Feature: Sincerity and Sales

By Ryan Amfahr Longhorn

Contemporary writers face some hard aesthetic decisions between sincerity and marketing. The best fiction (and the best literary non-fiction and poetry, for that matter) is, in my opinion, a work conceived in solitude, carried to term in solitude, and reflecting the utmost respect for a reader’s intelligence and ability to empathize with genuine characters—a reflection and insight and set of choices made, also, in solitude. And this solitude will usually produce the most sincere writing you can muster—and by sincere I mean no sacrifice of narrative integrity to the gods of the one-liner that might go over well at a reading; simply, sincerity as the act of moving the reader without relying on gimmicks.

But when your work is completed you must sacrifice the privacy of the act of creation for publication to a readership of a few hundred to a few hundred thousand. You’ll be expected to give readings to a friendly but naturally skeptical audience. You’ll be interviewed. You’ll be asked standard questions on the origins of your ideas and what your work “means.” And it’s here that you make a difficult choice between aesthetic authenticity and popularity.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive propositions. It’s entirely possible for a writer to be completely sincere in the solitary act of writing, and yet be incredibly popular with a large base of readers at the same time without reverting to narrative trickery. The problem young writers, or beginning writers face, comes on after attending their first reading where inevitably a weak writer steps up to the open mic and appeals to the crowd’s sense of politics (getting applause), or fires off a poem rife with humorous anecdotes about a lemon of a car (getting laughs), or reads an excerpt from a humorous but unoriginal story about sibling rivalry (getting laughs AND applause). And the young writer in the audience witnessing these breaks of applause and laughter may unfortunately get the impression that it’s more important to please the mob than to please the individual ethereal reader who inevitably ends the narrative process with a published book or story or poem in solitude. Writers write alone, and readers read alone.

But it’s impossible to discount the need to market one’s work. A writer in the 21st century competes with television, film, social networking, 24-hour news, and video games—all of which require nothing more than passivity. To read short fiction or poetry or labyrinthine novels requires work. Hard work. And lots of time. Given the competition, yeah, you’re going to need to make them laugh, you’re going to need to make them applaud, you’re going to, dare I say it, need to make them cry.

The prime difference between sincerity and trickery is that these ends can always be achieved regardless of your aesthetic disposition—it’s just a matter of the lasting impression on the reader or the audience.

The writer who uses gimmickry to entertain his base will drop some funny jokes, will get a few laughs, and might sell their work. But they’ll be forgotten quickly.

The writer who approaches the act of creation with humility, with indifference to high school-ish popularity contests at local readings, with a charge to produce the most solid work said writer can pull off, will—and I guarantee this—find a slowly building emotional response from readers and audiences who appreciate and respect the risk the writer has taken to expose his heart. You might not get a lot of laughs at your readings (at first), and the applause may be light afterward (at first), but you’ll find a good number of people quietly approaching later, over coffee, to give you props for what you’ve done.

If you’re a sincere writer, your reader will fall asleep and dream about your characters. They will spread word of your work to anyone who will listen. They will write you letters. You will find the buildup to notoriety slow and rife with insecurities but it will happen nonetheless.

And, if you’re a gimmick, you’ll get lots of attention for a few minutes and then largely be forgotten.

My prescription to you, if I may be so bold, is to ask you to take stock of who you are, why you write, what you intend to accomplish, and then, choose sides.

Ryan Amfahr Longhorn’s fiction has appeared in the North American Review and the Sandy
River Review. Longhorn is currently taking time off school to write his first novel. For more information about Mr. Longhorn, please visit his Twitter page.