Chasing the Market
A one-legged race with a blindfold on
In today’s post, you’ll find a few calls for submissions and a short speech Charlie Kaufman, filmmaker (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) and novelist (Antkind), gave at the Writers Guild of America last year. I read it earlier this week in Cole Haddon’s 5AM StoryTalk and can’t stop thinking about it.
I also want to share a recommendation: “Lovefool,” a short story by one of my favorite newer writers, Andrew Martin. It’s in the August issue of Harper’s, and I’ve linked to it above. It’s a funny-sad story about brotherly competition and admiration and features a great climactic scene (among several great scenes) at a wedding rehearsal dinner.
Martin’s collection, Cool for America, came out a few years ago, and I read it with the same avidity as Rebecca Lee’s 2013 collection, Bobcat (one of my favorite books). Martin has a novel too, Early Work, and I also really liked it. He writes with rueful humor about family, addiction, and characters who can’t stop making bad decisions.
Open for submissions:
- Electric Literature’s The Commuter: Send us your best flash fiction, poetry, and graphic narratives! All submissions will be accepted through our Submittable page. The portal will close at 11:59 PM PST on SUNDAY, JULY 28, or when we receive 375 submissions (per category). For candid advice from our editors on how to make your piece stand out, watch our video "How to Get Published in The Commuter." (NB: If you’re an Electric Literature paying subscriber you can submit work year-round.)
- Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine: fiction magazine specializing in mystery stories, pays $.05/per word, always open for submissions. You can find more information about submission guidelines here.
- The Baffler: “The Baffler is America’s leading voice of interesting and unexpected left-wing political criticism, cultural analysis, short stories, poems and art. We publish six print issues annually, as well as online content every day of the cursed workweek.” Submission portal and guidelines here.
Charlie Kaufman’s WGA speech:
Twenty years ago, I’m in the back of an auditorium watching a seminar called “How to Pitch.” One by one, supplicants approach a microphone at the foot of the stage on which sits a panel of experts: producers, executives, et ceteras. No writers.
The first student of the pitch speaks, voice shaking. “We open on a barge in the middle of…”
“Stop! You’ve lost me already.”
Student of pitch two, voice shaking. “A young man falls from the sky into…”
“No, no! Jesus, come on!”
And so it goes, these nervous young people step up to be shot down. Sadistic, I think. Payback for the way the panelists were once treated, I think. Garbage, I think. Training, I think.
We writers are trained by the business. We are trained to believe what we do is secondary to what they do. We are trained to do the bidding of people who are motivated not by curiosity, but by protecting their jobs. And we lose sight of what our work is.
It is not to contribute to their fortunes or our own. It is not to please them or critics, or even the audiences who have also been trained.
Our work is to reflect the world. Say what is true in the face of so much lying. The rest is window dressing at best, Triumph of the Will at worst.
Adrienne Rich wrote, “I do know that art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.”
The world is a mess. The world is beautiful. The world is impossibly complicated. And we have the opportunity to explore that. If we give that up for the carrot, then we might as well be the executives, the et ceteras. Because we have become their minions. I have dropped the ball. Wasted years seeking the approval of people with money.
Don’t get trapped in their world of box office numbers. You don’t work for them. You don’t work for the world of box office numbers. You work for the world.
Don’t worry about how to pitch. Don’t pitch. Be nervous. Be vulnerable. Just make your story honest, and tell it.
They’ve tricked us into thinking we can’t do it without them, but the truth is, they cannot do anything of value without us.
Thank you for this award. I’m so grateful for the opportunity it’s afforded me to reflect on what it is that’s important to me about the work that we do.
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Over the years, I’ve learned that writing with the market in mind is a surefire way to lose the proverbial plot. Because I don’t love the market. It’s an abstraction, and when it comes to creativity and works of the imagination, it’s also an adversary. What I have to love is my characters. As I’m writing something new, if I’m thinking, “This trope is popular. This will sell,” I know from first-hand experience it very likely will not.
Doubtless there are writers who do write successfully for/to the market, but I’m not one of them. I especially love what Kaufman says here: “Our work is to reflect the world. Say what is true in the face of so much lying. The rest is window dressing at best, Triumph of the Will at worst.”
It was startling, even though it should haven’t been, when I first heard several years ago that Kaufman had trouble funding his films—his budgets weren’t big, but even so—he wasn’t getting greenlit, even if major actors wanted to work with him. Of course the same problems have been dogging David Lynch and Susan Seidelman for many years (and probably anyone else who’s made a smaller budget film that’s broken through to a wider viewership: Cord Jefferson, Barry Jenkins, Kenneth Lonergan).
Their films haven’t made Star Wars or Marvel/DC Comics-level money—which it seems increasingly “producers, executives, et ceteras” use to measure all other movies’ potential. But most films don’t make huge amounts of money. Nor do most books.
A film by David Lynch is much more likely to be remembered and studied and lionized, however, than the latest action-adventure/comic book/fastfastfast! franchise.
For those trying to write books rather than McBooks, or scripts rather than McScripts, it’s difficult to keep in mind that this work matters. Art isn’t made in the service of quarterly earnings, despite the fact so many forces are colluding to convince us otherwise.
Practically speaking, I know we all have to find a way to support ourselves, but if we’re spending part of our waking hours writing, I do think it’s important to write what we want to write, rather than what we think we should write in order to chase an elusive marketable ideal that is always changing, and at great velocity.
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Thank you for this column. It makes me feel like I have two legs, at least
Thanks for this one, Christine, and all the other posts too. Words of wisdom and inspiration.