On Writing vs. Getting Good
Some inspiration from William Edmondson (not a writer).
Hello friends,
I have been thinking in an undirected way about the relationship between creative writing and money, which is a topic that is bandied about on Substack A Lot. I am not interested in digging into it here. I like to spend my time writing books, and my own preference would be to get paid zillions of dollars for writing the books, and that’s essentially my whole stance on the matter. It’s not a very spicy stance. I assume it is the foundational stance of basically everyone (especially if you replace “writing books” with your activity of choice, such as “painting thumbnail-sized pictures of dogs” or, idk, “accounting”), including the people who manage to come up with much hotter takes on the subject.
But I was thinking about a conversation I had with my dad a long time ago, after Until Death had sold to Little, Brown, but before it was out in the world. The idea of exposing my novel to the public was both a lifelong dream of mine AND a thing that made me feel very, very sticky. Famously, I have historically refused to share my novels with any of my family or friends. My rule was always, “You can see it once it’s published,” which was a safe rule before I got anything published. So the thought of cracking open my ribcage in front of not only my “family and friends” but “The Public” was… basically unpleasant, and something I had basically managed to avoid ever considering, in much the same way that I assume people who get pregnant manage to avoid thinking about the part where they are going to have to give birth.
So my father asked me something along the lines of, How does it feel to be publishing a book, idk. And I was thinking, at that moment, that what I really wanted to do was write the books, i.e. spend my time writing the books. Publishing the books was something that had to be done for the sake of making some money in order to continue to spend as much time as possible writing the books, but if I won the lottery or miraculously inherited a great sum of money from a long-lost relative, then perhaps I would not want to publish the books anymore. Perhaps I would just spend my time writing them.
I suggested this to my father. But almost as soon as the thought was out of my mouth, I was like, “No, that’s not true.”
In fact, it’s kind of intuitively untrue. Because not only do I want to write the books, I also want to get good. And eventually the only way to have any sense of whether you’re getting good is to share your work with the world and see how they react to it. To see if they will give it strong critiques, an agent, a book deal, a spot on a bestseller list, positive reviews, a prize, another book deal after that.
Unfortunately, the market is a pretty fallible arbiter. But it’s what we’ve got. The market is like the Pope, which is to say, a mere man trying to serve as the mouthpiece of God. If I could get God Himself to read my work and tell me whether it was any good, I’d do that, but I can’t, so instead I have to turn to Publishing and the Reading Public.
And then I started thinking about William Edmondson.
William Edmondson is one of my favorite artists. I know virtually nothing about visual art or art history, but in 2023 I ended up at an exhibition of Edmondson’s work at the Barnes. I loved it! His sculptures are so cute!!! He was a railroad worker turned custodian in rural Tennessee, and when he was about 60 years old he heard a message from God telling him to pick up his rail spike or whatever and start carving a block of limestone. And he did. He carved tombstones, angels, animals, birdbaths, imaginary creatures, schoolteachers, nurses, children, Eleanor Roosevelt. He carved about three hundred sculptures over the course of his remaining decade and a half on this earth. Eventually some rich guy from Nashville wandered through this rural Tennessee town and found all these limestone sculptures, overflowing from this guy’s yard, dotting the yards of his neighbors and friends. Can you imagine?
The rich guy became a patron of Edmondson’s, and eventually Edmondson became the first African-American artist to have a one-person show at MoMA. But I like to think that Edmondson didn’t care about that. He was already old. He just wanted to make the sculptures. And he didn’t need MoMA or the magazines or various gallerists to approve of his work — even when they did, which they didn’t always — but it didn’t matter, because Edmondson already had the approval of God.
News & Upcoming Events
On FRIDAY JULY 24, I’ll be in conversation with Clare Osongco at Kiss & Tale in Collingswood, NJ, to celebrate her newest novel, Unfinished Business. It’s a weird workplace rom-com about a woman whose dead mother is trapped in the company Slack. Until Death also has a love triangle and a dead (well, dying) mother, so I feel there’s a lot of resonance here. Info & tickets for Unfinished Business in Collingswood!
On SUNDAY AUGUST 23, I’ll be at Dark Ink Festival in Doylestown, discussing Debuts, Breakouts, and Finding Your Voice with Taylor Grothe, Kailee Pederson, Sara van Os, and Violet James McMaster. Free admission, reservations requested. Book signing to follow! The festival lineup also includes such heavy hitters as Chuck Wendig, Nat Cassidy, M.L. Rio, Rachel Harrison, and the Pulitzer-winning Daniel Kraus???
On MONDAY SEPTEMBER 14, I’ll be in conversation with Mona Awad at Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia for the paperback release of We Love You, Bunny. I once went to a Bunny-themed event in costume, so I was made for this. Info & tickets for We Love You, Bunny in Philly!
Then, on WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 16, I’ll be in conversation with Kerry Cullen and Lacey Dunham at Lost City Books in D.C. We will be celebrating the contemporary gothic, and let me tell you, we are having FUN with the THEME. Details to come.
Finally, I cannot wait to return to my old stomping grounds at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, on MONDAY OCTOBER 5! Info & tickets for Until Death in Oxford!
P.S. My novel Until Death is in stores now! It was an instant USA Today bestseller! It’s been called “Say Yes to the Dress meets Rosemary’s Baby” (Margie Sarsfield), “wryly humorous and progressively horrific” (Sequoia Nagamatsu), and a “debut [that] excels” (Kirkus). If you like my newsletter, stalking strangers’ wedding websites, or picking decades-old fights with your mom, check it out.
And yet, when all is said and done, you know in your bones you are doing what you were born to do: write!
Then there is this from Marcel Duchamp “The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word.”