Hope in the Absurd

Just read an informative (but stark!) post on Ian Irvine’s site about the world of publishing.  Some people may find an article like this helpful.  Some might be discouraged. There are all kinds of truths here.  Some nice.  Some not so nice.

Here’s the sad truth: most people who write a book will never get it published, half the writers who are published won’t see a second book in print, and most books published are never reprinted. What’s more, half the titles in any given bookshop won’t sell a single copy there, and most published writers won’t earn anything from their book apart from the advance.

So don’t expect anything from your writing apart from the personal fulfillment of having learned your craft and created a work that didn’t exist before.

I made my peace with this absurdity a long time ago and in the process found an enduring motive to set words to paper.  But if this post should send you into a deep funk.  Stop.  And recall Camus’ Sisyphus:

All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.