“I quit.” That’s how I felt by the end of the book fair I attended yesterday.
For the past few weeks I’ve been scrambling to make books for the Scottish Poetry Library’s small press fair. I printed and bound stacks of novels, because that’s what sold the most at the last one of these, and after all, publicising those is supposed to be why I’m doing these shows in the first place. And I made various sizes of blank journals. I came up with a few of these I was really happy with; these were more than just nice found paper. Two featured my cartoons for a change, and one was a creative kitchen sink of pages and pockets and slips of paper travel ephemera. So it was a rush, but everything came together. Doing the show would be the payoff for all that work.
I made all my train connections and managed to get myself and my rolly-bag of goods all the way down to Edinburgh, where my old pal Patrick met me at the station. I’ve really enjoyed having a few days to hang out with him, and he’s been showing me around my Scottish home-town, where, aside from the mess of the tram-tastrophe some surprisingly beautiful architectural projects have gone up.
It’s been odd to visit here: the nostalgia of revisiting this city feels less like going back to where I used to live and more like stepping into the pages of my novel about the place. It’d be very easy to slip into a line of thinking like “Oh, what am I doing in Wick? I should be back here.” But I’m not — not out of denial, but because it isn’t true. I could happily live here again, and maybe I will. But our time in Wick isn’t over, and it doesn’t feel like it should be yet. I trust that we’ll know when it is.
So yesterday morning I woke up early and took a taxi to the poetry library, stopping in at a grocery story nearby to pick up provisions so I could sit at my table all day and be with the people. I wasn’t doing any workshops, so I could just chat and meet the like-minded folk who were there, either as presenters or attendees.
The other book-folk with tables were, once again, a talented and friendly group. There’s no competition at all at these fairs, partly because the books we produce are so different, and because these people know from long, hard experience that art is not a competition — despite the public, the media, and the publishing industry being unable to conceive of it outside of a template of contests, sales lists, and royalty figures.
Hundreds of people walked past my table, picking up the books and putting them down, some quietly, some talking to me about my process. Despite what I’m about to say, I did feel honoured to meet these folks, to have the opportunity to share my work with them, perhaps inspire a few, to give them tools for creating their own work or just a book to use. The paper wallets were, as always, a particular favourite.
But as the day wore on, I grew tired — tired of being the guy enthusiastically giving away help and ideas, tired of selling lots of the wallets, the one thing on the table I cared least about. Oh, it’s fun to have figured out how to make them, and I like interacting daily with an unusual thing I’ve made myself. But there’s really none of me in them, nothing I add to them that anyone else couldn’t.
A cute little girl kept coming back to my table, lamenting that she didn’t have the money to buy a wallet. I ended up giving her a spare notebook I’d made as an experiment and wasn’t intending to sell, but had to be firm with myself about not giving away my work for free. But I tried to show her that she could do it herself, which I figured would be much more valuable and fun.
Meanwhile, folks passed by the table, and I sat or stood, trying to measure how much communication was enough to be warm and interesting, yet not so much as to be overbearing or make them feel trapped or obliged. So many people picked up the novels, but nobody bought one. Not one.
My table-neighbour was Joanna Gibbs, who was there with her artist’s books and her own version of the loss-leader: tiny leather books on thongs — which, it turns out, were the ones I’d seen online that had inspired me to make my own. I’d brought a few of mine, but when I was setting up and saw hers out, I quietly put them back into my bag — partly because hers were so much nicer and so much more carefully made, and partly to not appear to be trying to undercut her reasonably higher price.
She and I had been talking earlier, and I quickly got the impression that she was a kindred spirit. Her work is a real exploration, both on the page and in the process she uses to make it, and as we talked I found doors and windows opening in my head, like she was somehow giving me permission and the ability to think differently about this book work.
At one point I turned and said to her out of the blue, “Why am I doing this?”
It wasn’t asking just because I hadn’t sold any novels, though from a practical business perspective the question is appropriate enough. I asked because I felt tired and a bit sad. I still do.
What’s that about?
I made about ninety quid from the day, which really doesn’t justify all the hours of work and travel I put in — though I do appreciate that it’s not nothing; it isn’t an awful result. Last Christmas in Toronto I did much, much better, so that kind of figure was in my head. Yet it isn’t about making money.
Sitting with myself just now, I poked about inside and asked what this was about. It’s that I’m a creative person who happens to be able to do certain things, but I don’t feel like this is expressing anything I’m about right now. I don’t feel like making stuff in an attempt to appeal to strangers — especially when that stuff isn’t even really committed creative work. It’s more like craft, and I have no real investment in being a craftsperson.
The really troubling bit is that I don’t know what my art is. There’s this book I’m busy not-writing, partly because I was occupied with preparing a bookbinding workshop then making books for this fair, which has crowded out any non-copywriting work. I also don’t know what I would express: I live in a place I’m not from, and I spend my days there working in an anonymous bubble. There’s nothing really for me to react to.
Joanna suggested that I’m in transition (and wondered aloud about what she was doing there, too, which was reassuring, like she might be going through a similar period). Getting her permission to just let that be, to go with it and let myself go slow and quiet while I figure out what I should be creating, that was a real help.
So… I quit. No more book fairs. Not for now. If I was going because I felt that was what was required of an indie author/publisher to stay relevant and sell books — well, that argument is blown. I’m just further and further establishing myself as the guy who gives away helpful information for free, and, creatively, there’s really nothing more in that for me. I’ve done it, I’m hugely gratified that it’s been helpful to some folk, and I’m finished. I retire from that.
It’s not enough for me to just live and have a job, though. Maybe it should be enough to just be a good husband to Craig, and that’s certainly a big priority for me. But I also need to be processing and reflecting on my passage through this world and doing it creatively. That’s vital, and seems to just happen as a function of who I am.
The challenge is living in a world where we’re defined by our output, and it feels like we have to keep repeating what I’ve done before. I can allow myself to stop doing that. I don’t need to be “an author” and I don’t need to keep showing face at book fairs, trying to flog may handicrafts. But there’s still that creative urge, and it’s disconcerting to have neither a form for it nor the content to fill a form.
In an infinite universe, I know that I’m no one and nothing, and I’m fine with that. But inside the sphere of my consciousness, I’m the mechanism by which the universe understands itself. And I’m not quite getting it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
It’s a bit like Dachau (I’ve been getting a perverse pleasure from the comic effect of dropping “Dachau” into sentences lately): I’m having these experiences and wanting them to change me so profoundly that they dictate what I have to do next. But if I’m honest, I’m not getting that message.
So yesterday I packed up the books that hadn’t sold into my rolly-bag (most of what I’d brought, including all the novels), and trundled out of the poetry library, over the shining wet cobbles where an Edinburgh Saturday night was just starting to gear up (groups of lads bumping together like icebergs and young women tottering on stick-thin heels). I was finished with book shows, but it was nothing so dramatic as “I’m finished with books”.
“What’s next?” That’s my question. I don’t feel any strong enough pull to be able to provide an answer from myself. I feel like a goose whose magnetic beak thingy isn’t working, so he keeps circling and circling the earth.
For today, I’m just going to land here in my pal’s flat and watch movies.