Publications/Productivity

Have been wondering about the question of productivity/publicity recently. How important it is to get published? How important are publications as a testimony of one's productivity? My own answer to the second question would be, yes, publications do kind of testify to a writer's productivity. But it is also a very public form of acknowledgement. Yes, I mean acknowledgement. Also, it's a form of approval. We all like them. The approvals and affirmations I mean. I know I do. It's wonderful to see someone acknowledge my work in the form of publishing a poem/a story/ an essay in their journals. It also tells me, I am not writing shit. This is not to deny the fact that a lot of shit do get published and a lot of gems don't. And sometimes, it needs a huge amount of inner strength on the part of the writer/artist to keep on believing the essential quality of one's own work, keep on producing it, honing one's art and craft, even when the approvals of the publishing industry are not pouring in. Luckily, the history of world literature is full of these examples. So, whenever anyone is in doubt, one can turn to these examples, derive strength from them. But then, there is also the pressure to publish. Publish or perish, as we say it in the academic world. Honestly, who would like to perish? So we go on sending stuff out, even when they need more work, more brewing, more marination! I guess, I am one of those writers who would rather like to take one's own time to learn, before getting published.

It's okay if I am not described as "prolific." It's okay if I have only one book in me! Even if Arundhati Roy doesn't produce any more work of fiction, she will be remembered for her God of Small Things. And that's what matters. What matters is doing the hard work. Pouring oneself out for that one work that's within us. Getting ourselves to the writing table and the battle-field everyday. Pushing our work to places where it's hard to go otherwise! And after that, one can only hope to be noticed by some journal/publisher/whatever. If not, email the work to one's friends. If they like it, they will email it to their friends. And as it is, I don't expect my work to be read by more than 200 people. Hopefully, if I ever succeed to write something meaningful, it wouldn't be hard to find that number of people from amongst my friends and friends' friends and friends' friends' friends.

Like everything else, the concept of "productivity" is a historical-social construct. For me, it is important to not fall into the trap of its most dominant social definition. Rather, often times I need to re-define the term for myself, and then work accordingly. The test is, to keep myself accountable to my own definition of production and productivity.

And if you haven't guessed yet, it's not any kind of writer's block that prompted this post. But, the rejections:))))))))))