Hello, hello! Welcome back, dear friends, to Am I the Literary Asshole?, the drunken advice column that also serves as a much needed reheated pizza in this hangover that we call life. I’m your host, Kristen Arnett, and damn, I just made myself really hungry with that gorgeous, luminous comparison (it’s also humbly serving as a blurb)? Looks like it’s officially snack o’clock!

We’ve got some stunning questions on the docket for today. And hey, if we’re going to enjoy some pizza, might as well pour ourselves a few glasses of red wine to go with it. How about a nice chianti? Sounds great to me!

Onward!

1) Hey Kristen,
Thank you so much for your column. I really enjoy it. I ummm… I feel like SUCH a dick, but my book came out a month ago, and so far three of my close friends have all told me that they are writing a book in a similar (if not identical) genre. Getting published was really hard for me and took many years of work. To hear that multiple friends who have never expressed interest in writing before are now all writing books in the exact same genre—one even said “you’re so lucky. And while I’ve enjoyed writing my book, all I want is to sell it”—it makes my own experience seem cheap in comparison. She thinks that my experience was just luck. I guess that I’m just the worst.

Have you experienced this? Any advice would be helpful. I’m feeling pretty socially inept right now.

Oh wow! My pal, I’m sorry.

I’m going to go ahead and put you out of your misery here. You’re not an asshole for feeling put out by this behavior from your friends. I’m not sure if these people specifically told you that you’re experience boils down to “luck” or if they just made you feel that way by acting as though your years of hard work meant nothing, but regardless, that’s a bitter pill to swallow from people who are supposed to be your biggest cheerleaders.

Let me go ahead and congratulate you, if your friends did not (but hopefully they did, at least once, at some point): CONGRATS! Publishing a book is no small feat. It’s incredibly wonderful news, and I’m so glad you get to enjoy this time post-publication to bask in the fact that you really did that; you wrote a book and its out in the world for people to read!

Now, I’m going to flip things around (because I love to do that), and say that it’s quite possible that your friends saw how cool it was that you achieved this remarkable thing and wanted that kind of good feeling for themselves. The fact that they never really had any real interest in your work before they saw the success of it is truly tough, I’ll admit. They saw what you did, really liked it, and decided they were going to cut a little slice of your beautiful cake to take home with them. There’s nothing technically wrong with that when it comes to who-gets-to-write-what, but it definitely doesn’t make you a great friend.

However, it’s one thing to say that you’re going to write a book, it’s quite another to actually sit down and put your pen to the page. Okay, so maybe some of your friends have managed to do that. Are they also avid readers? Do they edit their work? Do they slog through multiple drafts? Do they take notes and learn from other writers when it comes to craft and attention to detail? And then, even if they make it through scribbling down a novel’s worth of plot, who’s to say anyone will ever want to publish it? You—a published author yourself—understand that it’s a long journey forward.

I guess what I’m saying to you, gentle reader, is that you can just wait this out. Odds are slim that anything will come from their efforts (aside from possibly developing a better relationship to art, but that’s a real longshot scenario from the sound of it). If you want to, feel free to consider yourself the expert when it comes to this dream achievement. When they inevitably come calling with questions about the process, you can list all the hardships that go into getting a book published. You can also smile and remind them that when it comes to writing, you should care more about the crafting and creating part than you should about (maybe) eventually receiving a check.

How about another glass of wine while I stuff a second piece of pizza in my face? Next up:

2) Am I the asshole for HATING literary awards season???????

You’re not alone in this feeling!

Regardless of where you sit in all of this (be it recently published author, reader, editor, or simply someone who thinks there’s no real way to rank books without leaving a lot left on the table), there are plenty of people out there who sympathize with your awards dislike. There are only a few to go around and there are lots of very deserving books!

It can be a very difficult thing to spend years and years working on a project only to be faced with a barrage of awards announcements and nomination requirements and social media posts about longlists and shortlists. To be sure, it’s overwhelming and feels all-consuming. It’s easy enough to say that awards don’t really matter, it’s the art itself that counts, but there can be something very heart wrenching about putting a little bit of hope into the idea that your book might be one of the chosen few and then seeing those hopes dashed.

Take heart, good buddy. Awards season will be over soon enough. Then something else can come along to snare our collective exasperation. Maybe mute certain words in your algorithm and call it a day? Take care of your brain!

Are you going to finish your pizza crusts? I’m sure as hell going to polish off the bottle of wine! Here’s our last question of the day:

3) Sorry if this one’s been done before, but I have to ask: does it drive anyone else crazy that every other month there is some new popular thing happening in books? There is no way to properly understand what’s going to resonate with readers because everyone is being told what they should like all the time. 

Hmm…. Interesting!

I’m sorry to say that I think I have a very different opinion on this. I mean, from a publishing and marketing perspective, I guess I can understand where that frustration comes from? If you’re trying to advertise and do what’s best for sales, it would be exasperating and incredibly difficult to know what “thing” will sparkle enough to catch the collective readership’s wily eyes.

But if I’m thinking about it in terms of reader consumption—and I, myself, am a reader—then it thrills me to know that the wheel of what’s cool and interesting and fun will never stop reinventing itself. I like the fact that there’s always some new trendy thing brewing in books! And I’ll also note that when it comes to the big staples (uber popular stuff), we all know those things can go in cycles. Reinvention of classics, a revisit to horny monsters, love triangles, etc. These things have happened before and will happen again. And there’s nothing wrong with that!

As the late Dorothy Allison once said, “change, when it comes, cracks everything open.” To try something new is to learn something unknown about yourself. Free your mind, my dude. Live a little!

And that’s all the time we have for today, folks! Join me next time when we read more of your anonymous questions (send them to me!!!) and I take some antacids for all this pizza I just inhaled.

Queasily,
Dad

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Are you worried you’re the literary asshole? Ask Kristen via email at AskKristen@lithub.com, or anonymously here.