Brendan Halpin: Writer, Teacher, Bon Vivant

Seth's Terrible Advice for Writers

Internet marketing huckster Seth Godin is at it again. Apparently he started some  publishing house with Amazon, and it was such a huge success that he's shutting it down.  I don't get it either.  But in his blog post where he declares victory and leaves, he says this:

Permission is still the most important and valuable asset of the web (and of publishing). The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller. It still amazes me how few online merchants and traditional publishers (and even authors) have done the hard work necessary to create this asset. If you're an author in search of success and you don't pursue this with singleminded passion, you're making a serious error. (See #2 on my advice for authors post from five years ago, or the last part of my other advice for authors post from six years ago.)

If you don't feel like clicking through, I'll summarize Seth's advice: you have to spend years building an audience for your blog and then use this asset to sell your book.  This is what Seth wants you to pursue with singleminded passion.

Now, I've always been mystified by this guy's popularity.  For reasons that escape me, he's built an army of people who hang on his every word.  And I guess he sells a lot of books about marketing and hucksterism or something.  

But I will tell you this:  his advice is terrible.  He thinks because it worked for him, it can work for you, but it can't.  Here's why.

If you write fiction, it's very difficult to translate a blog audience into a fiction buying audience.  (Yes, Cory Doctorow did it. Name someone else.) It's also very tough to build a blog audience if you're just writing whatever random crap interests you,as I do here.  When I was being very assiduous about updating every day (this is back when I was writing full time, so I had time to do that), I got about 60 views a day.  Now I get between 20 and 40.  I am grateful to everyone who ever thought the crap I spew forth here was worth reading, but there were never enough of you to build a career on.  

And if you write nonfiction, well, I'm afraid the wild west era of staking a claim to your corner of the internets and establishing an audience is pretty much over.  Too many other people have been at it too long.  Into celebrity gossip?  Why would I read you when Perez Hilton, TMZ, and Gawker have that covered from all angles? Interested in gadgets?  With Mashable, Techcrunch, and Gizmodo out there, why would I read you?  Want to rant about how publishing sucks and you are smarter than everybody else?  J.A. Konrath has that market cornered.  Want to pull prounouncements about the future out of your butt?  Sorry, but Seth Godin's been at it for years.

Outliers who don't understand that they are outliers are annoying.  At least traditionally published bestselling authors don't run around going, "Oh, everybody should do what I did."  They understand that there's a certain amount of luck involved in their success, as in everyone's.  

There is no blueprint.  

My advice is this: ignore everybody's advice. Including mine.

Read Reed Gunther

I've had conversations with a number of people (including the fine folks at JP Comics & Games) recently about the unrelenting grimness of a lot of comics these days.  I'm a huge fan of things dark and grim, and yet, at the same time, I didn't start reading comics because they were dark, brooding reflections on the nature of evil and such. I started reading them because they were fun. I want there to be grim comics. And I want there to be wacky fun comics too.  And those are getting harder and harder to find.

One person I had this conversation with at New York Comic Con was Shane Houghton, co-creator (with his brother Chris) of Reed Gunther. He assured me that his comic was a fun adventure that would appeal to everyone.  I bought the first five issues (well, I actually bought the first two, but then Shane nicely gave me the next three after I gave him a copy of The Mall of Cthulhu), and I finally read them this weekend.

I'm happy to report that this comic is a total delight.  It follows the adventures of a cowboy and his loyal bear as they travel across the country to--well, I don't wanna spoil it, but let's just say there is an evil idol involved, as well as a ton of monsters and some very bad humans as well.  And a spunky gal who runs her own cattle ranch.  It's funny, fun, lighthearted and even touching in spots. And the art really brings the cartoony fun as well, and there are a couple of really virtuosic panels that made me go "whoa!" . The trade paperback collection is just out, and I really recommend that you pick this up and check it out. (though I don't know if it features the entire double-wide cover of issue 5, which is really great--it's worth buying issue 5 just for the cover even if you have the trade paperback)  It's a blast.

My Recent Writing Soundtrack

I always listen to music when I write.  And since I'm currently writing a book about an asskicking teenage girl superhero, I've been listening to a lot of bands with female vocalists.  Here's a link to the playlist I've been listening to on MOG a lot as I write.  (Closing in on the end of the first draft, by the way.  About 20 or 30 more pages to go, methinks.)

But maybe you don't have MOG.  I like it much better than Spotify, but maybe you don't feel the same way. So here are some videos from some of the great bands that are helping me write this book.  

In alphabetical order, we begin with Norway's Cocktail Slippers:

 

We head to California to hear from the mighty Donnas:

 

And from there, it's back to Scandinavia to get our socks rocked off by Sweden's Sahara Hotnights:

 

We conclude our tour of asskicking female vocalists in the UK. Play us out, Zombina and the Skeletones...

 

 

I anticipate finishing the first draft of this book in the next couple of weeks. And then there's a major revision coming to fix a bunch of continuity errors and to generally improve the first half of the book, where I was perhaps a little impatient and lost a few early readers in the world I created.  I will, of course, keep you posted.

The Dropkick Murphys: Rockin' the Suburbs

Let me begin by saying that I like the Dropkick Murphys' politics. I like the fact that they acknowlede the existence of a white working class that is absent from most popular culture.  Also, I'm sure they're decent human beings.  

And their music has begun to bug the crap out of me.

This is rooted in their new single "Going Out in Style." I got a little suspicious at the mention of McGreevy's in the song.  I've been to McGreevy's. For a work event. So it's not really the kind of authentic neighborhood Irish bar that people unfamiliar with Boston who hear the song might assume.  McGreevy's is located in the rough-and-tumble Back Bay, next to a Trader Joe's and across the street from the Hynes Convention Center. About three blocks from the Apple Store.  It's a pleasant enough place, but it's one of those "Irish Pubs" that we have all over Boston that are kind of like Disney World's "Main Street USA": they're selling an ersatz version of something in order to appeal to phony nostalgia.

So I did some investigating. (Thanks, Wikipedia!). The Murphys' authentic Boston Irish lead singer is from New Hampshire.  Other members are from the suburbs of Watertown and Quincy.  The original, long-since-departed lead singer was from Dorchester, but, for the rest, this authentic Boston band is not actually from Boston.  

Not that this matters. Except. These guys are making a living selling this image of authentic Boston that is, in fact, inauthentic.

Entertainers will do this. Most commercial hip hop is artifice masquerading as authenticity.

But I guess as someone who lives in the city of Boston, I object to this fake-Irish-pub version of my city.  I think if you live in the suburbs, it's possible to construct this Boston of the Mind which is mostly about Irish-American drinking and sports, but the reality is that most of the famous Boston Irish moved out of Boston in the 70's. And there are a lot of Puerto Rican and Dominican Red Sox fans who probably don't feel like a reheated Pogues song represents their feelings about the team. 

And now it feels like the children of white flight are fueling a nostalgic vision of imaginary Irish Boston that feels not only dishonest but fundamentally kind of reactionary to me. 

I live in the city of Boston.  I am of Irish descent. And I can tell you that the city in which I live is just a much more interesting place than the Dropkick Murphys imaginary Boston.  Those of us who live here find ourselves bumping up against other races and cultures all the time.  It's part of what makes it cool to live here. 

I don't mean to suggest that everybody can't enjoy their particular ethnic traditions and music. But let's be honest about the fact that any band--Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, Haitian, or whatever--who is presenting an essentially monoethnic vision of this city is leaving out most of what the city is about.

I guess I just don't want the rest of the world to see the Dropkick Murphys as the soundtrack of the "real Boston." The real Boston is bigger and weirder and cooler than any one band can capture.

Here's the video for the song in question.  It's catchy as hell: