Enjoying the Passage of Time

Hello, Friends!

I Zoomed recently with an author whom I met at the San Francisco Writers Conference. At the conference, I get to consult with first-time attendees who wonder if their writing projects will find an audience. Some of them ask for a follow-up visit, or even a chance to work with me on an ongoing basis. This particular author found an audience with me for an hour, and I shared with him my unique perspectives on his unusual four book projects.

If “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time,” as the musician James Taylor says, then I got to enact that secret for an hour, talking about creativity, writing, publishing, and the discoverability of an aspiring creative professional. I eventually cut the conversation short not because I wasn’t enjoying our chat, but because I wanted this author to value my time. Also, I wanted to attend to my wife Kate.

My conversation partner lives in a small town in Iowa, and he revealed that locally he couldn’t find the perspectives that I could offer him on non-sequential, poetic, and experimental writing projects. We discussed how discoverability as an author matters, too, because of inadequate local interest in what he writes. The long tail of the internet, and the frictionless ways in which any digital document can be purchased, means that any productive author with what Kevin Kelly calls “1,000 True Fans” can likely make a living from sharing one’s latest publications. Or so one would hope.

My friend the Sacramento novelist M. Todd Gallowglas has an army of followers, locally and out there in the world, who attend his online classes and writers’ salons, buy his science fiction books and books in other genres, and attend his (Sacramento only) regular storytelling performances, such as the two he put on this past Saturday. You can tell that he’s s poet for the name he chose for his live shows: “Bard for Life.” His income is made possible in part from the books that he sells to his 1,000 true fans. I suspect he has more than 1,000.

I’ve been collecting poems for a reading that I am giving in a Sacramento piano bar on March 14^th, so I have been thinking about authorship as a producer as well as a consultant. Meanwhile, my French bulldog Margot sits in the family “comfy chair,” and my son Jukie was upstairs watching Encanto (though right now the house is eerily quiet). Both of these charges would like to go out for a walk, while I need to write up some notes for my new author contact in Iowa.

I also need to look over the script for the recent airing of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, my radio show that airs live Wednesday afternoons at 5 and drops as a podcast Thursday mornings at 9. So many authors from the writers conference have their own projects to discuss, and poems they would like to share with KDVS listeners.

I, too, have 1,000 true fans out there in the world, though many of them have but fond and fading memories of their writing, journalism, or poetry professor. As I’ve been fortunate to draw a salary from UC Davis for the last 34 years, I teach my army of followers not to follow me (anymore), and instead to become their own leaders. If I wanted to commodify and monetize all my creative work, I would spend more time ensuring my own discoverability, but I also recognize the pleasures of a Zoom conversation with a new friend, time preparing a meal for my son, the rough draft of a poem, or a late afternoon walk with the dog.

As Robert Graves reminds us, “There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.”

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P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Gold. More than half the U.S. gold reserve is found in what U.S. state? 

2. Forests. What country alone holds more than 20% of the world’s forests? 

3. Pop Culture – Music. The 2022 number one song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" is sung by the cast of what film?  

P.S. Did you know that I post free bonus quiz questions for the curious and weekly trivia contests for subscribers on Patreon?