How Sarah Vowell Saved My Sanity

Before I actually started to listen to audio books, I had a bad attitude about them. I was very dismissive – I figured people listened to audio books because they were too lazy to read. In my defense, there is some truth to that notion. When I worked at Borders, I helped many harried mothers whose children had to read a book for school that they simply would not read, because they hated to read. So moms bought the audio book, thinking that might help. And they may have been right, though for many of those kids, paying attention to 9+ hours of material was probably more than they were willing to do.

I began listening to audio books by accident. Ernie and I had night jobs on a clean-up crew at a local grade school, and our supervisor was an audio book fiend. He would play them on the PA system. After the first night of this, I was hooked. I realized that audio books were very much like the old radio shows. And best of all, I could listen to them while doing other stuff, like gardening, housekeeping, cooking, or driving. Now that I can listen to audio books on my itouch, I'm really spoiled – these days I'm listening to an audio book at some point just about every day.

In the old days, price used to be a huge limiting factor for audio books. You paid anywhere from $25 to $125 for one book. Many people were willing to pay, but after the economy tanked, publishers reacted more intelligently with audio books than they did with print books. They went digital. Granted, they may have been forced into that technology by heavy hitters like Amazon, but it seems to be working out for the best. Prices are lower, and there are a wide variety of good audio books to chose from.

I have my favorite authors: Ellis Peters, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Jeff Lindsay, Elizabeth Peters, etc. But now that I've been listening for a while I also have my favorite readers, people you will not have heard of unless you listen to audio books. These folks are superstars, they don't just read the material. They are the ones who turn a good book into an entertaining dramatic presentation. Many of them can do multiple foreign accents (an ability I very much envy, now that I'm recording my own audio books). Patrick Tull and Barbara Rosenblat are two giants in the field. TV actors also find work narrating audio books: B.D. Wong's narration of Ticktock, by Dean Koontz, is delightful. Jay O. Sanders and Stephen Lang also narrated books by Dean Koontz, Dragon Tears and By The Light Of The Moon. I have a long list of favorites I can refer to when I need to be happily diverted.

Sarah Vowell features prominently on that list. And it's not because she has a beautiful voice or because she can do foreign accents. In fact, though Sarah Vowell narrates 70% to 80% of her audio books (except for The Partly Cloudy Patriot, where she does about 90%), guest narrators do the particularly challenging roles. It's not Sarah's acting ability that snags me, it's her wit, her comic timing, and her delightfully nerdy subject matter that keeps me tuning in. She is an unabashed American history buff, and her obsessive inquiries into our past are funny, fascinating, and illuminating. Assassination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates can withstand multiple listenings. In fact, they just get better every time I hear them.

There are times I feel like I'm just a voice in the wilderness. It's nice to hear another voice crying out there too, even if it's a little squeaky. My voice isn't that melodious either. Sarah gives me hope – in more ways than one.

Treat yourself. Give her a listen.

Humility 101

They say that anyone who can be discouraged from becoming a writer, should be discouraged. And though I'm not usually the sort to try to discourage anyone, if you're considering becoming a writer, there's something you need to know right off the bat: writing is a humbling experience.

Let's get our definitions straight. By humbling, I'm not talking about the way you would feel if you received an award and you got behind a podium and said, “I am humbled by this honor.” Because, let's face it, you're the opposite.

And I'm not talking about the way you would feel if you were writing a book about a tragic event, and you did a bunch of interviews with people who survived it, and you said, “I am humbled by their strength and their courage.” Because you're actually impressed, not humbled. Maybe a little shamed, too, because you might wonder if you could rise to the challenge as well as they did.

Nope. I'm talking about the way you feel when someone pisses on you in public and the witnesses all laugh at you. Or the way you feel when you've worked really hard on something, and you're really proud of it, and someone walks by, takes a long look at it, makes a face, and says, “Meh.” (Also in public, because that's one of the main components of humiliation.) And just in case you think these humiliations will go away once you've become established, popular, and successful – forget it. You will be humbled again and again, for as long as you continue writing.

I know what you're thinking. “Sure, Devenport – crummy writers like you get humbled. I bet you get lots of bad reviews, and no one comes to your signings, editors give you the razz, and your own agent probably doesn't even return your phone calls. But I'm talented! I'm [fill in the names of several writers you admire] all rolled into one! Sure, I may get an occasional bad review from a jealous critic, but 99.99% of readers will know talent when they see it. These people are hungry for good books. In fact, they're starving. I know I'm better than most of the bozos on the best-seller list. If people like that mediocre stuff, wait 'till they get a load of the real deal!”

Okay, maybe you would word it a little differently (you are such a backseat driver), but you know you're thinkin' it. And that's the main reason you will be humbled. It's not because of bad reviews by jealous critics. Critics aren't jealous, they're arrogant (a human foible shared by writers). It's not even because sales will often fall short of expectations (make that drastically short) – that's just disappointing and discouraging. Depressing, too.

The main reason why being a writer is such a humbling experience is that your expectations rarely match up with reality, even when you should know better, even when you've been at this for decades and have had your share of ups & downs. Because writing books takes more self-confidence than most people will ever have, and that's only a half-good thing. It's that arrogance I mentioned earlier. You need it so you'll take risks and believe in your work. You need an obsessive-compulsive condition too, an attribute that will goad you into writing more books, long after your common sense has warned you that writing is a crummy way to make a living.

There are a thousand insults and disappointments you will suffer as a writer. This is regardless of your critical and/or financial success. Remember what you just said about those bestsellers you can write better than? (Okay, I said it, but you were thinking it.) Log onto any book site featuring Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Stephanie Meyer, or any other popular writer you can think of, and you will find negative reviews tarnishing all the good ones. Every writer who has ever lived has critics who will pick apart their work. Sure, financial success probably mitigates a lot of that disappointment, but only about the top 5% of writers enjoy real financial success. The rest of us have to take the insults and the injuries. We live, breathe, and dream a book for several months (or years), and then watch it turn into McBook – just one more hamburger out there on the market being perused by consumers who are always at least a little disdainful, and jaded, and ready to dismiss us just as soon as the next thing catches their eye.

All writers, obscure or popular, well paid or broke, share an essential disappointment, a realization that ultimately our work is just smoke and mirrors, an illusion we've tinkered together, a collection of ghosts who can't stand up to the daylight. It doesn't matter what anyone says or thinks about our work now, because eventually no one will say or think anything about it at all. It's like that poem by Shelley about Ozymandius, “Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing is left of those works but a pedestal.

Shelley's poem will probably survive several more centuries, but even his work will probably fall to dust, eventually.

This fact does not sit well with the grandiose fragment of the writer's personality that drives us to write in the first place, so we feel humbled. Add that to all the other slights and disappointments we suffer as writers, and that humility really starts to pile up.

And that's not a bad thing. I would venture to say it's good for you. But you have to be tough to withstand it. So grow a thick skin.

You're going to need it.