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

Or:

Why I Am a Much Better Writer Than Omar Tyree. And Why Omar Tyree Is a Much Better Business Man Than I Am.


In 1994, I came back to Philly after a year traveling through Europe and Africa as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow. It was a far from triumphant return: I was heartbroken about leaving a London that I adored, had just ended a disastrous eight-month relationship, and had nothing lined up for my future. I landed back in Philly broke and depressed, and went from continent jumping to working as an underpaid temp at the electric company.

My sole plan for salvation during this time, for rescue, was to write a novel, then use the money from its sale to return back to my former life in Brixton, the one I was forced to leave behind. I had never written a novel before, nor published anything else. I wasn't intending on writing anything too edgy, just something commercial enough to get me one of those phat publishing advances I'd been reading about. My intended novel would have a lot of hip hop, some violence, sex, all the stuff that sells. Nothing too demeaning: something like the movie Juice, but as a book.

For the entire year, I worked on this project. I obsessed over it. I worked on it at breaks at work. I became depressed if I wasn't producing on it, and obsessed over page counts as if the day I wrote page 200 I would magically be beamed back to my old life in South London.

Still, despite my desperation, the more I wrote, the more I remembered how much I loved literature. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to be a real writer and not just a cynical profiteer. So about halfway in, I started trying to write something that was actually good. That wasn't false stereotypes and cliches, bullshit archetypes and slang. I started to try and write something that reflected my reality, comprised of real emotion and honesty.

Eager to get it moving, after I reached page 200 I had the thing bound at Kinkos and sent to the literary agent of a friend of mine. After that day, whenever I left the house I checked my voicemail obsessively, waiting for the call from the agent that would serve as my reprieve. Finally, I did get a call. The agent wanted to talk.

I went up to NYC on the Amtrak from Philly, so eager that I showed up at the agent's office a half hour early. Then the agent and I went out to lunch at a fancy restaurant in the Village. Mariah Carey and Tommy Motolla were at the next table, not talking to each other. They were divorced a month later, I think.

There at the table, in a rushed aside, the agent told me:

"Half of the writing in your book is really good, fantastic. But the other half is just horrible. Just complete shit."

"I totally agree. I know that now. That's why I'm going to go back and rewrite that first half completely and-"

"What? No, no. That first half is great: really gritty, really urban. It's the second half that's horrible. It's dull pretentious crap. That's what needs to be changed."

I was heart broken. My dreams of a major publisher seemed squashed. Not wanting to be a literary coon, I ignored the agent's advice. I worked even harder to try and make the manuscript the way I wanted it. I called the book White Chocolate Melts: I tell you that because I think that sums up just how fucking awful the thing was. It was hopeless. I learned a lot about being a writer when I finished trying to edit the thing, but no agent was interested in that book, let alone a major publisher. With my options running out, I walked away from it.

What I realized though, in the months ahead, was that the agent had been right: I was good enough to write shitty commercial pulp, but I didn't have the skills to write a serious work of literature. To get those skills, I applied to an MFA and began my own program of reading and writing. I started the long, still ongoing process of trying to grow as a writer.

For the next four years, my energy went into pushing my craft, raising my skill level, and generally becoming a good enough writer that mainstream publishing had to open its doors for me. The result was I become a much stronger writer, and eventually sold a novel to a major house.

Now, all this first happened in '95. The self-publishing craze was in its infancy, with writers like Omar Tyree just starting to make noise as they found success first as self-published authors. The World Wide Web had barely happened, and self-publishing sites like iUniverse didn't exist yet, let alone the print-on-demand technology that was just around the corner. If I had hit my wall just three, or even two years later, all of those self-publishing options would have been available to me. As desperate as I was, I don't know if I would have said no to the idea. I don't think I would have known to. At the time I was working on that book, I actually considered it good enough to be published. I might have jumped at any opportunity not to take "No" for an answer.

If I had chosen to self-publish, that four years would have been spent on learning book marketing, promotion, publicity, audience identification, and all of the other many aspects of the publishing world. My time would have been spent traveling around with boxes of books in the back of my car, hand selling the thing to black bookstores and barbershops and churches, attending every cheesy promotional event I could find just to get White Chocolate Melts out there, no matter how flawed it was. I would have created press packets and done mailings and been out there schmoozing, trying to sneak my way onto every local TV and radio station I could find.

And at the end of that four years, I would probably have several books, having written them in a month or two to expand my product line. And with no real time for craft and my attention completely focused on the market, each would have sucked roughly as much as the first one. Having spent the bulk of my energy on the commerce instead of the art, I would have remained the same shitty writer I was when I started. The moment I chose to self-publish, I would have ceased to make substantial growth. I would have virtually calcified.

This might sound like conjecture, but it's not. I say this because I saw a generation of black writers fall into this trap, authors that could have been original voices that added to the canon, who instead became literary canon fodder. They went pop, blew up, and then almost instantly started vanishing, their worth dwindling with their sales.

Sadly, instead of working actively on getting better, many of this crew instead try to falsely justify the merit of their work. Just like it was impossible in the early 80s to find a disco band that admitted being a disco band, it is rare to find a black commericial writer that will admit that they are a commercial writer. Instead, they often try to argue that their work represents the best of African American literature, on par with Ellison, Baldwin and Morrison. It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad. And so insulting to those writers they claim to emulate.

Sincerely,

Mat Johnson
www.niggerati.com

Next Up:
Lesson #4: How the Black Commercial Fiction Boom Can Save American Publishing

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"

Okay, I'll add comments.

I'd like to send a big group thank you to all the people who've contacted me about the pieces. Since others seem to want it, against my better judgement I've added commenting to the features. Attack.

UPDATE: There have been over a hundred failed attempts to subscribe to the RSS feed. The issue has been fixed, so please subscribe away.

MJ

Dear Black Commercial Fiction Writer, You Suck! (But I'm here to help.) Lesson #1

The following is the first of a series of pieces I will be doing over the next few weeks.

Forget About the Money

When I sold Drop, I was paid $50,000. You heard me, $50,000!!! Just for writing some words on a page. Sounds like a lot, right? And it is, probably more than I deserved. I was officially one of the very few lucky ones, those of us who get financially rewarded for doing what we would do for free. But an advance is just gross profit, to see how much I really made we have to do some subtractions to get to the net.

First, my agent gets 15% percent, even before I see it. That's okay, she's worth it, and more than pays for herself. So we're really starting with $42,500. Then, there's taxes. Let's be generous and say I only got hit with another 15% (I have a good CPA), so now we're down to $36,125. Still, not too bad. Now we have to figure out how long it took me to write the book. Drop was literary fiction, which takes a lot of time because it's written on inspiration, which means it can't be cranked out. It's okay though, because I wrote Drop in two and a half years, from inception to final edit, so that's pretty quick. So now we have to subtract our earnings by half, to $14,450. Uh oh.

Now, to get good enough that I could write something anyone would pay for, I went to Columbia's MFA in Writing, which didn't give out full scholarships. So to attend, in addition to working two jobs the whole time, I went roughly -$47,000 in the hole in student loans. Maybe I could have grown sufficiently as a writer without this experience, but it certainly would have taken me a few years longer. So after selling Drop, I was still basically bankrupt (as a corporate entity, that is).

Now I have to subtract for those two years of beginning writing I needed to do to get good enough to attend Columbia's School of the Arts. That brings my yearly wage down to $8,027.77.

That's right, $8,027.77. Fiscally, I would have done a lot better if I had just kept temping at the electric company. I made $6.33 there.

So, for Drop, I made eight thousand a year in salary, and went fifty thousand dollars in debt. So I bought some nice socks after I cashed the check, paid off all the family members I'd hit up during that time, went back for the visit to London I'd been dreaming about, then put the rest of the money towards writing the next one, Hunting in Harlem (which wasn't enough; by the time Drop hit the stores, I was broke).

So what do I have for my efforts? I have a book that I'm proud of, that shows my truth on the page. I have the accomplishment. I have the people who contact me and tell me they enjoyed something about it, that it validated them or made them see life a little differently. I don't know where the hell those socks I bought are anymore, but my book is right up there on the shelf, and in the minds of everyone who reads it. In the end, that's what it's all about.

Now, if I had written a cynical piece of market-driven crap in less time for more money, my bottom line would have been a bit better. Regardless of this fact, there is always a day when that money runs out. And when it did, then what would I have? Shit, I think is the answer.

Yours Truly,

Mat Johnson
www.niggerati.com

Stay Tuned For:
"How I Know You Suck, Why You Suck, and How You Can Improve"

How to Pitch a Graphic Novel: The Incognegro Story

Vertigo Comics, the mature audience house at DC Comics, will be publishing my creator-owned original graphic novel in February 2008. In response to those who have asked how the hell something like that happens, I offer the following.

Growing up as mulatto pups, my cousin Ben and I used to joke about those other mixed breeds who would pretend to be white or, as we named it, went incognegro. Apparently (I just found this out), Ludacris had an album of the same title, but for the record I was using this word long before that, and budding etymologists may search for an article on “passing” I did for Time Out-New York that I’m pretty sure pre-dates the rapper’s usage. And I doubt I was the first to use the word (nor my cousin Ben).

Anyway, as an appropriately poor selling mid-list author, I often joke that all I would have to do to have a bestseller would be to write a commercial suspense book called Incognegro. Given the press’s desire to make the personal history of the artist and art the same thing, it was sure to be a hit. But it would have been a shitty, cynical book, so I wasn’t interested.

Fast forward. I started doing work with Vertigo, specifically on a Hellblazer mini-series that was a bit of fun. After that, I started looking at the idea of doing more. The graphic novels gave me the opportunity to write exciting, plot-driven pieces while not betraying the type of poetic, character-driven prose I enjoy. Many literary writers have written scripts for movies (really, really shitty movies too), the only difference here was that my script would be drawn instead of shot.

Sure, there would be those who’s pretensions would lead them to condemn me for doing any form of commercial work, but I wanted to do it anyway. If anything, doing genre-influenced scripts on the graphic side has inspired me to push the creative boundaries of prose further to the edge. Today, I have no expectation of money or readership for my novels at this point. Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. It means I get tell the truth, and not have to worry if anybody wants to hear it. (I say this now, but if I don’t get a million dollars and readers for my next novel, Pym, somebody’s getting shot.)

So I gave Vertigo this pitch. It’s short, but based on just these words, I sold them the idea and movie rights. I wrote the whole thing while living in Philly for the summer, and now it’s being drawn by Warren Pleece. I’m looking forward to seeing it, and I hope to put some sample images here over the next few months.

The Incognegro Pitch

The Spectre Goes Black: Buy this Comic

Eric Battle, fellow Philadelphian, comic book geek and Negro, has been given the job of a lifetime: drawing one of DC Comics’ central characters in a modern redesign. That character is The Spectre, and it’s one that has been central to the mythology of the DC Comics storyline over the years. It’s a huge break for him; when you do a book for a central character, all the fans see it, many of them buy it, and it’s the key to fame and fortune in this niche industry. The title is called Tales of the Unexpected, and will run eight issues.

The Spectre is also one of many recent re-imaginings in which the character is converted from a white male into something else (in this case a black one). It’s a long overdue attempt by the comics industry to catch up with the multiculturalization of American media and mythology over the last 30 years. I’m planning on putting together a lecture on the subject, and will put parts of that up here. For now, check out a pdf sample of Eric’s Spectre.

Somebody Call Coolio: White Savior Movies

Why is it that every couple of years, white people bring another movie out about a white teacher who goes into the ghetto to show the darkies that life isn’t so bad? Showering their wholesome whiteness onto the underprivileged pickaninnies and thereby making everything right. Sound familiar?

Remember Dangerous Minds? Or how about Half Nelson? Or maybe you prefer Music from the Heart?

Well guess what? If you liked those flaming turds of patronizing passive racism, you’re going to love FREEDOM WRITERS, new from Hillary Swank.

Is this revenge for To Sir with Love?

Apparently, there must be a huge market for self-indulgent caucasian rescue fantasies where the white viewer gets to feel good about themselves while still actively being racist as all hell. It’s so embarrassing to watch, I can barely look at the trailer. This shit is like porn for liberals. The fact that they are clueless to this just makes it worse.




(That said, PLEASE vote Democrat this November. Liberals can be annoying and silly, but goofy is better than fucking evil.)

Black Writer Complains of Being Ignored

No, it’s not me. It’s this guy. Langston Hughes knows rivers, and Alvin Aubert knows that the Norton Anthology of African American Literature screwed him over:

Your new compendium was touted as the big one and this is definitely not about sour grapes—its [sic] too far gone for that anyhow seeing as how the damned thing's already out; all the same, why in hell didn't any of you see fit to include anything of mine in your landmark new canon-making omnibus; could it be you just don't know how damned good I can be or that I even exist?

I have never read a word cuz has written before today, but if his poetry is anything like this letter, he officially has a new No.1 fan.

I don’t know what I love more: that he is openly indignant about his failure to appear in the Norton Anthology, or that he can’t believe that they’ve never heard of him or didn’t consider him important enough.

I understand. When you work your whole life on a body of work, you want that work appreciated, saved for future generations. Not getting into the Norton is like not making it onto Noah’s ark.

Of course, the typos that infest this thing are an argument against his inclusion in itself. A winning argument. That said, dude has a real voice. I mean, every time I read this I can’t help but I read it out loud, while doing an impression of Redd Foxx.

Alvin Aubert, you are a Lord of the Niggerati!