Seen but Unheard

Ok, I wanted to add a bit to somethin’ I said in an earlier blog about how everything should be seen, every story read, every story told, or something like that.

Well, I don’t change that, at all, but i do amend it in that, well, sometimes you can see why the stories are not always found and that is because they are just not that good. A problem with the whole self publication thing, a bit of a curse that is also a blessing, is that anyone can get their story out, no matter how polished or raw it is. This can be good and bad.

There is beauty in any stone, polished or not, but the rougher the edges, the harder it is to get to that beauty that may come more naturally for other tales. Working at a bookstore part time I see a lot of self published works – bless the owner, she prides herself on selling these books – and I have seen some things that are pretty rough. What gets me is that it isn’t even that these are awful stories – though when you see the things people choose to self publish it is a bit revealing – but just that they are not finished.

So many of these works are short, are under written, over written, not grammar or spell checked, and it seems as if much of it is written to catch a passing wind and not to say something with their own tongue. Just as, if I decided tomorrow that I was going to write a story about teen vampires it wouldn’t be because I have always wanted to do that, I haven’t, but it’d be because I wanted to make a buck. Nothing wrong with that, at all, but it is wholly different that putting out something that reflects your own heart and voice.

I admire anyone brave and tenacious enough to write and work to get it out there. It all has a right to exist. All of it. My fear though is just that with so much of this self published material being so clumsy and rough that the gems amongst them will not be seen and the entirety will be damned outright.

For now though, let us toast those who do, those you want to, and those who cannot, and hope that all three groups end up in the same place some day soon.

c