Reviewing Ariel Gore

I just recently finished Ariel Gore's book, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead. It sounds all fun and fancy, but I found the content to be a bit like the title: fun, but just a hint morose.

You see, the funny titles is based upon the death of a friend of Ariel's, as she explains in the preface. Alli wanted Ariel to help her with advice about writing and getting published, but life got in the way and before they could meet Alli had a seizure and died. How to Become a Famous Writer was inspired by that tragedy.

First the bad news: if you have read very many "how to" books on writing, section one of the book is old news. It talks about writing generally and covers a lot of ground, so that could be a good thing if one chooses to read just this book and no other.

I was also a bit bogged down by the numerous interviews with different writers. I suppose each interview corresponded with a section (Margaret Cho's interview was spliced into the chapter about self-promotion) but for the most part the writers seemed to mainly give their two-cents on the writing life, which did not offer up much to me (that said, the interviews in part 3 were another matter entirely, as I'll explain shortly).

Another point of concern would be the profuse indulgence in dirty language and the attention given the gay publishing world. The F-bomb is dropped quite liberally and writers for "queer" literature are featured several times throughout the book. To me, it just begs the question: if I were to be interviewed, would Ariel have introduced me as "straight"? No, so what's the point?

Now for the good news: the down and dirty of the publishing world is where it's at in this book. Parts 3-5 offer advice on self-publishing, big-name publishing, and self-promotion, respectively. I found part 3 the most helpful, especially the chapters about Zines, a field that is pretty new to me. Given our technology today, self-publishing is insanely easy, making the real challenge simply getting recognized. Set aside a week's pay at minimum wage and you can have a stack of lovely published works sitting on your coffee table. But getting your name out there is the key, so those three sections are a gold mine of information.

Publicity may be my weakness, since I'm just not inclined to stand out on a street corner in a gorilla mask and tutu (p.257) but there are many options that would not have come to mind otherwise, such as newspaper and radio interviews, roadtrip readings, and getting a book banned. Ariel encourages her readers to be shameless because, after all, you'll (maybe) never see any of these people again and now they know where to find your stuff. I guess one just has to follow what one would do naturally (ie, no tutus for me).