One of the smartest things I've done in a long time is start a graduate program in creative writing. It's helped me develop my craft, obviously, but also think about the kind of career I want to have. What kind of writer will I be, and how will I define success?
I've figured out I'm not a novelist, which I totally thought I would be. I'm a poet, a short fiction person, an essayist.
How big a poet, fictionist, essayist do I have to be? Is it a question of volume of work or volume of readership?
Suppose it's readership. One of my professors had us read Jane Friedman's The Business of Being a Writer, and one of Friedman's pieces of advice you get is to have an online presence. A Substack, an author site, socials, a newsletter, weekly if at all possible.
Author site, check. Kit.com is a fine enough product. For the rest, I've tried, I really have, but I don't have a newsletter in me. Maybe it will be different once I've finished my graduate program, but all my writing time goes into stuff for other people to put on their sites and feeds and what not. And every time I check, I still hate social media and hold it responsible for the slow but certain death of humankind.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a writer who has made it work without a "platform" in this now conventional sense. He has an author site but not a social media presence. Nicole Walker is another such artist.
If it means being obscure, then maybe I'm going to be obscure for a while. And anyway, almost all of my writing time goes into writing for my courses, which is why you see updates to this site only once every four months.
Maybe I'm going to define success by volume of work rather than volume of eyeballs. Is that honesty or self-limitation? Like a lot of kids, I was taught to limit myself by teachers, parents, even writers. If I take the path to success that goes through obscurity, am I continuing to do their work for them?
