...is a game that many authors, myself included, have found themselves locked into every now and again. By 'Beat the Clock' I am not referring to pushing one's self in order to meet a tight deadline (for those kinds of exercises can be healthy). Rather I am talking about a strange self-imposed neurosis that a lot of writers place themselves under; a neurosis that leads them to believe they must scramble like the proverbial one-armed paper hanger in order to keep those submissions gushing out into the marketplace, for if they miss that one anthology or magazine slot, they run the risk of tumbling into obscurity. Some authors feel that if they are not providing the reading public with brand new stories every week or month, they are not growing as artists, that they are slacking. This makes no sense to me.
I understand and appreciate the desire to have new material reach readers. As a writer evolves, it is only natural that he or she wishes to have their more recent (and presumably stronger) work see print. But this impulse tends to foster strange, nebulous theories about what makes a writer "active." For example, many people feel that the acceptable level of output for authors is a book per year. Most popular novelists adhere to this model --- paperback version of their previous book released in the spring, hardback of their latest novel out in time for the xmas shoppers. Again and again. Year after year. While this might be a perfectly respectable model for a full-time writer to live by, must this same gauge be applied to small-press authors? Practically speaking, most authors who are published by small or independent presses do not live off their creative writing. A significant block of their time is devoted to earning their keep working day jobs. Writing is therefore relegated to a part-time discipline. I certainly fall into this category, but I have no desire to hang my hat upon the oft-unstable and unreliable world of publishing. Unless you are in the rare class of "name" authors, or are incredibly prolific, you cannot depend on books to put food on your table.
In addition to this, small presses produce fewer titles and (often) at a much slower pace than the major publishing houses. Factoring in a day job and the small press production schedule, it would be monumentally difficult for a small press author to produce a book or two each year, year after year.
But does this really matter? Why do some authors feel that they must be published regularly, regardless of whether they have something to say or not? They pounce at every market, every genre, every style. This is great for those authors who feel that their imaginations are like muscles that need to be stretched constantly lest atrophy set in. I am not one of these writers.
Like Robert Aickman, I feel that I understand what the ancient Greeks meant by the Muse. For, as Aickman said in his acceptance speech for the World Fantasy Award in 1975, "If the Muse does not speak, you cannot write." I truly believe this to be the case, at least with my worthier tales.
Is taking the time to hone a fewer number of books until the author has felt they've reached their full potential an "inferior" model? I don't think so, provided that this is the approach they feel comfortable with. I still write every day, but each year I find myself growing stricter about when a story is ready to lay before an editor.
One of my favourite 20th Century weird authors is T.E.D. Klein; a man who has not produced a book of new fiction since 1984. To date, there are a mere three Klein books in the world, none of which are in print. Has the horror genre forgotten Klein? Has he been relegated to the dustbin of history because he didn't crank out a new story every two weeks? Hardly. Mention his name at a literary convention and watch the heads nod and the smiles grow. Klein is still read and remembered, even by those who discovered him decades after his work was being published.
Writing is one's legacy. Should that legacy not be honed and laboured over so that the stories an author leaves behind are ones that he or she is truly proud of? Being prolific does not guarantee a legacy any more than having a smaller output damns a writer to obscurity. The most prolific author from the golden age of 'Weird Tales' magazine was not H.P. Lovecraft, but Seabury Quinn. Quinn published scads of stories in the pulps, but good luck finding any of them today. He was a prolific scribe, but often of poor stories. Lovecraft's output was meagre by comparison, but the gentleman from Providence's legacy need not even be mentioned here.
The realm of books is a patient and methodical one. They take a long time to write, a considerable amount of time to publish, and (to some) a fair amount of time to read. Yes, this can be a disadvantage at times, but even with the technological advances that have graced publishing, the book world is not tremendously different in 2008 than it was in 1808. Publishers still produce catalogues, booksellers still select the titles they feel will suit their clientele, readers still seek out and read books the same they always have. In fact, many of the books that are being bought and read today contain the same stories of 1808 and earlier.
Authors have a rare staying power, one that is alien to almost every other artistic medium. Unlike music or film, one can conceivably slug away at writing for decades and they may leave their mark, even if it takes them fifty years. This does not happen with, say, pop music, where if you haven't made your mark by age thirty, chances are you're not going to.
Because writing is a timeless art form, let us shut off the clocks, ignore the hourglass. As writers we have more important things to consider, namely giving our visions the most eloquent and meaningful form possible.
