But then the Seattle Times stepped over a longstanding line. It “bought” a full-page ad in its own newspaper for the Republican candidate. Yes, it did this over the objection of its own news staff, but the point is – it did it. At that point, the Times stopped being a reasonably objective news source, and became an instrument of propaganda.

Though I’ve understood the impulse, I’ve always disagreed with those whose first reaction is to write in with a “cancel my subscription” letter upon seeing anything with which they disagree. I expect to see things I disagree with in the paper. If I didn’t, then the paper wouldn’t be worth a damn. The present-day ignorance of the Tea Partiers is due in part to living life in a conservative echo chamber that only tells them what they already believe. Minds are like parachutes . . .

But I did it. I wrote the “cancel my subscription” letter. This was different. It wasn’t the content of the message – indeed, the Times also bought a full-page ad in favor of gay marriage (or was it marijuana legalization?), both of which I support. It was the corruption of the medium inherent in stepping outside the traditional confines of the editorial page, thereby fully entering the partisan fray. It was the abandonment of any pretense of neutrality, and the concurrent betrayal of longstanding traditions of journalistic integrity, that sparked my “cancel my subscription” letter.

Since then, I’ve received a letter and a phone call from the Times offering deep discounts to get me back. The letter actually addressed the paper’s rationale for running the ads – but only the party line about demonstrating the power of the press to garner some of the campaign billions that goes to TV (so bogus – did they mean proving the lack of power of the press?). They actually had the gall to try to guilt trip me in the letter by asking for my support of their hard-working professional news team. Excuse me? Isn’t that the same news team that the editors and publisher so disrespected that they ran roughshod over their loud protests by running these corrupting ads in the first place?

My terms for returning to a print subscription are simple: the Seattle Times must print a full-page apology, explaining why journalistic ethics forbid what the paper did. Although frankly I’m getting very comfortable with the idea of not having dead trees piling up next to the gas fireplace. I get my international and national news from NPR and the online NY Times, and my local news from the online Seattle PI – the paper I used to subscribe to before the Seattle Times ruthlessly drove it out of business.

The only thing I really miss is the comics.

It is tempting at such moments to wrap oneself in the authorial shroud of mystery, mumble a few incomprehensible platitudes about extreme characters, setting as foreboding, and the arc of the narrative – and then shamble off towards the rest room. But why? Such evasions are a form of narcissism, and besides, the hopelessly beguiled can’t be warned off so easily. So if you are interested, I’m ready to divulge the great secret of novel writing:

Get up every morning, or at least five out of seven mornings a week, and write for a few hours. Unless you are Pynchon or Gaddis, what you write each day should be connected in some fairly logical or at least aesthetic way to what you’ve written in the previous days. Don’t edit too much; just get it down, to the tune of 800 to 1600 words a day. If you can do that, then as surely as 2+2=4, you’ll have a novel within the year.

Novel writing is not nearly as romantic as it is made out to be in the movies. It’s a job, it’s work, it could even be described as a grind at times, though frankly I never find it to be as grinding as dragging myself to a real job. At first you might have to kick yourself in the butt, but like water clearing a channel, the more you write the greater the flow, until you are transported.

And then stuck. Until you dredge another channel.

My point to the budding novelist is that nobody ever writes a novel, if by writing a novel one means that great big thing with all the perfect bound pages that’s propping the door open. Novelists write a few pages, then walk the dog or go to the movies. They write a few more pages, then do the shopping, cook dinner, give the kids a bath. They make love, sleep (or pace the floors), write a few more pages, talk to mother on the telephone. Then write some more.

Then ignore mother, the bills, the kids – for a while. But always, when the writing gets sticky, they take a walk or mow the lawn. Do all this, and you’ll end up with a novel.

But the real question is, why? Too few pause to consider why it is that they want to throw another novel into the abyss. There are far more novels than readers roaming the killing fields of entertainment capitalism. The novel is an anachronism in this post-literate world. Make a movie; post yourself on youTube; join the latest fun run. Don’t sit in an airless dark room, getting carpal tunnel syndrome and gaining weight for nothing.

Yet writers galore imagine that salvation lies in writing a novel and getting it published. In the age of iUnivese and CreateSpace, getting published is easy. With KINDLE and Smashwords, even a bit of distribution is within reach. What’s hard is selling. Selling books is as awful as selling used cars, and far less remunerative. If you are writing to boost your ego or to make it big, don’t. Writing – no, not writing – getting rejected and ignored – is depressing as hell. There are a million other ventures where your odds are better. Nobody has time to read, let alone to read what you write.

Writing is heaven next to the hell of the sell. Sadly, many who write for the right reasons are less likely to sell precisely because their work is challenging, while the mercenary writers bogging down the shelves with widget books are cashing in on fifty shades of pabulum. Please don’t write to sell. Don’t write to be famous. Don’t write to be the person signing the books, which careens from ego trip (when readers show up) to slap in the face (when, as usual, you are abandoned in a corner). Believe me, if you are a person of grace and substance, the marketing paces expected of even the most minor 21st Century writer will have you sick of yourself before your first novel is in galleys.

So, that’s why not to write and publish a novel. IF – and only if – after all that, you still have to write that novel, then do it. Do it every day, bit by bit. Write it for the same reason you breathe. Write it to live, to fill your lungs and cleanse your blood, to participate fully in the stink of life. We need fewer novels, but we always need more of the kind of novel that can’t take no for an answer.

- Weldon Kees, quoted in Aspects of Robinson, p.27 (ed. by Christopher Buckley and Christopher Howell)

I’m staring at this quote from Weldon Kees because it resonates with me. Oh sure, it says “community of dwarfs” which is as un-PC as the title of the third (or was it fourth?) Firesign Theatre album, but that’s just the way people talked back in the fifties and sixties. The point is the “vast individual schizophrenia,” which must resonate with nearly all writers, and certainly all poets. Marvin Bell says something like (I’m paraphrasing) – “fortunately for poets, you can be privately insane, and publicly sane.” My writing is chock full of killers and sex fiends and extreme characters who do and say bad things – isn’t yours? That’s where the meat is, not because it sells books (it doesn’t always) but because it’s interesting. My latest, The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality, written under the pen name AB Bard, is about a frustrated poet who becomes a serial killer to get read. Sure, there’s some of me and nearly every poet (short of Mary Oliver) in there. But it’s pure fantasy; I have no homicidal tendencies. Therein lies the first level of schizophrenia.
But I think Kees was after something deeper. If you don’t know of Kees, he was a wonderful painter and poet of the 1930’s-1950’s whose car was found abandoned on the Golden Gate Bridge – presumed suicide. He was not one to address only the surface of things. The “vast individual schizophrenia” looks to me like the disconnect between public culture and the deeper ethic of the writer, artist or intellectual. To abandon the latter – to become a Babbitt or a Stepford Wife – is to “enter a community of dwarfs.” I’ll suggest this: Every writer worth reading lives in a state of individual schizophrenia, holding the absurd world in which he or she lives at arms length, while at the same time passionately embracing it. From this tension we sometimes claw our way towards great writing.

Saturday, Oct. 6, 10:30a.m. – Write on the Sound, Edmonds. I’ll teach a class called “It’s All One Muse.” Cause it is.

Friday, Oct. 19, 7:00p.m., Bookworm Exchange, Columbia City. I’m honored to be included in the penultimate poetry reading at this legendary venue, along with Larry Crist, Phillip !!!, Rayn Roberts, Michael Dylan Welch, Dobbie Norris, Connie Walle, and the incomparable Tammy Robecker. Kudos to Christopher J. Jarmick for his service to the Muse.

Saturday, January 12, 2013, Greenlake Library. There’s a rumor that AB Bard might appear. Hide the children.

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013, Match Coffee & Wine Bar, Duvall. I’ll read with AB Bard on my home turf. You city slickers are welcome to cross the Snoqualmie River – if it isn’t flooded.

Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, Tumwater Library. With the generous support of Humanities Washington, I’ll be presenting a historical slideshow and talk called BONES BENEATH OUR FEET: The Puget Sound Indian War of 1855-56. Please come join the conversation!