A Million Flowers

 

Summer Field, Claude Monet

Make that millions of flowers. Flowers of creation. Flowers of a revolution. Computers, the internet, and self-publishing platforms like Wattpad, fanfic sites, Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and other self-publishing book sites have given millions of people around the world the opportunity, and the incentive, to be creative. To tell a story of their own. Technology has made it possible for people in all walks of life to write and share their stories with readers around the world. And in many cases, form communities of storytellers and readers who celebrate, share, and help each other as writers. Anyone, and everyone, can tell their stories, regardless of their level of accomplishment. And by doing so, they can grow in their craft by both by writing, and with the help of other readers and storytellers.

This tech revolution has also allowed many people the opportunity to publish and share with the world, their expertise on a million different subjects in articles, blogs and books. It has given people with special, obscure, and niche interests the chance to not only share their interests with the world, but to establish links with others who share their interests, people they would never have met without these technologies.

In short, it’s a wonderful world.

Since I’m a writer of fiction, I’m going to focus on the storytellers of this revolution.

I need, however, to first address the issue of accomplishment. There are many who dismiss the world of self-published books as a cesspool of bad books. And there are writers who feel that the presence of these millions of non-traditionally written books are suppressing the ability of their presumably superior products to shine. And by shining, they mean making a boat load of money from their books. Essentially they are saying that someone else is to blame for their lack of commercial success. But hey, that’s the nature of the market. One needs a business model to address it, or one will deserve to fail.

However, that’s commerce, not art. In my view, creating a story is art. There are many levels off accomplishment in any art. And often it takes decades of practice to become very accomplished in one’s field. But you have to start somewhere. And while the traditional advice for someone seeking to write commercially is to keep one’s early, less accomplished work, in a drawer, I have to ask why? The answer, I suspect, has more to do with the commercial aspects of traditional publishing than with art – the publishing houses want to limit the height of their slush piles, and authors want to limit the supply of potential competitors. Now, I believe that writing is an art. Art, however, becomes a product when it is offered for sale, which is something that needs to be judged differently than a work of art. And that is beyond the scope of this essay. 

Still, I'll admit that most of the books in that field of flowers, or the cesspool, were probably written to be products rather than art. However, given the long odds of any of them ever being viable products, I think that the vast majority of them can be viewed simply as an expression of art. I will also readily admit that many of them, in my opinion, are not very accomplished works of art. But then, I’m a rather harsh critic, and find that there are a lot of traditionally published books that I don't think are all that accomplished works of art -- even if they are good products.

The thing with self-published books, however, is that if viewed as art, they are the real deal. They haven’t been selected by the marketing department of a publishing house to appeal to a certain market. And they haven’t been manipulated in the editing process to conform to that target market. Self-published books are the authentic, unadulterated creation of their writers. And while they may have been written with a target audience in mind, they still reflect how the individual writer envisions the product for the market they are aiming for.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve read a lot of self-published books. Given my narrow tastes, there’s no way I’d read most of the ones I've sampled all the way through. However, what I do find interesting is that even the free samples of the story offers a window into the mind and imagination of the author. There’s a Jim Morrison’s tune, “People are Strange.” No truer lyrics have ever been written. We’re all strange. And the thing about writing is that it is often a window into the strangeness that lies within all of us. This alone makes even the least accomplished written story interesting, even if one can only stand to read a few pages of it. I read a couple of pages – or a chapter or two, and then sit back and wonder… What?

I’ve sampled a writer where even the blurb is hard to follow – a rush of breathless words and a tumbling cascade of ideas. And the stories read like an outline of ideas and events rather than the story. One wonders if this writer has ever compared what they write to what they’ve read. And yet, this writer has produced a dozen or more books, because the writer as so many ideas, so many stories. Neat.

I’ve sample the story of a fellow who hoped to make a ton of money on his book. The sample I read seemed to eerily parallel what little I could gather of his life, but it painted him becoming the super intelligent hero of the story. He put it on Amazon for twice the usual price of a self-published first novel, and the last time I looked, had never sold a single copy there. And he never lowered the price. I’m petty sure he has assigned blame for his failure to something other than himself. Sad.

I’ve sampled a few of the young writers on Wattpad which often offer interesting glimpses into the minds, dreams, and culture of the youth. Plus a feel for other cultures, with unfamiliar norms. Fresh.

And of course, because I read speculative fiction – well, mostly space opera stuff – I find lots of strange, and not so strange worlds. Sometimes the stories immediately bring to mind movies or TV shows. In these, I get to see just what aspects impressed the writers. A number of them have scenes with ship captains sitting a chair on the bridge barking commands to the crew at their stations all around them…Star Trek. Or some sort of fearful master dressed in a mask and a cape who strangles subordinates at will for minor mistakes because they’re evil. Star Wars. Or loading a down-and-out tramp ship loading a few crates of cargo and mysterious people up the ramp. Firefly. Fanfic in a mask.

Sometimes you are left wondering how these writers ever came to write speculative fiction at all, as they seem almost totally unfamiliar with basic science. Was it cartoons, anime or what? Curious.

There are worlds that are very familiar, others that are very bizarre. Worlds that seem small like stage plays, and others that toss galaxies around like bus stops. So many ways to imagine an alternate world. So many ways to think.

Whatever the level of accomplishment – and this is subjective as well as objective – I can appreciate these little glimpses into the minds and dreams of other people.

And what’s more, I can admire them for the effort they put into bringing forth the stories they tell, however they tell it. Writing takes an effort, and finishing a story is an accomplishment, no matter how accomplished one is at the craft of writing. And it takes courage to put one’s creations out for people to view, read, enjoy, or criticize. So however accomplished, or not, the writing is, publishing a story is an accomplishment to be admired. It is the process of creation – the journey as it were – that is the heart of creation, not the end. And I feel that should be celebrated.

So in self-publishing, one has this field of flowers stretching away to the horizons. Millions of them. And yes, they’re mostly wildflowers, with a few escapees from traditional gardens scattered here and there. But each is unique. Each of these flowers blossom as an expression of creativity from deep within the writers’ wells of dreams and imagination.

Let the flowers bloom!