| My Blog |
To follow my regular blog, please visit
Elisa Hategan's Blog at Subversive Writer,
my Wordpress blog site.
I try to write a new blog every week or so.
I look forward to seeing your comments
and hope that you'll enjoy the articles.
If you would like me to write an article on
any given subject, please let me know. I
would also ask for a small donation to
cover my research and composing time.
Any donations will be much appreciated.
Elisa Hategan's Blog at Subversive Writer,
my Wordpress blog site.
I try to write a new blog every week or so.
I look forward to seeing your comments
and hope that you'll enjoy the articles.
If you would like me to write an article on
any given subject, please let me know. I
would also ask for a small donation to
cover my research and composing time.
Any donations will be much appreciated.
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Elisa Hategan
© 2007 Elisa Hategan www.elisahategan.com
My Philosophy...
Until now, if you chose to be a full-time writer you would face an
uncertain, grueling profession - you could get piecemeal publication,
one or two poems at a time in various magazines, and get rejected
ten, twenty times over for no reason other than the editor’s style
does not reflect your own, or they have an idea of an angle for the
new issue and your work just doesn’t fit in. Not to mention how you
paid your rent or managed to put food on the table.
Where could you go for money? One place you tend to assume
artists can get funding from are municipal and provincial art councils.
However, that doesn't mean that the jury members on those arts
committees are impartial and don't have their own preferential
biases toward certain rather traditional types of art, which mostly
leads to favouring and funding stale duplications of the status quo.
In the summer of 2005 I wrote a proposal for a literary grant - it
would have enabled me to finish a poetry book project. I didn’t get
the grant, but managed to publish the book anyway - on my own. It
was the last straw that made me, at last, awaken to the fact that I
should just step back in time and look at the historical context of self-
publishing. Most major writers of the past, including the 19th French
poets I looked up to, all self-published, then distributed, their work
in various circles, until it “caught on”.
No self-respecting publishing house of the time had published
Rimbaud, or Baudelaire, or any of the more scandalous writers of
later day. But those “scandalous” writers - think Henry Miller, Anais
Nin - eventually swayed, and altered the course of the industry.
When the beat poets of the 1970s made up their own poetry, they
were distributing it illicitly, like political manifestos, in taverns and on
the street, and nobody gave a hoot as to whether the prestigious
Harvard Review published them.
When rappers put verse to song, everybody laughed. They’re crazy,
they said. This isn’t art. Until it caught on.
Always remember that demand is what drives any industry. The
publishing press does not matter. We are in a new age, where talent
only, NOT editors and NOT censors, will control which way the
industry goes.
It is time that we bypass the long line of desperate wanna-be
authors who agonize over how to peddle their book to self-
righteous jerks, snotty agents and editors who have never been
published themselves.
Once you have something in print, it CHANGES you. It’s hard to
describe, it’s like a process begins inside you, deep at the molecular
structure of your being; your self-esteem unwinds, as does your
realization that it IS possible. ANYTHING is possible.
There is freedom. There is SUCH a freedom that comes from
publishing on your own. And to hell with the publishing houses.
NOBODY needs them. They would like to scare people into thinking
that they will never be successful unless they are “approved” or
“accepted”, but I really believe it’s a gimmick, a scare tactic to keep
people in line and obeying the process of “how we do things”.
It is my hope that through this website I can empower readers, as
well as writers and free-thinkers who are at the mercy of publishers,
editors and critics who would rather drive talent into the ground
than allow the freedom of diversity to take over literature as we
know it today.
There are so many talented voices out there, and we are all making
our way through the muck. But at least we are shaping our own
futures. We can begin today to promote ourselves subversively and
revolutionize the world. We hold our destinies in our own hands.
Until now, if you chose to be a full-time writer you would face an
uncertain, grueling profession - you could get piecemeal publication,
one or two poems at a time in various magazines, and get rejected
ten, twenty times over for no reason other than the editor’s style
does not reflect your own, or they have an idea of an angle for the
new issue and your work just doesn’t fit in. Not to mention how you
paid your rent or managed to put food on the table.
Where could you go for money? One place you tend to assume
artists can get funding from are municipal and provincial art councils.
However, that doesn't mean that the jury members on those arts
committees are impartial and don't have their own preferential
biases toward certain rather traditional types of art, which mostly
leads to favouring and funding stale duplications of the status quo.
In the summer of 2005 I wrote a proposal for a literary grant - it
would have enabled me to finish a poetry book project. I didn’t get
the grant, but managed to publish the book anyway - on my own. It
was the last straw that made me, at last, awaken to the fact that I
should just step back in time and look at the historical context of self-
publishing. Most major writers of the past, including the 19th French
poets I looked up to, all self-published, then distributed, their work
in various circles, until it “caught on”.
No self-respecting publishing house of the time had published
Rimbaud, or Baudelaire, or any of the more scandalous writers of
later day. But those “scandalous” writers - think Henry Miller, Anais
Nin - eventually swayed, and altered the course of the industry.
When the beat poets of the 1970s made up their own poetry, they
were distributing it illicitly, like political manifestos, in taverns and on
the street, and nobody gave a hoot as to whether the prestigious
Harvard Review published them.
When rappers put verse to song, everybody laughed. They’re crazy,
they said. This isn’t art. Until it caught on.
Always remember that demand is what drives any industry. The
publishing press does not matter. We are in a new age, where talent
only, NOT editors and NOT censors, will control which way the
industry goes.
It is time that we bypass the long line of desperate wanna-be
authors who agonize over how to peddle their book to self-
righteous jerks, snotty agents and editors who have never been
published themselves.
Once you have something in print, it CHANGES you. It’s hard to
describe, it’s like a process begins inside you, deep at the molecular
structure of your being; your self-esteem unwinds, as does your
realization that it IS possible. ANYTHING is possible.
There is freedom. There is SUCH a freedom that comes from
publishing on your own. And to hell with the publishing houses.
NOBODY needs them. They would like to scare people into thinking
that they will never be successful unless they are “approved” or
“accepted”, but I really believe it’s a gimmick, a scare tactic to keep
people in line and obeying the process of “how we do things”.
It is my hope that through this website I can empower readers, as
well as writers and free-thinkers who are at the mercy of publishers,
editors and critics who would rather drive talent into the ground
than allow the freedom of diversity to take over literature as we
know it today.
There are so many talented voices out there, and we are all making
our way through the muck. But at least we are shaping our own
futures. We can begin today to promote ourselves subversively and
revolutionize the world. We hold our destinies in our own hands.