{"id":1658,"date":"2011-12-10T08:40:03","date_gmt":"2011-12-10T16:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2011-12-10T08:40:03","modified_gmt":"2011-12-10T16:40:03","slug":"chris-orcutts-barbaric-yawp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/chris-orcutts-barbaric-yawp\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Orcutt's Barbaric Yawp"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the\u00a0world.”\u2014Walt Whitman,\u00a0<\/em>Leaves of Grass<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Jen Cray<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

THE OTHER DAY, I wrote that I was going to \u201ctake it easy\u201d when it came to self-promotion, but you know what? Screw that.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to take it easy. I don\u2019t want to be modest, humble, or<\/em> self-deprecating. I\u2019ve done that all my life, and I\u2019m sick of it. I was raised by honest and hardworking Mainers\u2014parents and<\/em> grandparents\u2014who imbued in me the sense that a person shouldn\u2019t brag or go on about himself. Promoting yourself, they suggested, was unseemly.<\/p>\n

But as a 20-year professional writer of journalism, video scripts, magazine articles, technical manuals, speeches and a ton of unpublished (and some published) fiction, I\u2019ve learned a few things, and one of the things\u00a0I\u2019ve learned is that there are\u00a0a lot of\u00a0lesser writers out there doing very well for themselves, and do you know why?<\/p>\n

\"\"
A recent newspaper article by Kate Goldsmith of the N. Dutchess News about me and "A Real Piece of Work."<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s right\u2014because they promoted themselves. Because they talked about their work at every turn and made no apologies. Because they didn\u2019t wait around for outside approval of their work or of their status as writers. Because they declared themselves<\/em> writers and forced the world to consider them as such.<\/p>\n

As a kid, I moved too many times; an average of once a year until I was 18. Consequently, wherever I was living, I didn\u2019t want to make waves. I just wanted to get along. Even in the town where I graduated from high school, although I threw some legendary parties there, I was hardly known as Mr. Popular or Mr. Self-Promoter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sad fact of it is, I\u2019ve spent the last 20 years playing down myself and my accomplishments, and I don\u2019t want to do it anymore.<\/p>\n

Recently the pain of continuous rejection of my work by mainstream publications brought me precipitously close to taking my own life. Beyond that, I found myself consistently thinking that I wouldn\u2019t mind if I were hit by a bus or struck by a falling tree limb. Ultimately I wanted to die, but I didn\u2019t want to take responsibility for the act.<\/p>\n

Since then, I\u2019ve gotten on some new medications that are working wonders. Say what you will about the pharmaceutical industry, but as a guy with a potentially paralyzing mental illness, I can declare with authority that some of what they produce actually works<\/em> and is doing some good in the world.<\/p>\n

In my case, they\u2019ve cleared up my thinking, made me 5x more productive, and inspired me to speak up for myself and my work\u2014with confidence\u2014for the first time in my life.<\/p>\n

So allow me, if you will, to \u201csound my barbaric yawp[s] over the roofs of the world,\u201d to \u201ccelebrate myself,\u201d as Walt Whitman also put it\u2014to share some of my accomplishments and to declare myself to the universe as a unique creation, never before seen or to be seen again when I shuffle off this mortal coil:<\/p>\n

I am a very good writer, and I believe I have the capacity to become a great one. My idols, the writers to whose level I aspire,\u00a0are the best of the best: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, White, Cain, Chandler, Cheever, Carver, Nabokov,\u00a0Keillor and Boyle.<\/p>\n

I have written millions<\/em> of words. Millions. First as a philosophy student, then as a newspaper reporter and freelance writer. Later as a technical writer and speechwriter. Recently as a playwright. And forever as a storyteller. In published and unpublished novels and stories, not to mention 20 years of journal writing, I conservatively estimate I\u2019ve written 5 million words.<\/p>\n

In the past 18 months, I have written 25 stories and at least a dozen humorous sketches, all of which have been rejected (so far) by mainstream publications. Of these works, by my excruciatingly high standards I would say a dozen are very good and 6\u20138 are great pieces of work. I\u2019m not giving up on any of them, but especially not the great ones. I\u2019m confident that some editor out there is going to \u201cget\u201d them and want to publish the work. I\u2019m confident that before I die I will write one solid collection of short stories, and I’m also confident that if I continue to write my very best, I might, just might, pen one perfect short story\u2014one \u201cThe Lady with the Dog<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
You have to admit, you admire my brazenness and consistency.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have written 2 exceptional mystery\/PI novels\u2014A Real Piece of Work <\/em>and\u00a0The Rich Are Different<\/em>\u2014that I believe have the potential to become modern classics in the genre. They are as well-written and well-told stories as any being published by mainstream publishers today. And I have drafts and outlines of 4 more. One book, you got dick; three, four, five books, you got yourself a series<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I am not a writer who can be pigeonholed, even if, for years, I kept trying to do it to myself. I can do it all\u2014and well\u2014and I refuse to make apologies for it anymore.<\/p>\n

I am proud that I have learned to write\u00a0almost entirely on my own\u2014by writing daily and reading deeply about the subject.<\/p>\n

I write every day, and have written every day\u2014at least a page\u2014for 20 years. It\u2019s how I process the world. The world doesn\u2019t make sense to me until I write it down. Writing gives me clarity, and I try to give back to the world some of the clarity it gives me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Screw<\/em><\/strong> taking it easy.<\/p>\n

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the\u00a0world.”\u2014Walt Whitman,\u00a0Leaves of Grass THE OTHER DAY, I wrote that I was going to \u201ctake it easy\u201d when it came to self-promotion, but you know what? Screw that. I don\u2019t want to take it easy. I don\u2019t want to be modest, humble, or self-deprecating. I\u2019ve done … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18,19,20,7,24,25,11,12,27,13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-real-piece-of-work","category-dramaticwriting","category-fiction","category-journalism","category-personal","category-speechwriting","category-technical","category-dakota-stevens-mysteries-series","category-the-rich-are-different","category-webcontent","category-writers","category-writingexperiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}