To be a successful writer, you have to first develop a “platform”. This is a publishing term for a loyal fan base that will buy just about anything you write. It only makes sense, in the way that cultivating regulars at a bar gives the owner a stable base to pay the mortgage from. What’s funny about it is that you have to have the “platform” before you are likely to publish a book. That’s why you see celebrity cookbooks and the like getting precedence over cookbooks from people who are professional chefs. Celebs always sell, at least at first.

This is really nothing new. In the second wave of television, the large number of gab shows and celeb game shows were filled with raconteurs – people who were professional wits along the Oscar Wilde line. Many of them were actually pitching books most of the time, and the teevee shows were just their platform. George Plimpton comes to mind, and to a great extent even Studs Terkel worked the gab shows. It was based on having something to say, even if the conversation was sometimes rather vapid.

That tradition continues, but in a strange form. Anne Coulter builds her platform by giving outrageous interviews, an obvious fact that the interviewers appear to have not caught on to. They have, actually, but the producers who program the time know that controversy is boffo Nielsens. That allows her to keep selling more books and make what is obviously a very strange living. For the record, I don’t like Paul Krugman much either, and I think Michael Moore has definitely worn out his welcome. But the right wingers have played the media game far better, and none more than Coulter. The handicap of not actually being able to write a coherent thought has not stopped her one bit. That’s the value of platforms.

Today, and looking forward, a blog is an essential part of a writing platform. That’s part of why I write here, but I don’t expect to make a living off of it. I write because I have something to say, not because I have any interest in fame. I don’t have the slightest idea what is famous or popular right now, and I find my life much richer for it. Popular culture simply confounds me, and it seems as though it takes a lot of time and effort to stay on top of it. For that reason, I don’t think that my blogging or any other platform I build is going to get me what a publisher wants – a big, reliable platform.

The problem is simple. Since I have no idea what’s out there, I can only tell everyone what’s on my mind. That means that most of what I come up with will be unusual and new. No matter what people tell you about our exciting and changing times, I don’t think people want stuff that’s really new. Yes, they want small pieces around the edges to be different, but not anything substantially challenging. I think it’s hard-wired into our biology.

Our type of chimp first starting walking upright on the grasslands of Africa. In that ecosystem, there is a huge advantage in being a pattern matching machine. You have to be able to tell at a great distance what is a predator and what is prey, and you do that by matching what you see with what you have seen before. Grey blur = Zebra = Food! Orange fluff = Lion = Run! Our whole “Fight or Flight” mechanism of survival is bound up in the fact that we are great pattern matching machines.

In something as benign as culture, we want patterns that we recognize. Something that is sorta like what we know, but has a pink frill, is new. Something we don’t recognize at all is difficult and requires work and is plain weird. It’s worth noting that Tolkien’s “Ring” series didn’t sell worth a hoot until some of the geeks and weirdos that loved it developed a cultural frame that allowed it to be recognizable by the masses, about 50 years on from when it was started.

So if ya don’t know the culture, you won’t be popular. People won’t find the patterns they like in your stuff. And it’s hard to build a platform on that.

Thank you for reading my stuff so far, because getting to the end of this means you aren’t afraid of someone who is culturally illiterate enough to audaciously talk about things no one else will. My platform is based on nothing more than the fact that we are animals with strange instincts that drive us to create things like cultural norms that include gab shows and blogs. Nothing more than that. Heck, you’ve even proved me wrong on the salient point of this blog entry. I do appreciate it!

But if you could give me a vote for “Best Literature Blog” at the weblog awards on your way out, I’d be even happier. Thanks!

http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-literature-blog-1.php