At A Crossroad: Jump Through the Hoop or Not.

In his memoir, A Pirate Looks at Fifty (one of my top 5 favorite, "desert island" books) Jimmy Buffett speaks of how he often wishes he didn't have to go on stage and be a human juke box all summer, playing same songs every college frat boy knows and loves to get drunk to. He says he would love to someday scale down to himself and another guitar player, sit in a club, and do the songs he loves, and the ones nobody (except us true Parrotheads) knows.

I'm paraphrasing of course but he essentially muses that he knows it's too late for that. At least it was a decade & a half ago when he wrote the book. He openly admits there came a point in his career where he had to make a choice: continue being a struggling folk singer, clutching desperately to artistic integrity and non-commercialism, and risk not knowing where the next paycheck (or meal) was coming from, . . . or jump through that flaming hoop the ringmaster was dangling in front of him and dive headlong into pure showmanship and spectacle.
At that moment, he chose to jump.

Does he regret it? I'd say look at his multiple houses, multiple personal airplanes, annual sold out summer concert tours, legion of adoring fans, and . . . yes, the balance in his bank account . . . and tell me if you think. I'd say that aside from occasional daydreams, he hasn't looked back much since.

Where is it written that art has to look like suffering anyway? Why is it that if you create with a smile, your considered a sellout? I would say to both, it is not. The only people who truly believe that are the ones suffering for their art, and struggling to make it happen.
I struggle with it sometimes myself. I am currently at a crossroads as to what to do next. I mean that in the bigger sense of "what action must I take to further this fledgling second life as a storyteller I so desperately want?" But I mean it more specifically too, as in "I don't know what to write next."

Notice I said storyteller, not specifically writer, although is from the pen (or keyboard) that all stories flow. Music, books, art, theater, film . . . all conceived first in the mind, then birthed on paper before being presented in the final medium.
I currently have about 6 books, 1 play, and 1 screenplay already sitting in my hard drive. Of those, 3 have full finished drafts. I have beginning, middle, and end for them. In theory they're only a few rewrites from being ready for public consumption. Are they good enough? Well, that's the rub. A couple definitely. A few, well, still working on that.

But the thing that's really holding me up right now is not which book do I want to write. The question is more what kind of writer do I want to be. For some reason, we as a society like to compartmentalize people. "This is what you do, and therefore you can't do something different."
And there's the issue of, am I writing what I want, and writing it for me, or am I just writing something I think/hope will sell? I'm working on a novel now that at one time I was completely in love with, but now I find myself in the rewrite process thinking "This is terrible. People won't like this. Why am I bothering? I should change the whole thing?"

Anyone reading this most likely has seen me shamelessly shilling my self-published young adult novel Balaam. Balaam was a short story I wrote 4 years ago based on an Old Testament character. To overly simplify it, Balaam was so stubborn God made his ass talk. No, not like Jim Carrey. I mean his actual donkey stood up and spoke. There was also this little incident where he, like Moses, saved the Hebrews from being slaughtered by an angry king, I mean, if you want to get specific and all. Anyway, I just decided to take this character and expand on his life. Truth be told, I never intended it to be published.

Of course I've always wanted to be a published author, but this was not the book by which I meant to introduce myself to the world. However early this year I learned about Kindle Direct where one could publish their work for free in the form of an ebook. I am a bit of a Luddite and have not embraced ebooks or ereaders, but am I not so ignorant to turn my back on them either. So I decided as an experiment, I would test it with Balaam. And in the first week I sold a dozen. I took the next step and made Balaam available in paperback through Amazon's p.o.d. wing Create Space. It's not free, but it is pretty inexpensive if you do it yourself. Again, sold a few right off the bat. Within a month I'd made the tiny initial investment back. And it continues to sell, little by little. But hey, it's selling.

If you only fail when you don't try, it must also be true that if your book makes money, it's a success. If so, I am a successful author. Just don't look to closely at the specifics. Actual numbers aside, if Random House had the percentages I've got on Balaam, they'd piss themselves with jubilation! They'd call it the salvation of the publishing business!
And I didn't publish the book the make money (lucky for me!) I published it because I'm a storyteller. It's all I am. It's all I want to be. And a storyteller who has no one to hear his stories is that proverbial tree falling in the forest. I just wanted to get my words out there, in the hands of readers. I wanted my stories to thrill and delight. And I've gotten a lot of feedback from readers saying it has. Again, this is success.

But, no good deed goes unpunished. I am still disappointed. I made a conscious choice to make Balaam my first, not simply because it was finished (although that helped!) I chose this particular piece because it's a family friendly story, and while based on a Biblical story it is non-denominational. I can be enjoyed by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Whatevertarians . . . ! That's the idea. Yet, ironically, one of the few literary agents I sent it to said to me in her response "I did like it, but it's too Christian to be commercial, and too controversial to be Christian fiction."
I wanted to jump all over her and say "Lady, it's not Christian fiction! Old Testament! Thousands of years before Christ was even born!"

Her words were probably the original inspiration to make me self-publish. I just wanted it out there, as is. I didn't want it compartmentalized. I don't even go overboard selling it as "Young Adult fiction." I honestly believe (and have been assured) many adults enjoy it just as much (and perhaps in different ways) than the intended demo. Plus I thought, screw what she said, I'll put it out there and push it on Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn. I've got over 700 friends on FB, surely I can sell at least 200 - 300 books without breaking a sweat.
Funny thing about life. When you really want to know who your friends are, ask them to shell out a couple bucks. You'll find out, and you'll usually be disappointed.

Maybe the religious/Biblical smell of the subject matter is too strong, and turns people off. I don't know. I approached it more like a fairy tale, to be honest. And I didn't want to omit the things known. And while I the point was to create a back story for character that wasn't given, and make it interesting, I didn't want to dilute or twist what was there. I wanted to blend them with more of fantasy and magic story, a mash-up of the Divine and Pagan traditions. Wow, that's a lot for a kids book! I've actually been asked when I'll write a sequel, but I just laugh and say sorry, but there'll never be one. I managed to write and publish this one without lightning from the sky striking me down. I'll leave the old boy wherever he is.

Maybe that's me. Maybe that's the writer I am. A foot in both worlds. Can an artist create exactly the work he wants to and still appease the masses? I think I'm lucky. I have such a wide array of interests that I can write almost anything and enjoy it. It's just the process of creation that I love. Some of them are hits (at least to me), some are stupid monsters, but I enjoyed sewing them together just the same.

Still as I work on another Young Adult project, there's a voice in my head saying "you're going to get pigeon-holed. It's like this little cigar-chomping monkey whispering "You screwed yourself putting out that last one. If they wouldn't buy it, they really won't buy this. "

I can't help it. I love writing for younger readers. You can tell exciting tales, and throw in a good amount of absurdity, and they don't care. I don't write down to them. I don't try to complicate it, but I do like to challenge them just a bit. Increase their vocabulary. Maybe throw in a philosophical conundrum here or there. It's good for them, trust me. It's good for me too! It is what excites me, even if it means I'll never be considered a "serious writer."

I have projects I'm developing that are the distant end of the spectrum. I'm working on a memoir of my years at a Christian college that you wouldn't dare let a kid read. I probably wouldn't let my wife read it! It's meant to be crass, funny, and shocking. And it will burn a lot of bridges! But it's honest. And it's damn entertaining. Might even get me on Oprah . . . sorry, on OWN. So do I crank the wheel, jump the center median, and speed off in the other direction?

I have a novel where the protagonist is actually pretty unlikable. He's slovenly, he does a pretty despicable thing for a living, and he's a drunk. And the whole thing takes place in Vegas. Scene one involves a tranny hooker. Do I go full-steam ahead on that one instead?

Nobody can answer those questions. Only me, I suppose. I guess that is the process. You have to make that decision for yourself and decide what kind of writer (insert your trade) you want to be. What stories you want to tell. And you have to make that decision, completely detached from the trappings of money, audience, etc. If you are a storyteller, you will tell the stories you have to tell. All else be damned.

So now if I'm to take my own advice, I guess there's really only one solution. I have to write all of them. That's my plan. Write them all. Put them all out there. Let the world decide what they want to read. The only real problem is, which one do I try to focus my ADD brain on to finish first?

That said, if anyone wants to hold out that flaming hoop for me, I may be all to happy to jump!
(Hey, I've got 2 kids and a mortgage!)