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13th March 2013

Post reblogged from DC Pierson with 160 notes

We Didn’t Do It, But We Did It: Crap Kingdom and the New York Times

dcpierson:

So, Crap Kingdom did not make it onto the New York Times Best Seller list this week.

I say “this week,” because: hey. Not to get all The Secret about stuff, but I earnestly believe that if I keep my head down and keep working and keep doing all the things I’m doing, someday it will be. It, or another book. My dream scenario is that my next book (or the book after it, or the book after it) is finally the effort-coalescing smash hit I have been waiting for and that propels my whole back catalog onto the list. I think this is the dream of every artist who feels under-appreciated. It is also (though the details may be different) the dream of anyone who has ever felt undervalued or looked down upon in any walk of life. “THIS ONE DANCE I DO AT THE TALENT SHOW WILL BE SO GREAT EVERYONE WILL SUDDENLY REALIZE I’M BEAUTIFUL AND THEY’LL THINK BACK ON EVERY TIME I TRIPPED IN THE HALLWAY AND REALIZE I WASN’T TRIPPING AT ALL, I WAS PERFORMING BEAUTIFUL MINI-DANCES!” And so on.

It is a cliché dream and I get that yet I am fully in its thrall.

That said, I’m sad. I do believe there’s a difference between “getting your hopes up” and “being excited by the possibility something.” I didn’t used to think that. I used to very willfully try to assume that nothing good would happen, thinking that if something good happened, it would be a neat surprise, but if nothing happened, or something bad happened, who cares? All that happened is what I expected to happen. Look how smart I am.

After a few cool things happened in my life and were greeted with very little fanfare by my insides, I realized something gamblers and businessmen know implicitly: in order to win anything, you have to wager something. If you want to be thrilled when something cool happens, you have to have hoped it was going to happen.

Basically: “Exciting” is a more marketable way of saying “full of potential heartbreak.” 

So I was excited by the possibility that this could happen, and I worked really really hard to try and get it to happen. I try very hard not to be like a high school yearbook staff, where I say “we worked really hard on this” like it somehow inures me from criticism when I’ve misspelled someone’s name. I believe hard work should be a given. Hard work does not mean you deserve something. I scream this at the TV most weeks during “Shark Tank.” I have worked hard and I will continue to work hard and when it’s finally been enough work for it to happen, it will happen.

Interesting thing about getting bad news (and an interesting thing about getting good news): it happens. And then you are still alive. After the moment you get the bad news, there is a next moment. And a next moment and a next moment and a next moment.

And then you go get something to eat.

So the bad news is it’s not on this week’s Best Sellers list. The good news is, it is out there, and people seem to like it, and once it’s out, it stays out, and people can get it, and people can find it. And I still sold quite a lot of books. And every time someone tweets a picture of their copy of the book at me, I think: “This rules.”

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