Five Questions with Stephen Markley, Author of “Publish This Book”
June 17th, 2010
Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly had to say about Stephen Markley’s latest book Publish This Book: “It doesn’t matter what problems you’ve got with Markley’s sprawling, self-referential account of his efforts to sell a book about his efforts to sell the book he’s writing at that very moment—he’s already anticipated your criticisms, from the imperfect echoes of writers like Dave Eggers and Chuck Klosterman to the preponderance of dick jokes and other forms of frat boy humor. Of course, on a basic level, the book is a stupid idea, he admits early on; later, he concedes, I’ve just been winging it, and it shows. He might have been better off cutting down some of the more self-indulgent sections, like a mini-history of his tenure as a political sex columnist for his college paper or an exploration of the fake memoir phenomenon featuring made-up conversations with Chicago drug dealers and underprivileged high school students. But there are compelling, emotionally resonant passages, too: a reflection on what it’s like to shake loose the influence of a literary mentor, for example, or a best friend’s realization of just how much an unplanned pregnancy has changed his life.”
Q: What can you tell us about your current book Publish This Book?
Publish This Book was basically a bizarre post-post-modern concept born of my frustration at trying to get a novel or non-fiction book published. I felt as if I’d been banging my head against the wall for awhile trying to get a writing career off the ground, and so it was my way of venting some of that frustration. Or at least, at first it was because it grew into something far different. It’s a book not only for writers but anyone who has ever found him or herself at a juncture in life (especially when you’re young) that made no sense–where every route looks iffy at best. I feel as if it’s a deeply hopeful book masquerading as a cynic’s rant—which incidentally is the sanest way to approach life.
Q: Why did you pursue traditional publishing?
I definitely could never have been satisfied by self-publishing. Maybe I need the validation, but the way I look at it, self-publishing is kind of admitting that you’re not talented enough to break through. I know that sounds somewhat snobby and that there are plenty of examples of self-publishing success, but it’s like blogging: anyone can do it, so where’s the differentiation? Also, I clearly couldn’t self-publish a book called “Publish This Book” where the whole story is about me trying to attract the attention of agents and editors. Otherwise, it would have been one chapter of me sending a manuscript off to the bookbinder.
Q: What is your writing process?
PTB was unlike anything I’d ever written before because I was essentially just recording events two months after they happened. It was part diary, part literary endeavor, which at times made it incredibly complex to deal with emotionally. Most of the time when you write a memoir you have years to reflect on events and put them in some kind of context. I had to ferret out the context of a lot of things on the fly. I wrote it over the course of roughly two years, but most of the book got written in a four-month frenzy where I was staying up until two or three in the morning working on my little lawn chair or a mattress on my floor. I’d go to work the next day and be into my third cup of coffee before noon. It basically gave me a life-long sleeping disorder, I think. Don’t want to say too much, though, because this is a lot of what the book is about (with a lot more profanity).
Q: What advice or tips can you give other entrepreneurs and experts who are considering writing a book?
Have people read what you’re writing. Don’t sit in a basement and try to hammer out genius by yourself because it will make you tired and bitter and crazy. It will be especially daunting when someone tells you what you’ve been working on all this time is not that good because he or she is the first person to have ever laid eyes on it. This was a mistake I made early in my life as a writer and one I have since corrected with a vengeance. Join a writing group and stick with it. Don’t take criticism personally. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to have a small, manageable drinking problem. You’ll meet all the smartest people over beers.
Q: Are you working on your next project and can you tell us about it?
I’m always working on something. I certainly didn’t want to be a writer for the money (although, damn, that would really nice). I do it because it’s a compulsion, one that I still don’t fully understand. Because this project is still four-fifths existent entirely in my head, I’ll refrain from trying to explain. I will say that I hold out a very dim, very killable hope that PTB will be enough of a success that I can sustain myself on just writing books. That’s got to be every writer’s dream, right? To just be able to hole up in a log cabin, write whatever you want and ship it off to the presses? This is clearly stupid, but I’m going to go ahead and think of wistfully for a few more years anyway.
CONNECT WITH STEPHEN MARKLEY:
Website: http://www.stephenmarkley.com
























