All articles in this series "On Writing and Self-Publishing" have become part of an ongoing feature called On Writing.

I've been waiting to write this next post for a few days because I knew my book was hanging out there for review. I had arrived at a point in writing this series that I had to put up or shut up. I'm not one to grease the skids of my success with bullshit. Either my work expresses the art and craft of which I've written, or I walk away knowing there is a lot more work to be done. Actually there is always more work to be done, that's the nature of craft. But you don't want to overwork it either. It has to preserve a natural grace.

I know my work is not perfect. It's ragged in the way human life is, but also dignified and graceful in the way human life can be, a paradox. Perfection is a phantom construct, a killer of the human spirit. Can anybody show me perfect? It's like saying there's a largest number. The kids I used to teach would say, "How about a googal?" I would reply, "How about a googal plus one?"

A conception of perfect is a static model and it can't deal with the dynamic reality of what life really is. Let's say that's a lot like publishing houses. Though no one would put the perfect label on them, they are certainly static models that cannot deal with the dynamic reality of life. But this is true all the way down the publishing food chain. When an agent will only look at work recommended by established writers on their client list, the process becomes self-referential and misses some new dynamic. They don't want to work hard at sorting the field or establishing a procedure to do that, so they skim the known. I equate it to the white buffalo hunter practice of taking only the tender hump of the beast and leaving behind the heart and other vital organs to rot in the hot prairie sun. Better to take the whole thing; make shelter from it, bowstrings, clothes, a whole life. Better to be reverent toward that which gives of itself.

The fact is that the whole world of books is a living ecosystem. Whereas nature moves toward a greater diversity in order to protect life--all her eggs are not in the same gene pool--the corporate hierarchical structure of the book business pushes toward consolidation, less diversity, and greater exposure to calamity. Many years ago the publishers made most of their sales on the midlist books, which allowed for greater diversity. Now everything hangs on blockbusters and clones of blockbusters with fewer and fewer viable publishers. It is a system with no flexibility, adaptability, dynamism, or life.

Within the ecosystem of a colony of ants, their organizing principle is to promote ant life. In the present ecosystem of the corporate book world, the organizing principle is not the promotion of book life, but rather to extract money. Books are not viewed as or promoted as repositories of cultural symbols and wisdom as much as they are viewed as a means for extraction of profit. As such any shit can do.