The Death of Ambition 🕸️ Issue 11
I care very much about making good art. Not so much, anymore, about making it big.
Before we begin: book news!
My debut novella, The Year of Return, will be available on MAY 21st! Only 2 months away!
It is available for preorder in ebook and paperback formats, from my US publisher, Android Press, and audiobook format, from Recorded Books!
My Ghana people who want hard copies on the continent, I will have news for you soon—some things are still developing!
Locus Magazine did the first reveal for the amazing cover created by Justine Norton-Kertson and my one and only homie, Henry Desouza Nelson:
My publisher, Android Press, also released a book trailer, which I reposted!
I’m so grateful for everyone who has supported me through this publication journey. Stick with me and let’s see this through to the end. So much love! 💜
Now, on to today’s newsletter content.
Once upon a time, when I was young and in high school and more than a little arrogant, I tweeted that, in the next ten years, I wanted to be the first name people mentioned when they thought about Ghanaian novelists. Well. It’s important to be able to laugh at yourself in hindsight.
Safe to say that not only have I not even completed a novel manuscript in the nearly nine years since I posted that Tweet (although I’m closer now than I’ve ever been!), but I no longer care very much about achieving it. That statement was dripping with ambition which, since the latter half of 2023, I no longer feel that I have.
Back in 2020, I held tight to the image of a clear and straightforward literary career trajectory, when an agent I’d never heard of approached me for representation. And yet, I remember saying to myself, “Wow. Somebody in the world thinks you are good enough to make them money."
Even before my first conversation with that agent, I felt sure that money was the driving force of the main players within the literary industry. I wasn’t completely right, of course. Many literary magazines are puttering along on love and passion rather than actual funding. But what I had grasped already was the fundamental armor that would shield me from surprise, if not from pain, when the tentacles of capitalism sprang out from the bodies of industry professionals. Even before my profound disillusionment last year, I found it important to keep in mind that the literary industry is, first and foremost, an industry.
Let's pause here for a book recommendation! Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang is an intriguing and revealing novel which sheds some insight on intrigue within the US book publishing industry. I thought it was great. It doesn’t speak especially to my situation or experience, but it’s an undeniably relevant book.
Back to the matter.
On the surface, 2023 seemed to be a year of literary success for me. I got into my dream workshop, Clarion West. I received a bursary to attend the Milford SF conference in Wales, and a FIYAH grant to get me there. Why, when I seemed to be accumulating marks of literary success, did my ambition take a severe hit, this year of all years? Because the more insight I get into the way the literary industry works, the less interested I am in participating in it.
When the Clarion slogans tell you that these workshops are for people who are serious about writing, they’re not lying. And all those stories about people who give up writing after attending such intensive workshops are not at all baseless. One might come into the deeper ends of the industry with passion and love for writing, and once immersed, realize that it’s not as fun a game as you once thought. It’s a race, it can be unkind to your work and your ego, it’s full of scandals and biases, and the hurdles that need to be jumped through take more than mere passion for writing to endure.
One of the most impactful things I digested last year is how arbitrary so many things are. One of my cohort’s Clarion West instructors took great pains to help us understand the subjectivity of the submission-acceptance/rejection-editing-publishing cycle. The instructor implored us not to take rejections as indicators of our work’s quality or our own proficiency, because feedback could be influenced by anything from a literary professional’s personal taste to unseen preference-based disagreements between co-editors, to the specific requirements of the thing for which your work has been submitted, the issues an editor may have faced with their partner that morning, and more. I feel that these impressions were meant to be encouraging, but I cannot explain how frightened I was at the idea that somewhere miles away, someone’s irritation from their coffee spilling onto their dress could have consequences on any aspect of my literary career. Even worse, to think that someone might be biased against my work because of the language I’ve used, or a portion of my own identity as a writer which they cannot identify with or are opposed to. But these are just facts of life. And while it may seem that the arts are more prone to subjectivity than other industries, I will argue that unseen biases are prevalent probably everywhere.
Let me pause here for another book recommendation. I recently finished reading Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, and I loved it thoroughly. 5 stars! And no, I have not watched the series yet, although I plan to. The main character is a woman in the 1960s, whose first love is chemistry. As a scientist, she derives much satisfaction from the objectivity of science. And yet, within and outside of the scientific community, biases against various aspects of her identity consistently interfere with her ability to thrive as a scientist. It’s fantastically and wittily written.
As I was saying. It’s difficult to figure out if my writing is “good” or not based on professional feedback when one literary professional could pass on a piece for a host of seemingly valid reasons, while another might be more excited about the same work than about their favorite meal.
Another side of the coin is this: If I’m not meant to take rejections as a reflection of my literary ability, why on earth should I take acceptances as reflections of the same? The subjectivity of the industry suggests, from the most pessimistic point of view, that everything means nearly nothing. The prize you won doesn’t mean your work was great; it only means that it won. The fact that you got accepted into a program with a 1% acceptance rate doesn’t mean you were better than the other 99% of applicants, it means little more than the fact that you simply got in. Reasons behind any “yes” can be as obscure and as biased as reasons behind any “no.” These days, looking back on my past literary achievements is a very sobering affair.
Arbitrariness notwithstanding, there are structures and strategies that can be manipulated if you want to work your way up to literary fame and influence. There are literary prizes you can target, worldviews which can make you popular in the public eye of your target audience, pipelines you can work your way higher in as an editor or publisher, ways that you can pitch yourself to make you sound irresistible, accolades you can rack up to make your CV shiny, and markets you can try to get published in which look the most impressive.
Most of these things, I no longer care about. Not because caring about them is wrong or bad, but because, for all I’ve been through in the last few years in life and in career, I’ve either become too tired to care, or convinced that I do not have the personality, nor the set of desires, nor the tenacity that it takes to ruthlessly push my way up the ladder. I can fight for what I have energy or genuine desire for, and not a thing more. I used to have youthfully naive ideas about which opportunities and actions would change my life and set me on the trajectory of literary superstardom. I have tried to structure my life around these opportunities. Again and again, life has shown me that all that glitters is not made of gold.
At this time, I do not believe that I will ever feel anything close to the same kind of hope, that on-the-verge-of-something-big-ness, as I felt when I first got an offer for representation, or a publishing deal, or funding or residency opportunities, or workshop or writing program acceptances. There was a time when the elation around these things was rooted in the idea that they could dramatically change my life. I know now that these things are rarely golden tickets. They come, they go, they sometimes leave you in worse crises than you were in before, sometimes feeling a little better about yourself and your life than you did before. They may open little windows that lead you into the next room you’re supposed to be in and no further, or not all at once. They are not cosmic miracles.
These days, my reactions and expectations are more tempered by reality and experience. In just a few months, my novella will come out into the world. I do not expect it to change my life in all but the smallest ways. (Preorder it, though!) I continue to plod away at my novel-in-progress, with love, but I don’t think it will change my life either. I expect any changes to be incremental and non-linear. I expect things that look like brilliant opportunities to possibly spark internal crises. I expect that things that make me feel emotionally at the bottom of the world will create opportunities for clarity and wisdom for future decisions. The plans I had when I came out of college, to work my way into becoming a Recognized Writer™️, have gone to shambles, and it’s not okay at all, but it is also very okay.
As long as I am alive, I want to read stories and write stories and enjoy myself and be able to afford to do so as my primary career, if possible. I care very much about making good art. Not so much, anymore, about making it big. Knowing this, I am psychologically freer, if less idealistic, than I have been for several years. 🕸️
Don’t forget to preorder my novella (tell your friends to preorder it too!) and listen to my latest poem-rap-song, Heroes (share it and save it to your library)!
Until next time,
The Spider Kid. 🕸️
A candid, appreciated set of meditations. Particularly because I've personally been curious about the value of creating art - especially if its not experienced by the world. I read this and remember that creating art has its own fundamental value, and how reaching for success - can sometimes make the very endeavor lose much of its meaning.
But then, I wonder, how can we satisfy that itching, essential need for the feeling of growth? I'm not positive just creating more work would feel gratifying. And if it's not more readers, more eyeballs, more money, then I think we'd hunger for another metric. In literature, would it be more complicated, nuanced stories? Or maybe experimenting with more and more genres?
Honestly, I don't know what it is, but I feel we may want something else to strive for, if it's not mainstream success.