An orgy of writers?

lizshine74by lizshine74

In On writing.

“Overcapacity has been something generally acknowledged across the writing industry for at least 10 years. In a 2002 essay in The New York Times, the onetime best-selling novelist and story writer Ann Beattie mourned the situation of the modern writer, living in a world where people are more interested in “being a writer” than in writing itself. “There are too many of us, and M.F.A. programs graduate more every year, causing publishers to suffer snow-blindness, which has resulted in everyone getting lost,” she lamented. That Ann Beattie must now compete on Amazon with a self-published author named Ann Rothrock Beattie is proof of how enormous the blizzard has become.”
From “Bail Out the Writers!” by Paul Greenberg, published in the NY Times 12/9/2008

Comment: So what! In reading this article, I had to remind myself why I write in the first place. I write, as many writers do, out of a freakin’ unstoppable inner drive to understand. Would it be such a bad thing if every single one of us tried our hand at being a “writer”? I don’t think so. In fact, it could be something resembling utopian. The idea of making money off writing is a potential perk so far away from the heart of why I write in the first place, that I can only bring myself to attempt entering the strange and complicated world that is publishing in short-lived bursts of oh, what the hell energy. I feel about that endeavor the same way I feel about the fact that as a high school English teacher I have to assign my students letter grades and participate in team-building activities in which I am encouraged to “cross-pollinate” with other teachers, but during which the entire time is spent musing on why in the hell we are doing that particular thing anyway. Since we could die at any moment, shouldn’t we spend as much time as possible doing what is meaningful? I prefer to work for a living and write to see.

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.