I think it spells out resilience. All of those traits connect there. More positive in life, less negative and transcendence. We grow a thick skin, even if we don’t start out with one. In the end we write for ourselves, even if we don’t start there. In the end we are part of something bigger than our “self” even if we didn’t start there. It’s waking up every morning and turning blood into Ink. And the fact we can’t wait to get there. Creativity finds us yet she never leaves us the same. I believe we just get better and better at letting her through.
I'm thinking – can it be that the qualities he noticed to predetermine success or failure as a writer are mostly applicable to his circle in the U.S.? Because I can think of dozens astonishingly successful writers who are "shy, and meek, and timid" which Wilson says here are qualities of the unsuccessful. I believe in Eastern Europe, especially where I'm from, Bulgaria, it might even be quite the opposite to what he said.
Very true. The American way of success, especially Robert Heinlein (who's sci-fi I loved reading as a teenager in the 1960s/70s) works because it's expected in the culture. America is a big country, and you have to shout loud to be heard.
As a 'muted' introvert European, I can turn on the extrovert when on stage reciting poetry, but it's not my natural way of being; it exhausts me. Knowing a few American introverts telling their stories how they were brought up to be extrovert and pushy in order to be successful, they collapsed later on in life from the strain of it all, from having to play the performing monkey, and were burnt out. Most retreated to the countryside to live a simpler life away from all the frenetic noise.
I agree, Not to mention that success is also linked to the mass following movements, works put forward etc. So success is relative from this point of view. A mass that would think for itself, would perhaps give more interest to the original works or other.
Interesting point; a mass of people unable to think for themselves will always follow what the media says they should follow.
Perhaps we also need a better definition of success - perhaps it should come from each of us to ask ourselves: what would success look like, for me? (and never mind the externally imposed measures)
Yes, very relevant, as far as I’m concerned, the numbers don’t matter to me, what counts, depending on the subject treated, is the relevance, beauty, originality, thinking outside the box etc. that attract me.
Having said this, we can not deny that sometimes, some works with great success, are also grandiose, and we like it very much, it remains still marginal in terms of publications.
I appreciate some big projects that are successful and attracted a lot of funding (eg: https://www.edenproject.com/) near where we used to live in Cornwall, U.K. And also much else art-work.
As a weaver/sculptor/poet and general maker-of-things, I am totally absorbed in the creative process ... and after that I tend to lose interest in 'making it successful'. I did invent the YarnShifter hand-weaving loom and made them for five years selling kits all over the world, and it paid for itself. Now I am retired with a pension so I can afford to do stuff for its own sake without being concerned about there having to be a follow-up stage of 'success'. Having said that, I'd quite like my poetry to be more widely read - but maybe I'm not fanatical enough about it.
I don’t know this project (Eden), I will look at it.
I go looking the YarnShifter hand-weaving loom
We need a little success to live from art, we can’t share everything freely, a good balance is good.
Retirement is good, I think. I can understand the desire to share are art, we don’t live only for ourself. I like the arts very much, I don’t have much free time, sometimes more in winter, but I try to discover the unknown beauties yet.
What would be good, is if we (readers) like, that we put them forward, that we recommend etc. it would allow to make them known more ahead.
Well, unshakable confidence in your skill, and the writing you produce, is essential in order to weather the criticism and rejection that are inherent in the writing and publishing process. It's easy to feel dejected after receiving difficult feedback. Confidence helps you tune into the feedback without getting defensive. Then you can decide if the feedback has merit or not. Confidence helps you stay the course and keep submitting when you're getting rejection after rejection. Keep sending it in, someone will love it as much as you do! Confidence makes it a lot easier to love the process, even during a second draft that doesn't seem much better than the first. It'll get there, because you are good at this!
So true so true. One quality omitted however is that piece of equipment dangling between men’s legs. All the examples given of writers having that strength of ego and assertive self belief are men. Women - certainly women who grew up in the 1940’s- 1960’s and before, had these qualities of which you speak stamped out as soon as they might have appeared. Yes I was a 8,9,10 year old eager poet and writer of stories in the fifties but many many decades later the over stuffed overworked draft of my novel lies entrapped in doubt somewhat like the dismembered lantern fly encased and half eaten by the creative spinner of the web at my NYC window - but she - the striped orbweaver - neoscona crucifer - worked endlessly and successfully at her creative project yesterday as I watched, immobilized by a medical procedure and happy for the distraction, so I will take her creative determined hungry work and your words in todays Poetic Outlaw as great inspiration. Thank you as always!!
Today's reminded me of a quote I love and have returned to for bolstering from John Steinbeck:
"Such is the prestige of the Nobel award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practiced it through the ages."
>>>Frank Lloyd Wright, when testifying in court, described himself as the world's greatest architect, and when his friends told him later that he sounded grandiose he replied that he had to tell the truth because he was under oath.<<<
I totally busted out laughing when I read that. So funny! and so true.
As in everything else, good old Bob was always brilliant when he wrote about writing and creativity. Thank you sincerely for sharing this.
For anybody wondering, this piece comes from a 1981 issue of the science fiction magazine STARSHIP, which sometimes published work by RAW.
For fun, here's a bit more from him on the subject of writing, from my book WHAT THE DAEMON SAID, and likewise featuring a quote from STARSHIP:
"Entirely aside from all of the far-out details of his (possibly) paranormal experiences, at least twice in his life Wilson directly equated the autonomous-feeling force in the psyche that drives artistic creativity with the ontologically indeterminate Higher Intelligence that seemingly communicated with him, Leary, and Crowley. One of these instances came in an essay he wrote about the life and work of Raymond Chandler, under the pseudonym of one of his (Wilson’s) own fictional creations, book critic Epicene Wildeblood. In describing the 15-year hiatus from fiction-writing that Chandler once experienced, Wilson said, 'Chandler spent 15 years, the prime years of a man’s life, in the oil-executive game before the Daemon or Holy Guardian Angel that haunts artists got its teeth into him again.'
"The other instance is found in a 1981 interview Wilson gave to the late, great genre magazine Starship: The Magazine about Science Fiction. The interviewer asked him, 'Is a book fully organized in your mind before you start writing or does it take shape as it unfolds?' Wilson responded:
'Sometimes I have a clearer idea of where I’m going than other times, but it always surprises me. In the course of writing, I’m always drawing on my unconscious creativity, and I find things creeping into my writing that I wasn’t aware of at the time. That’s part of the pleasure of writing. After you’ve written something, you say to yourself, “Where in the hell did that come from?” Faulkner called it the “demon” that directs the writer. The Kabalists call it the “holy guardian angel.” Every writer experiences this sensation. Robert E. Howard said he felt there was somebody dictating the Conan stories to him. There’s some deep level of the unconscious that knows a lot more than the conscious mind of the writer knows.'"
"The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain."
I am staring at the comment box and thinking of ways to disagree. Which is so strange, why do I look for ways to disagree about everything you wrote, even though I agree with it all? It's as if I'm looking for an excuse to lower my confidence and hoist that flag up for a while. I felt a surge of excitement when you wrote "to keep on sending each piece out until you sell it" and it gave me the trust in myself that I should try harder to sell my writing. Two years of consistent writing and it is time to move forward. I thank you for this!
I am a natural born artist, making art my whole life. I am now a government certified old master (I get social security) While I am very prolific, there is no time to sell everything as it gets made. Most things don't sell right away, sometimes it takes 20+ years to sell something now that I am old enough to have waited that long. I still sell stuff across my whole oeuvre. I always say 'every sale is a one in a million event' - but there are billions of millions of events happening every day. The other trick is working in a timeless way where time makes no difference to the story or the art. It might be of the moment but make it for the ages.
So basically, cultivate misery in yourself and others and you got it made. Make sure all your victories are pyrrhic. Got it. This macho philosophy is an insult to the earth and life. Life says, here I am. Delight in me. And I say, No. I'm too important for that. Earth feels embarrassed for this confused person. The foundations of great art are gratitude and awe-- a kind of non-referential gratitude and amazement, grasping dissolves and creation happens naturally as a reflexive reciprocation-- the amazement creates and the artist experiences joy, transcendence. This is a viable approach. Wilson's not describing an artist, by my lights. He's describing an entrepreneur -- tech bro mentality. For some fucked up reason the two are conflated in America.
Correlation vs. causation, right? Just because a lot of artists are dicks, doesn't make it a requirement. Plus, monetization and success are not identical. There are existential victories, aesthetic victories-- finding anew way to make a thing, outgrowing models, centering ones life in imagination instead of convention. These are triumphs I think. Aren't those more fulfilling and worth pursuing? From what I've observed commercial success destroys creative people as often as not. Anyway. This mythologizing of artistic misery is a pet peeve. People talk about art and artists as if they were stocks and bonds and no one remarks on the arbitrariness of that.
This is the most illuminating, instructive, and wise composition I have ever read on a forum for writers. As a writer who leans hard into the fiction genre, the mark for me that separates the ordinary from the great is an ability to take what exists deep in the reservoir of every heart and making it rise to the surface. Mr. Wilson has achieved this quite successfully in a non-fiction piece.
Although everything you publish hits me where it needs to, this is one of my favourites because I'm not sure I agree with it.
How would Alan Watts and many other writers who write about letting go of the ego react to this? Would they agree with the comments that this grandiose approach to the ego is necessary for the 'Merican culture but not others?
I'm also thinking about the Leonard Cohen quote I found, thanks to you. "The less there was of me, the happier I got."
Is this contradictory to what you write here, or does the quote reflect your truth precisely because it's contradictory?
Believing you are meant for greatness while believing you are nothing more than a product of stardust (for atheists) or made by God (for religious people) seems contradictory, but it's not. It allows you to connect to more. If you don't believe in anything outside of yourself, you cannot truly love yourself because that means you don't understand the self is everything.
Also, this piece is making my wheels spin because I’ve always believed I was meant to be a writer and that I have something to say in a way nobody else can. I don’t run away from my dark side but confront it. Part of that dark side is labelled vanity. They say my head is in the clouds. After fourteen years of writing dozens of hours a week, I have a few hundred dollars and engagements to show for it. I’m constantly beaten down by the masses and made to believe I’m lesser than I thought. Instead of falling into a depression, I’ve been letting go “of the self.” Unfortunately, that has included giving up on who I thought I was and what I could achieve in this world. This piece is helping me to connect to the ego that keeps my work alive.
This was a nicely provocative piece to read; much enjoyed.
Of the three psychological characteristics required, I'm fully on board with two of them: "... belief in something greater than yourself, and sheer delight in what you are doing." Those two come easy to me. As for the third "belief in yourself", and believing you're the greatest thing since sliced-bread, ... not so easy. If Nature scored zero in this department, and Nurture was a diet of "You're not the only pebble on the beach" and "the nail that stands up gets hammered down" and "what if everyone was selfish and just did what they wanted?"... etc ... then one has a hard road to accomplish to gain 'belief in oneself'. That said, it's still vital; though some will have a much harder time achieving it than others.
As for Heinlein's pragmatic advice, the second one (100 applications, then 100 more), what I call the 'dance-hammering' approach, could be countered by the 1980s/90s mantra: "don't work harder, work smarter". Especially in a time very different from Heinlein's era. PS: congratulations on getting a publisher for your Ph.D thesis. Mine's been sitting on the shelf 30 years; and that's where it'll stay.
Sometimes it helps to write about your many flaws in the guise of your character(s). If you can't find an agent or published and still believe your work has merit, self-publish. It's not an ideal alternative, but at least you have a chance you'll be read.
I agree, publish yourself as you go along which goes with 'finish what you start'. Start building your 'shelf feet'. Don't depend on others. The thing about self publishing is that you get to practice making a finished product. You don't even need to make it public at the beginning. Publish privately as documentation for your own use, print a proof, stack it on your self and say 'done'. Go to the next one. Publish 10-15 books than go back and figure out which to start getting out into the public market place. THEN look around for a publisher. That is what I think anyway. I have self published around 40 books and catalogs at this point. All for my own documentary enjoyment. Fun! Getting into the book market and selling enough books to make it worth the trouble... that is a separate story. Leave that part to the agents and pros that love what they do - that is their art - like you love what you do and that's your art.
I think it spells out resilience. All of those traits connect there. More positive in life, less negative and transcendence. We grow a thick skin, even if we don’t start out with one. In the end we write for ourselves, even if we don’t start there. In the end we are part of something bigger than our “self” even if we didn’t start there. It’s waking up every morning and turning blood into Ink. And the fact we can’t wait to get there. Creativity finds us yet she never leaves us the same. I believe we just get better and better at letting her through.
This! 🖤
Nicely said Jamie! Write, believe, learn, repeat. J
I'm thinking – can it be that the qualities he noticed to predetermine success or failure as a writer are mostly applicable to his circle in the U.S.? Because I can think of dozens astonishingly successful writers who are "shy, and meek, and timid" which Wilson says here are qualities of the unsuccessful. I believe in Eastern Europe, especially where I'm from, Bulgaria, it might even be quite the opposite to what he said.
Very true. The American way of success, especially Robert Heinlein (who's sci-fi I loved reading as a teenager in the 1960s/70s) works because it's expected in the culture. America is a big country, and you have to shout loud to be heard.
As a 'muted' introvert European, I can turn on the extrovert when on stage reciting poetry, but it's not my natural way of being; it exhausts me. Knowing a few American introverts telling their stories how they were brought up to be extrovert and pushy in order to be successful, they collapsed later on in life from the strain of it all, from having to play the performing monkey, and were burnt out. Most retreated to the countryside to live a simpler life away from all the frenetic noise.
I agree, Not to mention that success is also linked to the mass following movements, works put forward etc. So success is relative from this point of view. A mass that would think for itself, would perhaps give more interest to the original works or other.
Interesting point; a mass of people unable to think for themselves will always follow what the media says they should follow.
Perhaps we also need a better definition of success - perhaps it should come from each of us to ask ourselves: what would success look like, for me? (and never mind the externally imposed measures)
Yes, very relevant, as far as I’m concerned, the numbers don’t matter to me, what counts, depending on the subject treated, is the relevance, beauty, originality, thinking outside the box etc. that attract me.
Having said this, we can not deny that sometimes, some works with great success, are also grandiose, and we like it very much, it remains still marginal in terms of publications.
I appreciate some big projects that are successful and attracted a lot of funding (eg: https://www.edenproject.com/) near where we used to live in Cornwall, U.K. And also much else art-work.
As a weaver/sculptor/poet and general maker-of-things, I am totally absorbed in the creative process ... and after that I tend to lose interest in 'making it successful'. I did invent the YarnShifter hand-weaving loom and made them for five years selling kits all over the world, and it paid for itself. Now I am retired with a pension so I can afford to do stuff for its own sake without being concerned about there having to be a follow-up stage of 'success'. Having said that, I'd quite like my poetry to be more widely read - but maybe I'm not fanatical enough about it.
I don’t know this project (Eden), I will look at it.
I go looking the YarnShifter hand-weaving loom
We need a little success to live from art, we can’t share everything freely, a good balance is good.
Retirement is good, I think. I can understand the desire to share are art, we don’t live only for ourself. I like the arts very much, I don’t have much free time, sometimes more in winter, but I try to discover the unknown beauties yet.
What would be good, is if we (readers) like, that we put them forward, that we recommend etc. it would allow to make them known more ahead.
Agreed.It would seem Donald Trump has all the qualities to be a great writer.
Already done :))
https://goodreads.com/book/show/36167187-the-beautiful-poetry-of-donald-trump
Well, unshakable confidence in your skill, and the writing you produce, is essential in order to weather the criticism and rejection that are inherent in the writing and publishing process. It's easy to feel dejected after receiving difficult feedback. Confidence helps you tune into the feedback without getting defensive. Then you can decide if the feedback has merit or not. Confidence helps you stay the course and keep submitting when you're getting rejection after rejection. Keep sending it in, someone will love it as much as you do! Confidence makes it a lot easier to love the process, even during a second draft that doesn't seem much better than the first. It'll get there, because you are good at this!
So true so true. One quality omitted however is that piece of equipment dangling between men’s legs. All the examples given of writers having that strength of ego and assertive self belief are men. Women - certainly women who grew up in the 1940’s- 1960’s and before, had these qualities of which you speak stamped out as soon as they might have appeared. Yes I was a 8,9,10 year old eager poet and writer of stories in the fifties but many many decades later the over stuffed overworked draft of my novel lies entrapped in doubt somewhat like the dismembered lantern fly encased and half eaten by the creative spinner of the web at my NYC window - but she - the striped orbweaver - neoscona crucifer - worked endlessly and successfully at her creative project yesterday as I watched, immobilized by a medical procedure and happy for the distraction, so I will take her creative determined hungry work and your words in todays Poetic Outlaw as great inspiration. Thank you as always!!
Today's reminded me of a quote I love and have returned to for bolstering from John Steinbeck:
"Such is the prestige of the Nobel award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practiced it through the ages."
>>>Frank Lloyd Wright, when testifying in court, described himself as the world's greatest architect, and when his friends told him later that he sounded grandiose he replied that he had to tell the truth because he was under oath.<<<
I totally busted out laughing when I read that. So funny! and so true.
For Wright, the best indicator of the 'unmitigable fact he knew about himself.'
Me, too!
As in everything else, good old Bob was always brilliant when he wrote about writing and creativity. Thank you sincerely for sharing this.
For anybody wondering, this piece comes from a 1981 issue of the science fiction magazine STARSHIP, which sometimes published work by RAW.
For fun, here's a bit more from him on the subject of writing, from my book WHAT THE DAEMON SAID, and likewise featuring a quote from STARSHIP:
"Entirely aside from all of the far-out details of his (possibly) paranormal experiences, at least twice in his life Wilson directly equated the autonomous-feeling force in the psyche that drives artistic creativity with the ontologically indeterminate Higher Intelligence that seemingly communicated with him, Leary, and Crowley. One of these instances came in an essay he wrote about the life and work of Raymond Chandler, under the pseudonym of one of his (Wilson’s) own fictional creations, book critic Epicene Wildeblood. In describing the 15-year hiatus from fiction-writing that Chandler once experienced, Wilson said, 'Chandler spent 15 years, the prime years of a man’s life, in the oil-executive game before the Daemon or Holy Guardian Angel that haunts artists got its teeth into him again.'
"The other instance is found in a 1981 interview Wilson gave to the late, great genre magazine Starship: The Magazine about Science Fiction. The interviewer asked him, 'Is a book fully organized in your mind before you start writing or does it take shape as it unfolds?' Wilson responded:
'Sometimes I have a clearer idea of where I’m going than other times, but it always surprises me. In the course of writing, I’m always drawing on my unconscious creativity, and I find things creeping into my writing that I wasn’t aware of at the time. That’s part of the pleasure of writing. After you’ve written something, you say to yourself, “Where in the hell did that come from?” Faulkner called it the “demon” that directs the writer. The Kabalists call it the “holy guardian angel.” Every writer experiences this sensation. Robert E. Howard said he felt there was somebody dictating the Conan stories to him. There’s some deep level of the unconscious that knows a lot more than the conscious mind of the writer knows.'"
I believe the most important element is having fun writing. That makes a piece great. No matter how wonderful I think I am.
"The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain."
~ Henry Miller
I am staring at the comment box and thinking of ways to disagree. Which is so strange, why do I look for ways to disagree about everything you wrote, even though I agree with it all? It's as if I'm looking for an excuse to lower my confidence and hoist that flag up for a while. I felt a surge of excitement when you wrote "to keep on sending each piece out until you sell it" and it gave me the trust in myself that I should try harder to sell my writing. Two years of consistent writing and it is time to move forward. I thank you for this!
I am a natural born artist, making art my whole life. I am now a government certified old master (I get social security) While I am very prolific, there is no time to sell everything as it gets made. Most things don't sell right away, sometimes it takes 20+ years to sell something now that I am old enough to have waited that long. I still sell stuff across my whole oeuvre. I always say 'every sale is a one in a million event' - but there are billions of millions of events happening every day. The other trick is working in a timeless way where time makes no difference to the story or the art. It might be of the moment but make it for the ages.
So basically, cultivate misery in yourself and others and you got it made. Make sure all your victories are pyrrhic. Got it. This macho philosophy is an insult to the earth and life. Life says, here I am. Delight in me. And I say, No. I'm too important for that. Earth feels embarrassed for this confused person. The foundations of great art are gratitude and awe-- a kind of non-referential gratitude and amazement, grasping dissolves and creation happens naturally as a reflexive reciprocation-- the amazement creates and the artist experiences joy, transcendence. This is a viable approach. Wilson's not describing an artist, by my lights. He's describing an entrepreneur -- tech bro mentality. For some fucked up reason the two are conflated in America.
Bravo, well said.
Correlation vs. causation, right? Just because a lot of artists are dicks, doesn't make it a requirement. Plus, monetization and success are not identical. There are existential victories, aesthetic victories-- finding anew way to make a thing, outgrowing models, centering ones life in imagination instead of convention. These are triumphs I think. Aren't those more fulfilling and worth pursuing? From what I've observed commercial success destroys creative people as often as not. Anyway. This mythologizing of artistic misery is a pet peeve. People talk about art and artists as if they were stocks and bonds and no one remarks on the arbitrariness of that.
Indeed, it is quite so, so well expressed, and beautiful by its essence.
This is the most illuminating, instructive, and wise composition I have ever read on a forum for writers. As a writer who leans hard into the fiction genre, the mark for me that separates the ordinary from the great is an ability to take what exists deep in the reservoir of every heart and making it rise to the surface. Mr. Wilson has achieved this quite successfully in a non-fiction piece.
Although everything you publish hits me where it needs to, this is one of my favourites because I'm not sure I agree with it.
How would Alan Watts and many other writers who write about letting go of the ego react to this? Would they agree with the comments that this grandiose approach to the ego is necessary for the 'Merican culture but not others?
I'm also thinking about the Leonard Cohen quote I found, thanks to you. "The less there was of me, the happier I got."
Is this contradictory to what you write here, or does the quote reflect your truth precisely because it's contradictory?
Believing you are meant for greatness while believing you are nothing more than a product of stardust (for atheists) or made by God (for religious people) seems contradictory, but it's not. It allows you to connect to more. If you don't believe in anything outside of yourself, you cannot truly love yourself because that means you don't understand the self is everything.
Also, this piece is making my wheels spin because I’ve always believed I was meant to be a writer and that I have something to say in a way nobody else can. I don’t run away from my dark side but confront it. Part of that dark side is labelled vanity. They say my head is in the clouds. After fourteen years of writing dozens of hours a week, I have a few hundred dollars and engagements to show for it. I’m constantly beaten down by the masses and made to believe I’m lesser than I thought. Instead of falling into a depression, I’ve been letting go “of the self.” Unfortunately, that has included giving up on who I thought I was and what I could achieve in this world. This piece is helping me to connect to the ego that keeps my work alive.
This was a nicely provocative piece to read; much enjoyed.
Of the three psychological characteristics required, I'm fully on board with two of them: "... belief in something greater than yourself, and sheer delight in what you are doing." Those two come easy to me. As for the third "belief in yourself", and believing you're the greatest thing since sliced-bread, ... not so easy. If Nature scored zero in this department, and Nurture was a diet of "You're not the only pebble on the beach" and "the nail that stands up gets hammered down" and "what if everyone was selfish and just did what they wanted?"... etc ... then one has a hard road to accomplish to gain 'belief in oneself'. That said, it's still vital; though some will have a much harder time achieving it than others.
As for Heinlein's pragmatic advice, the second one (100 applications, then 100 more), what I call the 'dance-hammering' approach, could be countered by the 1980s/90s mantra: "don't work harder, work smarter". Especially in a time very different from Heinlein's era. PS: congratulations on getting a publisher for your Ph.D thesis. Mine's been sitting on the shelf 30 years; and that's where it'll stay.
Write it like a message in a bottle with honest hope and accepted abandon.
When you "make it" as a writer, you know you have failed.
Sometimes it helps to write about your many flaws in the guise of your character(s). If you can't find an agent or published and still believe your work has merit, self-publish. It's not an ideal alternative, but at least you have a chance you'll be read.
I agree, publish yourself as you go along which goes with 'finish what you start'. Start building your 'shelf feet'. Don't depend on others. The thing about self publishing is that you get to practice making a finished product. You don't even need to make it public at the beginning. Publish privately as documentation for your own use, print a proof, stack it on your self and say 'done'. Go to the next one. Publish 10-15 books than go back and figure out which to start getting out into the public market place. THEN look around for a publisher. That is what I think anyway. I have self published around 40 books and catalogs at this point. All for my own documentary enjoyment. Fun! Getting into the book market and selling enough books to make it worth the trouble... that is a separate story. Leave that part to the agents and pros that love what they do - that is their art - like you love what you do and that's your art.
Thank you for this.