I’ve been thinking that what I don’t know would fill a big old book and a bunch of sequels besides. Look out J.K. Rowling.
The thing that got me thinking about all this stuff I don’t know is a television program, specifically Jeopardy!, and a conversation I recently had with a writer friend.
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First, the Jeopardy! Alex Trebek and his daily trio of brainy contestants have always been a decent barometer for fact-based knowledge and the lack thereof. After all, the same person who runs the category in "Potent Potables" might completely wash out on "The New Testament." None of us can know everything, not even Ken Jennings. That’s not exactly the type of knowledge I had in mind, however. This week, the quiz show is featuring special episodes pitting Watson, an IBM supercomputer, against two of its best players: Jennings, of course, and also Brad Rutter. These two have won millions on a game that regularly sends big winners home with $50,000 or less. In other words, it’s not about the cash. This week it’s an exhibition match designed to showcase the capabilities of Watson against two great players in much the same way that IBM’s Deep Blue took on Garry Kasparov in chess in the 1990s. In describing Watson and how it was programmed and prepped to play the game, the IBM-ers explained that Watson knows what he knows and he knows what he doesn’t know. He won’t ring in at all if his certainty about an answer (or a ‘question’ in Jeopardy! parlance) doesn’t reach a certain level. In case you missed it, he’s pretty darn certain about Beatles lyrics among other things.
Now, the writer. This particular writer is published, award-winning, respected and very talented. Yet, he’s currently revising a manuscript for an agent who might be interested in representing his second book. “Writing on spec,” he calls it. This is after sending it out to a whole list of agents, many of whom never responded to his inquiry. Did I mention the awards? The talent? In preparation to “write on spec,” he had a long conversation with the agent and she gave him lots of feedback about what she wanted to see from a revision. Helpful? Maybe. The problem, he said, is that he took notes and it all sounded great until he hung up the phone and realized that a lot of the suggestions were abstract, open to interpretation, maddeningly subjective. If this writer were Watson and the agent were Trebek, I’m guessing the writer wouldn’t bother to ring in at all. The uncertainty threshold is very high. And, yet, having read much of this writer’s work, I can honestly say it would be a terrible thing if he forfeited at this point.
It is frustrating (infuriating) to work on something for an unknown and possibly nonexistent audience. Unless you are well-established and hanging out on the bestseller lists, you don’t know if what you are writing will resonate with anyone other than yourself. We are all “writing on spec” to some extent. I had the pleasure of hearing Joyce Carol Oates speak a few weeks ago and she regaled us with horrifying yet hopeful tales of authors who were rejected again and again and again until one day they weren’t. Some actually did give up only to be resurrected by optimistic spouses with good instincts (Stephen King). Others continued despite devastating discouragement (Richard Ford). And, of course, there is the aforementioned J.K. Rowling who penned the first Harry Potter book while in dire financial straits and then endured more than a year of rejection upon sending out the manuscript.
For all the rejection-to-bestseller stories, there must be thousands of writers who give up just shy of success, who decide that the agent or the editor or even the reading public is just not interested in what they are writing. I can’t help but wonder what might happen if IBM created a supercomputer novelist or poet. Would that computer be imbued with enough confidence to keep putting words on a page despite a high level of uncertainty? How would it be programmed to deal with rejection? If you've seen any of Watson's performance, then you know that he occasionally does ring in with a wrong answer. His level of certainty rises up and he submits despite what he doesn't actually know. I suppose that as writers we must do the same.
This weekend, we all have a chance to hear from some folks who didn’t give up. Lighthouse is presenting the ever-popular Writer’s Buzz: The Story of a Book featuring a bunch of writers who are enjoying publishing success including Eleanor Brown whose first novel The Weird Sisters is currently climbing the New York Times Bestseller List (#15 last time I checked). Brown joins Harrison Fletcher, Jackie St. Joan, and Jenny Shank to discuss their journeys from manuscript to print. Come hear how they did it and maybe get a little inspiration for your own work in progress. Click here for the full deets.
Hope to see you there.
