Mark Twain's autobiography was released in October, 100 years after his death, as he requested. A brilliant move on his part since, as we come into December, it is now a best-seller and readers worldwide are rediscovering the genius of a man who pulled no punches and offered nothing but stark truth when he could get away with it. And that is the point of a delayed publication... getting away with it, saying whatever he wanted with no reservations.What I find most interesting as I dig into the text of this first volume (Volume 2 has yet to be released), is that Twain, like all writers, went through the ups and downs of the nasty business that is publishing just like all writers do. He says:
"In those early days I had already published one little thing in an eastern paper, but I did not consider that that counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise away above that; he must appear in a Magazine. He would then be a Literary Person; also he would be famous -- right away. These two ambitions were strong upon me. This was in 1866. I prepared my contribution, and then looked around for the best magazine to go up to glory in. I selected Harper's Monthly. The contribution was accepted. I signed it "Mark Twain," for that name had some currency on the Pacific Coast, and it was my idea to spread it all over the world, now, at this one jump. The article appeared in the December number, and I sat up a month waiting for the January number -- for that one would contain the year's list of contributor's, my name would be in it, and I should be famous and could give the banquet I was meditating.
I did not give the banquet. I had not written the "Mark Twain" distinctly; it was a fresh name to Harper's printers, and they put it Mike Swain or MacSwain, I do not remember which. At any rate I not celebrated, and I did not give the banquet. I was a Literary Person, but that was all -- a buried one; buried alive. "
Funny how Twain equates a writer's life to death. It absolutely feels like it a lot of the time. And just like life and death, there is a cycle to writing. It looks something like this:
write something you think is brillaint---} send it in to the place you believe is a perfect fit for your brilliance ---} pump yourself up with precious and overly exaggerated hope that you will be famous once the brilliant piece of writing hits the market ----} experience the let-down of little or no success that is most always inevitable in this scenario ----} write something you think is brilliant and start over...
For the new writer, the writer just starting out in his/her career or the one who has yet to publish, that "death," that experiencing of little or no success for each submission, occurs more frequently than sometimes is tolerable. It's truly enough to make a writer consider giving up. On a daily basis, I ask myself, "Why the hell am I doing this?" But then, as with all things cyclical, I come around again. Because if you ask a biologist or a physician what the meaning of life is, they will most likely tell you, "To make more life," and I suppose the meaning of a writer's life needs to be similar: "To make more writing... despite the let-downs."
