Emptying My Notebooks: What If I Thought of GUN CURIOUS as a Work of Art Rather Than a Commodity?

NOTE: I recently unpacked my hodgepodge of notebooks about gun culture to begin thinking about writing another book in 2025. Seeing John McPhee’s Tabula Rasa in a local bookstore inspired me to empty those notebooks here. Be advised: These are truly notes and not composed ideas.

Probably written in May 2023 (note an older title for my book referenced) and saved to a file just rediscovered.

I have been told by more publishers than I can (or care to) count that there is no market for my book on American gun culture, Gun Curious: Understanding America’s Evolving Culture of Firearms. For some, there is no market for books on guns generally; for others, no market for my particular low-heat, balanced take on guns.

This has been frustrating, of course, but it has also led me to reevaluate what exactly I am doing as an author. The famous music producer Rick Rubin’s new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, has been invaluable in this process.

I didn’t set out to study American gun culture to sell commodities. I set out to discover something new about a world I did not know or understand. To draw from the Baruch Spinoza quote that has been on my blog from the start, “I have sedulously endeavored not to laugh at human actions, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.” In this case, human actions around guns.

So, what if I took Rick Rubin’s advice and thought of my book not as a commodity whose value is determined in the marketplace but as a work of art that is good in itself? What if I took the process of observing, reflecting, thinking, and writing to be a creative process? What if I thought of myself as an artist?

Liberation.

If nothing else and for better or worse, every word in Gun Curious was my choice – not written for a market that doesn’t exist, or in response to a reviewer or editor whose perspective diverges from mine.

I revisit The Creative Act periodically as I struggle to approach my ongoing work as the creative work of an artist, not as a line worker grinding out the commodities that the market demands.