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Remarks by NWU Boston co-chair Charles Coe at 2007 Winter Book Party, January 21, 2007

I'd like to congratulate everyone who had a book published in 2006; for a lot of the rest of you, I hope 2007 is your year.

I just wanted to take a few minutes to share with you some thoughts on a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. Namely, why do we bother writing? In the face of how difficult the publishing industry makes it for working writers, why do we keep hanging in there? We all know a lot of people who don't. I know someone who wrote short stories for years and finally got fed up with how difficult it is to make a living doing so. So she gave up writing fiction and started a consulting business to tutor high-level corporate executives who're non-native speakers of English. Now she's making a bundle.

The composer Bizet, who his entire life struggled to make a living, once said, "Music is a wonderful craft, and a miserable profession." One might be tempted to say the same about writing: the consolidation of media outlets; the unfair working conditions that the publishing industry, in full collusion with its protectors and friends in government has managed to impose on working writers and editors; and the shrinking number of outlets for writers as many in the American public − especially young people − seem more interested in iPods and video games and busywork Sudoku puzzles and magazines that follow breathlessly the romantic liaisons of braindead flavor-of-the-month pop stars.

So why do writers keep at it? Because one story read by one person at the right time can change that person's life. And it certainly changes the life of the person who wrote it. So we keep at it, because we're hooked.

Sometimes when I talk with a young person who's complaining about how difficult it is to get any traction in the writing profession, I'll nod in full agreement. And when they finally wind down, I'll say, "You're absolutely right. Writing is a really rotten way to try to earn your beer and cigarette money − much less earn a living. In fact, writing is so hard − both as a craft and a profession − that if you can live without it you should probably do exactly that."

I doubt seriously if anyone in this room could follow that advice. Although you might have occasionally wished you could. I know I've had times when I've wished that as a kid I'd been interested in the stock market and tax law instead of books and music. But I stick with it. And you stick with it. Because the truth is out there. And it ain't on Fox News. Or in the New York Times.

Last week, Bill Moyers gave the opening address at the National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis. You can read the text on the Democracy Now website, democracynow.org, and I highly recommend you do so. It was a talk that was depressing, terrifying and inspiring, all at once.

Moyers said:

So if we need to know what is happening, and Big Media won't tell us; if we need to know why it matters, and Big Media won't tell us; if we need to know what to do about it, and Big Media won't tell us, it's clear what we have to do. We have to tell the story ourselves.

And this is what the plantation owners feared most of all. Over all those decades here in the South, when they used human beings as chattel, and quoted scripture to justify it, property rights over human rights was God's way, they secretly lived in fear that one day -- instead of saying, "Yes, Massa" -- those gaunt, weary, sweat-soaked field hands, bending low over the cotton under the burning sun, would suddenly stand up straight, look around, see their sweltering and stooping kin and say, 'This ain't the product of intelligent design. The boss man in the big house has been lying to me. Something is wrong with this system."

This is the moment freedom begins, the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story, and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.

So I hope you all keep the faith. Keep writing your stories. Keep telling your truths, with as much craft and honesty as you can. Stay involved with the National Writers Union, or get involved. Work with other writers who are committed to bringing a diversity of voices and insights to the national conversation.

The power and money of the media conglomerates is daunting, as is what seems like the massive indifference of so much of the general public their willingness to live off the pabulum that so often passes for mainstream media.

But I still believe we can make a difference. So I'll leave you with the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead, who said:

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has."