Hi Writers,
Today’s exhibit from the WD archives, typing which put me in the mood to write very stream-of-conscious and use lots of run on sentences, is by everyone’s favorite beatnik, Jack Kerouac, from the January 1962 issue of Writer’s Digest; so here it is, dig it man:

by Jack Kerouac
Writers are made, for anybody who isn’t illiterate can write; but geniuses of the writer art like Melville, Whitman or Thoreau are born. Let’s examine the word “genius.” It doesn’t mean screwiness or eccentricity or excessive “talent.” It is derived from the Latin word gignere (to beget) and a genius is simply a person who originates something never known before. Nobody but Melville could have written Moby Dick, not even Whitman or Shakespeare. Nobody but Whitman could have conceived, originated and written Leaves of Grass; Whitman was born to write a Leaves of Grass and Melville was born to write a Moby Dick. “It ain’t whatcha do,” Sy Oliver and James Young said, “it’s the way atcha do it.” Five thousand writing class students who study “required reading” can put their hand to the legend of Faustus but only one Marlowe was born to do it the way he did.
    I always get a laugh to hear Broadway wiseguys talk about “talent” and “genius,” but the genius, the originating force, really belongs to Brahms; the violin virtuoso is simply a talented interpreter—in other words, a “Talent.” Or you’ll hear people say that so-and-so is a “major writer” because of his “large talent.” There can be no major writer without original genius. Artists of genius, like Jackson Pollock, have painted things that have never been seen before. Anybody who’s seen his immense Samapattis of color has no right to criticize his “crazy method” of splashing and throwing and dancing around.
    Take the case of James Joyce: people said he “wasted” his “talent” on the stream of consciousness style, when in fact he was simply born to originate it. How would you like to spend your old age reading books about contemporary life written in the pre-Joycean style of, say, Ruskin, or William Dean Howells, or Taine? Some geniuses come with heavy feet and march solemnly forward like Dreiser, yet no one ever wrote about that America of his as well as he. Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it’s that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through—originality.


As Kerouac writes at the end:
“But it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”

Keep Writing,
Maria

Hi Writers,
Welcome to the archives of March, in which I'm posting an excerpt a day (more or less) throughout March.

Hi Writers,
I have a confession: I don't really think about the official demographic data when putting together the editorial content for Writer's Digest. I prefer to think our magazine appeals to writers who cut a wide swath across the age, gender, income spectrum.

At any rate, our marketing department recently surveyed our readers and this is what they came back with:

Age:
74% 41 and Over
47% Over 50

Gender:
37% Male
63% Female

State:
18% FL, NY, TX (6% each)
12% California

Education:
64% College Degree
27% Master's or higher

Experience
31% Published writer
55% Serious aspiring writer

67% are primarily interested in writing fiction
40% also interested in writing screenplays
39% also interested in writing non-fiction
25% also interested in writing memoirs
24% also interested in writing poetry

71% primarily use Windows XP
75% primarily use Microsoft Word

26% read The Writer
18% read Poets & Writers
10% read Publisher's Weekly
 
51% visit WritersMarket.com
13% visit Publisher's Weekly (pw.com)
9% visit MediaBistro.com

So please let me know where you fit—or don't fit—into this survey.
Are the marketing folks way off base, or right on target? As always, I appreciate your feedback.

Keep Writing,
Maria
P.S. In my quest to get my bosses to yell "uncle" and let me digitize the WD archives, I'm going to post cool stuff from our archives all through March. So if you're a lover of literary ephemera come back for more.