Noir fiction for the modern reader.

Over at the Kill Zone today, James Scott Bell posted a very articulate blog about self-doubt among writers. According to Jim, virtually all writers are gripped with fear for most of their lives, 100% certain that they will be exposed as frauds or worse. Even the likes of Stephen King, Jim says, live in fear because they’ve set the bar so high with their previous successes, topping it often appears impossible.

Jim is himself an excellent writer with quite a few novels under his belt, along with the how-to book, Plot And Structure, which should be (IMO) required reading for all writers. So he’s not coming at this from left field. I’m sure he’s been plagued with doubt himself. And, like most of us, he gets over it after he writes each book, only to have it rear its head again as he sits down to write another one.

But when Stephen King or Dean Koontz start whining about self-doubt and how they’re just positive their lack of talent will be exposed, it’s real hard for me to gin up any sympathy, you know what I mean? And I certainly don’t get the touchy-feely “we’re all in this together” message that I’m supposed to be getting. Those guys, and others like them, sell millions and millions of books, they get huge advances, they sign movie deals worth a king’s ransom, and they crank out best-selling novels like Burger King cranks out Whoppers. Now, I know, they’re all worried about whether their next book will be any good, but who cares? They know deep down–and the rest of us know, too–that their next book is going to light up the charts just like all the rest of them did. All they have to do is click “send” and watch their latest novel shoot off to their eager publishers.

Real self-doubt, on the other hand, resides in those of us who have never been able to get the attention of even a single can’t-be-bothered literary agent or a mainstream publisher, those of us who wander unguided into the darkness of the self-publishing netherworld, those of us whose books can never seem to get off the ground, never take flight.

Real self-doubt resides in those of us who labor away at the computer, sweating out plot developments and dialogue just like Stephen King does, without being propped up by seven-figure advances, wondering if this will be the book that finally gets a little attention, gets a few readers.

Real self-doubt resides in those of us who are denied real membership in the elitist Mystery Writers of America and other such organizations who sneer at self-published authors, who claim our work is merely part of a giant “slush pile”, who arrogantly claim we’re contributing to a mountain of “crap” that has been made possible by the recent ease of self-publishing.

Real self-doubt resides in those of us who really do wonder, given all the above roadblocks thrown in our path, if we can write after all. And the question plagues us, is it all worth it if our only destiny is to be crushed under someone else’s train that has already left the station.

Put a bestselling author in those circumstances and let’s see what happens to his/her self-doubt. Want to bet it would feel a lot more real?

Scott D Parker posted a blog on the Do Some Damage site today which got me to thinking. He posited the analogy of a book to a concert t-shirt.

When you read a book, according to Scott, the book becomes an artifact of the reading experience, in much the same manner as a t-shirt becomes the artifact of a concert you attended. People see the book, they can assume you’ve read it. People see the t-shirt, they can assume you went to the concert. If he reads a book, the experience is internal, personal, and not needing a souvenir for verification. He goes on to say that in a book, the story is everything, and the medium is irrelevant. As long as the material can be delivered to the reader, what’s the difference if it comes through an iPad or a 500-page hardcover? It’s through this prism that the book becomes like the t-shirt. An artifact. This is a somewhat original way of looking at it and it works, up to a point.

I would highlight a big difference, though. If I want to reread a particular passage in the book, or reread the entire book, for that matter, I can do so. The written words are still there. The concert’s music, however, is long gone, vanishing the moment it was played. The t-shirt is just a memory of the event, embalmed in a cotton-polyester blend and growing more distant with each passing day. If I want to hear Don Henley sing, “Freedom, oh freedom, that’s just some people talkin’” once again, well, I’m going to have to go to another concert.

Now, I know that ebooks offer the same reviewing capabilities as print books; if you want to reread something, just scroll back to the point and read away. But Scott cited Stephen King, who in a recent interview, said he felt a certain “not-thereness” to ereading. It’s exactly this “not-thereness” which crystallizes the difference between books and digital files.

Books are much more than mere souvenirs of reading. Rather, they are the physical repository of the art itself. They are tangible proof that the author and his muse came together in a magical confluence of events. Their covers are large enough to be examined in close detail. They can be signed, displayed, resold, reprinted (with different covers), and, perhaps centuries later, gazed upon with awe from behind a velvet rope. And, not incidentally, they can never be deleted with the stroke of a key.

I remember seeing the original Magna Carta around 20 years ago, as it rolled through New Orleans. It was on tour along with several other “documents of democracy”, and was displayed inside an air-conditioned tractor trailer, out of the bright sun. It was lit with the dimmest of bulbs, difficult to see, fading after nearly eight hundred years of existence. But there it was. The paper that started it all. I mean the very paper with the very ink forming the very words which, back in the early 13th century, shook England to its core and would go on to resonate around the world. It’s hard for me to imagine staring at a digital file on a computer screen with that same sense of reverence.

Don’t get me wrong, now. I’m not blind to reality. I know digitalization is here to stay and it’s only going to have a larger presence, much larger. Furthermore, it’s going to be mostly to our benefit. A quick check of the blogosphere–Joe Konrath, for example–will convince even the most hardline skeptic. Ebooks are the future and we’re probably all going to be better off for it. Indie authors will multiply and thrive because they’ll be able to draw a straight line between themselves and their readers. This is a fantastic development which could never have been foreseen just five or ten years ago.

But in the process, we’re going to lose something. Whether you call it the artifact of the experience or the vault of the knowledge itself, it’s going to disappear, straight into the digital mist.