a coworker of mine fielded questions from a library patron about how to get his book into libraries. in his mind, there was some mechanism for him to send out copies through a network that connects libraries all over the country; how does he get plugged in so that readers across America might stumble upon his book? an understandable question coming from someone who cares about what they’re writing enough to want people to read it. sadly, though, there’s no such mechanism, especially if you’re self-publishing. each library purchases materials according to their unique needs, so what books end up on shelves comes down to what each librarian making collection development decisions selects. the nearest you can get to a network that ensures your book ends up on shelves nationally is to have your book published by one of the major publishing houses, and have your publisher pay Publisher’s Weekly to review the book, so that it’s given slightly more visibility to librarians forced to select newly published material on the most cursory of impressions. a sort of formalized payola system, really.

this state of affairs is enough to discourage anyone seeking adulation through literary publishing. which is why desire for fame should lead you to almost any other pursuit besides literature. or, to put it another way, you have to really love the act of writing itself to write at all, because it is lonely, difficult, and masochistic.

whether or not I love writing enough to pursue it as vocation is a question that hounds me constantly. I’m always thinking of how many entries in Kafka’s diaries lament how he “wrote nothing” on a given day. it’s cold comfort, considering how miserable Kafka was, how little success he achieved during his lifetime. it’s also an evasion on my part, because even if he often felt he was failing to produce enough work, he also often stayed up late into the night working to the point of exhaustion and, as a result, failing to meet his workaday obligations, something I’ve become too careful to ever risk, it seems.

I’m trying to avoid these kinds of posts where I talk up some big gameplan for finally overcoming my sloth, or where I otherwise kvetch about how I’m not writing enough. what the gameplan is I won’t say, but I’ve made a proposition to myself, and if I fail to hold up my end of the bargain, it means I should quit this delusion; piss or get off the pot.

the man who wanted to see his book on library shelves across america, he isn’t even done writing it. he’s 100 pages into it. so I could cynically dismiss him for his naivete, and tell myself that he’s just some retiree with a hobby, unlike me, a Real Artist. but 100 pages of a novel is a lot more than what I have right now, so who’s really the Real Artist?