Dear Black Commercial Fiction Writer, You Suck! (But I'm here to help.) Lesson #2: Water Torture

How I Know You Suck, Why You Suck, and How You Can Get Better

Let me say first that there are some truly gifted, stunning commercial writers out there with work well worth indulging in. And that also there is an overwhelming supply of boring, self-indulgent, derivative literary writers out there to avoid at all costs. This series is aimed specifically at my brethren on the literary chitterlings circuit that has evolved over the last fifteen years: Terri's children, Zane's hoes, and most recently the bastard CHUDs of Donald Goines. The vast majority of these folks I've found to be very nice people, but also very bad writers. Yes, I'm talking about you. Now that our first lesson has temporarily removed the dollar signs from your eyes, let us discuss craft.

THE WATER METHOD.
True story: When I was about 10, my cousin Alex and I both went to his kitchen with the expressed intent of retrieving a glass of water. Once we got there, however, I went to the sink, and he went to a jug of spring water on the counter. My cousin Alex was more middle-class than I, and when he saw that I was drinking Philly tap water he saw fit to mock me. I, in response, told him that he was a stuck-up punk, and that water was water. There was no difference between tap and spring. To prove how silly he was, I devised a test.

Taking two identical cobalt blue drinking glasses, I filled one with tap water and one with bottled spring water, and then had Alex enter the room and try to identify the spring water. The glasses looked identical, and tasted identical to me: like water, nothing more. The first time, the spring water was on the left, and Alex walked in and choose the left. The next time, the spring water was on the right, and Alex came in and picked the one on the right. Again and again, much to my confusion, he got it right. I thought he was cheating, so sent him further and further away, but every time he came back he knew instantly which sample was which. I began to suspect that Alex had tapped into to some mutant physic power, but besides that I had no explanation.

Later that week, my mother's friend told us about a natural spring that ran about an hour north in the mountains where one could bottle for free, so we took a day trip there. Filling up a dozen gallon jugs, we brought back enough spring water for a month. And then, I began to drink it.

A few weeks later I went back to my cousins' house. Again, Alex and I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and again, this time just to be defiant, I went for the tap. It was the first time I had sipped Philly tap water in almost a month. I put it to my lips, and what I tasted was shit. Pickled shit, with floride thrown in on top. It was utterly undrinkable; I had to swallow a glass of spring water just to wipe the funk out of my mouth.

Today, I get the same feeling when I read a lot of the crap that lines the shelves of the fiction section in our black bookstores. Don't get me wrong, I don't read the whole books. But I don't have to. After a diet of good literature, I can see everything that is wrong with them just by reading their first paragraphs. Your first paragraph is the welcome mat to your text, it's where you try to seduce the reader to go further, where you strut your best stuff and hope they choose to come inside. If that first bite is stale, it's not like the rest of your bread is going to be any better. And it's not. And that's not because you're stupid, or are devoid of talent. It's because you know so little about literature that you don't have any idea what's good and what's bad, what's new and what's worn out. And you can always change that. Here's how:

READ. READ. READ.
Writing, art in general, is about bringing something new, something different. Otherwise, what's the point? (If you said to make money, repeat Lesson #1.) Innovation is the key. This is true of all types of writing: that is why Terri McMillan was memorable, and most of her offspring were not. That is why Donald Goines was the shit, and most of his literary offspring are just plain fecal. But how can you do something new if you don't even know what's already been done? Literature is a conversation. You ever try to join in on a lively conversation without having an understanding of what the others have been talking about? You repeat things they already discussed, bring up points they already discredited, and generally throw off the rhythm. Awkward, right? Yup. Just like your prose.

Most of the writers on the black commercial scene don't read. When asked about who they do read, they recite the names Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, or Toni Morrison, but never anyone who isn't taught in the high school curriculum. There are a ton of fantastic, gifted writers just within the African American dialogue to choose from (let alone beyond it), but you never hear them say they read Ishmael Reed or Gayl Jones, and they're just the living writers. I don't think they even know who Wallace Thurman or Nella Larsen, Ann Petry or Chester Himes are. This is because they haven't read anything since high school, or at least nothing worth bragging about. Most of the black commercial fiction writers are primarily entrepreneurs, with college degrees in pragmatic things like engineering and marketing, but with absolutely no education in literature. When they discuss writing, they have no idea what they're talking about historically, critically, or practically. They can speak English and type, but that's about it.

Read good books and figure out why they are good. Read bad books to figure out why they are bad. Don't try to simply copy something, but instead try to see what pieces you can take to build something new. Something that nobody's seen before.

I know this goes against your very business nature. In the business world, creating a potentially lucrative product is about identifying an audience, and trying to meet an already expressed demand. In that arena, everybody wants to be second: the second in line to cash in on a proven success. Hence, Terri's kids started trying to do copies of her work to sell to the audience she created. The focus was not on innovation, rather on repetition. But this is why, by and large, the books themselves weren't that good. And why they are already being forgotten, their sales steadily diminishing as the next genre fad is jumped on.

KILL THE CLICHES.
All good authors know that writing is the fight against cliche: whether in language or ideas. Please declare war, already. Many commercial writers are so clueless to this basic reality that they even use cliches for titles (with a little ebonics thrown in for good measure). Comb your writing of well-worn catch phrases, worn out imagery, and mundane, unchallenged thought. Replace all those with new, original, honest descriptions and takes on reality. That's all you have to do. Give your work its own vision.

FLIP IT UP.
The benefit of reading books is the language, particularly in this age of movies and television. If the language is not special, what is the point of reading? I love watching TV, now with my iPod I can watch it anywhere I go. If you're not going to dance for me, I'm going to watch Lost reruns instead. So learn to get some rhythm to your prose: we have a jazz heritage, you're welcome to use it. Stop giving pages and pages of pure motion-to-motion description so that your books read like a script: "Lorenzo walked in the door. He turned on the TV. He wondered where Kim was. Maybe he would call her..." Go on a riff, a tangent, whether in prose or subject. Watch your word repetitions, try not to let the same word echo in a paragraph. Once you've learned the rules, bend them. Stop trying to plow through to the ending so you can get your next product on the shelves, and enjoy yourself.

PUSH YOURSELF FURTHER.
Let's take this from our history: as a people we have had to push ourselves further, harder, than others around us. Please take this ethic to your writing. The fact that you wrote 300 pages doesn't mean your words are worth the paper they're printed on. There is a difference between writing and typing. Stop thinking that just because you sold 10,000 books in three months, that you're a good writer. That doesn't make you a good writer, that makes you a good salesman. Edit. Edit again. Push yourself further. Anyone can improve. Just look at me. I used to suck really really bad. Now, after years of dedication and hard work, I don't suck nearly as much as used to.

Sincerely,
Mat Johnson
www.niggerati.com

Up Next:

"Lesson #3: How Self-Publishing is Ruining a Generation of Black Writers"

or

"How I Almost Became a Bad Black Writer"