Louder Than Clout 🕸️ Issue 15

May my work ever be louder than my name.

There was a period in recent years, somewhere between 2021 and 2023, when I had a cascade of wins in my literary career. It felt like hardly any time passed between announcements about one thing or the other: I was shortlisted for the Miles Morland Writing Fellowship; I got into the LOATAD West African Writers’ residency; I signed an audiobook deal and then a print book deal for my debut novella, The Year of Return; I was shortlisted for the first edition of the Adinkra Poetry Prize; I got into the inaugural JIAS Creative Writing Workshop in South Africa; I got into the Clarion West 6-week Writing Workshop; I was awarded one of two bursaries to attend the Milford SF Conference in Wales and a grant from FIYAH Literary Magazine which allowed me to cover a significant portion of my travel expenses.

(As much as spelling things out like this can seem self-aggrandizing, there is probably an author or two somewhere who may not know that these things exist and that they can apply/might be eligible for them until they read such an itemized list, so I shall let it be. In any case, I don’t feel aggrandized. In the grand scheme of things, I no reach anywhere sef, and I refuse to be consumed by small pond syndrome.)

I am so, so grateful for all that these opportunities presented to me. My portfolio, my literary skills, my network, and my CV are certainly much better for it. I will say, however, that one thing I didn’t anticipate is how stressed it would make me to think that my name could become more popular or even more important than the actual work I produce.

I am not a person who craves fame. I am much more comfortable being aloof and hidden in the shadows, where I perceive life to be safer—ironic, given how prone I am to covetousness, especially of more “successful” people in my fields of artistic expression. On the other hand, it really does fill me with pleasure when work I made is consumed, appreciated, resonated with, and shared. The process of creating is already so fulfilling in itself, but the consumption of the work among an audience is what really closes that fulfillment loop for me in a way that popularity in and of itself never will.

Photo credit: Seth Avusuglo, 2024 - during TYOR book launch

And so, during that season of my life when it seemed like my work was everywhere, I was increasingly stressed because my work was not being read, despite the clout I seemed to be gathering. I had requests to be interviewed, to feature on podcasts, to contribute to publications, from acquaintances, strangers and celebrities; people I would be very hard pressed to believe had any true familiarity with my work. I am sure I rejected more than half of these requests. I even reached a point where I started to have little panic sessions each time another request came through.

One of the reasons I am so sure that the people extending these requests to me weren’t reading my work is because my work wasn’t out—or otherwise, wasn’t easily accessible to the people sending these requests. When I would get shortlisted for a prize, or accepted into a program, or awarded grant money, often the only people who would have read the work that earned me those things are the people who reviewed my applications. Often, the writing that earns me these achievements are works in progress, sometimes even proposals, nowhere close to ready for publication (that’s what the workshops are for). And so, even for the most well-meaning people who make up my potential audience, the most they can do is congratulate me—which is very sweet and immensely appreciated, and yet still cannot close the loop because it is not the same as actually reading the work.

Another problem is that in the few cases where I have gotten published, it is often in places which are generally inaccessible to many of the people who make up my primary or potential audience; namely, Africans in Africa who know me personally, or know people who know me personally. My first pro sale, “Exiles of Witchery”, was published in Africa Risen, which was so hard to get to Ghana that my author copies got lost at sea maybe twice, and I had to get them shipped to someone in the US so that I could get my copies. If it’s this difficult for a contributing writer in Africa, how much more potential readers? (It remains one of the highlights of my literary career, however, that I walked into a library in London and saw this book, with my work in it, on prominent display nearly immediately.) There are similar struggles concerning the work I’ve had published in anthologies in Switzerland and the UK.

Yet another reason my work wasn’t out is because, despite a few successes which I consider flukes, I do not think writing good short stories comes naturally. Longer stories, or at least much larger worlds, are more my style. Often, my attempts at short stories have such horrible cliffhanger endings or provoke so much curiosity in readers about the worlds in which they are set that they leave readers unsatisfied and feeling as though I ended the story without actually finishing it. I daresay there are many readers who feel this way about The Year of Return.

I wouldn’t say necessarily that publishing short stories is easier than publishing long ones, but I will say that the timeline in terms of getting one’s work out into the world in accessible ways (e.g. literary magazines that don’t have paywalls) is much shorter for short stories than for novels and other longer forms of writing.

Another thing about the interviews, appearances and other requests is that it starts feeling, at some point, like being used. I am convinced there are people who think I am a much bigger deal or a much better writer than I actually am. Sometimes I wonder if they erroneously think having my name associated with their endeavor will grant them some kind of legitimacy. And, in cases where I check myself and conclude that it really isn’t legitimacy that I’m being used for, I still feel that I’m being used at the very least to fill a content void.

Being used is not necessarily a bad thing. In many cases, it can be mutually beneficial. However, in the season during which these requests came my way, I didn’t feel like I would have much to gain besides exposure for its own sake. If I am ever to seek exposure, I want it to be for my work’s sake. But without work out, without something substantial to promote besides my own name, I did not feel like accepting the requests was worth it. So I made a personal commitment not to accept these requests until two works that I was really looking forward to releasing were finally out in the world: the rewritten version of OTC 1: The Complete Kuukua Collection, and my novella, The Year of Return. Take, for example, the interview I did with Florence Adu for the Glocal Citizens podcast, in which I actually got to talk about my published work. That was a truly fulfilling conversation, and I would like that to be the norm for the rest of my career. One can dream.

I will freely confess to having a bit of disdain for people who seem remarkably comfortable with having their names be louder than their work—and that’s as much shade as I’ll allow myself to throw in public. In truth, I recognize that different human beings have different goals and desires, and that is okay. Besides, I am well aware that in the 21^st century, clout does have the potential to sell work. The connection is not as linear as one might think, but it does exist. Alas, I do not enjoy making noise, and social media exhausts me, so I am stuck somewhere along the popularity ladder with barely any energy or willingness to put in the effort to get unstuck. So, if you’re reading this and you enjoy what I write, please just help me out by putting more people on!

I would say that finally being published has made quite a bit of difference in helping resolve some of the stress—especially in having editions of my book published and available for purchase in the English-speaking global superpowers as well as locally, in Ghana. Of course, this doesn’t help much for those members of my (potential) audience who are prohibited not just by geographical location but financially. My self-enforced solution to that is to have free work out via my passion project, On the Ceiling. The free download epub collection that I wrote can be opened on any compatible e-reader or smartphone application. It renders beautifully on Kindle devices and on the Apple Books app, for example.

This is not the last you’ll hear from me on this topic, but I do want to say thank you, thank you, thank you readers, for the type of career support I value above all the others: actually reading what I write.

Love,

The Spider Kid. 🕸️