I have been told by more publishers than I can (or care to) count that there is no market for my book on American gun culture, Gun Curious: Understanding America’s Evolving Culture of Firearms. For some, there is no market for books on guns generally; for others, no market for my particular low-heat, balanced take on guns.
This has been frustrating, of course, but it has also led me to reevaluate what exactly I am doing as an author. The famous music producer Rick Rubin’s new book The Creative Act, has been extremely helpful in this process.
I didn’t set out to study American gun culture to sell commodities. I set out to discover something new about a world I did not know or understand. To draw from the Baruch Spinoza quote that has been on my blog from the start, “I have sedulously endeavored . . . to understand” human action around guns.
So, what if I took Rick Rubin’s advice and thought of my book not as a commodity whose value is determined in the marketplace but as a work of art that is good in itself? What if I took the process of observing, reflecting, thinking, and writing to be a creative process? What if I thought of myself as an artist?
Maybe I would find liberation.
In a following post that I will update on a regular basis as I work through the book, I will be extracting some of the most thought-provoking passages from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. This will allow me to return to these thoughts periodically as I struggle to approach my book as the creative work of an artist.
Maybe they will help you, too.