On why publishing (series: notes to myself)
Why does one publish anything at all? In a world that is always distracted. That already has millions of books. That has more classics than anyone will ever be able to read. In a world that does not read, does not care, does not mind. Why, really?
If writing were just a dialogue with oneself, there would be no need to make it public. Why involve others in a private struggle? What is this need to share one’s own thoughts? Something is wrong.
Let me exclude some obvious answers. Of course, there are professional requirements: an academic, for example, will struggle to get a job without publications. There may be commercial needs: hoping to make some money, or just being able to support oneself. Commitments and promises can also play a role. Ambitions of fame and hopes for glory should never be underestimated, no matter how groundless. And with them, the glimpse, or just the illusion of a slice of immortality, or at least a less short legacy. Someone may read you, one day, in the distant future.
Perhaps. But all this seems a distraction, not yet the real answer. Let’s assume there is no pressure, no further reason, no heteronomy: no job, no money, no fame, no contract, no expectations, no promise, no need or reward of any kind, no nothing of the sort. Why would you make the production of your mind public, assuming that this is what publishing means? It’s the same question one could ask a rich artist. Why do they care so much to make their intellectual creations public? Perhaps one wouldn’t, it may be retorted. No carrot, no stick, no publishing. But I’m not convinced.
Suppose you were the last person on earth. You know you will not be read. And yet, you may still publish, so to speak (mind the qualification), your thoughts. Write them down, revise them, edit them, and make them accessible, at least in theory, counterfactually, as if there were someone who could read them. People write diaries while hoping that such diaries may remain secret. They “publish” without wanting or wishing to make their thoughts public. This is not the same, but it is much more like the publishing I have in mind. It is the unread publishing, the bringing it out into the open, but invisibly so, that seems to matter. This seems closer to answering the difficult question, but there is more.
I do not know a word to express this idea of public unreadigness. I searched, but “samizdat” will not do, it is another “almost”, like a secret diary, even if for other reasons. Because the term refers to the clandestine publication of banned literature in communist countries of Eastern Europe, but that was still meant to be read by the right people. Still, “samizdat” does help a bit, by pointing towards the practice of self-publishing, as it derives from “sam” (“self, by oneself”) and izdat (an abbreviation of izdatel’stvo, “publishing house”), and thus means “self-published”. We are getting close.
Secret diaries, and clandestine literature… can be forms of self-publishing, which of course, refer to the publication by an author directly, without the intermediation of a publisher. But here I like to interpret it differently, as publishing not by oneself but for oneself, no matter whether directly or indirectly, with or without the mediation of others, the publishers.
Being published is not being read, obviously. So one could seek to “self-publish” even if longing for secrecy, or not minding public unreadingness. And that, I think, it’s the significant difference. For the whole point of publishing is first of all ensuring that one’s own thoughts finally solidify into a permanent artefact. Distilled and deposited into a some-thing. Stratified, like living organisms now dead, into layers of words, paragraphs, sections, pages, volumes. This happens even in secrecy, even without readers. Indeed, publishing may be more successful if it is “self-publishing”, because the eyes and ears of the readers, imagined by the writer, corrupt the process of writing, like clumsy and oblivious anthropologists mingling with prehistorical people, influencing their customs and behaviours. The reader must remain an invisible presence, for the writing to be authentic.
Self-publishing is a job done properly, even if nobody will ever know, and it is done better if nobody is expected to know, even if they may. In this, self-publishing as publishing for oneself is like broadcasting: the formulation and transmission of one’s own thoughts, even if no one is listening, even if the universe is dead, even if you are the last person standing on earth.
And so, by committing your thoughts to some external support, by “self-publishing” without minding whether reading will follow, you reify your thoughts and make them external, and enable more thoughts to develop, building these new thoughts on the calcified ones now in the world. In this, self-publishing as publishing for oneself resembles the private mourning of one’s own thoughts, which have completed their journey and can now rest, ultimately detached from the mind that kept them alive.
Almost done, but something is still missing. Because publishing as “self-publishing” is also about liberating oneself from the mental pressure of thoughts that have become unbearable, from thoughts that are ready to be born. Any Athena gives an awful headache to her Zeus, no matter how small one’s divinities may be. It is about being able to use those self-published thoughts as new input for other thoughts, new explorations, enjoyable at first, soon to become painful, and later ready to be self-published themselves, in a cycle of genesis, expulsion, and leverage. A bit like the God of the Bible, who could not help having us, but needed to get rid of us to have other thoughts, apparently to save us.
And so, the answer to the question is that, ultimately, you publish because you publish for yourself, and your only good publishing is this self-publishing, so that your thoughts may be dead to you, external compost for more internal thoughts, no matter whether they may be alive to others, should they ever wish to welcome them.
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash
PS The second edition of Notes to myself is available as a book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/c0NmO2F
