Should I Become a DJ or a Self-Published Author? I Chose the Second
Introducing Half Thoughts, a semi-comedic book of phrases...
Spoiler: I’m self-publishing a book! It is not the book that I have been writing over the past three years, but rather a little project that came to life after a startling (and oddly inspiring) encounter on TikTok.
Eleven months ago, I saw a poem on TikTok that made me cackle, thinking that the poem the creator was sharing was a joke. Shortly after, I began to spiral, realizing that the poem was not a joke but an excerpt from the creator’s self-published book, its genius affirmed by hundreds of thousands of people in the comments, despite my opposite impression. I thought: Surely, this has to be a bit…No one, in their right mind, could read this and think it is good.
My disposition made me consider something I had never thought about before: Am I wrong? More precisely: Do I not know what good writing is? Are the millions of people who liked the video and commented “omg buying immediately,” “i felt this in my heart,” “need this book now” an accurate representation of the general public’s literary taste, which then, in my perspective, lacks any and all artistic sensitivity, which would then make me a literary snob? And if all of the answers to the questions above are yes—the public enjoys reading turds—then why am I spending so much time trying to write things that sound like diamonds (or, at least, tumbled rocks)?
The poem, more or less, read like this:
you stole my heart
and now i am broken
I read it over and over again, clicked on the creator’s profile—which made me cringe a thousand times more (a white guy living in Paris with several other poems that read like texts)—and ended up on the Amazon page for the book itself, which had hundreds of gushing reviews about how emotional and raw the poetry was. I soon realized that my investigation was futile: whether or not the poetry was good did not matter, for it was achieving what most writers cannot: sell. Besides, who am I to decide what is good or bad?
Yet the investigation was not solely launched out of my desire to define some objective rank of artistic quality (and note that that poem ranked on the lower end). It stemmed from a broader question as to why I care about writing well in the first place. If the majority of people prefer click-bait poetry and Colleen Hoover, then why am I attempting to write like Rachel Cusk or Tommy Orange? If I have a dream of writing for a living, a dream that most writers chase, then why don’t I write silly pages that the masses can read at the same speed with which we refresh our feeds?
The thought of doing so, however, prompted no temptation. We want to write what we want to write. The catch, of course, is that writing what we want does not guarantee an income. Writing for a living typically translates to writing to sell, for in order to make a living, we must sell, no matter what it is we do (our time, our art, our words, our knowledge). The reality of most full-time writers involves writing and selling not only essays, op-eds or books, but courses, workshops and how-to guides, the latter of which makes me shudder.
I soon came to terms with the fact that the business of writing is not something I am interested in, for it, too, is the business of selling, and creating things with the intention of selling them is already what I do in my day job. My career as a [insert vague marketing title] has outlined the path towards the financial freedom I once associated with the holy-grail of book deals I thought I was entitled to, as every writer does, convincing ourselves that that one book will let us stop working, until we realize that overnight success is a misaligned, if not unproductive goal to hinge the pursuit of a craft on, and that perhaps the dream itself is not to be paid to write, but to be paid and get to write.
I realize, then, that my dream is not to write for a living. My dream is to write for myself—for the things I feel, believe that matter and hope to inspire in the people I love. For play, for fun, for discovery. The same goes for anything I create: videos, little designs, dinners with friends. Being able to write is the goal, not sell a million copies. Being able to take care of ourselves and the people around us, while creating things that are true, is the ultimate dream. So I continued to work and continued to write, unmoved by the turd poem that stopped me in my tracks—albeit, for one thing.
Before I scrolled onto the next video, another laugh bubbled at the bottom of my belly: It was funny. It was funny how simple the poem was: you stole my heart / and now i am broken. Had the book been written as satire, intended to make fun of its own form, I would have bought it. I would have enjoyed it. The sheer presentation of such simple thoughts in the format of a poem struck me as hilarious, and soon a million others came to mind:
bitch why did you make dinner if you aren’t going to wash the dishes — roommate
it is a simple exchange:
tomorrow's joy for
tonight's camaraderie
acute euphoria for a
delayed desire to die
just remember to take your milk thistle
— another one, pleasefirst came the coffee
then
came
the exorcism
— febreezeAnd thus was born the idea to create a poetry book that would not be called a poetry book, for all of the poems inside of it would mimic the elementary style of a third grader speaking their thoughts aloud. I thought: Instead of being a hater, I can have fun, celebrate the subjectivity of art with a comedic creation of my own. Over the next few months, I wrote over a hundred poems—or what I call “phrases,” considering I know little to nothing about poetry—and made it into a book.
The problem with creating anything is that it often becomes something we care about. While the intention of this book—titled Half Thoughts—was supposed to be pure satire, a parody of the work from the online poets I considered cringe, I ended up caring for several of the phrases I included in the book. I realize that this makes the book complicated, for some of the content is not designed for laughs, however, I would still be delighted if those parts were laughed at, because the reality is that I, too, am an aspiring writer, and the process of growing into anything (our creativity, our personhood, our relationships) is hilarious: the awkward ways we say things, the terrible first drafts, the incredulous or non-existent plots, the meaningless content. So I invite us all to laugh—and, if we wish, inquire.
The Kindle version of the book is available for pre-order here that will be released on March 15th, 2025 (there will be a print version available on March 17th, 2025). As a thank you to everyone who has supported my writing via a subscription to Sleepover, I’ll be offering paid subscribers a free copy of the book—just reply to this newsletter with your address. ᡣ𐭩
I know: Not me selling something immediately after talking about how I am not writing to sell JAJAJAJ. The thing is, self-publishing at large (on Amazon, Substack, Spotify, TikTok, YouTube) is a form of decentralizing the relationship between the artist and the public. Every artist’s dream is to a) make something they are proud of and b) share it with good people, the people they belong to, in the hopes that all those people feel inspired, find each other and, perhaps, find them. Before self-publishing came to light, a writer had to wait to find an agent, a filmmaker had to wait to find a distributor, a musician had to wait to get signed onto a label. Now a writer can publish their project in a matter of hours on Amazon KDP, a filmmaker can share their work on YouTube and a musician can release their music on Spotify or Soundcloud. While there are clear and pressing downsides (like the low payouts for artists on Spotify, the inequitable distributions to creators on YouTube and Twitch—which is why I started working in Web3 to begin with, but more on that later…), being able to create something and share it with the world is a powerful process, and I am low-key infatuated with the values that self-publishing represents: power to the people.
So I see it like this: I am writing things for myself, and then sharing them with the world. ☻
Without further ado, here is a little preview of the book itself, Half Thoughts:
how many hours
have i thought about
pretty men
who have nothing to do with
my real life?
— screen timehe said he was a filmmaker and
a photographer and
a playwright and
a model and
in between all of those incomes
he still has not
venmoed me
for dinner
— manboydo you have any dietary
restrictions?
vegan, vegetarian,
gluten-free?
no
please
i need the meat
the men i see in the evening
have barely anything to eat
— flat asswe are the
puppets
of billionaires and
millionaires and
know how to point fingers at each other
better than at
the truth
go back to where you came from!
stop taking our jobs!
gentrify someplace else!
— trick mirrorwhy are we talking about selena gomez
and bailey bieber
when my cousin had a piano recital
and no one came to see her
— talking headsi wanted to change the world
until the one hundred and seventh person
said to me
this is just how it is
and one hundred and seven months later
as the world choked in carbon and
bodies laid on the floor
the only thing i knew how to say was
this is just
how it is
— burnoutthe other day i came upon
a modern eureka:
instead of entering
a mental breakdown
i can
wash my face
and eat a meal
— choicesi started writing
poetry
yesterday;
for $29.99,
you can start
writing poetry
too!
— creator economydumplings thick like tree bark
soft like a
supple hug
and stuffed with pork
by the hands of a grandmother
— homesickthe world is drowned and on fire swept up by the wind or buried by the land but at least we have techno at least we have uk house garage — optimism ☷
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With love,
Your favorite capybara ☼ AKA Travis Zane
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