Author! Author! People aren't reading as much as they used to, but they're writing a heck of a lot more.

From The Orange County Register – Friday, May 16, 2003
By Andre Mouchard

Writing is big. Mega. Vegas huge.

This is somewhat unexpected. Last year, the average American spent 109 hours reading, down from 123 hours in 1996, according to statistics published in a recent edition of Book magazine. As trends go, a sudden, sharp decline in reading would seem to be somewhat unhealthy for the corresponding act of writing.

Apparently, nobody cares.

Writing is the medium for a half-million new Internet scribes with broadband, for a small but growing world of performance poets, and for a large and growing world of unknown prose-heads sweating out Great American Novels a quarter-century after that particular art form was declared by many to be a festering corpse.

Oldsters, youngsters, mothers, fathers, children, students, teachers, student teachers; everybody is entitled to write, poorly or otherwise. And everybody, it seems, is cashing in on that entitlement. Writing classes are booming. Writing clubs are booked. Writing seminars, retreats, summer camps – all are experiencing peak moments.

"There are a lot of writers. A lot more than you'd think," says Kim Hawley, chief executive of iUniverse, an online publishing house that is one of several new companies cashing in on the writing boom.

"Some days it seems like everybody is a writer."

"IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY AND, WELL, YOU KNOW, MOIST ..."

It's a boomer thing, many say. A natural result of what happens when 80 million, mostly well-educated people reach a stage of life when it's time to write up or shut up or croak.

Maybe so. But that doesn't explain a recent surge in creative writing on college campuses. Even places like the University of California, Irvine, which has one of the better-regarded writing programs in the country, are coming up with new fields of study for a new generation of writing-oriented students.

There are other forces at play, too, some large and some seemingly banal. The rise of e-mail, for example, has created a generation of people as familiar with writing their thoughts as they are with speaking over the phone.

A few people trace the writing boom to terror and a general feeling of cultural drift.

"Right after Sept. 11 we saw enrollment in our writing classes just jump," says Shea Caron, who helps run UCI Extension, a night-school world that takes any student who signs up in time and can pay $200-$400 per 10-week class. Enrollment in UCI Extension fiction and autobiography courses has tripled in the past two years, Caron says. Many students, she adds, report a need to "get something off their chest."

"It's not an odd thing, if you think about it. The economy turned down at that time. We all had something to say and time to say it. ... The world became more reflective.

"And writing is a way to fully experience the world," adds Caron, who holds a master's degree in creative writing. "You get to create a world that pleases you or makes sense to you. You can even come up with a happy ending."

The writing boom is also partly about commerce.

Traditional publishing houses last year churned out a record 145,000 new titles, a 20 percent jump from four years earlier. They set their record while continuing a long-standing habit of rejecting or, when feeling deliciously sadistic, ignoring nine of 10 manuscripts sent their way.

Writing has even reached a point where its reward system now resembles other forms of artistic capitalism's.

In writing, the weak (aka, 99.9 percent of those practicing the art) are lucky to earn the per-hour wage of a Wal-Mart greeter. Meanwhile, the strong (a tiny but often-photographed world of brand- name writers and celebrities and celebrity writers) get paydays once reserved for power hitters and bankable movie stars. J.K. Rowling, who invented "Harry Potter," is worth more than the queen of her home country, England. True story.

Still, money flowing from publishers to writers is just part of the writing craze.

Publish-on-demand, an industry of about 100 smallish dot-com companies, is thriving because it has made self- publishing – once limited to the expensive world of the vanity press – affordable to the masses. By spending $100- $2,000, anyone can turn their steaming piles of words on loose paper into things that look like, smell like and, once in a long while, sell like real books.

Last year, a record 55,000 writers self-published their books. By next year, this semi-desperate army is expected to swell to over 100,000, and within five years self-publishing is likely to dwarf traditional publishing.

But the writing boom is about something bigger than statistics and dollars and frustration. It's about power. And worth. And a desire to leave some sort of emotional skid mark on lives that, increasingly, look like they might get no mark at all.

Once viewed as the sewer job of creative endeavors; an act that is usually lonesome, endless and seldom compensated, writing is one more thing – chic.

"People believe they should be heard. That it's important to be heard," says online publisher Hawley.

"It's part of a socioeconomic shift that's happened in the past 20 years or so. Everybody is a free agent now. We're all in charge of our own destiny.

"And for a lot of people, independence translates into writing a book."

"IT WAS DARK, DUDE, DARK AND STORMIN' ..."

Nick Novick pulls no punches.

"That," he says, pointing at a copy of his first novel, "Dead Lawyers," "makes me feel accomplished."

This seems unfair, somehow. Novick, 77, of Irvine, is a retired Orange County prosecutor. He's been married 52 years. His two children, now grown, pay their own taxes and have never been to jail. He's run a company, traveled the world and served his country during World War II.

A self-published book – about a serial killer who uses the name of the Greek god Hermes and spends most of his time knocking off Newport Beach lawyers – should be a cherry atop a life that continues to be lived very well. And it is that. But, Novick says, it's something more, too.

"I write 16 hours straight sometimes. I don't notice the time. Don't even know it's gone. And then I don't write again for a few weeks.

"But I'd like to write every day. I never have writer's block."

Forget punching him for this. Instead, consider: Novick, who still can ride his bike 50 miles for a workout, who still volunteers his time for community causes, who this year will spend several weeks driving through the Southeast, considers writing the most satisfying thing he does.

"I'm OK," he adds, when asked if he's any good at it. "I'm getting better."

He's sold about 2,000 copies of "Dead Lawyers" since it came out in January. He's signed books at a Santa Ana bookstore. He's pointed his lawyer friends to Borders and Barnes and Noble, where they can order a copy and get it 10 days later. He's schmoozed.

That makes "Dead Lawyers" a huge success in self-publishing, where fewer than 5 percent of all titles sell more than 500 copies. Still, like others in the self-publishing boom, Novick is hoping to make a jump.

"It would be wonderful if the book could be picked up" by a mainstream publisher, he says. He doesn't need the money. But he wouldn't mind the acceptance.

"A check would feel good."

Dwayne Tarver, 41, of Rancho Santa Margarita believes he's about to see that check. He's got several books in self-published print, including one of the best-selling translations of "The Art of War" and a novel, "Soul Purpose." Tarver has been picked for what iUniverse calls its "Star Program," meaning he and his work are being marketed, at some level, through the company's retail partner, Barnes and Noble.

"I still write mostly for enjoyment. It's hard to describe the thrill," says Tarver, who writes under the name D.E. Tarver.

"But the reception I've gotten so far from the book is that it seems like it's about to make the leap to a much wider audience. I think this is all about to change for me."

Allene Symons knows the feeling.

In 1991 the Santa Ana journalism instructor appeared on the "Today" show, touting her then-new travel book about Americans who retire in other countries. "Adventures Abroad" should have been a hit. It was a work of nonfiction targeting a market (those about to retire) that likes to spend money on good nonfiction. And it was published by a mainstream company with heavy marketing clout. The plug on national TV was proof.

"But it was a bad time," Symons says. "The economy went bad that year and, well ... ."

She never quit her job, which at the time was to manage the Rizzoli bookstore in South Coast Plaza. Later, that store would close.

Still, she hasn't given up on writing. She's an officer in the Orange County chapter of the California Writers Club, which grew recently to 35 members.

This year, the group self-published an anthology, "Twist of Orange." In it, Symons has a couple of humorous essays and a few poems, genres she's hasn't published in previously.

She's also considering republishing a novel she wrote in the mid-1980s, "Vagabond Prophet: A Novel of Nostradamus." That book, a biographical fiction, sold about 15,000 copies in two printings through mainstream publishers. She might self-publish this time, if only to test the market.

Symons isn't expecting fame or money or anything connected to either. She isn't even positive people will read new writers.

"I don't think anyone in our (writing) group has any illusions of making a living from this. And if anybody does, I would be quick to dispel that notion ... very quick," she says.

"Writing is like anything in the arts. The odds are against you. Still."