied us as circumstances force us to choose among the things that we don't want.

The New Yorker for December 6, 2004 contains an article by a doctor looking for the difference between ordinary health care providers and truly excellent ones (Annals of Medicine: The Bell Curve, Atul Gawande, p. 82). He sat in on a session in which the best cystic fibrosis specialist in the country discussed with a teen-age patient the consequences of not following her medical regimen. "A person's daily risk of getting a bad lung illness with CF is 0.5%. The daily risk of getting a bad lung illness with CF plus treatment is 0.05%. So ...you're looking at the difference between a 99.95% chance of staying well and a 99.5% chance of staying well. Seems hardly any difference, right? On any given day, you have basically a 100% chance of being well. But...sum it up over a year, and it's the difference between an 83% chance of making it through 2004 without getting sick and only a 16% chance." And that, concludes the writer, is the difference between a good doctor and an excellent one - he understands the importance of the difference between 0.5% and 0.05%.

Every professional writer I know understands that difference - applied to her writing. I am not sure any of us, or our editors, or our publishers, grasp it fully as applied to our lives and careers.

We do not feel any more powerless in the face of the vast indifference of the world and the strange inertia of the publishing world than those doctors feel in the face of the scourge of cystic fibrosis, a disease in which it is an accomplishment to live to the age of 30, a triumph to live to 40.

The article's excellent doctor has a patient who, at the time of writing, was 64. Is what we have to do really any harder than that?

I'm an author, couldn't be prouder, if you can't hear me I'LL WRITE A LITTLE LOUDER!!!

January 2005 © Peni Griffin

Editor: Michael Thorn
Contact: 07803605045 or email
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