Harte was one of the early masters of the American short story, writing well-regarded pieces such as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts Of Poker Flat" that accurately depicted the California in which he grew up in.
Thank you, David, for naming a couple of Harte's most admired stories. These stories continue to hold up with freshness and humor for readers today. His reputation remained secure in England and Germany throughout his life, and he remained popular in America even after his falling out with the most ambitious literary gatekeepers. He was read and admired by James Joyce, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, and Ruskin, among others. Unfortunately, his major biographers (Scharnhorst and George Stewart) leave us with the same taste of moral judgment that my article risks, which is not altogether fair. He was still only in his forties and early fifties when he established a more satisfying life in Europe. Thank you for leaving readers with a couple of names that can lead them to a more satisfying view of Harte. :-)
Thank you, Tara, for this thoughtful introduction to Harte -- and for making the idea of the unending conversation real here on Substack! What a privilege to be in dialogue about this essential question.
I did not realize that Harte's fame came from a misunderstanding. How ironic -- and going along with it, just because the fame seemed like his ticket through the gate, surely must have felt like a self-betrayal. Money and fame really mess with us. This story has been told countless times in biopics of musicians, hasn't it? The garage band that gets the record contract, and then is held hostage to the brand that the record company wants, rather than to their own creativity.
Forgive me for my cynicism, but this is why I cannot join the Taylor Swift bandwagon. There is no "why" larger than herself, her brand in its ascendancy, her market share. At least Kurt Cobain ruminated on the grossness of being "stupid and contagious" (the quest for "virality" is explicitly the desire to be contagious with no sense of Cobain's irony, isn't it?).
I love your contrasting example of Milton. And I'd offer Gillian Welch's "Everything Is Free Now" as another: "Someone hit the big score / they figured it out -- / That we're gonna do it anyway / even if it doesn't pay."
Thank you for two more great references, Kurt Cobain and Gillian Welch. Those are spot-on, sadly.
On the question of assessing other people's "why" (and whether they have one), you may be right about Taylor Swift, but when I first thought to name some newsletters here that had a clear "why," I quickly realized the presumption of it and limited examples to Rabbi Ruttenberg, who explicitly addressed it (as you do, too, in multiple posts). Unless we name it aloud, the existence of a "why" can be a private thing. I realized I couldn't point to writers with a "mission" as well as I could point to writers with a "niche."
Also, in fairness to Harte, I've certainly left out a lot here. His Condensed Novels and Bohemian essays attracted notice among certain readers (of Bohemian and Republican and Unitarian newspapers) first. Then "The Luck of Roaring Camp" raised him to the notice of Fields and Osgood, who offered to make a book of his sketches. The Overland stories also got reprinted in quite a few newspapers. "Plain Language" was the kaboom in an otherwise steadily growing reputation. It was reprinted everywhere. The phrase "The Heathen Chinee" shows up for years afterward as a newspaper heading introducing any news item about Chinese-Americans. English readers noticed him after the poem (later, those readers were his most faithful). It is hard to say whether the Atlantic contract would have been so large without the viral poem. I'm sure there'd have been a contract with just the Overland stories, but so much? None can say.
Thank you for keeping the "why" question alive at The Recovering Academic.
Very good points -- and good reminders for me to be a little less judgy :). This gets to a thread on one of Jay Adler's posts on Hemingway and how easily our own deeply held sensibilities can make us jerks to others with different sensibilities (Cather called this "creative hate"). So I shall endeavor to speak only for myself.
The tale you tell of that viral poem, and how the virality was based on a misunderstanding, is pretty haunting. It shows how much misery we let ourselves in for when we try to fit into other people's boxes. The pain of it also comes from knowing that my foremost desire as a writer is to be UNDERSTOOD. As a religious young person, I always thought that heaven would be a place where you were understood completely. Fame based on a lie never ends well.
Perhaps I hear Gillian Welch differently. There is a kind of defiance in that song that I find heartening, actually. "Never minded working hard / It's who I'm working for." And the idea of avoiding the hustle, just staying home and singing a little love song seems beautiful to me.
"Creative hate" is not a phrase I knew from Cather. I feel like discourse everywhere is pretty judgy. (In education, "assessment" is bedrock. Ugh.) It takes work to sidestep or shrink-ray it.
It's an interesting thought experiment to put a writer in a situation where they can *either* be understood or have fame and fortune from a misunderstanding. How many would choose to be misunderstood in the short term and trust they could try again for understanding later? "Success" is tempting, and it's easy to have faith in ourselves to fix "little things" without seeing their longer consequences. Harte didn't know as much as we know now about the extent to which his poem was misunderstood. He knew some of it. I hope it's true of heaven, though: understanding.
Now that I know you play guitar, I can hear why Gillian Welch's song is heartening. The best parts are in the guitar line. I hear ambivalence in the chords and the vocal line, but the little guitar bridge around 3:00 is free-spirited, breaking out of the whole value system. I hear the defiance from there. It's good art. More than one thing going on. :-)
This is Thea Kronborg to Dr. Archie in The Song of the Lark: "If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be."
Your essay made me think of "Coming, Aphrodite!" (formerly "Coming, Eden Bower!"), which examines this debate between fame and craft through the characters of Eden Bower and Don Hedger. Bower, who becomes a celebrity, can't understand why Hedger is unimpressed by Burton Ives's mass produced success. Perhaps I'll examine the idea of "success" through this story in an upcoming post. It seems very much in step with Harte's story.
The "why" is a challenging question, particularly at this very moment for me.
I'm increasingly writing about matters of wealth and class and privilege. That's a broad enough topic that I hesitate to call it a niche as I think a niche is definitionally small.
My surface why is that I know a lot about these matters from my perspective, few people write about it from my perspective, and I think readers are curious/hungry for it.
My deeper answer may be that the dialogue I'm hearing too often is either a sense of hopelessness about our hyper-capitalism––we need to burn it all down vs. a full throated cheer for progress as the cure-all.
So perhaps i can develop a more nuanced approach as i explore these matters.
Thank you, David. I love your "deeper" answer about inserting nuance in a polarized, sometimes hopeless dialogue about capitalism. We do need that. I'm reminded of nineteenth-century writers who made wealth and privilege their subject matter (Edith Wharton, Henry James, Henry Adams). They show that there is plenty of room to explore the nuances of privilege and related topics. I'd be reluctant to put any of them in a "privilege niche" either. it's easy to see why the idea of a niche can feel counter-productive for a writer. Thank you for keeping the thoughts going! :-)
Appreciate your insightful take on Harte's career, and also your reflections on niche or no niche. In 2006 I started a blog (which I then ran until 2022, when I shut it down to launch my current Substack publication) titled The Teeming Brain. Its title was meant to explicitly indicate its broad scope and absence of niche focus. So was its tagline, "Channeling the multiverse of ideas." So was its slogan: "Read widely. See broadly. Think deeply." That same year (2006), only a few months after launching the blog, I attended the World Fantasy Convention and ended up having a good conversation with an iconic science fiction writer about my idea of being a writer who overtly rejects focused branding and a recognizable niche in favor of embracing everything and having that be my authorial identity. She understood what I was about, but she also questioned whether this would be commercially viable. Her concerns were valid, but I have enjoyed the approach to embracing absolutely everything that interests me as a writer, which I continue to employ right now.
Dear Matt, Thank you for reading and sharing your experience and your conversation with the iconic writer. We don't hear as much about what success looks like outside a niche, so that's a topic I'm eager to explore further in this series. I'm glad you found a scope for your writing that is right for you! Sometimes it can take forever to turn ourselves around from advice that doesn't fit.
Thanks for this very thoughtful essay and the great example of Harte.
I have almost resolutely stayed out of these conversations, except for once before over at Sam Kahn's place. I think this genuine issue, for some, is brought to the fore by two current tendencies in the culture I dislike and that are alive on Substack. (Josh, with whom I had a recent, related exchange, is an example of a separate situation in my mind. He is both a creative writer and scholar and now a self-employed businessman, and he is working out how those two distinct identities relate to his substack.) The first tendency I refer to is Substack's functioning as the latest iteration of blogging.
I have no idea what the percentages are, but some people write substacks the way people blogged in the 2000s. They like to write, they have interests or expertise they think they can monetize, and Substack and different venues on it are directed at developing those stacks and further monetizing those interests.
Related to this tendency is the ever-expansive vocabulary we use to identify people who engage in any kind of creative or writing-centered activity. People aren't *artists* anymore or specific kinds of artist, like painter or poet; they are "creatives," an almost infinitely broad term that almost anyone can employ and that embraces a wider range of *creative* work. People aren't *writers* anymore; they are "content creators." And even the old fashioned "writer" contains a multitude of "whys."
The pretty regular discussions on Substack about this issue confuse all these categories by failing even to acknowledge and distinguish them. What a person traveling around the country in a van who likes to write (lots of bloggers) is doing, having fun sharing his experiences and trying to make some living off it, is not the same as what -- to choose an example -- Ernest Hemingway thought he was doing *writing*, even if he hoped to make money from it. It's not what a scholar-intellectual with narrower or broader interests is doing sharing her passions with readers. It isn't, to choose the least remunerated writer of all as example, the poet is doing sharing poetry on Substack.
For that poet, the question of "why," if it ever arose, was likely answered long ago, and *marketable niche* is a foreign language.
Thank you, Jay, for this valuable rumination, which I share. I too have been interested in these different uses of Substack. I wonder if it's just you and me and others with training in genres that see these various kinds of writers, or if there are unspoken trouble spots with writers not feeling they belong? Does everyone feel the craft advice is addressed to them? I'm not sure.
Haha! I love that phrase, too. Is it like a progressive dinner party? The company and conversation topics sometimes change with every stop and sometimes carry over from house to house. We drop by for a combination of the cuisine, the company, and lovable or tolerable housepets?
Tara - appreciated this post. I see a lot of "How to succeed on Substack" stuff out there that says find your niche and write for a specific reader. That may very well be the way to monetary success. But I define success by other measures than just money. I do want to connect with a readership but I also feel the only way for me to be genuine is to write about what I am passionate about. While I love writing about literature I don't ever want to feel like I am locked in to writing only that because that is what my readers expect. Understanding why we write is as important as what we write and who we write for.
From someone who always struggled to explain my ‘niche’ --whether in business or writing this was comforting to read. I’ve often wished I had or could find “my” niche, but alas, it has escaped me. And that’s ok.
There you go, reading my mind. An upcoming post is about a writer whose niche came to her, though not as a trophy. Yours can be a trophy. A nice deep niche in the uphill side of your driveway might suffice. No?
I plan to order a baseball cap with a built in ponytail, a pair of Birkenstocks and some patchouli oil. As soon as the snow is off that mountainside, I plan to make my way down to that giving tree and hug it, sincerely and with gratitude.
"The point is to observe what happens when fame precedes the author’s reflection on the long-range, satisfying purpose that will outlast the whims of popular opinion." For me that's the take home message and I thank you, Tara.
I'm glad to come to know Harte through this introduction. Thank you for writing this essay. I often wonder what *doesn't* get written, created, expressed because of "niche" and fame. I feel some permission to flail about a bit now, nicheless, and writing in endless bow to why.
I enjoy everything you write Tara but I think this is my favorite essay. You are a brilliant scholar and writer. I appreciate your ability to use the past to reflect on the present, your call to question our mentors and make sure their values are in alignment with our own. I agree wholeheartedly that a fit audience of any size, coupled with knowing why I am showing up here in the first place, are my guiding stars.
Dear Donna, Hooray! I'm happy this one spoke to you. Many thanks for such high praise! I am grateful that we have found each other on Substack with our common respect for some similar guiding stars. ✨
Thank you for sharing this piece and adding to the discussion which Josh and I had a part in. I had never heard of Harte before, but the stories you shared here (even if they're just a taste of his whole story) are poignant. Harte's story reminds me of the fact that I have enough privilege to not need to decide what I would sacrifice for fame and a living. I want to be published and read, but as much I want to write the kinds of work that hint at Truth (with a capital T). But if it doesn't happen, or it takes longer than I wish, I'm blessed to still have enough around me.
I think that puts me in Jay's second group, at least that's what I tell myself. I only recently dove deeper into the taxonomy of creative writing, which I learned during a creative writing course. It was not something that was taught in my physics undergrad, my MBA, or any of the other various pursuits. I agree with your response, that many writers feel like they don't belong, or don't know how to belong or where to look. There's a large industry out there convincing bloggers to start newsletters by selling them dreams of being the next DFW or the next Hemingway. I know, because I've paid for some of these courses, which were helpful in beginning me on this journey. But very few people I know have moved beyond that phase and truly begun understanding what they are doing, what their why is.
Now I'm off to see what our local library has of Harte. Thank you again.
Thank you for the Restack, Latham! I enjoyed and appreciated reading your post and Josh's about writing with personal integrity around the same time. I think this is the way to go.
As for Bret Harte, if your library has paperbacks edited by David Wyatt or Gary Scharnhorst, those are the best for both the contents and the introductions. You can't go wrong with any edition for Harte's own stories (in fact, older editions from the mid-20th century have the best range from different periods of his career), though the introductions aren't all equally reliable. Have fun reading Harte. He's a true innovator of the short story genre. Before him were Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, and Hawthorne (whom he admired), and his stories are markedly different in voice and style. Hemingway learned some of his craft from Harte. James Joyce named the character Gabriel Conroy after a Bret Harte novel. Happy reading! Thank you for taking time to comment.
Let's face it, we are a celebrity-obsessed culture, and it has somehow seeped into the literary world, fueled by MFA programs and quick publication via social media outlets. You are right to suggest that a writer must be true to herself. My books that have done well were the ones I wrote for myself. The ones publishers asked me to write because they were topical did very little. But shame on me for writing them.
I've always been amused by writers who get crippled by their egos and suddenly think they are geniuses. Which reminds me of a poem that pokes fun of such narcissism.
“The Genius”
Look out Flaubert! Move over Joyce! He slept on a mattress stuffed with old first editions and women’s shoes. Stayed up late, this Genius, touching himself and anticipating nocturnal omissions. He strung brilliant sounds together—“mustang bang,” “laughable liaisons”—and built a portable pedestal he dragged from city to city, reading his poetry and romancing Rubenesque librarians. “Sonny, oh, Sonny,” they’d say, “you’re a Genius.” One rainy day, he retrieved an orange prescription bottle floating toward a sewer. In it, this note: “Immediately, if not sooner.” A judgement? A prognostication? That’s the trouble with Genius, it’s so very hard to pin down.
Peter! There you are. Things were quiet for awhile over at the Still Howling web page. Good to see a little howling here. That is very affirming to hear that your books have done best when they came from YOU. I suspect there might be more evidence that chasing the market is not really the best way to go, if only someone wanted to collect it. Is "The Genius" a creation of your own? That's a message in a bottle worthy of old Poe.
I really enjoyed this post Tara. The headline grabbed me because I struggle sometimes with what my niche is here on Substack as a multi-genre writer, photographer and sometime graphic artist. My niche varies from post to post sometimes!
Thank you for reading, Pamela. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I can't speak for you, but I sense your posts (newsletter and Notes together) may have a mission behind them. No? (Spread good vibes / share the light that you see? / Bring a lift to others?) One of my curiosities as I read around Substack is whether the niches that pay (since those are important) do develop from missions first. I don't have an answer yet. Still learning. :-)
Tara, my life mission has pretty much always been to spread good vibes, share the light I see, lift others up, make a difference in the world. I also write poetry, nonfiction/memoir and fiction. The only thing I have not posted here is any fiction, because its an unfinished historical novel.
I do think having a mission statement is important for any business, especially small business - another former niche - entrepreneur.
Well, I write mostly about water, but I see it as a lens through which to view the world, rather than a niche, and a wide-angIe lens at that. I'll set it aside from time to time too.
I don't need much persuading not to pursue fame. Hadden Turner (I wish we could tag people in comments) recently posted something Gary Snyder said in conversation with Wendell Berry: "Be famous within 15 miles." That's all the fame I want!
Haha! That Gary Snyder line is a good one to remember! (Even if both of their fame spread a little farther, it's still a good place to aim, and then let the chips fall where they may.)
A lens is a nice alternative to a niche. It sounds far less confining, but readers and writers can still share some expectations. I can think of quite a few people's lenses that I like to look through. I'd probably even be ok if they swapped out their glasses sometimes.
Yes, they were both famous way further than 15 miles!
I know, it's still a niche and it does create expectations, for me at least if not for the reader. I try to swim in my lane at least three posts out of four.
"I'd probably even be ok if they swapped out their glasses sometimes." Love this!
I thought it was pretty brilliant how you managed to go globetrotting with your wife and STILL write about water every time. Maybe you'll inspire me to go traveling and looking for quiet reading. I'll bet it's out there. :-)
I didn't start with that intent, but a couple of water stories landed in my lap while we were in Finland. After that it was a deliberate choice. It does make me look with more attention. It's really enhanced the travel experience as well as giving me things to write about.
And I'm 100% sure that quiet reading is everywhere too. I always manage to find a quiet reading nook wherever we stay.
There was a glassed-in balcony in an apartment in Helsinki, in which the owner had put a bed and about a dozen pillows. A perfect eyrie for reading and surveilling the world below.
A cabin in Cannon Beach, reading and storm-watching.
Harte was one of the early masters of the American short story, writing well-regarded pieces such as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts Of Poker Flat" that accurately depicted the California in which he grew up in.
Thank you, David, for naming a couple of Harte's most admired stories. These stories continue to hold up with freshness and humor for readers today. His reputation remained secure in England and Germany throughout his life, and he remained popular in America even after his falling out with the most ambitious literary gatekeepers. He was read and admired by James Joyce, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, and Ruskin, among others. Unfortunately, his major biographers (Scharnhorst and George Stewart) leave us with the same taste of moral judgment that my article risks, which is not altogether fair. He was still only in his forties and early fifties when he established a more satisfying life in Europe. Thank you for leaving readers with a couple of names that can lead them to a more satisfying view of Harte. :-)
Thank you, Tara, for this thoughtful introduction to Harte -- and for making the idea of the unending conversation real here on Substack! What a privilege to be in dialogue about this essential question.
I did not realize that Harte's fame came from a misunderstanding. How ironic -- and going along with it, just because the fame seemed like his ticket through the gate, surely must have felt like a self-betrayal. Money and fame really mess with us. This story has been told countless times in biopics of musicians, hasn't it? The garage band that gets the record contract, and then is held hostage to the brand that the record company wants, rather than to their own creativity.
Forgive me for my cynicism, but this is why I cannot join the Taylor Swift bandwagon. There is no "why" larger than herself, her brand in its ascendancy, her market share. At least Kurt Cobain ruminated on the grossness of being "stupid and contagious" (the quest for "virality" is explicitly the desire to be contagious with no sense of Cobain's irony, isn't it?).
I love your contrasting example of Milton. And I'd offer Gillian Welch's "Everything Is Free Now" as another: "Someone hit the big score / they figured it out -- / That we're gonna do it anyway / even if it doesn't pay."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFle2YoQwWg&t=5s
Thank you for two more great references, Kurt Cobain and Gillian Welch. Those are spot-on, sadly.
On the question of assessing other people's "why" (and whether they have one), you may be right about Taylor Swift, but when I first thought to name some newsletters here that had a clear "why," I quickly realized the presumption of it and limited examples to Rabbi Ruttenberg, who explicitly addressed it (as you do, too, in multiple posts). Unless we name it aloud, the existence of a "why" can be a private thing. I realized I couldn't point to writers with a "mission" as well as I could point to writers with a "niche."
Also, in fairness to Harte, I've certainly left out a lot here. His Condensed Novels and Bohemian essays attracted notice among certain readers (of Bohemian and Republican and Unitarian newspapers) first. Then "The Luck of Roaring Camp" raised him to the notice of Fields and Osgood, who offered to make a book of his sketches. The Overland stories also got reprinted in quite a few newspapers. "Plain Language" was the kaboom in an otherwise steadily growing reputation. It was reprinted everywhere. The phrase "The Heathen Chinee" shows up for years afterward as a newspaper heading introducing any news item about Chinese-Americans. English readers noticed him after the poem (later, those readers were his most faithful). It is hard to say whether the Atlantic contract would have been so large without the viral poem. I'm sure there'd have been a contract with just the Overland stories, but so much? None can say.
Thank you for keeping the "why" question alive at The Recovering Academic.
(Gillian Welch - ouch!)
Very good points -- and good reminders for me to be a little less judgy :). This gets to a thread on one of Jay Adler's posts on Hemingway and how easily our own deeply held sensibilities can make us jerks to others with different sensibilities (Cather called this "creative hate"). So I shall endeavor to speak only for myself.
The tale you tell of that viral poem, and how the virality was based on a misunderstanding, is pretty haunting. It shows how much misery we let ourselves in for when we try to fit into other people's boxes. The pain of it also comes from knowing that my foremost desire as a writer is to be UNDERSTOOD. As a religious young person, I always thought that heaven would be a place where you were understood completely. Fame based on a lie never ends well.
Perhaps I hear Gillian Welch differently. There is a kind of defiance in that song that I find heartening, actually. "Never minded working hard / It's who I'm working for." And the idea of avoiding the hustle, just staying home and singing a little love song seems beautiful to me.
"Creative hate" is not a phrase I knew from Cather. I feel like discourse everywhere is pretty judgy. (In education, "assessment" is bedrock. Ugh.) It takes work to sidestep or shrink-ray it.
It's an interesting thought experiment to put a writer in a situation where they can *either* be understood or have fame and fortune from a misunderstanding. How many would choose to be misunderstood in the short term and trust they could try again for understanding later? "Success" is tempting, and it's easy to have faith in ourselves to fix "little things" without seeing their longer consequences. Harte didn't know as much as we know now about the extent to which his poem was misunderstood. He knew some of it. I hope it's true of heaven, though: understanding.
Now that I know you play guitar, I can hear why Gillian Welch's song is heartening. The best parts are in the guitar line. I hear ambivalence in the chords and the vocal line, but the little guitar bridge around 3:00 is free-spirited, breaking out of the whole value system. I hear the defiance from there. It's good art. More than one thing going on. :-)
This is Thea Kronborg to Dr. Archie in The Song of the Lark: "If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be."
Ooo, Thea! Thank you for the passage. Now I get it.
Your essay made me think of "Coming, Aphrodite!" (formerly "Coming, Eden Bower!"), which examines this debate between fame and craft through the characters of Eden Bower and Don Hedger. Bower, who becomes a celebrity, can't understand why Hedger is unimpressed by Burton Ives's mass produced success. Perhaps I'll examine the idea of "success" through this story in an upcoming post. It seems very much in step with Harte's story.
Tara,
The "why" is a challenging question, particularly at this very moment for me.
I'm increasingly writing about matters of wealth and class and privilege. That's a broad enough topic that I hesitate to call it a niche as I think a niche is definitionally small.
My surface why is that I know a lot about these matters from my perspective, few people write about it from my perspective, and I think readers are curious/hungry for it.
My deeper answer may be that the dialogue I'm hearing too often is either a sense of hopelessness about our hyper-capitalism––we need to burn it all down vs. a full throated cheer for progress as the cure-all.
So perhaps i can develop a more nuanced approach as i explore these matters.
Thanks for making me think!
Thank you, David. I love your "deeper" answer about inserting nuance in a polarized, sometimes hopeless dialogue about capitalism. We do need that. I'm reminded of nineteenth-century writers who made wealth and privilege their subject matter (Edith Wharton, Henry James, Henry Adams). They show that there is plenty of room to explore the nuances of privilege and related topics. I'd be reluctant to put any of them in a "privilege niche" either. it's easy to see why the idea of a niche can feel counter-productive for a writer. Thank you for keeping the thoughts going! :-)
Commenting on your post helped me get closer to a why. So thank you!
Wonderful! Glad to hear it. I mull over the question myself and suspect I will revise my answer from time to time.
Appreciate your insightful take on Harte's career, and also your reflections on niche or no niche. In 2006 I started a blog (which I then ran until 2022, when I shut it down to launch my current Substack publication) titled The Teeming Brain. Its title was meant to explicitly indicate its broad scope and absence of niche focus. So was its tagline, "Channeling the multiverse of ideas." So was its slogan: "Read widely. See broadly. Think deeply." That same year (2006), only a few months after launching the blog, I attended the World Fantasy Convention and ended up having a good conversation with an iconic science fiction writer about my idea of being a writer who overtly rejects focused branding and a recognizable niche in favor of embracing everything and having that be my authorial identity. She understood what I was about, but she also questioned whether this would be commercially viable. Her concerns were valid, but I have enjoyed the approach to embracing absolutely everything that interests me as a writer, which I continue to employ right now.
Dear Matt, Thank you for reading and sharing your experience and your conversation with the iconic writer. We don't hear as much about what success looks like outside a niche, so that's a topic I'm eager to explore further in this series. I'm glad you found a scope for your writing that is right for you! Sometimes it can take forever to turn ourselves around from advice that doesn't fit.
Thanks for this very thoughtful essay and the great example of Harte.
I have almost resolutely stayed out of these conversations, except for once before over at Sam Kahn's place. I think this genuine issue, for some, is brought to the fore by two current tendencies in the culture I dislike and that are alive on Substack. (Josh, with whom I had a recent, related exchange, is an example of a separate situation in my mind. He is both a creative writer and scholar and now a self-employed businessman, and he is working out how those two distinct identities relate to his substack.) The first tendency I refer to is Substack's functioning as the latest iteration of blogging.
I have no idea what the percentages are, but some people write substacks the way people blogged in the 2000s. They like to write, they have interests or expertise they think they can monetize, and Substack and different venues on it are directed at developing those stacks and further monetizing those interests.
Related to this tendency is the ever-expansive vocabulary we use to identify people who engage in any kind of creative or writing-centered activity. People aren't *artists* anymore or specific kinds of artist, like painter or poet; they are "creatives," an almost infinitely broad term that almost anyone can employ and that embraces a wider range of *creative* work. People aren't *writers* anymore; they are "content creators." And even the old fashioned "writer" contains a multitude of "whys."
The pretty regular discussions on Substack about this issue confuse all these categories by failing even to acknowledge and distinguish them. What a person traveling around the country in a van who likes to write (lots of bloggers) is doing, having fun sharing his experiences and trying to make some living off it, is not the same as what -- to choose an example -- Ernest Hemingway thought he was doing *writing*, even if he hoped to make money from it. It's not what a scholar-intellectual with narrower or broader interests is doing sharing her passions with readers. It isn't, to choose the least remunerated writer of all as example, the poet is doing sharing poetry on Substack.
For that poet, the question of "why," if it ever arose, was likely answered long ago, and *marketable niche* is a foreign language.
Thank you, Jay, for this valuable rumination, which I share. I too have been interested in these different uses of Substack. I wonder if it's just you and me and others with training in genres that see these various kinds of writers, or if there are unspoken trouble spots with writers not feeling they belong? Does everyone feel the craft advice is addressed to them? I'm not sure.
"I have almost resolutely stayed out of these conversations, except for once before over at Sam Kahn's place"
Sam's place: I like how you phrased that. As if you were walking by Sam's house, saw he had some folks by for conversation and decided to drop in.
Haha! I love that phrase, too. Is it like a progressive dinner party? The company and conversation topics sometimes change with every stop and sometimes carry over from house to house. We drop by for a combination of the cuisine, the company, and lovable or tolerable housepets?
Tara - appreciated this post. I see a lot of "How to succeed on Substack" stuff out there that says find your niche and write for a specific reader. That may very well be the way to monetary success. But I define success by other measures than just money. I do want to connect with a readership but I also feel the only way for me to be genuine is to write about what I am passionate about. While I love writing about literature I don't ever want to feel like I am locked in to writing only that because that is what my readers expect. Understanding why we write is as important as what we write and who we write for.
Well said, Matthew. Once we've experienced writing and reading as freeing to the mind, it's hard to accept being "locked" in any version of them.
From someone who always struggled to explain my ‘niche’ --whether in business or writing this was comforting to read. I’ve often wished I had or could find “my” niche, but alas, it has escaped me. And that’s ok.
Kim, I feel that way too! If I have a niche, I hope someone will tell me so I can coax it out to play. 😂
You are not alone, Tara. I have no niche, just a world I explore. Maybe when I get good, a niche will come to me as a trophy for meaning well.
There you go, reading my mind. An upcoming post is about a writer whose niche came to her, though not as a trophy. Yours can be a trophy. A nice deep niche in the uphill side of your driveway might suffice. No?
I plan to order a baseball cap with a built in ponytail, a pair of Birkenstocks and some patchouli oil. As soon as the snow is off that mountainside, I plan to make my way down to that giving tree and hug it, sincerely and with gratitude.
"The point is to observe what happens when fame precedes the author’s reflection on the long-range, satisfying purpose that will outlast the whims of popular opinion." For me that's the take home message and I thank you, Tara.
Thank you, Mark. I hope there is inspiration in the story for thoughtful folk.
Definitely food for thought. Kind of like when someone's kayaking. Think twice before going where the current wants to take you.
I love a good metaphor, and that is spot on!
I agree regarding the appreciation of metaphors. They're an alternative place where the tire meets the road.
Haha - rather like a bull's-eye? 🎯 (I never did like that prohibition against mixing metaphors.) 😂
Right on!
I'm glad to come to know Harte through this introduction. Thank you for writing this essay. I often wonder what *doesn't* get written, created, expressed because of "niche" and fame. I feel some permission to flail about a bit now, nicheless, and writing in endless bow to why.
As an intro to Harte, it is admittedly selective. (This is more sympathetic: https://open.substack.com/pub/tarapenry/p/stumbling-upon-enchantment?r=1mk0zn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web ) As permission to flail, yes! In the era of the growth mindset, you'd think we could give our best minds license to take risks and explore.
Thank you for sharing your article! Weekend reading. . . (with delight!)
After Wonder! :-)
I enjoy everything you write Tara but I think this is my favorite essay. You are a brilliant scholar and writer. I appreciate your ability to use the past to reflect on the present, your call to question our mentors and make sure their values are in alignment with our own. I agree wholeheartedly that a fit audience of any size, coupled with knowing why I am showing up here in the first place, are my guiding stars.
Thank you for this.
Dear Donna, Hooray! I'm happy this one spoke to you. Many thanks for such high praise! I am grateful that we have found each other on Substack with our common respect for some similar guiding stars. ✨
Dear, Tara-
Thank you for sharing this piece and adding to the discussion which Josh and I had a part in. I had never heard of Harte before, but the stories you shared here (even if they're just a taste of his whole story) are poignant. Harte's story reminds me of the fact that I have enough privilege to not need to decide what I would sacrifice for fame and a living. I want to be published and read, but as much I want to write the kinds of work that hint at Truth (with a capital T). But if it doesn't happen, or it takes longer than I wish, I'm blessed to still have enough around me.
I think that puts me in Jay's second group, at least that's what I tell myself. I only recently dove deeper into the taxonomy of creative writing, which I learned during a creative writing course. It was not something that was taught in my physics undergrad, my MBA, or any of the other various pursuits. I agree with your response, that many writers feel like they don't belong, or don't know how to belong or where to look. There's a large industry out there convincing bloggers to start newsletters by selling them dreams of being the next DFW or the next Hemingway. I know, because I've paid for some of these courses, which were helpful in beginning me on this journey. But very few people I know have moved beyond that phase and truly begun understanding what they are doing, what their why is.
Now I'm off to see what our local library has of Harte. Thank you again.
Thank you for the Restack, Latham! I enjoyed and appreciated reading your post and Josh's about writing with personal integrity around the same time. I think this is the way to go.
As for Bret Harte, if your library has paperbacks edited by David Wyatt or Gary Scharnhorst, those are the best for both the contents and the introductions. You can't go wrong with any edition for Harte's own stories (in fact, older editions from the mid-20th century have the best range from different periods of his career), though the introductions aren't all equally reliable. Have fun reading Harte. He's a true innovator of the short story genre. Before him were Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, and Hawthorne (whom he admired), and his stories are markedly different in voice and style. Hemingway learned some of his craft from Harte. James Joyce named the character Gabriel Conroy after a Bret Harte novel. Happy reading! Thank you for taking time to comment.
Let's face it, we are a celebrity-obsessed culture, and it has somehow seeped into the literary world, fueled by MFA programs and quick publication via social media outlets. You are right to suggest that a writer must be true to herself. My books that have done well were the ones I wrote for myself. The ones publishers asked me to write because they were topical did very little. But shame on me for writing them.
I've always been amused by writers who get crippled by their egos and suddenly think they are geniuses. Which reminds me of a poem that pokes fun of such narcissism.
“The Genius”
Look out Flaubert! Move over Joyce! He slept on a mattress stuffed with old first editions and women’s shoes. Stayed up late, this Genius, touching himself and anticipating nocturnal omissions. He strung brilliant sounds together—“mustang bang,” “laughable liaisons”—and built a portable pedestal he dragged from city to city, reading his poetry and romancing Rubenesque librarians. “Sonny, oh, Sonny,” they’d say, “you’re a Genius.” One rainy day, he retrieved an orange prescription bottle floating toward a sewer. In it, this note: “Immediately, if not sooner.” A judgement? A prognostication? That’s the trouble with Genius, it’s so very hard to pin down.
Peter! There you are. Things were quiet for awhile over at the Still Howling web page. Good to see a little howling here. That is very affirming to hear that your books have done best when they came from YOU. I suspect there might be more evidence that chasing the market is not really the best way to go, if only someone wanted to collect it. Is "The Genius" a creation of your own? That's a message in a bottle worthy of old Poe.
(PS - Thank you for the Restack!) 🙏
I really enjoyed this post Tara. The headline grabbed me because I struggle sometimes with what my niche is here on Substack as a multi-genre writer, photographer and sometime graphic artist. My niche varies from post to post sometimes!
Thank you for reading, Pamela. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I can't speak for you, but I sense your posts (newsletter and Notes together) may have a mission behind them. No? (Spread good vibes / share the light that you see? / Bring a lift to others?) One of my curiosities as I read around Substack is whether the niches that pay (since those are important) do develop from missions first. I don't have an answer yet. Still learning. :-)
Tara, my life mission has pretty much always been to spread good vibes, share the light I see, lift others up, make a difference in the world. I also write poetry, nonfiction/memoir and fiction. The only thing I have not posted here is any fiction, because its an unfinished historical novel.
I do think having a mission statement is important for any business, especially small business - another former niche - entrepreneur.
Aha! The life mission shows. :-)
I'm happy to hear that! :)
Well, I write mostly about water, but I see it as a lens through which to view the world, rather than a niche, and a wide-angIe lens at that. I'll set it aside from time to time too.
I don't need much persuading not to pursue fame. Hadden Turner (I wish we could tag people in comments) recently posted something Gary Snyder said in conversation with Wendell Berry: "Be famous within 15 miles." That's all the fame I want!
Haha! That Gary Snyder line is a good one to remember! (Even if both of their fame spread a little farther, it's still a good place to aim, and then let the chips fall where they may.)
A lens is a nice alternative to a niche. It sounds far less confining, but readers and writers can still share some expectations. I can think of quite a few people's lenses that I like to look through. I'd probably even be ok if they swapped out their glasses sometimes.
Yes, they were both famous way further than 15 miles!
I know, it's still a niche and it does create expectations, for me at least if not for the reader. I try to swim in my lane at least three posts out of four.
"I'd probably even be ok if they swapped out their glasses sometimes." Love this!
I thought it was pretty brilliant how you managed to go globetrotting with your wife and STILL write about water every time. Maybe you'll inspire me to go traveling and looking for quiet reading. I'll bet it's out there. :-)
Well, except the beanie!
I didn't start with that intent, but a couple of water stories landed in my lap while we were in Finland. After that it was a deliberate choice. It does make me look with more attention. It's really enhanced the travel experience as well as giving me things to write about.
And I'm 100% sure that quiet reading is everywhere too. I always manage to find a quiet reading nook wherever we stay.
That’s it. I’m packing! 😉😊
There was a glassed-in balcony in an apartment in Helsinki, in which the owner had put a bed and about a dozen pillows. A perfect eyrie for reading and surveilling the world below.
A cabin in Cannon Beach, reading and storm-watching.
OK, I'll stop.