Thomas Swick’s Hard Times

"Ghost Writer" by Paul Blow.

The day I walked out of the newsroom—July 29, 2008—I felt like the happiest unemployed man in America. For nineteen years, I had put out the Sunday Travel section, and for eighteen, I had filled it with stories from my journeys around the world, as well as stories from freelancers, and columns reflecting on—and often poking fun at—the changing state of that world and our attempts to get to know it. It was, as I wrote in the book that collected some of those pieces, "a charmed, unheralded life."

The charm came to an end in 2007, when my newspaper began taking seriously its motto of "local and useful." While not particularly exciting for the rest of the paper—our erstwhile foreign correspondent wrote one story, titled "Cold War," about the excessive air-conditioning of offices and malls in South Florida—it was disastrous for the Travel section. My budgets for trips and for freelance stories were cut to the bone, and I was, for the first time really, given directives on how to run the section. This resulted in a dramatic increase in "weekend getaway" articles and the addition of a wire column on theme parks. Travel, the one part of the paper that always offered a release from the familiar, an openness to the world, was turned into a provincial bore.

So when the first layoffs in the history of the paper took place, I was delighted to be one of the casualties. I was also insulted, experiencing for perhaps the first time in my life a feeling of joyous indignation (which the Germans probably have a word for).

I knew from my pre-employment days that the great advantage of being a writer—as opposed to, say, being a banker—is that you can always do what you do at home. A real job is immaterial to your professional advancement; in fact, in writing it can be a detriment. Writers are about the only people who can lose a job and gain respect.

For years, many of my contributors had been telling me about the dismal freelance market. One longtime freelancer in San Francisco wrote plaintive e-mails about having to pay the rent by selling his collection of MAD magazines, issue by prized issue. During his career he had written for Playboy and Harper's, but had unwisely, if unintentionally, outlasted his editors. Countering the dignity of unemployment is the fact that writing is one of the few trades in which the older you get, the harder the actual business of it becomes (especially in a culture that glorifies youth).

And, of course, there were now thousands of unemployed journalists sitting at home typing on computers.

But I was not deterred. I had never completely given up freelancing, and I was looking forward to sending out writing that didn't have the label of "newspaper travel editor" attached. In my nearly two decades as such, I had published two books and had been included in a few anthologies, and I hoped that these accomplishments might stand out more clearly when disconnected from a branch of journalism somewhat lacking in respect.

Within a couple of months, I had a list of pieces and the publications to which they had been shopped. It was all very similar to how I began in this business thirty years earlier. I was still, for the moment at least, writing about what interested me (present company included) and sending out the results in the hope that they would interest someone else. This had earned me piles of rejections as a novice, and—if the results from the early-voter precincts are any indication—not much has changed in the interim.

What is new is the technology, though a number of elite magazines still insist on submissions by post. (The SASE lives, at least for uninvited correspondents.) And the immediacy of e-mail rarely translates into prompt replies. Actually, it often contributes to silence, as messages get pushed down out of sight—and, subsequently, mind—by the onslaught of new ones.

I'm being generous. I'd been warned of a new etiquette, or lack thereof, by which editors feel no obligation to respond to e-mails—presumably because they receive so many. The ease of communication has so crowded the field that it has ended communication.

This makes life difficult for any writer, but especially for one who was recently an editor. And even more so for one who was a writer/editor. For nearly two decades, I assigned myself stories, turned them in to my unwavering approval, and then got back to myself immediately regarding publication dates. Being your own man pales in comparison to being your own editor (which, among other things, allows for the former).

Occasional freelancing didn't prepare me for the daily uneventfulness, which belies—and is made all the more disconcerting by—the concept of instant connectedness. I used to send something out and then go about my life; now, this is my life. I work at home, without the diversions of traffic and colleagues, and sit for hours at the machine through which news of my success (or failure) will eventually come (or not). It is a maddening ur-connect, with no escape. While writing, I am forever conscious of the potential arrival of a verdict on my writing. No longer do you check the mail once a day; now you can check it once a paragraph. Three just passed without a message. Waiting, like fasting, is now a twenty-four-hour ordeal.

You can log off e-mail, of course, but you can't turn your mind off the idea of e-mail. Hugely successful writers complain that the demands of fame take them away from their work; today, all writers are distracted by the persistent fantasy of an incoming valentine. Stranger things have happened.

Breaks are more important than ever, providing relief not just from the intense mental concentration of writing but also from the psychological toll of nonstop anticipation. The longer that you are away from your computer, the greater the chance (statistically, at least) of collecting messages on it. What those messages say is another matter.

Rejection is to writers what flies are to cows—a constant annoyance that we somehow attract but never get used to. Being common does not make it any more palatable, in part because it's always a private, individual affair. Though not personal. Intellectually, all writers know this, and if they forget, the impersonal rejection letter dutifully reminds them. Those that arrive electronically tend not to be form rejections, as that would require too much typing. They are dashed-off one- or two-liners. When I was starting out, I collected my rejections; like war wounds, they seemed a kind of badge of honor. (Nothing says you're a writer like your first New Yorker rejection.) Now I delete them.

Waiting and rejection are the being and nothingness of a writer's life. The first begins with an element of hope, but as it drags on the feeling of optimism turns into one of abandonment. The silence, as you sit at your computer hour after hour, month after month, becomes unbearable. You can be convinced that your writing is brilliant, but not that it is being read.

This is especially the case when you submit blind; who you know is as important in publishing as it is in politics. With this in mind, I've formulated what I call the three rules of freelancing: If you're friends with an editor, you'll get an assignment. If you know an editor, you'll get a response. If you don't know an editor, you're basically playing the lottery.

Rejection, if it finally comes, does have the virtue of providing closure. Though even with the more bespoke e-jections, it is not always obvious that your submission received a careful perusal. The dismissal can be a little fuzzy. Nevertheless, it unequivocally kills any remaining hope. It is one of the rare situations in which vague writing has a potent effect.

The combination of waiting and rejection used to drive writers to drink; now it drives them to blog. The blogosphere is an editor-free zone, a lawless, all-embracing realm from which uncertainty, disappointment, and standards have been banished. Anything goes and everyone, it sometimes seems, is there, even the talented, which is proof of the painful universality of rejection. (We all need a place safe from putdowns.) The blogosphere is the hack's idea of heaven.

Blogs unquestionably have their uses, but finding room for what John Cheever called "a page of good prose" isn't one of them. Andrew Sullivan's claims to the contrary, their rise would seem to put artful writing in jeopardy. For what use is nuance in the age of information? What hope has the poetic in a landscape of opinion? When so much is of the moment, is there still a place—and an audience—for the timeless? "I rewrite," André Gide is popularly quoted as saying, "in order to be reread." But who rereads on the Internet, that ever-changing screen?

The people who still care about the written word tend to become writers (MFA programs are thriving), which necessarily limits the number of disinterested readers. The practice of writing has always verged on folly, and in a world that craves images it has become more questionable and frustrating than ever. I'd give it up tomorrow if I could shed my unfashionable belief in its importance.