The Religion of Writing: Part Two -- The Hierarchy

Disclaimer: The following example is a paraphrase of the events, so to speak. It's just a general idea of how things happened and how they work and not meant to be exact fact.

Way back in the way back, God had relationships with men on an individual basis. There was God and Adam, God and Methuselah, God and Noah. Then there was God and Abraham, and God and Jacob, and God and Moses. By the time we get to God and Moses, the Hebrews were getting a bit tired of the whole "indie God" scene and wanted a more traditional pub...um, I mean, god, so, to deal with the issue, God gave them some basic guidelines to live by. There weren't too many, because God didn't want to bog everyone down with a bunch of rules, and, really, those rules boiled down to two things: 1. Love God and 2. Be excellent to each other.

But you know people, and they couldn't deal with things being so straightforward, so the agents, I mean priests, got together and made lots of rules. Lots and lots of rules. LOTS and LOTS of rules. So many rules, we've lost track of them all. And you couldn't just join the "Hebrew club" anymore, either. There were lots and lots of rules and tests and all sorts of things you had to do to get on the inside with God. According to the Pharisees, at any rate.

After a while, God got tired of all of that, so He sent his Son down to deal with the people. His son, Jesus, said, "Dudes, no more rules. Just love God and be excellent to each other." Of course, we all know how that turned out. But the apostles understood the message and started spreading the love. Except, almost right away, people started making new rules or re-imposing the old ones and, eventually, along came the Romans and made it all Catholic and stuff, and, pretty soon, there were even more rules than before and, again, no one could just decide to follow God; they all had to jump through special hoops and get rid of all their adverbs and stuff before they were let into the "Catholic club."

After another while, this other dude, Martin Luther, came along and said, "Dudes! Jesus came to get rid of all of these rules. And, oh yeah, the agents, too. We don't need those guys!" Things didn't go well for Martin, either, but a bunch of new small publishers sprang up that, initially, did away with agents (I mean priests), but it wasn't long before they put new agents in place and made all sorts of new rules (like you can't go to Heaven unless you speak in tongues, and dancing will send you straight to Hell).

I'm sure you get the idea.

So let's look at something else.

Way back in the not quite as way back there was a dude that wrote a book. He paid to have some copies printed, then he tried to sell them. Other guys did the same thing. That worked out for some of those guys and not for some of the others. Some guys had more money than others, so they could print more books, and things tended to work out better for them than for the guys that couldn't afford to print very many. There was no such thing as "best seller" back in those days, but some of those books are still around.

Eventually, some poor author (because almost all of them were poor (are poor)) had the bright idea to hire a printer to be his publisher. Since he couldn't pay the guy that owned the printing press in advance, he offered to pay the printer, now his publisher, from the profits from the book. The printer saw the opportunity to make more money than if the writer just paid for the number of copies he could afford and, thus, was born the modern traditional publishing model.

However, I want to point out that when all of this started, the author was in charge. The author communicated directly with his readers, often selling his books to them by hand or taking them to small stores to sell (because there were not, yet, bookstores). The printer/publisher worked for the author, not the other way around. As the idea of being paid from the book profits took hold, the whole process became an invest for the printer/publishers, but, at first, the author was still in control. But the balance of power shifted to the money guys as more and more authors sought out the same publishers. And then came rules. And agents. And more rules. Until the author was at the bottom. No longer communicating directly with... anyone. Except the agentpriest.

And all the people began to worship the traditional publishing house and abide by its rules and jump through its hoops to get inside. Agents really are the priests of the traditional publishers, testing people to see if they're worthy, but, just like it was with the Pharisees (charging for sacrifices and requiring that people only use special "temple money") and the Catholics (selling Indulgences to have your sins forgiven) and the televangelists, it's all about the money.

And, now, we have self-publishing, which is kind of like the Protestant Reformation. And, just like the Catholic church condemned Luther, we have the big traditional publishing houses condemning Amazon and other self publishing outlets and calling people that do self-publish all kinds of bad things.

And we have people clinging to the old model. To the church of Traditional Publishing.

And I have to wonder about what sorts of rules we're going to develop for self-publishing and what kinds of hoops we'll eventually have to jump through for that. Because, well, we humans seem to love our rules and our hierarchies. I guess, that way, we know who's "winning." Charlie Sheen, right? Or is he still winning? I don't know.

I'm not much of one for outdated traditions. Or any traditions that aren't relevant. All of this post has been to say that we ought to really look at what the people "in charge" are telling us and figure what part of it is useful. Because, as far as I can tell, unless you are just in desperate need for the validation that comes from being traditionally published, those guys aren't doing anyone any good. Not anymore. And, hey, really, if you are looking for that pat on the back, I'm sure there are better places to get it.

The Religion of Writing: Part One -- Religion

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be offensive in any way. It's about an actual experience which will serve as an example to my actual point in this series. Having said that, though, and knowing that religion is a touchy subject, as is writing, I know that this post is opening to door to people being offended. Just know that when I write this, I'm not really condemning anyone else's beliefs or belief system. I am condemning people that are condemning of others' beliefs, though, because that's just wrong. People ought to be allowed to believe whatever crazy thing they want to believe no matter how wrong it is without the fear of other people coming along and damning them for it. You know, as long as those beliefs aren't hurting someone else.

I started working at my church at a pretty young age. I don't mean just helping out in VBS and stuff like that, although I did do those things, too; I mean I was actually on staff and getting paid. I was 15 when I started being in charge of things like the gym and being left to supervise various recreation programs we ran. By the time I was in college, I was actually in charge of the youth and recreation programs.

One of the things we did was rent out our gym building (which had the chapel in it (as opposed to the sanctuary, which was the bigger building where we had "big" church)) to other church groups that didn't have a gym at their church. The most common reason other churches wanted to rent our facilities was to hold lock-ins. That meant I had to be there for the duration of any given lock-in. [Sometimes, during the summer, we would have a lock-in every weekend.]

There are a few things here you need to know:
1. My church was Southern Baptist. I have always liked to refer to the Baptists as the Pharisees of the Protestants. They are as tied to tradition and "how things are done" as the Catholics.
2. That being said, there are "worse" denominations (by worse, I mean even more strict and legalistic). One of those is the Pentecostals (and the Pentecostals really liked to rent out our gym).
3. Sometimes, to have something to do during a lock-in, I would invite some of my friends to hang out in the office with me. Seriously, it was important, because it was hard to stay awake otherwise. Just sitting and watching people skate and play basketball isn't all that entertaining.

4. You also need to know the basic fact of Pentecostalism: you only get to go to Heaven if you speak in tongues. [Yes, I'm boiling it down to its very core essence, but there's really not room, here, to elaborate.]

[The issue with the speaking in tongues thing is that it doesn't say that in the Bible. Not explicitly. There are some passages they base this belief on, but they create a logic trail you have to weave all through the Bible to come to that conclusion, and there are just as many passages that knock the foundation out from under that belief.
And, now, the plot is set for you.]

So... there was this lock-in, and I had invited a couple of my friends from college, both ministerial students, to come hang out for the night. I mean, it's free food which is pretty close to the Holy Grail for college students. All the pizza you can eat is a pretty big draw, and, in all actuality, getting invited to come to one of these things with me was pretty highly sought after. These were my two best friends, and it wasn't the first time they'd done this.

At one point, I was in the office working on something; I don't remember what but something to do with the lock-in. The guys had wandered off to the lounge where the TV was; one of them to work on a class assignment, which happened to be a sermon. He had his Bible out and open. The two of them were alone in the lounge. For a while.

But a group of the women (moms and such (chaperons)) who had been setting something up in the chapel for later in the evening came out into the lounge and found my friends there, one of them with his Bible out (maybe both of them, I'm not sure). One of the women asked them what they were doing, and the one working on the sermon responded that that's what he was doing...

And the group of women began telling my friends about how they were going to Hell.

It was the noise of the arguing that drew me down the hall. My two friends were surrounded by about half a dozen Pentecostal moms, one of the scariest things on the planet, I'm pretty sure. One of my friends was holding an open Bible with which he was refuting statements by the women. Now, here's the interesting part of that:

One of the women would say something like, "Well, the Bible says blah blah blah."
And my friend, with the Bible in his hand, would look up that passage of scripture and say, "That's not actually what it says. It says," and he would read it, "blah blippity blip blah."
To which the woman would reply, "Well, that's wrong, because my pastor says it says blah blah blah."
Did I say that my friend had his open Bible in his hand?
But the Bible was wrong because of what some woman thought her pastor had said about what was in the Bible. And none of the women had ever read the Bible. Many of them had never actually physically read any part of it because they had been indoctrinated to believe that they shouldn't read it because, you know, they couldn't figure it out for themselves, so it was better to just let the pastor tell them what was inside.
Even if it wasn't.
[I'm not making that part up. Several of them made statements to that effect.]
It didn't matter that my friends had the book in question in their hands, the proof, so to speak. The proof, the actual data, was "wrong."

That's what I walked in on. I was no less offended than my friends, but I was offended because they were in my church telling us we were going to Hell. My only question was why they wanted to rent our building if they believed we were a church on the way to Hell. With or without the hand-basket.

Since I was in charge, though, I had to break the whole thing up, so I sent my buddies down to the office to cool off for a while.

I'll be explicit here:
Many writers are just like those women in the way that they treat writing. In all sorts of ways. Things like traditional publishing being god. Agents being priests carrying the Holy word that can't be questioned. And all sorts of other things that I'm not ready to get into, yet, because we'll get to them in good time. Just be thinking about the ways you might be like that group of women. Believing without questioning what's being handed down to you.