A sprinking of fairy dust

 George Bernard Shaw's writing desk in his writing hut in the garden at his home, Shaw's Corner.

 

This morning, I read an article in The Author, the publication of The Society of Authors, titled "Payments in the digital age."

My first reaction was, "What payments?" As an author, I did pretty well from 1975 until 1997 out of writing non-fiction books for major publishers such as Simon & Schuster. I didn't write blockbusters; I wrote travel and business books under a couple of pen names. The books reached a modest audience, and I'm still getting small royalties from some of them. (There were 14 books in all.)

And then, the internet began to erode the income of virtually all professional writers except big-book novelists. I think my last decent contract was in 2000, for The Complete Idiot's Guide to Natural Disasters. Thank goodness writing the thing was fun, because the advance was a few grand less than the same publisher had paid me in 1999 to write The Unofficial Guide to Surviving Y2K and Beyond. That book got one stunning review; it said it was the only balanced report on the subject, and so it was. Of course, that's because I was a journalist, not a fear-monger like those nuts Gary North and Edward Yourdon. As I read it, North is a bona fide right-wing whacko, a nut who managed to turn his religious zeal into a humongous mess for the rest of us and profit for himself into the bargain, and Yourdon is a bona fide computer dude who saw the main chance by setting the rest of us on edge for a couple of years by convincing us that cyberspace was going to wreck our world.

So, anyway, I had a contract, so I began the research. As it turned out, there never really was a Y2K problem. An independent IT consultant in Columbia, MD, told me (paraphrase) during my research: "Your car has chips in it, sure. But the car doesn't really care what the date is--except maybe the one in the clock--and were not designed to melt down at midnight in 2000."

So, I told the truth. No problem. And I was right. Which ultimately sold very, very few books. The publisher, thankfully, stood behind me when I presented 400 pages of my findings, as I had a track record for accuracy. Still, none of us made much money. North and Yourdon, however, were sitting pretty. And today Yourdon, at least, doesn't even acknowledge the useless brouhaha he started. His website doesn't mention his involvement--nay, his masterminding--of the Y2K debacle, and he's still being paid lots of money as an expert witness on IT matters, apparently.

Which just goes to show the importance of fairy dust.

What is fairy dust? It is the ineffable something writers sprinkle over the very same words that might be turned out by a computer in the next generation of cyberspace. Indeed, Pearson publishers have already gone to work-for-hire contracts rather than royalty deals as often as they can, apparently, so that the writer--the sprinkler of fairy dust--will not profit nearly to the same percentage as the publisher will. (Yes, that was always true, but it's a matter of balance.) Next, according to Steve Ellsworth, in the article cited above, the publishers will attempt to cut out the writer completely, even (or maybe especially) those like Ellsworth who write ESL books (English as a second language). Yes, a computer could probably do that. I use the computer now to translate French sites for me on occasion, in fact. I get the information I need, but it is hardly deathless prose.

Ellsworth believes that if computerization of ESL books happens--and there are already novel-writing software programs out there, for crying out loud, so ESL should be easy--the fairy dust will disappear. While there isn't much fairy dust in ESL, and the fairy dust used by North and Yourdon was suspect, I think the fairy dust is what convinced people there was a Y2K problem, but also kept me employed all those years, churning out journalism--accurate journalism--but with a very human(e) face. And it doubtless adds to the success of Ellsworth's books, since he writes accessible and even perhaps deathless prose in teaching English because he is not a machine.

I love the fairy dust. I love it when I read it; I love it when I write it. I do not want HAL to attempt fairy dust. It would sicken me. It might never get things so wrong as did North and Yourdon because of its computer accuracy and lack of fairy dust. But it wouldn't mean much either. Who could laugh or cry or even be amused or aggravated by the bits and bytes that some hunk of silica turned into words?

I can tell you one thing: I'm glad my body of work when I moved to the UK four years ago was sufficient for me to gain membership in The Society of Authors. It's a great organization, pursuing income and rights for writers and offering certain perks every fairy dust producer deserves: lodging at The New Cavendish Club and the Goodenough Club in central London at special rates, membership in The Poets' Society Cafe, and discounts at Specsavers, all the better to keep that fairy dust coming during advancing years. And more.

I've been concentrating on the painting recently, but perhaps Ellsworth's article will draw me back to writing, if only to add one more writer's hand in staving off the introduction of HAL WRITER. Perhaps it will make a difference,  one more writer  toiling with pen and ink...or, in my case, Microsoft Bloody Word.