Van Gogh almost wasn't.

Vincent Van Gogh was called the "tortured genius". Everyone who knew the painter thought him to be sick in the head because of his avocation. He wanted to be an artist so badly growing up that by the age of 26, he was utterly derelict. At the age of 31, he discovered the inspirational environment and climate of Arles, France. It was there that he found his muse in nature. And took his place in the annals of art history.

It was also there that he began to suffer from odd emotional ailments and psychotic episodes. That was no surprise to anyone, as "the idea that creativity was linked to 'madness' was well known at this time" (www.tate.org.uk: "Van Gogh: Challenging the Myth of the 'Tortured Genius'"). Van Gogh knew otherwise -- the mental illness he suffered had nothing at all to do with his artistic abilities or drive. It was just his fate.

The article sums up the tragedy that was Vincent Van Gogh's life: "Framing Van Gogh as a mad genius reduces him to his mental health and illness. He wasn't a great painter because of poor mental health. Nor did he allow it to stop him painting."

Okay. Let's change course here. As Bob Dylan sang, "The times, they are a-changin'." I spent all day yesterday reading and taking notes from a book I bought on Kindle about how to get reviews for my novels. Then I started another. There are a lot of how-to books out there on ways to become a successful author and the advice they throw at you feels daunting. You're probably wondering why I don't avoid it all by just submitting my books to a publishing company rather than Amazon (which leaves the stressful heavy lifting to the writers). We'll broach that topic in a bit.

Once upon a time, an author submitted his or her manuscript idea at the very least to a handful of companies who later would handle all the ins and outs of getting the finished product published, noticed and sold (if they liked it well enough to invest all that work in it). It didn't cost anything at the time for the author. He or she would get either a free rejection letter or a monetary motivational advance. One was a discouraging humiliation; the other a sure inducement of writer's block.

Remember the "Writer's Guide"? It was a fat directory of all the literary agents and publishing companies in existence, good and bad. I had the "Screenwriter's Guide" to agents and production companies. It was fat as well. I remember going through and dog-earing the places that might (I stress "might") look at my stuff. Both guides not only provided subscribers' contact information but also the types of genres and page counts, among other things, they'd need to consider before they'd even take a glance. It wasn't enough to have written a great screenplay or story. It wouldn't get read by even a lowly reader if it didn't fit neatly into a tidy little box. Did I mention the one-sentence pitch? You know: Godzilla meets Barbie? That lay at the top of the box as an enticement. Everyone had to learn how to write a winning pitch.

That box still exists, as publishers still have narrow requirements to this day. For one, my novels are too long! I tried to keep The Last Solo Roller at 100,000 words (the upper limit according to numerous sources), but I couldn't. It consists of 113,399, to include the page at the end that begs for reviews. My thickest novel is The Well of Tears & Laughter, at 144,405. If you read it, you'd understand why. 

For publishers, a big roadblock is word count which -- to me -- is insulting to an avid reader. They don't quibble over words, do they? A story with 100,000 three-letter words is as long as a 50,000 six-letter word book! According to www.masterclass.com's "Word Count Guide: How Long Is a Book, Short Story, or Novella?", audiences prefer stories that don't surpass a designated word count. That has to be a lie. The better the book, the longer I'd like it to be! In fact, that's why my readers get upset when I end in a cliffhanger.

I've never based my reading on how many words are in a book. I may have shied from War and Peace as a teenager because of how thick it was. And I didn't have Microsoft to warn me I'd be cogitating almost 600,000 words in Tolstoy's tome. I just looked at the width of the spine. That said, the Harry Potter collection contains 1,084,170 words. Imagine putting all that between two covers!

The other issue I face is the fact that I (proudly) label my book set as a contemporary erotic romance series. Oh, I'm sure the eyebrows rise on that when I send query letters. But what is an author to do with a character who was just as proud of being a midnight cowboy? Turn him into a choir boy to appease the strait-laced readers of the world? As few as there are? Or strait-laced publishers who don't realize or care that a lot of people like the spicy stuff?

Now, back to my words five paragraphs back: "It didn't cost anything at the time for the author." Nowadays, there are so many authors and so many more novels competing with one another than ever before. Many of them are written quickly with the aid of AI. Some writers' clubs even have contests to see who can produce a book in a month. I admit there are a few publishers out there who promise to sell my novels, but their effort comes at a hefty price -- to me. They can either be picky because of the competition or they don't want to take a chance on something that was written in a matter of weeks with the aid of AI or as part of a contest.

I guess I'd have to agree with the powers that be that this is just how it is and that I ought to shell out the thousands required to have someone else do that heavy lifting Amazon won't. At least for my first novel. Once it starts earning me enough royalties to buy a humble house in rural Kansas, my reputation will precede me and I won't have to offer another bribe thereafter.

So, shall I start a GoFundMe for that hefty investment? Until I can otherwise cough it up, I remain dwarfed in a sea of authors and their own accomplishments, honestly come by or otherwise. All of us vying for the attention of readers who are swayed by the SEO one struggles to learn from a how-to book or with the aid of sweet Claude. And swayed by the star count and reviews that one must beg for with various time-consuming strategies that may or may not produce the needed results.

So, here we arrive at that "madness". We write because we love to write. We all have stories to share. We have dreams that demand to be interpreted in word and image. We have imaginations that scream to soar. We are like Van Gogh, throwing his life to the wind in order to paint haystacks and sunflowers bending to its will. Aching to be recognized for our talent.

Van Gogh claimed he wasn't mentally ill because of the art. He did the art because he loved it, despite his disabilities. It must have been cathartic. It must have been for him the peaceful eye of the storm that was his life. The happy place where the artist could feel safe.

He prevailed and became an icon. It isn't hard to see, however, that such good fortune was a possibility. Van Gogh's "madness" clearly contributed to his fame and fortune. Could he have forged a spot in the world of art without it? Might he have died instead a lonely resident of the local poor house without it? I'm sure he caused quite the sensation when he cut off his ear, whether or not it was due to unrequited love. People noticed him.

We authors who put our all into manuscripts that just sit there on Amazon's virtual shelves competing with one another across genres and key words, stagnating at some millionth spot in the search engine only because we don't have the financial resources or the skills or acumen to bypass it, are succumbing to frustration, anxiety, emotional dejection and mental paralysis trying to market ourselves. While we spend time struggling to install the right apps and find the right influencers and compose the sincerest request and keep track of a myriad outgoing and incoming communiques, good and bad, we are all slowly sinking into a state of spiritual malaise and utter despair.

Why? Because we're not doing what we love. If all we had to do was write, we'd be in our happy places like Van Gogh. Unlike him, though, we don't start our journey of creation afflicted as he was. And while his mental health didn't define him throughout his short life, for we really only remember him as an amazing Post-Impressionist artist, ours does. We start our literary career with light hearts, high goals, trusting spirits, and the confidence of a pioneer marching into the unknown. It doesn't take long for us to enter the real world, however, where those of us with money pay others to do our marketing and those of us without lose hope and go back to our day jobs.

With that, I shall now put my faith in artificial intelligence to develop an SEO plan. Because human intelligence is apparently a common commodity with little extrinsic value.