The sky is the kind of blue that hurts your eyes; all the colours are so sharp – the rich greens, the bright whites, the hurtful blues – they set a digitally enhanced backdrop and turn your walk into the opening scene of a feature film. Your inner dialog – the monolog over the credits. The busker on the corner – an extra, soon to be the next big thing when the title song hits the charts.
Your name appears on the screen, moments after the title, and almost as large. In a few months, you’ll walk the red carpet when your movie premieres with the busker on your arm, and cameras flashing like lightning bugs. And some advertising underling whispers your name into a tabloid writer’s ear, a few words that will earn you every cover in the grocery isle.
Fame is a dirty word.
While writers can make or break a career with the right words placed beside a candid photo; we rarely achieve the kind of recognition that actors and musicians receive. Robert Pattinson gets more press than Stephanie Myer. And how many times have you seen a movie never knowing it was a book?
At The Glass Coin, our focus is to use every means at our disposal to promote our writer’s byline, website and anything else we can get our endorsing little hands on. Getting the word out is not something most writers do naturally. We’d rather just tell our stories or pen our poems in peace. But in the internet age, – when everyone and his brother has a blog – writers need to be working as much on promotion as on their craft.
Getting the word out is not something most writers do naturally.
Fame is a dirty word and unfairly acquainted with selling out. Artists are supposed to slave for their craft and not be concerned with rewards or recognition. From my experience, it isn’t the artist making up these rules, but the disembodied voice of envy.
There are more artists than opportunities in our society and the arts are grossly under valued, with a few extravagant exceptions. Unless your favourite author is JK Rowling, chances are your friends haven’t heard of her yet. So while the writer needs to be thinking about promotion, she also needs to realize that she’s picked the wrong road to fame.
What does it mean that an actor playing a character gets his name in large font at the start, while the creator of that character gets a small mention when everyone has already left the theatre? Anyone who has seen an embarrassing performance can tell you that acting isn’t as easy as it looks, but bad acting takes much less time then writing a bad novel. The reason so many bad novels get published is the same reason bad acting makes it to the big screen – it’s not always the great ones who make a name for themselves, but those who make an art out of networking, publicity and fame.
But it’s a beautiful day. Enjoy it! And let it inspire the next thing you write. If you’re like me, you have no aspirations to be on the screen, but it might be nice to write that unknown story that the next blockbuster is based on.
Jo
JM Prescott – Editor
The Glass Coin
Wonderful editorial. Anytime I get discouraged I just think of why I write…for me…and then I just keep going!!