What Do Writers Want?

Roxane Gay once noted in Salon that all our discussions about whether women writers like best-selling Jennifer Weiner don’t get enough press coverage miss a major point.

Writers are easily dissatisfied, no matter what they’ve achieved. As Gay put it so beautifully: “What most writers have in common is desire. We want and want and want and want.” That’s partly because when you’re in the world of writers, you will likely always know a writer who is doing better than you: making more money, getting more publicity, scooping up more followers on Instagram and so on. R.F. Kuang’s satirical new novel Yellowface is a terrific exploration of living with that kind of comparison making which undermines confidence and can build resentment or worse.

I learned about this early in my publishing career when an author I was getting to know told me about a contemporary writer whose first novel was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. It was subsequently on the NYT best seller list, and sold 500,000 copies--in hardcover. That’s the kind of exposure, notoriety, and sales record most writers can’t even imagine.

My friend had lunch with this author who turned out to be very unhappy. Why? Because he hadn’t gotten a Pulitzer nomination, and couldn’t let go of the disappointment and frustration.

I know another best-selling author of thrillers whose name is everywhere, especially blurbing other people’s books because that name is red hot. This author is making millions from books that sell worldwide. He’s had books book turned into movies and a TV miniseries. His name pops up on Amazon, in company with even more famous thriller writers.  A prestigious monthly magazine even did a super-long profile of this author. So what’s missing? He wants “respect” from established literary critics.  This author is a wealthy Rodney Dangerfield.

Another writer friend who’s been invited to speak all across the country about her book and has taught writing workshops more than once in great European venues, is eaten up by not being invited to keynote a small annual writer’s conference in her home town.  Seriously.

No matter what level of achievement writers reach, many of us cannot stop hoping for more. And more. And more. Sadly, we don’t seem to wish we were writing better books, we wish we were better known, richer, more respected, adulated even, had more exposure or had what some other writer has. But that wouldn’t be enough, because for many writers, there’s never enough.

Roxane Gay’s essay was another voice in the controversy launched when Jennifer Weiner went public about about not being as respected as Jonathan Franzen, not getting his level of respect or review coverage. A writer of popular fiction, she’s been a New York Times best seller, has made millions from her books and more than one has become a movie. It’s an enviable place to be, but she apparently envies literary novelist Jonathan Franzen, who’s made the cover of TIME and been a critical darling.

Whatever you think about her statements on-line and in the press, or about her writing, I suspect Weiner would be unhappy even if she had everything she thinks she wants, because there would be something else beyond her reach. She’s a writer, after all, and for many of us, our favorite music is what the poet Linda Pastan calls “the song of the self.” It’s a one-voice melody that runs up and down the scale “like a mouse maddened/by its own elusive tail.”

Lev Raphael is the author of twenty-seven books in genres from memoir to mystery, including Writer's Block is Bunk.  With fifteen years of teaching writing and creative writing at the university level behind him, he edits, mentors, and coaches writers online at writewithoutborders.com. 

(Free image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay)