On What Makes a Good Writer with Kevin Wilson
"It wasn’t that I woke up and said, 'I am here!' but that I found a community of people and it made me feel like what I was doing mattered. I felt less alone."
Welcome to the first interview in our new twice-monthly series, On Something with Somebody. If you’re not interested in this series, you can manage your subscriptions here.
When someone asks how to make it as a writer and is bombarded with endless how-to books, masterclasses, and listicles of dos and don’ts, I worry something, somewhere, might be broken. So, I wanted to talk to someone who made it before there was so much to make—a person whose writing career began in the bygone era of the early aughts.
Yes, I mean Kevin Wilson. Author of Nothing to See Here, The Family Fang, and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and some of my favorite stories, like Blowing up on the Spot (Ploughshares) and Worst-Case Scenario (One Story). And the one responsible for aspiring writer (and fictional character) Frankie Budge saying:
“I thought that the saddest thing that could happen was that something inside your head worked so hard to make it into the world and then nothing happened. It just disappeared. Now that I’d put those words into the open air, I needed them to multiply, to reproduce, to cover the world.” - Now Is Not The Time To Panic
This sentiment reflects a lot of writers’ fears. Certainly, it is a common fear of writers putting themselves out there in magazines. What’s the point? Is anybody reading? Am I not good enough? Hello!? Hello?…Hello…
So, what does it take to be a writer? A good writer. Hell, what does that even mean? Should prospective writers, with so many sociological and psychological barriers to overcome, even bother anymore? It was a lot to throw at a person. And Kevin stuck with us down the rabbit hole. Bless him.
Part 1: Where Do We Begin?
I feel such intense gratitude when I read a book by someone who, for a brief moment, makes me feel less alone in the world and makes these complicated things in my brain feel a little easier to understand.
Benjamin Davis: You’ve spoken about how your professor, Tony Earley, encouraged you to try making a go of it as a writer. Since writing as a career is so often discouraged, a lot of folks wouldn’t start if not for "permission granted" moments like this. Permission to believe they can write for a living. Permission to write what and how they want to write. These are defining moments for any writer. But for many, they come from a place of privilege: access to university education, the time to read, the space to write. This perpetuates the writing world's North American, middle-to-upper-class gooey center. After traversing the world of literary discoverability as a short-form writer, novel writer, and teacher yourself, what is working to change this? What isn't? What magic wand would you wave to expand the industry to give more people permission to write for themselves, as themselves?
Kevin Wilson: The easiest answer is that we should value craft and the creation of all forms of art and subsidize that. I live in the same rural county in Tennessee where I grew up, and just this past month, the school system cut music from our elementary school curriculum. When parents asked the school board to reconsider, some people were genuinely mystified as to why anyone would care if art and music were taught in school. And this is not something that you can blame just on rurality. It happens everywhere in the United States.
I grew up loving books, but the idea of being an author wasn’t even something I considered possible. I loved movies just as much, but as a teenager, I had no idea how to get access to a camera or lights or equipment, and I certainly didn’t know how to edit, and I wasn’t even sure how to find other people with that expertise. So I honestly became more invested in writing because it was something that I loved and I could do it on my own.
But I also think we’re talking about two different things as one.
One, writing as an art form, an opportunity to make things in order to learn more about yourself, to expand your creative abilities, and to possibly connect with other people who also love making things. Two, writing as a way to make money and support yourself and to gain access to opportunities that allow you to make a career out of the fact that you make things.
But you are absolutely right that having money and access to higher education is a huge advantage. Those four years of college completely shaped the person I became, and without that privilege, who knows how I would have found my way toward something like this.
I think it’s important for me to note that when Tony Earley said I could do this, he meant as a career. But for me, it just meant that there was promise in what I was trying to do and this thing that made me so happy and gave my life meaning might also resonate with other people. Even if I didn’t publish a book or make money from writing, what meant the most to me was that this thing I loved could be loved by someone else.
And that goes back to reading, for me. I feel such intense gratitude when I read a book by someone who, for a brief moment, makes me feel less alone in the world and makes these complicated things in my brain feel a little easier to understand.
But, yes, the easiest answer within my role as a teacher and a writer is that if we truly love art, we can’t let a very narrow group of people determine what is and isn’t worthwhile. We have to subsidize and support all the different ways in which art can be made and not necessarily tie that to monetary success. And maybe, as with all societal issues, if we make it a natural and worthwhile part of our early experiences, it will open up those possibilities and spaces, and then those ideas of monetary success open up as well.
But those are grand ideas. As a teacher, I just want my students to write about the things that move them, that occupy those strange spaces in their brains. I don’t want them to write out of a sense of what someone else might want to hear or what’s come before. Our obsessions and concerns and desires are pretty elemental, and so it’s the specificity of each voice, shaped by individual experience, that makes art worthwhile.
BD: You say we’re talking about two things: writing for the love of it and writing as a career path. A career path can be costly in time and money, which can lead to a very narrow group of people determining what is and isn’t worthwhile. If one of your students whose writing moved them but didn’t fit anywhere asked what to do after they leave the classroom, what do you tell them both to encourage but also prepare them for a publishing world that is increasingly predatory?
KW: I am increasingly worried about the path forward for emerging writers. But, again, I don’t think this is specific to writing. The barriers to employment are depressing. There are different avenues for continuing to write, but I think it also includes thinking of your writing as existing in the larger world, and it depends on what you want. I’ve had students go get their MFAs and PhDs in creative writing. I’ve had students work in wildly different fields but continue to write and to query agents and to submit their work. I’ve had students create or join writing groups in their communities, and many of them have now sustained those groups and built friendships that have lasted more than a decade. I’ve had students go into publishing or start their own literary journals. I’ve had students move into politics and non-profit work. I’ve had students try any number of these things toward a life in literary publishing and get so burned out that they quit. Generally what I ask them is how can they make space for writing within the part of their life that comes next, and what that writing might look like. Is it actively writing a book or a story? Is it reading more to get a better sense of the kind of work that they want to make? Is it working in publishing to see the business side? It’s not the same for each person, but mostly I want them to hold onto some part of writing so that they can find their way to it as their lives change.
BD: You started publishing short fiction in the early '00s. You got your MFA in 2004, and your first story was published in Shenandoah. Though, with your first book, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, published in 2009, you'd already established yourself as a writer of note. But if you were in the shoes of a new writer today—as good as you are, as confident as ever—what would you do to build the legacy you have now? Is where you are now attainable for someone who has only just published their first short story?
KW: I was reading journals back in the late 90s, so even further back. When I was a really desperate teenager who just wanted to figure out how to make something out of the complicated and unknowable things inside of me, I wasn’t thinking at all about legacy or even literary success. I didn’t start out writing with the idea of having multiple books published. I just loved writing and I liked all these cool journals that were doing neat things and I enjoyed working toward the possibility of finding my own stories alongside work by people I admired. My first publication was in the student-run literary journal at Vanderbilt, and then in 2000, I got a story in 64 Magazine, and then I was working as a secretary and got publications in Shenandoah and New Orleans Review, and this was lovely and wonderful and it sustained me. I wasn’t even thinking, “These stories will now be in my first collection,” because I didn’t have an idea of a collection. I was just writing stories and working on a fabulist baseball novel and enjoying the process of it. And each publication was this moment of feeling like what I was doing could be received favorably by other people, and that gave me the confidence to keep at it.
My answer to the question “Is where you are now attainable for someone who has only just published their first short story?” is “Yeah.” I’ve never been in the Paris Review or the New Yorker or the Atlantic or Harper’s or Zoetrope or Granta or all those big literary magazines. I didn’t think of publishing stories necessarily as this set of stairs that you take to the top. I started out publishing in small journals, and I love those journals. And then in the early to mid-2000s online journals and indie journals were doing cool work, and I admired writers like Blake Butler and Amelia Gray and Roxane Gay and Aaron Burch, and I sought out those journals because they liked weird stuff. I loved reading work by people like Shane Jones and Megan Boyle and it wasn’t that I thought, “This is getting me closer to a major publishing deal.” I was just thinking, “I love these writers and these stories are so amazing and inspiring and I like that there’s a place that might let me showcase some of my own work.”
Novels take up a lot of my brain now, so I don’t have as many short stories, but I still submit them. I just got an acceptance at Michigan Quarterly Review, and I’m so happy because I’ve tried for years to get in there. Everyone puts in the work and the time and handles the rejection, so that’s not special. But it’s 2024 and I’ve been writing since 1999. Twenty-five years means you start to get a better sense of what you do, and you make connections, and you just try to keep going.
BD: Now, with so much bombardment of writing advice, is it harder for a writer to avoid thinking about their first collection alongside their first story and/or their first novel? You’re right that 25 years on, you have the experience, perspective, and connections to keep it all at arm’s distance. But when you entered the community, there wasn’t TikTok, Substack, Twitter, Facebook—it’s so hard to ignore.
KW: I don’t want to say that I was immune to those concerns. I definitely wanted to publish a book in my twenties; that seemed like a marker that was important to me. I wanted to win a big prize or get featured in the debut writer issue of the New Yorker and have my photo in a glossy magazine. Like, of course. But those things felt imaginary in some way. But, yes, if I was seeing video clips nonstop on my phone about all the specific ways I could have made that happen but wasn’t smart enough or engaged enough, it would have made me feel so sad.
BD: We watch many lit mags shut down, lose funding, or become controversial. Hobart was buried by controversy. Blake Butler’s HTMLGiant no longer publishes. Roxane Gay’s PANK was taken over by folks who were caught up in a load of scams reported in Lit Mag News. I think Aaron Burch’s HAD is one of the most innovative magazines around now. How can the industry do more of that? How can it evolve to move away from the predatory environment that technology and private education have created for young writers?
KW: I would say a fair number of my publications no longer exist and even their presence on the internet is gone. I’ve also had publications in literary journals that are still around, but access to them is so limited as to be nonexistent. I don’t think of that as a failure on the part of the journals. I’m not sure the expectation of something lasting forever is helpful. I think Aaron Burch has done something really interesting with HAD, and it’s cool to me because I think a lot of it is figuring out what would work within these parameters and being open about how it functions. It’s exciting and feels like you’re invested in a different way as a writer and reader.
But your question of evolving is the most important thing. I would say that the proliferation of advice and instruction targeted to teenagers is troubling, because it does create a sense of writing as this singular chart of events and markers of success, and that feels debilitating to me. A community where competition occurs and makes you reconsider your work so early on in the process would also have been hard for me. Do you think that the anxiety about making a career in writing has led to even more possibilities for exploitation? One of the direct ways to make money is to have coaching and workshops and young writer camps.
BD: I do, and I think writing has fallen into a self-help trap of sorts where there is no set of standards for those coaching or running workshops. Before delving into what makes a “good writer,” I'd love to establish what makes a “writer,” period. Was there a point in your career when you woke up and said, “This is it; I am here!”? And how does this line up with how you see others in the field? At what point does someone become your peer?
KW: These are fantastic questions, and I have to be honest that I’ve never not had another job in addition to writing fiction. And, so, when I meet someone, I generally just say that I teach, because that’s my 9 to 5 job that pays our bills. It’s not that I don’t think I’m a writer or even feel weird about asserting it, but most people who ask are just trying to fill the silence while we wait for our kids to get out of theater rehearsals. When I was a secretary and also a writer, I just said I was a secretary. So, I don’t know, because I tend not to worry about the preciousness of it or feel the anxiety of being a writer. Most people don’t care. I know I’m a writer because it sustains me and I feel happiness when I make stuff and share it and feel the connection with other people. But unless I’m in a space that’s focused on creative work, I rarely bring it up or worry about it.
But you’re asking a different kind of question, that moment when you allow yourself to identify as a writer, and I don’t have an easy answer for that. Like I said earlier, when I was publishing stories early in my writing life, it was as satisfying to have my work alongside writers I admired as it was just to have a story published. It wasn’t that I woke up and said, “I am here!” but that I found a community of people and it made me feel like what I was doing mattered. I felt less alone.
Part 2: How Do We Become Good?
Writing is craft-based. It’s a technical form. Talent is impossible to fully define, and it’s a shifting metric, so at the end of the day, you have to rely on the technical ability that allows you to simply make the thing you want to make.
BD: Now, how about being a "good" writer? In an interview with the Creative Independent, you talk about your routine: "Rather than try to write every day for two hours, which would kill me, I don't write at all for months and months and months. I probably only write two or three months out of the year. I just save it up." Have the pressures of family, work, and life led to this more balanced approach, whereas you followed a more obsessive routine when you were younger? Or is it all bullshit?
KW: Oh, yes, it’s tricky, but it’s just life, honestly. I felt keenly the pressure of being a “good” parent and all the things you “have” to do or else your baby will never thrive and will grow up to hate you for the obvious failure that you were as a parent. And my son is playing basketball, and that industry preys on the same insecurities that there is a true and correct way to do things or else you’ll never get a D1 scholarship (which is an impossibility for most people and shouldn’t be the metric for loving the sport). Writing advice and coaching work in the same realm. And, I mean, I teach creative writing at a university, and academia also makes you believe that it’s absolutely necessary to get an MFA in order to be successful.
You can listen to any of it and push yourself to try new ways of thinking about writing, and you can also reject very sound advice that, while practical and good, doesn’t fit into your own life or the work you want to do. That helps you assert more clearly what it is that you “do” when you make stuff. You have your own life, and the parameters of that life are different from anyone else’s, and you scavenge and find the things that help you realize what it is you want to do.
And, yes, I do not write every day and I probably never will write every day. I didn’t do it before my family and kids. I get obsessive and I go, and when it’s not asking me to attend to it, I don’t. It’s fine for me, because I love writing and it fulfills me and makes me happy and I’ve made a career from this way of doing things.
BD: The “good” writer rhetoric has become so popular because people feel like if they are not writing, they aren’t becoming a better writer. And now that we’ve been thrown into a world where platform building and social media engagement and events and being a “literary citizen” are all wrapped up in the idea of what it is to be a writer, they find that even when not actively writing, they are still being a writer. Rather than try to disprove the idea of the “good writer”—since it is so often experience and time that gets people past it—could you share how parts of your life that have absolutely nothing to do with writing have made you a better writer?
KW: It does take a lot of time to assert your own parameters because it takes a long time to create and understand the parameters of a life. You meet someone you care about and suddenly those parameters change. Your mom gets really sick and it shifts. You have a kid and it shifts. Our lives are constantly changing and undergoing stress from inside and outside, and so if you just decide that a singular thing, like writing, is your life, it feels maybe easier to control.
In thinking about the parts of my life that have absolutely nothing to do with writing, I’m just constantly scavenging from my own life and figuring out fictional constructs with which to mess around with those elements. But I think you mean elements of my life that make me a better writer, like craft-wise. Having animals in my life made me a better writer because with animals there really is a barrier to interiority. You can’t communicate exactly the same, so you always have to admit there’s a certain unknowability to their inner workings, but you still strive to figure it out. And so it asks you to consider the world from a vantage point that isn’t yours. Being attuned to the things that make my dog anxious or what she fixates on when we walk means I have to adjust my own perception of what I’m seeing to accommodate her. This is the same with little kids, honestly. I think cooking, too, because I’m pretty bad at it. I’m not a very precise person, and we live on a mountain in Tennessee so there’s some limitation to ingredients, so I’m often trying to make things work with what I have, and then realizing that it’s never going to turn out the way it does for other people who really know what they’re doing. But I experiment and realize that I’ve made something that’s not bad, and then I see that maybe another time, I can adjust. And I eat it, so it’s gone. You don’t have to live with it for long. It’s gone. All that work and you ate it. Perfect.
BD: Now for the other kind of "good." Since the 1980s, books on how to write and MFA programs have exploded in popularity. So, why aren't we all brilliant writers yet? How do you know when someone is “good?” Can that be learned from a book, or podcast, or seminar? Can it even be learned?
KW: Oh, yeah, it can be learned. Writing is craft-based. It’s a technical form. Talent is impossible to fully define, and it’s a shifting metric, so at the end of the day, you have to rely on the technical ability that allows you to simply make the thing you want to make. I’m sorry to keep going back to sports, but I love basketball. And because of my anxiety and issues with mental health, I shoot baskets at the gym pretty much every day. I’m not playing pickup games. I just shoot for an hour. And because it’s hard and because I’m not particularly good at it, it requires me to focus entirely on what I’m doing, and that keeps me from thinking about bad things that might send me spiraling. Writing is like that for me, as well. To do what I need to do, I have to give it my full attention and that’s helpful for me. But no matter how much I tried and how many videos I watched, my form was just kind of broken and it was not going to let me shoot efficiently. And so after a lot of resistance, I went to the coach at my school and asked if he could recommend a student player who could help me. I met with Cal twice a week, and he observed my form and told me things that I was doing that were preventing me from shooting effectively. And just to have someone look at my mechanics and offer suggestions was so helpful. Did that solve everything? No. I sometimes completely forget the form and spend a whole hour bricking shots. But eventually, because of having that instruction, I can get myself back on track. I’m “good” because I can see the improvements I’ve made, and I’m better than when I started.
That’s writing for me. The instruction I’ve received in books and in classes has been helpful, but it won’t make me perfect. It will just help me think more clearly about what it is I want to do and try to improve… I’m working to find the limits of what is possible for me.
BD: Let’s play off the basketball comparison. In basketball, there are clear markers for success. Even though loads of nuance and skill are at play. Points go up, and someone wins. So rather than try to identify the “hoop” for writers, what should they look for when someone says, “I know where the hoop is, and I can show you how to sink baskets.” How would you go about identifying good technical writing education over bad?
KW: That’s maybe true if your only goal in basketball is to “win.” I don’t want to stretch it out too far, but someone wins that single game in a lifetime of games. And there are definitely external factors that control not just the outcome of the game but who has the ability to take part in the game, and on and on and on. And clear markers for success are nebulous, too. I don’t think anyone would say Allen Iverson was a failure even though he never won a championship and maybe had a shorter career than other greats. Big prizes like the Nobel or Pulitzer have certainly recognized amazing writers, but they’ve missed great writers. Ann Patchett doesn’t have a Pulitzer. DeLillo doesn’t have one. Joyce Carol Oates has been a finalist but never won. That’s all just to say that it’s hard to pin anything down and to try too hard can be crazymaking.
So, finding the right tutor or mentor or craft book or education means trial and error, accepting the limitations of any enterprise, scavenging. Not every MFA program or even free writers group is going to be equally beneficial. It doesn’t discount those things, but it’s all very subjective. Look for instruction that makes the writing process feel like you’re encountering less resistance. It’s not to say that it solves everything, but pinpoints some value in the instruction that, when put to use, makes the story or poem come together without the same obstacles.
BD: You've spoken a bit in the past about how you improved as a writer by getting a sense of what you do well, being OK with criticism, and getting better over time as you out-write and wait out other writers through the slog of rejection. How did you figure out what you do well? How does a new writer know when to listen, what to be receptive to, and when confidence will save their voice instead of ruining it? If it helps, you’ve used the idea of developing muscle memory as a metaphor for getting better, but a muscle used wrong over and over cripples you.
KW: I always talk about publishing to my workshops at the end of the semester and I used to bring the folder I have of every physical rejection I got from journals. All these slips of paper. It is a huge folder. And I’d tell them that sometimes you have to endure that rejection and doubt and you either keep going or you don’t. It got to be a little weird because they’d pass all the rejections around and say things like, “If I got this many rejections, I would have quit” and then I’d have to say, “Oh, well, I did get acceptances.” And they’d say, “You have three rejections from the Weird Butt Review,” and I was like, “Give me the folder back, please.”
But I don’t want to act like I was simply impervious to rejection or that it didn’t cause doubt. I would rather have an unbroken line of success without hardship. That would be optimal. But the thing with writing is that it’s malleable, and so I was OK with going back into the work and trying to incorporate suggestions. A lot of great experiences were when an editor would want to accept a piece but ask for some pretty specific revisions and I thought, “If this is the difference between getting the piece accepted or rejected, sure I’ll try that.” A lot of times it worked out and the piece was way better. But sometimes it didn’t work out and that was fine. I just went back to the original draft and tried something else.
But, yeah, who do you listen to? When do you stand up for what you think is best? At the end of the day, no one is going to read your story and say, “Oh, this person got bad advice from a teacher or editor or friend. What a terrible editor.” They are going to dislike your story and your name is the only name on it. I think that’s why the workshop was helpful for me, six months in a room with the same people, so you started to know who offered criticism that was helpful. It wasn’t that you could tune out other people, but you knew that if this person was focused on a specific style or theme, it might not fit what you were trying to do, and to make those changes wouldn’t benefit what you wanted the story to be. And so that becomes helpful, to wade through opposing critiques and figure out what you want.
I agree that a muscle used wrong over and over is going to create a problem. But, honestly, just knowing what you do well and what you don’t is helpful. I tend to be a conceit-heavy writer. I know I can figure out weird openings that create uncertainty. But what I’m building muscle memory for is how to take that initial weirdness and sustain it.
Part 3: What Comes Next?
The thing is, I can’t control the response to my work. The only thing I can control is how it felt when I was making it. That’s the thing that no one else can take away.
BD: I want to talk briefly about Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Right now, it’s #1 on Amazon’s best sellers. Great book by a debut author, no notes. But in the actual title of the book on Amazon, it says it is a “Read with Jenna Pick.” That it is being read by a book club is given almost as much weight as the title (equal weight on Amazon).
In the description, the first three things you read are reviews and recommendations. One of them is yours. There are five or so promises being made that the book is good before anyone knows what the book is even about. Is this not a little silly? Does the publishing industry sell the dream of being a writer so well, and release so many books each year, that the only way to set them apart is by plastering them with praise? Does that make the currency praise and feed into this cycle that you brought up in the beginning, where the few dictate quality to the many?
KW: I will say that my son is currently reading this novel and loving it and it makes me happy that this book about an old lady and an octopus has reached a kid in Tennessee. But, yes, you are right that there is a ridiculous amount of work to make that happen and it can feel overwhelming. I think this is partly how different groups think about reading and how it fits into their larger life. Book clubs bring a huge social element to reading, especially in adulthood, where sometimes the book is less important than the community aspect. And the blurbs are there not necessarily for the reader making a choice about which book to read, but for the booksellers and bookstores to help them market the book to readers who might be interested. Is that silly? It certainly can feel that way. It’s advertising and that always feels a little silly. And that’s the commodification of art, that there’s a scaffolding built up so that even getting published isn’t necessarily enough. You need a blurb or an early starred review or a pitch that resonates with book buyers. That’s something we don’t explore enough because it’s already such a small subset of the writing community, but what happens when the thing you’ve spent so much time on and had to jump through so many hoops to get published just arrives and disappears?
I was at the dentist yesterday and my hygienist, whom I have known for years, told me that she really doesn’t like reading. It’s just not a huge part of her life at all, and she really only checks out a book like Colleen Hoover when so many of the people she knows are reading it and she’s got a block of time like a vacation coming up. It’s always strange when you’re a writer and people tell you they don’t really like books. But I think it’s also a reminder for me that the reading public isn’t this singular group and that so many people randomly pick a book because a friend recommended it or an author they like blurbed this new book.
I guess what I mean is that I sometimes imagine a reader as a kind of monolith of people who read a lot of books each year and follow the careers of writers and make space to find new work or rediscover older books, but that’s not every reader. Trying to understand how I fit into the reading list of all these different people is beyond my abilities, and so I do rely on the publisher and my agent and my editor to help me navigate that and to help me reach whatever audience I can find.
BD: , a neuroscientist who writes
has talked about how walled gardens have impacted online writing. Part of the idea is that we will become more isolated into our little corners of the internet and that maybe being a “bestseller” is outdated. Maybe there will just be pocket communities big and small helping each other grow, but always with a ceiling. Do you think this sort of dynamic is a net gain for writers or a loss? To know that millions will never read your work, but thousands will adore it, and you likely won’t make a living but might supplement your income enough to work less.KW: I will check this out, because I’d like to get a better sense of it. I do think, like anything, the initial promise of something like the internet being a universal conduit toward community will become highly segmented and isolated. But I also worry that’s just the way the world works because of how huge and vast it is.
I think this is where I worry I’m getting too expansive in answering, but oh well. But my favorite music is rap and it’s pretty much all I listen to at this point. And one of the reasons it appealed to me so much when I was young was that regional aspects were so important. Memphis and Cleveland could share certain stylistic elements but also be wildly different. Entire forms of music could kind of bubble out from a city or state and you could see the way it moved across the country, something like drill in Chicago. You could be huge within a single city and be a king or queen in that region, even if the larger accolades never came. You could rule Baton Rouge and everyone would play your tape in that area, but that was it. That feels pretty satisfying to me, because it was received and loved by the people directly inspired by the same places. And that doesn’t have to just mean a specific location, but that you can be loved by a very specific subset.
And then as time goes on, things get muddy, and that’s also interesting to me. RaiderKlan can take Memphis rap and make it swampier because of Florida influences, and then that can somehow get taken by A$AP in NYC and become something else. And maybe A$SAP Rocky is more famous than Tommy Wright III or Amber London, and so he has the money and the corporate backing to extend his career. But if you want to work backward, my god, you can find Playa Fly and realize how big all of this is. Nothing more wonderful than realizing that the world is both larger and smaller than you thought.
I guess this goes back to the idea of ceilings and I don’t know how to define “net gain” or “net loss” with art. To know that millions won’t read your work but thousands will adore it sounds pretty incredible because there is also the chance that only a dozen people read your work. To feel appreciated and to feel seen in any way because you make something that might resonate feels like a thing to strive for, regardless of whether it’s a loss or not. And you can’t control the possibility that one of those dozen people reads your work and it helps them figure out how to tell a story that reaches a million people and they pay homage to this thing you made. And that, while not as immediately satisfying, still allows for the opportunity for your work to keep going.
BD: You're nineteen. You've realized you wanted to do this—to write forever. Tony Earley just told you to give it a try. You look out at all the magazines, blogs, newsletters, Instapoets, TikToks, and readers increasingly migrating toward online micro-communities—the promise of "writer" creeping closer and closer to being synonymous with “influencer.” The ‘this’ you wanted to do forever now comes with all that. Would you do it all again today? If not, why? If so, what's your plan?
KW: Of course I’d do it all over again! When I was in college, there were essays about the death of the novel, and the internet was really becoming ubiquitous, and people worried that literature had no practical purpose in the modern world. Who cares? When I published my first collection, my publisher said I really needed a website and a blog, so I did that, but I never really was great at social media. I am positive that it has lessened my reach and prevented me from finding new readers, but I did my best and found ways to do what I love, and I’m happy with the career that I have.
The thing is, I can’t control the response to my work. The only thing I can control is how it felt when I was making it. That’s the thing that no one else can take away. And I write because it makes me feel less alone in the world and it helps my brain stay on some kind of steady course that keeps me alive. If I get a book deal, that is a miracle, and I am so happy. But on some level I’m not going to be able to control that, and so I’m just glad I got to make this thing.
I've been a full-time, self-employed writer for decades. Over the years, I've been paid to write pretty much every type of material: a syndicated humor column, essays for hundreds of publications, countless magazine articles, travel pieces, scripts, fiction, speeches, advertising copy, and material for Fortune 500 companies like white papers, case studies, and infographics.
I've learned one truism over the years: If you have talent and drive, it's pretty easy to make a steady, six-figure income producing the kind of material the market values but most writers don't particularly enjoy doing (like white corporate white papers). However, it's much, much harder to make a buck with personal, creatively satisfying writing.
But that's true of most creative pursuits. For a long time, my philosophy has been to balance the stuff I really want to do with the stuff other people really want to pay me to do. I get more enjoyment and win more awards for the former, and get much bigger paychecks and give my broker more enjoyment for the latter.
What a terrific interview. Great questions, great answers! So much to consider, but my favorite bit is the very last paragraph. Thank you! Can’t wait to read more.