Why I'm not famous

Or, why this writing hasn't "gone anywhere" (2019)

Dear M,

Anyone who's been writing for fifteen years and isn't famous has got to ask himself why.  There are lots of answers, and most of them, excepting the most likely one, are easy.  You can say, for instance, that most people have no taste, or brains, or attention spans; or that they're too uptight and fragile to appreciate fresh thinking, or too young and inexperienced to understand you, or even too old — or maybe that you're just not that good a writer.  Tons of easy excuses and one ugly possibility. 

The truth is there are too many writers and most of them are bad; and even if someone likes you there are too many other things they like too; and unless you slap them upside the head three times a day, brilliantly or not, they're going to forget you.  The secret to a strong following on the internet isn’t brilliance, but consistency.  And my writing is anything but consistent.  It has also at times, I admit, been horrible.

I take pride in the fact that I admit this, and consider it one of my better traits.  Am I horrible? is a question everyone ought to ask himself about everything; and it's no small comfort to me that the people most likely to be horrible are the people least likely to ask it.  They don't see it because they won't see it; but if a man wants to bask in his own sunlight, he's got to stop covering himself with an umbrella.  If he wants to feel the bracing, northern breeze of inspiration he's got to stop suffocating himself in an overcoat.  But we protect our egos and end up with less to be egotistical about — a lousy trade in the long run, I think.

So I like to ask myself if I'm the bad guy.  Not just whether I screw up, but whether I'm a monster.  I also ask whether I'm weak, or crazy, or cheap, or mean — and these are the questions that keep me strong, and reasonable, and generous, and kind.  I pound my gavel and convict myself and at that moment I become a saint.  I wrote things ten years ago I believed in, and because I questioned them now I write things I'm in love with.  I have become more fully myself by destroying my old self.  Like every creator I'm also a demolition man.  I cut down some trees and I built up a house.  If a man wants to carve Mount Rushmore, the first thing he's got to be comfortable with is dynamite.

However.  There are some things my own ego's too delicate to change, and one of them, as I’ve mentioned above, is my own inconsistency.  Am I willing, for instance, to flood my Substack with things I'm not proud of, which I don't think are inspiring, and might keep me in someone's mind — but don't quite lodge me in their heart? 

Not yet, it seems; and my love of myself has kept other people from remembering me, and I believe on some level their inability to remember me is the thing that keeps them from loving me.  There are just too many other people clamoring for their mindspace; and I’m too self-conscious about my brand to make a constant slew of so-so performances.  I had also believed — wrongly, I now think — in word of mouth.  I thought by now I'd be “discovered,” but it turns out that discovery, in this day and age, happens to people who attempt first and foremost to be discovered.

I have believed in myself too fully to “put myself out there."  I believed a beacon on a hill would be seen.  The problem was, I wasn't standing on a hill.  I was crammed in a valley with a million other would-be beacons; these third-rate prophets were outperformed by a larger horde of jugglers, clowns, and side-show freaks; the few that were able to climb out were given hands-up by the people already at top; and my dislike of climbing has led to much more of a trampling. 

The lesson here is simple: I'm not saying I'm the best there is.  But I've read lots of famous essayists and almost all of them suck; and you can train yourself to be the best there is and somebody who's not taking themselves as seriously will pass you up because they were better at posting memes, shaking hands, and kissing babies*.  Being a marketer, in the end, is just as important to as being a philosopher.  There's a point where taking yourself too seriously will lead others to take you less seriously.  I tell myself I've learned this — but I haven't.   

Yours,
-J

September 6th, 2019

*One time I walked into work, clocked in, shook my boss's hand and said let's kick some ass.  He looked me right in the eye, smiled, and said, I think it’s much more likely we'll be kissing it — an honest, clear-eyed description of business if I ever heard one.

Author’s update, October 17th, 2024:

Some things have come to my attention since writing this five years ago, and one of them happens to be the fact that, to many people, I’m embarrassing.

My writing itself is easy to swallow — much clearer, deeper, and generally more fun to deal with than five years ago. It’s also more original. The problem is that my views on social issues and politics are disturbing to the Democrats, and my views on religion are disturbing to Republicans. Thus these essays are unlikely to be shared out of a pure fear of heresy: one side likely to get you ostracized from church, and the other likely to get you ostracized from your job.

What I'd like to be is a modern-day jack-of-all-trades George Orwell — “every socialist’s favorite conservative, and every conservative’s favorite socialist.” And maybe that’s coming as my writing takes new directions. But at the moment I’m more like drugs: I’m fun to read, but it’s safer to not tell mom or your boss or your pastor about it. Not the worst thing in the whole world, of course: I prefer to be a dirty little secret over a bore — or maybe a guilty pleasure.

This is what I want sharing my stuff to be like

Is this a virtue, or a vice? In being “true to myself” — in some miniscule way here on paper — am I sabotaging my message? This of course is the question every artist has to ask himself; and if he goes too weakly after “himself” he ends up saying nothing*; and if he divulges too much, in the majority of cases he ends up alone — or in many countries, in jail.

This is why Christians don’t have any great writers today. The liberal Christians, obsessed with “loving the unlovable” — that is, loving everyone except conservatives — are incapable of making clear-eyed and obvious judgments. And the conservative Christians, focused on being “orthodox” and proper, are incapable of being fun. The end result is a boring, worn-out, watered-down prison gruel instead of a fine wine: a whittling and sanitizing of man’s mind down to a bare and sterile caricature, and whatever’s left being not only flavorless, but if you do happen to swallow it, totally lacking in sustenance.

To be a writer, a man has to be interesting first, and second, he has to be honest. But if a Christian risks either, he's unlikely to be published, or worse — he’s unlikely to even be shared. The non-Christians like him, but they don't understand him. The Christians understand him, and they can’t admit it in public.

Yours,

-J

*Whether I’m “saying something” or not, a question might be asked about my writing: what exactly am I trying to do here?

Ten years ago I sat down at my computer and tried to change the world. It was my honest belief that in attacking injustices, countering lies, and spreading truth I was on some kind of a crusade — and that eventually I’d be running some kind of a mob, or that I’d go into politics, or end up leading a church.

That, of course, was the fever dream of a young man on fire. And it’s not that I’m “disillusioned” now — an aging, tired, failed revolutionary. It’s more that I don’t really care if the public catches fire with me anymore. I’ve accepted that what I do is beautiful and that I’m the only one who's doing it. And furthermore, that if I’m the only one who’s doing it, maybe only a few people will understand it.

I don’t need to change the world anymore. I want to touch a soul. I want to build a word-cathedral for someone to wander into, or a mountain for a wayfaring mind to climb. I want to stoke burning questions, the ones about God and man, into full and raging flames. I want to paint the mind with colors and strokes that only a discerning viewer can appreciate. I want to make people laugh, and fume, and fall in love with me and God. I want to be beautiful, or sad, or funny, in the moments I’m capable of it; and I want to be handed down to my grandchildren after I’ve passed, and have them say here was a full man.