Update
Hello Everyone,
My apologies for not posting this week, I have been distracted.
At the moment, I'm writing the final pages on my next novel. There was a time when this act of completion would send me into a depression. I once heard George Saunders say that writers who experienced this end-of-novel melancholy were mourning the loss of the perfect novel they'd imagined but couldn't write, and accepting instead the limitations of the novel that they did produce. On the completion of this latest novel, however, I just feel relief that it went as well as it did. It's not that it is perfect, it's just its a rather bizarre piece of ficiton, and I know it could have gone much much worse.
For all of you aspiring Ladies and Lords of the Niggerati, I will be teaching at both the Callaloo Writing Workshop and the Hurston/Wright Writers in the summer of 2007. If you want my assistance with your writing, please apply.
Callaloo Writing Workshop
Hurston/Wright Writers Week
Best,
Mat Johnson
www.niggerati.com
My apologies for not posting this week, I have been distracted.
At the moment, I'm writing the final pages on my next novel. There was a time when this act of completion would send me into a depression. I once heard George Saunders say that writers who experienced this end-of-novel melancholy were mourning the loss of the perfect novel they'd imagined but couldn't write, and accepting instead the limitations of the novel that they did produce. On the completion of this latest novel, however, I just feel relief that it went as well as it did. It's not that it is perfect, it's just its a rather bizarre piece of ficiton, and I know it could have gone much much worse.
For all of you aspiring Ladies and Lords of the Niggerati, I will be teaching at both the Callaloo Writing Workshop and the Hurston/Wright Writers in the summer of 2007. If you want my assistance with your writing, please apply.
Callaloo Writing Workshop
Hurston/Wright Writers Week
Best,
Mat Johnson
www.niggerati.com
3 Comments:
How am I supposed to get there? Will you please help with flight and accomodations? I've got a novel about slavery that takes place during the civil rights movement. I have already recieved offers from the National Book Award people.
Congrats man, I just finished mine, on my birthday no less. Now I'm going through this agent process again. Now should I feel guilty saying "Hey 2007 is the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade and lookee here: a slave novel?"
I just wrote a 250 page sequal to a 19th Poe novel nobody bought in the first place. Can you say, "Bestseller?" No, you can't, and apparently I can't write one.
I think the problem with slavery as a subject is that those who are interested in it in publishing don't want to hear new truth on the subject, they just want to be comforted with old ones.
Again, Time Capsules. I think we are writing time capsules. Someday, some student is going to pick up your text and it will open up a whole world of thought. You'll be dead and will never hear about it, but please trust that this will happen.
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