Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Conversation about relearning the kinship worldview with author, horse-drawn woodwright, and renowned storyteller, D. Firth Griffith. Unshod is a podcast and community that believes to rebel, we must pause, that we live with Earth as Earthlings, that we must approach creativity, curiosity, and compassion in conversation.… but we must approach this ground UNSHOD. This has nothing to do with "saving the world." It has everything to do with leaving the right kind of tracts in the mud.
Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Kendrick Lamar, Toni Morrison, and the Sacredness of Story with Kern Carter
In this episode, I talk with my friend Kern Carter as he shares his insights on the intricate relationship between storytelling, culture, and identity, emphasizing the importance of patience and authenticity in the writing process. He reflects on the influence of artists like Kendrick Lamar and Toni Morrison, advocating for a diverse representation in literature while highlighting the essential role of writers in society.
Learn more about Kern on his WEBSITE or SUBSTACK.
Unshod Links:
Sacred Field Harvesting Course HERE.
Order my The Plain of Pillars new book HERE.
Hello, hi, welcome to the podcast. Today's conversation is with a dear friend of mine, kern Carter. He is a novelist celebrated for his captivating ability to tell a tale. He's a storyteller and a writer. He's a thinker. I think you'll see all of these things in our conversation today. I hope you'll enjoy it. He writes often about the intersection of family and relationship and drama, but he also spends quite a bit of time, as we see in this episode, writing at the intersection between literature and popular culture.
D. Firth Griffith:This episode was recorded before the Super Bowl, but it begins with an examination of Kendrick Lamar's writing, his rhythm, his music, his rise to fame, in a very unique and very artistic way, and then it transcends into subjects such as literature and Toni Morrison, and inspiration and craft and the sacredness of holding story. All of this and more in this episode with Kern Carter. But before we jump in, two quick announcements and I will make them quick I promise. Number one this upcoming May, morgan and I here at the Wildland are hosting a 100% hands-on, sacred and ceremonial field harvesting and finer processing workshop. Here on the podcast we often talk about the death to rebirth or through rebirth to life process, whether or not it's in the harvesting of meats, the harvesting of wild herbs and vegetables and roots and mushrooms or whatever else that we may be talking about on this very chaotic podcast that we run. This is your opportunity to participate in that, to learn with us as we experience the grief and the glitter of really becoming human, stepping into the earth as an earthling and participating in the grief and in the glitter of the harvest process. Click the link in the show notes if this is interesting. The tickets generally sell out pretty quickly and so let us know.
D. Firth Griffith:The second announcement is this upcoming March. March 20th, we are releasing my fifth book. It's the first novel that I've written. It's a concentric mythological fantasy, a retelling of ancient Celtic stories, a bit of dreamwalking, a bit of mythology type writing, heavy amounts of fantasy. I encourage you to check it out. It's called the Plane of Pillars. The link is in the show notes and I would love to share it with you.
Kern Carter:I can. It's uh wonderful to meet you, by the way. Yeah, no, great meeting you too.
D. Firth Griffith:It's uh it's gonna be, uh, an interesting conversation, I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I'll follow your lead. I stumbled on you and your writing uh, on like substacks, like notes framework, right, and I usually abhor that side of Substack because I feel like I scroll like I do Instagram and I just scroll through it like on my phone, and I'm always debating whether or not I should even have the Substack app on my phone because it just makes me feel like Instagram. But then I found your stuff and then I kind of live off of your notes, I kind of like dawdle in the side, like in the dark corners. I try not to like every single one of them, but it's so true Like you write, so painfully true about writing and authorship and confidence and all of these things which I struggle with and so yeah, been through it all, been through it all and still going through it.
Kern Carter:So you know, I'm just expressing what I'm going through essentially, you know, or what I research, or what I learn, or whatever, and I just try to put it together. So it's been fun. It's been fun for sure.
D. Firth Griffith:What brought you to Substack? I'm always so interested when I talk to people who have quite an audience on Substack and are quite active there, like what brought you over to the platform quite an audience on Substack and are quite active there.
Kern Carter:Like what brought you over to the platform? Actually, I was on Substack fairly early. I was on Substack in 2020. And before I even got on it I was kind of just researching it. I was seeing what other people were posting and back then it was very much for journalists. Like a lot of journalists were on there and they were doing their thing and making money and that was their main let's call it marketing message. They're like come over to Substack if you're a journalist type of thing. So I was just kind of thinking about how I could use it differently at that point, how I could use it differently.
Kern Carter:So my first endeavor on Substack was actually a short memoir that I titled. What did I title it? I titled it my Failures as a Father and I wrote like this five chapter memoir and I put it out. I was going to put it out monthly, but then I got fairly good reactions to it after the first chapter. So I was like, oh, let me put it out weekly and you know, speed this up a little bit. So I put it out weekly and then I was like, okay, I kind of like this. What if we just kept this going. I have a creative partner and we're like, how do we keep this going? We're like, let's get other people to tell their stories. So I actually turned.
Kern Carter:My first experience with sub sack was turning it into, uh, a storytelling platform for other authors that we called love and literature, and I'll just all. We got authors not even authors, I wouldn't even say that, we just got writers and storytellers from around the world, literally india, um, italy, the us because I'm in canada, here, uh, all over Middle East, everywhere and we just had them share. I think we did two chapters or four chapters, I don't remember. We did a few chapters, though, and we had them share a memoir style story, and we did that for like a year. So that was my first really kind of introduction to chap, to sub stack, and then I'm like you know what that kind of ran its course. It did what it did, and I was looking for some way to combine my passion for literature in general with my passion but my curiosity for pop culture.
Kern Carter:I I don't necessarily call it a passion, but I would say my curiosity, deep curiosity for popular culture, and I was doing a lot of research, formal and formal research, just kind of thinking through how I could put it together. And then I was in LA in May of 2022 or April of 2022, something like that, and I was like you know what I think it's? I got the name Writers Are Superstars. Like that name came to my head. I'm like Writers Are Superstars and I like the confidence of it. I like the boldness of it.
Kern Carter:It felt right and it felt like a calling, because I always want my writing to speak, this writing anyway. I want it to speak to writers. I wanted to speak to writers so I wanted to very specifically call them out and infuse confidence in them with just the name alone. So I thought of the name and then I'm like, all right, let's put it together. And I was in LA, so my first piece was on Kendrick Lamar. His album had just come out in 2022, his Mr Morale album. And I was in LA, so I was like this is the perfect opportunity. This is popular culture, this is I could, I could find a way to connect it to literature and boom, boom, boom, that's, that's how it all started.
D. Firth Griffith:That's amazing. I, I, I am. I am not the curious soul like you on pop culture, but I do know of the recent Grammys and I have to say, like the little bit, that I know about Kendrick Lamar as someone who cares about words, like I, am so attracted to everything that that man is, everything that is Like the fact that he could use, like just that simple language and, of course, the rhythm and the melody and everything else that goes along with his style of art, that creative medium of rap and song and such to like, do what he's doing.
Kern Carter:It's amazing. It it truly is. It is and I love. He's actually my favorite artist because of that. He cares so much about the words and the story and the art itself. He really loves hip-hop itself. So I think that's important and it's just it's.
Kern Carter:Unfortunately, I feel like that's rare. You know, he's he's able to, to layer meanings in his songs that keep you like it's, it's, it's a very I'm a, I'm a, not a. I'm like almost a day one kendrick fan. I was on him years and, like before his first album, or let's say his first album, when his first album came out, I was a super fan already. So it's actually weird to see him get this popular because before he was, he was the most unique artist to me because he had kept very, very, very close or pure to his art, like he was. He's a, he's a purist, but he's also someone who could sell out stadiums. So he had this pure, pure art form where he never sacrificed anything and he could, him, he has the top, him and drake have the top grossing hip-hop tours of all time. So you're, you're with the biggest rap pop star in the world, right, like as far as him, drake, making pop music, and then you're this, this, this purist, this hip-hop purist, and people still just attract or were attracted to him. But his fans were very like you have to be a kendrick fan like he didn't have casual fans, which made him really really amazing to me. He, until last year, kendrick, never had casual fans, or very little casual fans. You didn't. You didn't hear him on the radio very much outside of the West Coast. You didn't like, he just didn't. His songs weren't like that. He didn't make songs for the radio. So to see him rise to this level of popularity but still not, you know, sacrificing who he is is really really intriguing to watch and I love that he cares this much. I really, I really I admire it, you know, and it's actually really inspirational.
Kern Carter:The the post, the post that I did, the last post that I did, called um on sub stack. Do I have permission to write? This was inspired by one of kendrick's songs on his latest album. The song was called Reincarnated and on that song he presents himself as the devil and the devil going back years to the early 40s first, and existing through these musicians.
Kern Carter:So he talks about a musician who was born in 1947, this guitarist and they're actually, they're real people. Who was born in 1947? This guitarist and I think they're. They're actually, they're real people. I just don't remember their, the guitarist's name right now, but he goes through um and talks about how that person was amazing. But he, he, uh, I think he's, he ended up committing suicide or something like that, or he struggled with drugs and blah, blah, like. So he talks through, talks like he's a devil behaving, acting through him, and then he moves on to another musician in the 60s or 70s and then he acts through her and he talks about all the struggles that she had, even though she was amazing. And then he comes to himself and he's a little bit more learned, but then he has an actual conversation with God. He's talking to God. He's like don't tell me. Like, I feel like I've learned, you know, because you know I've gotten the devil out of me and I'm learning. God's like no, you're still, you're still, you still need to learn.
Kern Carter:And it was the, it's the most amazing song. So I took that concept and the concept of kind of of writing about something or someone without naming it, because he didn't name the people. So when I wrote my last piece and I'm like um, the, the, like the child, the west african child, that uh came on, uh, that was on the, the, the ship that came to the east part of america, and blah, blah, blah. Like I was, I was literally thinking about kendrick, about how he formatted his song, and I was trying to bring it into literature. So like that's to me that that's kind of like kendrick would do something like that, you know. So I was just like, okay, I'm kind of, I feel like I'm in his spirit, but he's, he's to me, he is this era's greatest rap artist, one of one of the greatest artists period, um, and I, and I really like, I really respect him, him and, interestingly enough, another artist I really love is lana del rey, for the same reasons, I feel like she's just really thoughtful with her art.
Kern Carter:I think, you know, yeah, I think she really, she really puts a lot into the lyrics, the melodies, her videos, and trying to put together a cohesive unit of work like a, an album. That means something, like in its form you know, not individual songs, but in its form, means something. I think that I, I just appreciate that the time. I think it's music and art's beautiful. It should, it should, it should be meaningful. You know even the fun songs.
D. Firth Griffith:It should be meaningful, so yeah no, I think like and I can speak about, like the artistic media and that I often walk in, like writing and novels and authorship and such. I think a lot of people associate accessible stories in their mind initially to very ugly, benign prose, simple plots and dialogues and such. And then you read a master right and on one hand you can have, you know, Kendrick Lamar on one side of the art spectrum and I don't know if this is I've been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy. Have you ever read Cormac's work?
Kern Carter:Not yet, but he's on my list. I'm actually going to the library to grab a couple of books.
D. Firth Griffith:I don't know where you would start. I shouldn't say I would trust somebody else in your life to tell you the Road. No Country for Old Men. I think those are two magnanimous works. I find them very entertaining, while also being in that true Cormac McCarthy style. But like McCarthy's, prose is unbelievably simple, like right now I'm rereading through one of his books and I don't think I found a word that's longer than maybe two syllables, three at the most, five, six, seven letters at the most. Every single word, and it's very I mean, it's very painful, is the way he's writing and it's and it's giving you that message. But, like Lamar, like so many others, like what you're saying with Del Rey, it's like the purpose behind every word is its beauty, not necessarily the like, benignness or the hum drummery of the words that he chooses, but, like you know, when water falls and it puddles into a pond, he says it like splatters or splats, not pools or collects, right, and like the different word choice there speaks volumes.
Kern Carter:Absolutely. First of all, you describing Cormac McCarthy that little sentence that you told me, that maybe got me so excited.
D. Firth Griffith:Good.
Kern Carter:So I know I'm a book nerd, because as soon as you said that I'm, oh my gosh, he said splat instead of collect.
D. Firth Griffith:I'm gonna it's amazing, but he also makes up words like one of them I read this morning. I get up and I read in the mornings um, and I'm currently, as I said, working through one of his um disklets of falling rain and I looked up I didn't know what disklet means, like I get it like i't know what disclet means, like I get it, like I. I understand what disclet means because of the way he used it, maybe more so than if it was defined in a dictionary, but that that word doesn't exist. So I started diving into it this morning. The majority of the way he uses certain phrases, um, I should say differently, the words he uses to describe certain things are not words Like disclet is not a word but like disclet is a word, Like we all know what that means.
D. Firth Griffith:But it's exactly in its phrase and the way it comes out of your mouth and the way it looks on the page, like the way it reads, the immediate acceptance of its like finer meat, like all of these things just combine into like got it, got it, that's amazing.
Kern Carter:Could you imagine the confidence you have? To have as a writer, though, to write that word and be like I don't care what they think they're gonna get. I consider myself a confident writer.
Kern Carter:I would not even attempt that like I would be so nervous that people will laugh at me. The readers will be like current, what is a disclet? Like I would be so nervous. But I read. I was when I self-published my second novel.
Kern Carter:When I was in the process of writing that second novel, I was about 40,000 words in or so and then I was reading a Jhupala Hari book and the book was the Lowland. Then I was reading a Jhupala Hari book and the book was the Lowland and her writing is kind of how you're describing Cormac McCarthy they're totally different authors but the simplicity of her writing. It made me, after reading the book, it made me go back and start my entire book over. I deleted all of it and I'm like, oh my goodness, I've been doing this wrong. Literally I said that and I kept the characters because I knew I had something good, but I had to book over. I deleted all, all of it and I'm like, oh my goodness, I've been doing this wrong. Literally I said that and I kept the characters because I knew I had something good but I had to rewrite it because I'm like how, the way junpa was able to articulate the the most the lowline is an extremely painful story but she kept it so simple and she did not. She let the, the emotions of the scenes pull you in and make you feel everything, without necessarily to your point. You know, I I guess it. Without the purple prose.
Kern Carter:I guess you can say, uh, and it was, it was. It was magnificent to read, I loved it, but it taught me simplicity. Reading that book taught me simplicity and ever since then I really make an effort for that. Yes, I study words. I'll go on a thesaurus and look for different words sometimes and stuff like that, but for the most part I'm writing. I'm writing what's in my mind and I'm writing to the scene and I'm I'm really trying, in this most simple, the most powerful, also the most articulate way, though Like the, the way that I, I feel like, would communicate the, the scene, the best. That's, that's what I'm thinking about more than anything, and I I do find that simplicity, nine times out of 10, is the better way.
D. Firth Griffith:I mean we can take this conversation so many ways, but before we divert off of this latest essay you published on your sub stack, writers Are Superstars about permission. So much of writing like you're getting at here is like a drawn from the soul. People talk about, like you know, courting the muse and whatever, like mary oliver, annie dillard, so many of them. Um, stephen king has even, like, written many a book on the subject of writing and visiting this muse or whatever. But your, your piece gets to something a little bit unique in the sense of that conversation I feel. For instance, you you talk about tony morrison who was asked why she has no white characters in the book. Or when you self-published one of your books, I think you were you put like a white girl's face on the cover and you were dealing with that sense of writing outside of your race and the whole piece kind of gets to that. But that was fascinating because to some degree, like when a writer is writing, they are alone and the story comes to them.
D. Firth Griffith:I don't know many writers that feel like it's any other way, like the story appears. Um, even this morning, uh, I write in the mornings. By the way, I love that you had a note. Sorry, total divergence of thought. You had this one note about why you write in the mornings, or something like this and you're just like because if cause like when I'm done now I know that I've had a great day, or something like this.
Kern Carter:Yeah, I know that I've had a great day, or something like this. I know that, no matter what happens throughout the day, I started with the thing that I love the most. Yes, I loved that.
D. Firth Griffith:Love that. So I was writing this morning and I'm in the middle of working through a novel and maybe about halfway done, and maybe for the last week and a half I felt really good about what I've written, but it's been very short, you know, 200 words a day, 500 words a day at the most. I like what I'm writing, but it's very short. And then this morning it was like two and a half thousand. I just blew up on the page and to some degree that's what I'm talking about in that moment, when the writer is truly in that flow state where the characters are, you know, dialoguing without thought, and it's real and it's moving in front of you and around you through the words, and the words are telling the story, both in their meaning and their form and the color and the way they sound, and everything is coming together. I've never really thought about race in that moment, but your piece really stimulated a lot of thoughts in that regard.
Kern Carter:Yeah, I think it and a lot of conversation is one of my most popular pieces already and it came out just a few days ago as of this conversation. But I think I think what people are reacting to is well, let me let mears, when I did the cover, the cover came from an art contest that I did. So I had just started writing the book. I was thinking of ways to really start engaging readers right away, even though I was still working on a draft, and I reached out to two local high schools here in Toronto art high schools very specifically and I asked hey, do you want to do a cover contest? And you know, get your art students the winner. I guarantee they'll be by book cover. So we did that and the the winning one was the winning one like I. It was actually chosen by me, but before that it was chosen like we put it out on social media, so the public chose it and their peers chose that. So when the book was finished and I put it out on social media, so the public chose it and their peers chose that. So when the book was finished and I put it on the cover and I promise this, this is actually very true, I never once thought that that represented a white person, a white girl, like it didn't occur to me, like, genuinely in my heart. It never occurred to me until I started getting messages from some, from my black let's call them peers and um, one friend, um, but let's say peers and they're messaging me and they're like oh, you, you know, they're questioning why I put a white girl on the cover. My first reaction was what are you talking about? Like, that was my first gut reaction. Like what are you talking about? So I literally picked up the cover, looked at it and I'm like, oh, like, what are you talking about? So I literally picked up the cover, looked at it and I'm like, oh, I guess I see what they mean. Like, you know, but it wasn't. It came from such a uh place of just pure art, from these students who put their heart into into this right, like, really put their heart into this. These are 16 year olds. The cover of my, my novel, is from a 16 year old, you know, who put their heart into doing this and was so excited to win that. Not none of that, at zero point did it cross my mind. To back to your, to your initial point about just just writing, having stories come to you, that the way beauty scars came to me was like that it was. It was I, who knows where stories come from, right, who knows where that, that initial kind of inspiration comes from. But it just came to me and that's how I wrote it.
Kern Carter:I don't mention race in the book at all. There's no mention of race. There are maybe cultural cues that might lead you to believe that this person is this race or that race, but I don't. I don't mention race I mentioned. I just don't don't. So to me the cover could have been anything and I would have taken it as long as it felt true to the story. That cover felt most true to the story.
Kern Carter:So I think, for me I I don't know if you could have the experience that you had this morning if you were in conscious thought. I don't think you. I don't think if you could have the experience that you had this morning if you were in conscious thought. I don't think that's how writing works. I'm going to assume I don't think that's how any art works. I think you need to have give yourself what I framed as permission. Give yourself that permission to feel and write and create whatever you want, like truly whatever you want, whatever inspires you, whatever makes you breathe, whatever gets you excited, whatever is in your heart. I think you need to create that and wherever that takes you, I don't mind. And, you know, sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm I have a lot of US readers, like American readers, and I'm from, I'm from Canada and very specifically I'm from Toronto and it's I don't think we, we look at race in the same way.
Kern Carter:I don't. I don't think, and even the people who reached out to me back talking about duty scars were all from the US. So I, or mostly I, were all from the U S, so I, or mostly, I would say, from the U S. So I just think, and it's not, it's not a I'm not, it's not a like I'm not knocking it, I'm not, obviously like I had a lot. I'm not saying anything negative, I'm just saying I think race is looked at differently and there than it is here, and the thought of that never crossed my mind and again, I think if it did cross my mind, I wouldn't have been able to tell that story. And that's how I look at it.
Kern Carter:And I also wanted to the reason I kind of paralleled that with the Toni Morrison story is because I was like it could go either way. It could be like why, you know, why aren't you talking about this, this dominant race? And then for me it was like why aren't you talking about your race, you know? Like why, or why aren't you embracing, I guess you can say, your race? So it could there's and and the last piece of that too is the. In that same paragraph I believe I also talk about, or right after that, I also say, or sometimes we say, this person can't write about this, that person. And then we, and then we, we judge it, because I've seen that happen too.
Kern Carter:To me, this is it has to be up to a reader If a reader is engaged by a story, if a reader is engaged by a story, a reader's engaged by a story. I, I'm not sure that, being a reader myself, I'm not sure I care what the race of a reader is in, and not in, not in, not in. As it pertains to how, the, how I read the story, um, I, I think I just want to read a great story, and I've read great stories from every, every race, like I was just finished reading the emissary, that's. That was a japanese story, that I, that I finally figured out what it meant and I and I understood it. Um, I, I've read. I've read, obviously, books from canadians, too many books from Americans, all types of Americans.
Kern Carter:Toni Morrison is my favorite author, but so is Khalid Hosseini, so is Marlon James. So I had Jhumpa Lahiri, donna Tartt, like to me. I just gave you five different races right there who I legitimately love, like, legitimately love, but not for their race, like that it's. It's such a, it's such an odd kind of consideration for me. Uh, culture, I think, is much more of an interesting conversation and much more influential in the way authors write and create their stories. Where, like, what called where? What is your immediate environment? What is the environment that you grew up in? What's in compared to the environment that you live in now? Like, I think, those things who are your parents, who are, who are you around in school, I think those things influence your influences, your stories, more than anything.
Kern Carter:I think of an author like, oh, she wrote the 40 Rules of Love and I'm blanking on her name, but she wrote a novel called the 40 Rules of Love and she was born in, I think, born somewhere in the Middle East but her mother was a diplomat, so she spent time in Spain, then she moved to the UK but then went to university in America. So when you read her books it's like you feel all of that, you know all of it and it's beautiful. I wish I remembered her name. I'm totally like, oh, alif Shafak. Like what would you tell her? How would you tell her to not to write? What would you tell her to not to write? What would you? What would you? How would you even broach that conversation with her? You know what I mean. Like you're not allowed to write what? So never. I think we need to start with permission and then let the world decide if they enjoyed or not.
D. Firth Griffith:I was very intrigued. I was very intrigued because I think a lot of us are uprooted and it's our only, our current culture that really does a very large degree, provides that like external mosaic that we can truly understand. That is to say, like I think you know our ancestors, our lineage, you know our family legacies and cultural traditions that we've brought from older worlds with us, like that lives, that's like an internal interior mosaic, but it's this new culture that surrounds us. That is our culture. Like you in Toronto, me here in central Virginia. Like that is a canvas that we can speak about because we know it, we are it. I thought it was really interesting. It was. It was a really interesting piece. I uh, I don't mean to use this whole podcast as like a walk through your sub stack, but I can't leave this this moment without. So you wrote a piece. I believe it was toward the beginning of January of this this year. Um, I think it's titled. Uh, I told my publishers I won't do this anymore. I can't. I can't do this anymore.
D. Firth Griffith:Um, and there's a there's a quote that I have screenshot here and, uh, I just want to read it and then I want to talk to you about it. So you wrote in this piece turning down contracts and significant amount of money is a big deal for me, but I want to be the one to dictate my author career. I know the stories I have in my heart and those are the ones I want to write. And, to be real, that money we lost will come back to me tenfold, I know it.
D. Firth Griffith:I think there's a lot of writers today who feel, with the current track of big publishing and imprints and agents acting in certain ways and PR and marketing and sales departments bigger than they've ever been, while book readers and the industry, or I should say the consumption of this artistic industry, is changing in ways from covers to mediums of books, to technological mediums, to like audio has never been larger, to my understanding, audio books.
D. Firth Griffith:There's a lot of change in flux and I think a lot of authors feel like they have to write to that flux. Um, now there's specifics in in this, this piece, that obviously you could speak about in the sense of writing you know middle grade novels and you wanted to do something else, or feeling like your, your, your, your creative energy was in a different way and backing out of contracts, and like you can speak to that. And then maybe, if we could navigate the conversation over to like what does it really mean Cause I know you work with a lot of authors you ghost write, you speak. What does it really mean to write to that like intrinsic element of who you are, both internal, that is to say, your ancestry, to some degree, that lineage, but also external, that culture that we've been talking about?
Kern Carter:yeah, that is. That is an extremely complex question, that that I think I'm still working through myself. You know, clearly I'm still working through because I wrote that piece in january, so I'm still trying to figure it out. I think with the piece it was, I think I can maybe answer both at the same time. I think I think when I was when I started my, my, my writing journey, my author journey, my goal has always been to be published. I, however, that sounds like that was my goal. I wanted to be published. However that sounds, that was my goal. I wanted to be published and, very specifically, I wanted to be published by Penguin. I wrote that down. So to be published by Penguin was. It's very hard to put into words what that did to my mindset. It felt like magic. I was writing.
Kern Carter:Since I was eight, I didn't fall into being an author. I always knew I wanted to be an author and when I declared that and then that thing happened, it felt like magic for me to write a book, a middle grade book. I remember reading, choosing books from Scholastic at eight and seven and nine and ten. It was a dream. It was a dream, so there was a certain amount of obligation that I felt when Scholastic asked me to write that middle grade book. You know like I felt obligated to them. So when they asked me to do it middle grade book you know like I felt obligated to them. So when they asked me to do it at first, it was again. It was a dream if I said yes when they asked me to do another one, that's when the obligation kicked in.
Kern Carter:I was like well, I don't really. To be quite honest, I don't love writing middle grade books. I did it because you're scholastic and I love you and I respect you, and you're a dream. My passion, though, is in just writing novels generally and speaking to the audience who I want to speak to, and telling the stories in the manner that I want to tell them. That's my passion. So I think the obligation mixed with feelings connected to capitalism you know, because we do live in capitalism and you do have to make money it was almost this too good to be true offer, like. If you looked at it from the outside, it's like Kern. You have Scholastic and Penguin asking you to write books for them.
D. Firth Griffith:Like what is going on here? You should just go you know, run with that.
Kern Carter:Let's run with it Like what are you complaining about and, to be honest, even my agent said and I think I wrote this in the piece he said you know, if you told me when we started four years ago, when we started working together, that you would have two books published by some of the biggest publishers in the world and three more in negotiation with those publishers, I would say, meaning my agent I would say that you are exactly where every author in the world wants to be. He said that to me. This is my agent, who I trust implicitly. I really, really trust him. He's always been honest with me. So when he told me that it was actually it was, it was difficult to combat it because from one perspective, he's absolutely right.
Kern Carter:But having said that, I think the what, what brought me back was that I, I had an obligation to myself and I think, the obligation to to who I am as an author and who I wanted to be and who that eight year old boy saw. You know, so long ago I needed to get to stay there. You know I, I think in life you compromise so much. I have I, I have a daughter. You know I, I think in life you compromise so much I have I, I, I have a daughter. You know I have one child, I have a daughter. You compromise your entire life for a child. Um, you, you do work that you don't necessarily love to do because you know you have to. You have to pay bills, like there's. There's so much if you're in a relationship, a romantic relationship is compromised there. So there's so much compromise that you do.
Kern Carter:I didn't want novel writing, like my author life, to have compromise. I didn't want that. I wanted it to be exactly the way I wanted it to be. You know, I wanted to write exactly what I wanted to write, um, and I felt that, you know, committing to those middle grade books was taking me into a direction that was compromising who I was. That's what it felt like. It didn't just feel like I was compromising my author career. It felt like I was compromising me like Kern, and that's why I was like, no, I can't go.
Kern Carter:I would resent myself so much for and resent the thing, resent myself for the thing that I love the most, and I was like there's absolutely no way I could, I can do that. So I think it's not like I'm the bravest person in the world. I, I don't necessarily see myself like that. I just I was shaking when I was talking to my agent. I was shaking when I was talking to my editor. Literally, you know, I was nervous about it. I was telling them, these people who gave me opportunities that I dreamed of since I was a child. Telling them, no, turning down, especially with my agent, this is how he makes money. So telling him oh sorry, let's throw tens of thousands of dollars out the door. Uh, I apologize, we'll get it back soon, right? Yeah, it's not. It's not an easy thing to do. So I was.
Kern Carter:I was really anxious about doing that, but I've I've I've gotten accustomed to doing scary things. I've gotten accustomed to doing things that put me in situations where I feel uncomfortable. I'm an extremely introverted person by nature, which surprises people. But it surprises them because I've gotten good at faking. I've gotten extremely good at just being able to put on for a certain amount of time and deal with the drainage of that afterwards, you know. So I can present differently, but in my heart those conversations are actually really difficult for me.
Kern Carter:So I just to me, the writing, writing very specifically, has to come from a place of absolute. I don't want to keep saying passion. I think maybe that might not even summarize what I'm trying to say. It has to feel like a calling. And because if it doesn't feel like a calling, I think it's too hard otherwise to continue to doing it. Because if you're doing it for money, the chances of that are almost nothing like novel writing, very specifically. If you're doing it for money, the chances of that are almost nothing Like novel writing, very specifically. If you're doing it for money, the chances of that are nothing.
Kern Carter:Even if you do get there, the rejection that you have to go through, the constant rejection that you have to go through to get there, is, I know, as you mentioned I talk to a lot of authors that part of it, the rejection part of it, is really hard for them, really hard for us. Let me just say it's really hard for us. Let me just say it's really hard to to constantly deal with that, to deal with the self-doubt that you have about your own work, to do like it's just it's too much and too, it's too emotionally draining for you to be doing this for any other reason than feeling like a true calling, like you just absolutely need to write. So if you don't and I tell people this, you know, I say if you don't, if there's something else that you feel that you should be doing, like if writing is not calling you, then just do something else. Don't. Don't make this your, your career, or don't make this something that you're you're chasing, you know, just do something else, because this, this road, this path of being an author, is not not only is it not guaranteed, there's no guarantees for it financially or monetarily, there's no exposure guarantee to it. There's no, you know, there's not even a guarantee that you will be red. There's not a guarantee that the thing you spent months and years on will be red. And if you're not ready for that, then I'm sorry, then you have to be satisfied with producing the work. If you're not satisfied with producing the work, then you have to do something else. And I'm saying that as someone who is the most ambitious.
Kern Carter:Yes, I want to sell millions of books. I want the world to read my, my writing. I definitely do. But I would write, and I do write, without that happening. I have five books, right, I have five books. I do this. I've been writing since I was a child. I do this regardless. This is who I am, and if publishing industry crumbled tomorrow, I would still continue writing. It doesn't matter for me. To be completely honest, I genuinely love it that much and I think if I I genuinely love it that much, and I think if you don't love it that much, then you shouldn't then do something else yeah, I don't know many authors or really are any.
D. Firth Griffith:You know artistic creators that aren't in a constant mode of critique and trying to ascend above that into that. Like that. I mean the confidence that you're speaking about, and I think a lot of the industry that surrounds the creative arts attempts to supply that, and I say that perfectly positively, like there's a reason that these things exist, like the confidence that you probably felt, although obviously it was uncomfortable for another reason, to have three books in negotiations with. You know that that that was probably very confidence boosting or at least confidence giving. But around that confidence you still have all these other variables that you speak about. But there is this interesting tension and I want to see if you feel this tension too and if you have any words to to elucidate or describe it. On the one end, I mean you you said this is rough paraphrase of you earlier, but like, to some degree, writing or art is like this, permission to create without conscious thought and I love that and simultaneously any good author or artist is also a student of that art in a very academic way. You know, like there's nothing creative about my love for a good story other than like when I read cormac mccarthy and, don't be wrong, there's obviously creative ways that I love good stories, but there are also ones that are completely uh, I don't want to say mathematical, but like just completely mechanistic, in the sense where I'm reading cormac mccarthy I'm seeing the word splat versus collect and I'm I'm sitting there and I'm wanting to cry because I don't think I ever would have done that and there's a level of a student's mind there that is paralyzing, that is deeply humiliating.
D. Firth Griffith:I'm reading another book. Have you read Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation series? No, it's not called that. I'm reading book four right now, which is the last book, and now that I'm saying this publicly, I have to make sure I don't know if I would recommend these books to anyone. They're amazing, they are, but I was describing it to my wife the other day. I'm on book four of a series and the whole series takes place in this world. That is just crazy and I still don't know if anything that I've read or if anything that has been given to me as potentially true is true. So let me say that another way.
D. Firth Griffith:I just read like 20 pages the other day of this battle between rabbits. Don't, don't ask me, read the books. Um, it's a battle between rabbits and and, and at the end of about 20 pages I looked at my wife, who was also reading this, cause I couldn't figure out if I'm just not getting it, kind of like the book you were describing earlier, like I didn't know if I was just not getting it or if there was actually nothing to get. So my wife is also reading it to help me and she's also enjoying it because it's an enjoyable read. But it was a 20 page scene of these rabbits fighting and at the end of it I'm not entirely sure the rabbits ever existed Wow, ever.
D. Firth Griffith:And Jeff Vandermeer has this ability and again, I don't know if this is a good ability or bad ability, but I'm entranced by it To put all of these words on paper. He never rambles, it's never unclear, it's not like he's talking above me, but what he's describing, it doesn't have any roots. Never once do I sit back and say no, no, no, there are the rapids Like never once. And that as a writer, as an author who's currently in the middle of drafting another book that captivates me. How is he again using the same word. But how does he captivate me without ever being physically there? That is crazy. Or I'm reading another book that I will never write like this. It's amazing writing, but it's just not my style. But it's stretching me to see it in a new way. So there's an entirely mechanistic way of studying the art and there's an entirely unconscious, creative way of allowing that art to like. Rule in your process. Is that attention? Is that a supportive unity of two different polar ends? Do they both exist like? How do you see that?
Kern Carter:that that's a very interesting question. I don't know if they're polar ends I I would explain it like this, though, though I think they're different. So it's so interesting that you said like you'd read a line like that that seems so like I don't know, like plain and about to bring tears to your eyes. Because I feel the same way, like you describing that scene with the rabbits, like I literally felt, so emotional, like legit in my heart, I was like, oh, like I get, and just even hearing you describe how, how it felt, you felt like it might not even be real and I I understand that on a level that is so intimate that it's, it's almost weird, you know. So for me, I think that that level of appreciation from uh, how you described it, as a mechanistic, as a mechanistic thing, I think is is specific to the people who love the art in the way that I described before, and I think I think the, the, the other piece now I'm actually going against myself when I'm saying this, but I think this is true for me. I think the other piece is connected to that, because I don't I don't know if you can say that you're, that you love this, without appreciating it in that way, like it's appreciating all the ways that that the art is beautiful, you know, and part of that is is studying it. I, I, I really think so. So I, I think they're very much connected, actually, and necessary. Also, you know, I I was doing a workshop the other day and with workshops I'm a little.
Kern Carter:I haven't done workshops in a while. I used to do them all the time but I'm also I'm always a little bit hesitant to give specific advice. Uh, I lay things out in story and I'm like here, here, here's this, and I kind of tell it in story and I always say these are suggestions and considerations. The only thing I say that is for sure that I tell them this at the end is you cannot not read and think any of this is going to work. The one part of being an author I don't care what you're writing is you to be reading books. Yeah, you know, and that is not optional. That is like, and everything else on the workshop is optional. Consider this suggestion here. This is not optional.
Kern Carter:You have to, you have to study it, you know, like you have to, you have to read other authors and be inspired and be feel emotional, feel discussed or feel whatever, but you have to read other authors and be inspired and be, feel emotional, feel discussed or feel whatever, but you have to read, you have to, you know. So you have to study this thing. And it's so interesting that you actually brought that point up, because to me, when people do ask me, when I go out and talk, and people ask me, you know what advice would you give young, young writers or emerging writers? And I always say study the craft, craft, study the craft. That will take you, give you everything that you need.
Kern Carter:You know, if you really dive into research research is maybe the wrong word, but let's go with it If you dive into research, if you dive into reading, if you just appreciate it, you know, learn to appreciate it. It it will show you everything that you need to know, you know. So, study, study the art, study the craft and let that be your guide and be diverse in the way that you study the craft, be diverse in the books that you read, be diverse in the essays that you consume. It will, it will give you everything. So yeah, actually I talked my way into that one, but I do believe that they're connected yeah.
D. Firth Griffith:I think, a lot of like. I don't run in the way that you run, but I do talk to a lot of authors and I'm always astounded when I hear someone who wants to publish a book. But when I ask them what's their favorite book, who are your mentors? Like you're the authors that you look up to which you'd rattled off and slews a five or six or seven like it was nothing, and they stumble over it Like Whoa, whoa, like where's your gods? Where are these figures? You're like you need to go in, in, in, in.
D. Firth Griffith:When I was, uh, when I was in college, I had a thesis director from Milliken University who became a pretty dear friend of mine and the one piece of advice he gave me was he said everyone will tell you to read and then write twice as much as you read. I want to tell you to read twice as much as you write, and I don't know which one is right in the universal sense, I can speak personally. In my sense, it's true, If I'm going to write an hour, I needed to have read for two in order to have the confidence, in order to have the eye opened. You know, panorama of like possibilities in front of me Right, like, and, as you're saying, like I've I've recently dived into Morrison's work Sula, yeah, sula, sula, yes, right, and it's like. I will never write like Morrison, ever. I will never write about the subjects Morrison writes about. I will never carry that cadence that she carries like. None of that. However, it expanded my understanding of certain phrases, certain ways of crafting the story, certain viewpoints in different cultures, like we talked about, or like. It was unbelievably well worth my while, although my own creative product is in, to some degree, the antithesis of every, you know, micro decision that she made. Right, her book is short. My book is long. You know, her main character might be, you know, a girl in the South. My main character is a boy in the Western Europe. Like, in every way our micro decisions have changed, but in every way it was necessary for me to have engulfed or dive into that golf that is Toni Morrison.
D. Firth Griffith:And, uh, and I heard one author recently, and this is a struggle and I guess I struggle with this, I wonder if you struggle with it as a reader, I enjoy books differently than I as an author, while still reading enjoy those same books. So, for instance, I might pick up a book and really enjoy it as a reader. But as soon as I begin to write, like I'm actively in the middle of a novel, I find that when I read those books those same books that I enjoyed as a reader, or something, or maybe a new book that I would enjoy as a reader I read it and I'm like, ah, I see what they're doing, I see what they're doing. This is this literary metric that's going to set up the foundation for some. Oh, there it is.
D. Firth Griffith:Like I read it as if I'm actually diagnosing, like a student, some sort of you know some sort of not mechanistic process, but like some sort of creative unfolding that I can then place within a framework, absolutely, and both of these things are necessary.
D. Firth Griffith:Like in a framework, absolutely, and both of these things are necessary. Like you need to be in love with the language, and then you need to be in love the way that the language is told, like in the framework of story, and then you need to do that over 50 different books, and then you're allowed to write like that to me, like in a query that you get to an agent or something, I feel like it should ask like, how many books have you read in the last decade. You know, and what are they? You know, like. That's what I feel is so important because, like, if you are well read and I mean that well, that that word well in in the sense of how you've been saying it the diversity, the spread, the separation between, like, your accepted norms that you've read, you know, growing up, whatever, just in that expansion, your writing will follow yeah, oh no, you're, you're absolutely right.
Kern Carter:There's, there's, no, I can't even add anything to that that that is yes, yes, yes, yes, like it. There there's a dissection that you do that, that feels both conscious and subconscious or unconscious, that you, that you do as a writer, that, and when you're, when you're reading that, totally, just it carries over over. You could place it, you know, you could, you could I don't know diagnose it, I guess to reuse that word, but no, I, I, I agree, I totally agree, and it's, and, and you should be okay with that, you know, I think it's not something you should run from. I think it's fine to to have those perspectives when you're reading and when you're writing. That's, that's, it's part of it's part of being being an author.
D. Firth Griffith:It's part of loving the art. I think what a beautiful form of love that is too, like a form that cares about the particulars but also the beautiful whole. Whatever you know, like it's, it's both like inside and outside. It's small, it's large, it's particular, it's general, like it's good, it's really good, and it's so.
Kern Carter:I was yesterday. I was hosting, I was interviewing another author for this event that we have here in toronto, um, and at one point I I turned to the crowd and I was like you there. I was talking to the author first. I was like you know, there are two parts of of being an author, because she was talking about something that she did in the story. I'm like there's two parts of being an author there's the storytelling, then there's the technical aspect of it and you would be shocked at how technical being an author is, writing a novel very specifically. You'll be shocked at how technical it is. You know, no-transcript, I'm writing a book. Now, actually, let me, actually I'll reverse.
Kern Carter:For me to write my first published book is a novel called boys and girls screaming for me to write that. I had to. I had an age. I'll tell you the story quickly. I had an agent. I was. I went to new york to pitch agents. You know this is before I was published. So I'm pitching agents. You sit, you have five minutes with them. You say, hey, do you like my book? You know, like here, here's a summary, the quick summary of my book.
D. Firth Griffith:Talk about confidence, by the way, like oh, so bad I was sweating the whole time I was like, no, I thought five minutes summary.
Kern Carter:So out of the I think I spoke to half a dozen agents or maybe a dozen agents and five of them said yes, they like it. Go back to toronto, seven year full manuscript. I did that and all five of them rejected it. But one of them gave me feedback on the manuscript, which you know agents don't do, but they, they give me very thorough, detailed feedback, like here are all the ways that you're failing in the craft. This is after I'd already self-published two novels, so I was hurt a little bit, a lot, but that happened.
Kern Carter:Let's say, november of that year, january of the following year, I put myself into a novel writing class. Eight months, two semesters at a local college here, and those two months eight months, sorry help elevate my writing more sharply than any other point in my life. I just understood the craft differently than I did before, cause you get paired with a published author and you work in one-on-one and they're workshopping your book no one else, it's just them. And I learned so many things about writing that I just didn't know. I just didn't know but what it did was. It helped my imagination, because all the things that I imagine now I could actually communicate onto the page.
Kern Carter:So when I finished that class and I rewrote the book and I submitted it to my agent, it was the most confident I'd ever been. I knew I was going to get a deal. I already knew it because I was like, oh my gosh, I understand story. Now I understand how to communicate these ideas that are in my mind because I understand technical aspects that will allow me to communicate it in a more effective way. So I think they're connected. I think the imagination and the skill are connected, so I think it's important to be brilliant with both, be brilliant at both, you know.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, it is interesting this idea of that connection, that meeting point over the holidays that my sister was visiting and she picked up this one book, a fantasy book that will go unnamed, and she herself is a massive fan of JRR Tolkien's work, anything that he's ever written, any letter he's ever sent. I mean, this gal, my sister has read and studied it to some degree, some very large degree. And she picked up this fantasy book and she just read, like a paragraph, and she's like Daniel, he's just plagiarizing Tolkien. And then she changed a couple of pages not plagiarizing, I say that from a reader's perspective, not from a writing perspective. It wasn't plagiarism, to be very clear, but it was. It was Tolkien, you know. And then she changed some pages and she's like look at this word, look at this word, look at this word, look at this word, look at this word, like they all stem from that source.
D. Firth Griffith:And it's an interesting thing because I think when you study the craft and you read all of these books, it's very easy to say I'm going to say splat instead of collect, right, I'm going to use these words that look like this, I'm going to take that phrase. And now listen, tolkien doesn't own these phrases. There's nuance and complexity there, of course, but I think what's really interesting is when you meet an author or you read a book that has clearly had a lot of great influence, but no like selfhood of the author, like I feel like I'm just meeting, you know, jeff Vandermeer and Tolkien's baby, like that's what that book is and that's uninteresting to me because Tolkien and Jeff Vandermeer are two different authors and they're worthy to be read in their own different ways. Like I want to meet Kern Carter, like when I read Kern's, I want to read Kern. I want to meet Kern and and of course, I'm going to see Kern's influences. I'm going to see you know that, that, that writing class and the technique that you so well displayed in this way and that way. But like I want to meet Kern and and and we were talking about Kendrick Lamar earlier and and again, I don't study his, his rise, if you will, although I do very much enjoy his music.
D. Firth Griffith:There's a, there's a video. Um, I believe the song is DNA, is that?
Kern Carter:one of his songs.
D. Firth Griffith:There's a video of our daughter, who is like eight now, but when she was a baby baby, my brother was playing it in the background and she's just started like dancing to it. But I mean she's months old, I mean she's just like this little purple you know blob of a couple months old baby but she like it's kind of like headbanging to it but like not in a metal sort of way, but she's moving it and I'll never forget like it's like the I got, I got, I got, I got. Is's a song right and she's just doing it and it's like and that was my first introduction to him, but it's like even to this moment, eight years later, seven and a half years later, that I can still get to that rhythm Like that's Kendrick Lamar, like I'm never going to get that confused with somebody else. You know, and that's real to me and while Kendrick obviously might have many influences, that somebody who might study his work, maybe, like you, can be able to tell, oh, that's a little bit of this guy, that's a little bit of this guy, that's this artist, that's true, but it's undeniably Kendrick.
D. Firth Griffith:Yeah, in the sense that when I read Kern or I read myself or I read others, I want to experience those people. Yeah, and that is this next next step, if you will. So you have like these two loving uh combinations, you know, between this mechanistic and art sort of approach and and plot and layout and technique, and you have that. And then you have the like fingerprint component.
D. Firth Griffith:What makes this kern on paper, and that to me is so interesting, like when you read a book that doesn't have that and then when you read a book that does have that, the lasting ramifications of both of them, like both of these two realities. I mean I find deeply interesting. But I find that if stories matter which I think is like the premise of your sub stack like writers are superstars, superstars matter, you know, like that's the essence of what a superstar is, like a somebody who is a star, but it's not super in the sense that nobody cares about, like it's not a star anymore, like this superstar has to matter, like storytellers, authors, books and in this art and maybe art in general, like it matters and and to me it it is beautifully done when it matters personally and then applies in that general sense.
Kern Carter:I think what you're talking about is actually the hardest thing to accomplish as a writer.
Kern Carter:Yeah, I agree I think it's really hard to find your own voice among, let's just call it the canon, and I don't mean the actual canon, but like a canon or the history of writers. Let's just say, I think it's very difficult to find your own voice, and I think it gets more difficult as years go by, because there's more influence and the space for variance and the space for nuance starts dwindling, I think, and for us, in 2025, to come up with a story that feels very specifically you is much more complicated than it would have been in in the 19th century, the 20th century. Even so, I think we are. We are facing a very, very difficult challenge as authors. At the same time, though, I think it's it's a challenge that we should welcome, and we should. We should not just welcome, but like, welcome with vigor, like an approach with, with vigor and enthusiasm. When, in the piece, in the, my most recent piece, when I start off with marlon james and saving like a brief history of seven killings, really gave me permission and blew my mind. I that's I I was serious about that. I start the piece like that. My mind was blown. That was serious. He said forget genre. He said forget. He didn't even have a main character, the character who you see at the end of the story wasn't even in the first 150 pages. It's the most brilliant story. I don't want to overhype it, but it is one of the most brilliant pieces of literature that I've ever read. It was so well done and it had elements of magical realism and maybe even a touch of fantasy and historical fiction for sure. And it was brilliant. It was really brilliant and it was literary and the writing was next level. And Marlon James has written good books before. His books previously to those were actually really good. So it's not like this was just out of the blue. I could see the kind of trajectory that he was on and it made sense. But I think to get to that is Talk about having the perfect balance of imagination and technical ability. That's, I think. Once you get that and then add your again finding your own voice and perspective, which is the, the final alternate piece, I think you get books like that that are just that, are just so, that just stand out and you could just see it and you could just feel it. So I I do think it's it it. So I I do think it's it's hard, though I I think it's really hard, and I think it. It takes several drafts, just like, if you're just talking about individual piece, pieces of work, it takes several drafts just to get a one novel to feel independent. You know what I mean. Like, yeah, just to sound like itself. It takes several drafts just to get to that. Now, imagine what you have to do to get it to not sound like anything else out there. You know. So it's a complicated thing, but I welcome that. I love that challenge. It's something I do think about, you know, and I'm writing a new novel right now and I'm experimenting with a new POV style right now and I'm experimenting with the new, a new pov style. So it's just, you see, you try things and you see what happens and if it works, if, if it works, great, if it doesn't, my agent's like kern, what are you doing this? We can't do this. You know it. Might you? You take it and you see what happens.
Kern Carter:The author I was talking to yesterday she actually said that she was, she was writing short stories. She, this was her first novel, her debut novel. She was a short story writer first and she had written many short stories and they had won awards and stuff like that. So her natural progression she thought when she pitched to her agent, was here's a collection of short stories, let's put them together and put them out. Her agent took it, pitched it to a few people and no one no it. So they're just like no, we're not doing this, write a novel.
Kern Carter:And told her to write a novel and she said she was devastated. Like I've been writing short stories essentially my entire writing career and now you're telling me, like, put that to the side and write a novel. Like she really felt devastated. But she said within her devastation, because she said the devastation was real, right, like it was actually real. But she said within the devastation, as soon as he said that, 24 hours later, something clicked in her and she knew exactly the book to write. You know what I mean. Like that only happens if you welcome it. You know, pass the pain, because there's pain. You cannot write and be in this world without feeling pain, which, what I was talking about earlier, this is just part of it, right, you know. So through that pain and devastation, she found the exact. She said 24 hours later she knew the exact book she needed to write. She already had the character, she had the title of the exact book she needed to write. So I I, there it's. You have to welcome that challenge and you have to push yourself.
Kern Carter:And the way I kind of look at it is I'm just adding to the history of authorship and of great writers and writers in general, and that's how I look at it. I put that amount of weight on my writing. I put that amount of respect on the authors that came before me. I want to add to it. I want to respect and honor what all of you have done, because these are my icons. These are people I genuinely feel like their stories have affected me or affect me in ways that are almost unexplainable.
Kern Carter:So, because I'm participating in the same practice that they do, that they have, I want to make sure I'm honoring them, as as I don't even know what the right word is I just, I just want to make sure I'm doing them justice. You know, like I, I really think about that. I want to make, I want to make tony morrison happy. I want to make khalid husseidi happy. You know, like I, I I have a tattoo of john milton on my arm. John milton wrote in the 1500s, if I'm not mistaken. Like you know what I mean. That's amazing. That's what I want. I want that I'm honoring those writers seriously. So for me, that's just like I put that weight and I approach my writing with that level of respect. So and again, I don't know, know other authors would describe it like that, but I think they feel similar in, in the, in the responsibility that there's, responsibilities that they have as as writers. So there's this.
D. Firth Griffith:Um, I think it's george orwell yeah, I think it's george orwell who wrote a piece like it's an essay. I think it's titled why I write, or something like this, something that I regard. And you describe writing as this chronic illness, you know, and pain, and and, and I think that's a fine way of seeing it. I think the way you described it is a fine way of seeing it. There's a pain there and then you like the rejection and everything else, like that's so important, it's so important to live there, to see what that grief is really for and to emerge out of it. And like when you emerge out of it, like it's true, like it's there, like the next step, you know it's always there outside of a very painful moment.
D. Firth Griffith:I think it requires time. I think that's something that a lot of authors today don't fully get the amount of time it takes for the words to truly percolate, like even if you are able to cast those words very quickly. It's almost like when I was saying earlier that you have to read twice as much as you write, like that was the advice given to me. That really works for me. It's almost like if you write a thousand words a day, you need like a thousand days to go by until you're ready for those words to actually live elsewhere, and that's totally mathematically incorrect. But the feeling of what I'm saying is true in the sense that, like, I know a lot of people who will write something quickly, edit it and then public, like try to get it published, or something like this, and it's like or you could have sat on it for six months, you know, and and and cause.
D. Firth Griffith:I feel like that's really important for me because I love to read, I love to read, I love to read, I love to read, I read all the time. However, when I'm in the active stages of pen to paper, like truly writing it's it's very hard for me to read at all, in the sense that you know I'll start to read and then all of a sudden I'm writing, like without even knowing it. I keep this little journal. It's like I have hundreds of these things laying around and you know, I'm reading this morning and I'm writing the book Like I can't help myself, it's just going to happen. And so it's like well, you know, I spent two hours reading, but was I really reading too much? It's very hard for me to to be there, and so I listened to audio books as much as possible, because I just don't see the word and it allows me to focus on just listening to the words and seeing the way the book develops, as opposed to, like, sitting there with my journal in writing. And I've always found that post drafting maybe the second draft there's this period where it's like okay, it's like you're free, now you're released from your quote unquote cage, to like, go experience some other things and then come back to me a new, and then let's go through the third draft or the second draft or whatever it is. It's like there's there's just evolutions that have to happen. You know, because, like, the daniel that finished the book is not the daniel that needs to publish this book. Like I need to evolve a little bit, I need to go experience other ways of storytelling, I need to go read some nonfiction. You know theoretical philosophy and you know what I'm trying to say. And then you come back. Everybody is rushing to hit the publish button and it's self-publishing, hybrid publishing, indie, traditional, whatever it is. They're just rushing to hit that publish button.
D. Firth Griffith:And I think about, you know, tolkien, jrr Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings. I once heard this and I don't know if it's true, but I want to believe that it's true and I don't know how you would ever validate this, but I believe that it is true. He spent an entire year retyping an edited draft of, like, the Fellowship of the Ring or something. Now again he's on a typewriter, so like, let's add some of that to like the physicality of that element. But he spent an entire year placing the edits on the page slowly letting that live. And yet he's still one of the greatest authors of all time, especially in the genre of fantasy and general theoretical fiction. But he took a year just to type it out and you want to take two days.
Kern Carter:Please, I agree, but he took a year just to like type it out. And you want to take two days, please, I agree, like we need I, I the. The slowness of it is, I almost want to say it's essential. Again, I like to always say consider things, but the writing is just a slow game, like, like it's the process of it requires reflection and requires space. Also, like to your point, like, go away for a little bit, go experience things.
Kern Carter:I wrote a piece that said why aren't there any child star novelists, like, why? Like, when I say child, I mean truly child, like you know how there are child scientists that are eight years old and they figured out some math with math, mathematical problem, are eight years old and they figured out some math with math, mathematical problem, blah, blah, blah. There's no eight-year-old novelist writing. Yeah, at the level of tolkien, yeah, and they just they don't have the patience one, yeah, and they don't have the experience, don't? That should tell you something right there, right there, that should tell you what it takes to be a novelist patience and experience.
D. Firth Griffith:Yes, it's a great experience.
Kern Carter:You know they have the imagination. They could probably spit a story like, tell you a story like from their mind, yeah. But to sit down and write it and sit with it and reflect on it, then give it space, come back to it, change it up, put and that's just draft one and that's, you know, you start moving on. That takes a level of patience that I don't think people are are quite ready for all the time or even understand why. You know they don't understand that part of it, but to me it's essential. It's the thing I tell myself all the time, like consciously I actually do this. I say, kern, when I'm writing I'm like be patient, you know, be patient with the scene, be patient with the sentence, be patient with this character and how you introduce this character, and like I'm constantly reminding myself from the micro level of writing to be patient to the macro level where it's like all right, like relax, like you know, like let's, we don't have to submit this to my, my agent right now, right, um, there's a I.
Kern Carter:I purposely, now that I I'm kind of in the game a little bit more, I give myself my deadlines with my editors. I'm like I need nine months, like I don't, I'm not on this, because sometimes they're like, oh, because you sent me a draft, I, because I send them a full draft. They're like, oh, you have like four months, five months. I'm like I need nine months, I don't care, like I, I want time to do nothing and not write that book. You, you know what I mean. I need time to be like uh, okay, I went a whole month and I, I just thought about it and I have. I was looking back cause I have my notebook, similar to yours too, where I'm just like I'm jotting and, trust me, the book you're going to get is going to be so much better than if you, if I deliver this in four months. You know what I mean. I give myself so much lead time.
D. Firth Griffith:Now I think it's really important because, especially in the age of social media and I think Substack also falls into this in this negative regard Digitally humanity is able to produce a lot very quickly and I see on Substack a lot of what I see where somebody has an opinion, they quickly write a piece and then a year later they have to like retract that piece. I see this all the time and and maybe they don't even retract it. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but it's, you know, like uh, I watched this wonderful interview recently between two people. One was a journalist, one was an archaeologist, a trained archaeologist, and the journalist was speaking and the archaeologist archaeologist was just like I.
D. Firth Griffith:While what you're saying is true, in a vacuum, it's not universally true.
D. Firth Griffith:Like a studier of archaeology who's dedicated their life to this particular subject understands all of the nuance, like I've spent 50 years here and so, while what you're saying is true, the second, you allow the nuance to actually exist over here in this realm that you never even perceived to be possible. It actually makes your particular statement false and it shows you that where, like if you move too quickly, like if you start talking about archeology not talking about it in in some sort of lay perspective, but like if you, if you start to actually exist in the realm of like an archeological writer, without spending the 50 years truly understanding it, you're actually writing falsely, like it might be perceived to be true but it's still false. Like that's the misinformation that petrifies me Not the social media stuff, although that is interesting too, but like it's the misinformation of people who thought they were serious and they were wrong because they moved too quickly. Or it's the stories that were too unbaked that, while they are initially perceived to be as interesting, will never actually last a decade.
Kern Carter:Yeah, exactly Exactly. But that's how you get the art that transcends time is through that patience.
D. Firth Griffith:Makes you glad to write novels. Patience, you know, makes you glad to write novels in your own little world. You know, especially me, because I I write, uh, like the book I'm writing right now is a mix between science fiction and fantasy, which petrifies me. Like talking about, like breaking genre boundaries, like I don't even know, like I feel like I need about nine more months, like you're saying, and maybe I'll be a little bit more sure, um, but it's like, it's my, my head. You know, like this world doesn't exist and thank God, but I still need the time.
D. Firth Griffith:You know it's, it's still like, oh and, and I get, I get so frustrated too, and I feel like the author wanted to mimic flow writing, like they wanted to write the book fast and they understood this idea of flow writing, but it's, it's not preachy, it's, um, it treats me like an idiot. You know, like there's something sparking in the dialogue and then there's going to be two paragraphs after describing the spark in the dialogue and what it looked like, and you're like no, no, no, no, no, that's not, that's not what I want. I'm not an idiot, but I think a little bit more time and it might not have solved it, of course, but a little bit more time, when the writer stepped away from the work. Go experience. Go hike in the Alps, I don't know, just go experience.
Kern Carter:Come back to it as a changed person then read it and realize that you feel stupid, you know, and then maybe you would have cut it, maybe or not.
D. Firth Griffith:Maybe you would have, maybe you wouldn't have, but I just I think that time component is so needed, like even even in terms of printing and other things, like I know people who they'll leave like a month, like self-published authors, they'll leave like two months I'm sorry, two weeks or a month for, like, the printing of the book, like they don't even have a book in hand. No, exactly, exactly, it's like like here's the road sitting next to me, but like, like they don't even have a physical book, you know. And like their book launches in two or three weeks and and they've never. Like I mean, I've seen this 10 times, I've seen this more than that and they're just like, oh yeah, well, you know it'll get printed, and it's like, do you not respect what this is? To the point where, like, like you don't like the type setting doesn't matter, the margins doesn't matter, the images on the inside, like what?
Kern Carter:if it was off, are you not going to change it Exactly? Or like the color of your book cover was off.
D. Firth Griffith:Exactly Like, exactly right, what if the blue isn't the blue that was in your dream? Like it's just patience. You know, like even I, I have a book coming out on uh, on, uh, the, the, the festival of of Ostara, for us would be like the spring equinox or kind of like in the middle of the spring season and uh, March, March 20th, and like I'm like sweating. It's February 5th when we're recording and I'm sweating because, while we've had two different print runs, I'm not yet completely satisfied with, with the, the physicality of the book, Like it's all done, you know, the audio books record, like, but and I'm still like I'm stressing about this, because it matters like.
Kern Carter:This is the legacy of literature.
D. Firth Griffith:We don't have oral stories over hearth and flame in the dark winter season before technology anymore and so that sacred space that you, that our ancestors used to dwell in, now lives between cardboard you know, cover sets and it needs to be sacred Like that actually needs to exist in my opinion.
D. Firth Griffith:So I'm stressed about it. You know, like, yeah, um, I don't know, there's a, there's a lot there, um, but I really appreciate your, your time and your view. I really appreciate your work on Substack. Um, thank you.
D. Firth Griffith:Regardless of this conversation and all the different things that we've been able to dive into, I, as an author, feel like I need your Substack. So please, keep going To some very large degree in order to do what you have described here well the art, the creative skill set, the love, the passion, the storytelling abilities, the ability to lay out the book, all of these things that really have a complete story, to really make our ancestors proud and our lineages proud. I think in order to do that, you need that confidence. You need that person next to you saying keep going, kern. That that's it. It looks like crap right now. Let's, let's go through a couple of renditions, but yes, you know hell, yes, keep going. And I, and I feel like your sub stack is that, not obviously in its entirety, but to some very large degree. You as a person, I should say and and I experienced a person on sub stack most often is that bulwark, if you will to a lot of authors.
D. Firth Griffith:I mean it's, it's well followed, obviously it's well loved your, your writings and your, your, your presence there. Um, no, I appreciate that no, no, no for sure.
Kern Carter:No, I appreciate that it's, it's important for me. Clearly, like, based on this entire conversation, I think we we both share, share that and um, I think substack, like I said, it is just an opportunity for me to blend my passions and then share insights with other writers. I'm speaking to writers, I'm not speaking to anybody else. I'm sure other people get things out of it. There are a few of my friends that follow it and they like some parts of it, but I'm speaking to writers and for me that's important. I, the tradition is important, the craft is important, the history is important, the legacy is important. That's all important to me. So if I can in any way, you know, add or give, give some inspiration or some confidence or some some calm to to writers, uh, I, I want to try to do that or some confidence or some calm to writers, I want to try to do that. Or some understanding. You know, I really say that even the name Writers Are Superstars comes from a space of I felt like we are neglected in popular culture.
Kern Carter:You know, I joke with my creative partner that publishing is the biggest niche in the world. You know it's, it feels so, it's, it's big but it can feel very specific. It's we don't have we don't have very many cultural conversations outside of publishing and outside of literature about the authors. It's not. There's no award show that's on tv. You know what I'm saying? That millions of people are going to. It's not. There's no award show that's on tv. You know what I'm saying? That millions of people are going to watch. There's. There's no. You know we're not getting shoe deals and making, you know, liquor brand uh, partnerships with authors like it doesn't. It doesn't necessarily work like that for us. You know, we're not considered in popular culture in the same way and I feel like that's such a disservice because all the films that everyone loves so much, it started with the writer's mind and if you really want to get specific, a lot of the films that you watch started with a book. Yeah, so it's the video games that you play, the news that you watch I, I think it's so much of it starts with the writer. We're not even getting, we don't get, the same level of attention that an actor would get or a director would get. You know what I mean. Not necessarily that I don't think the individuals like it's not an individualistic thing, I'm thinking as a collective, like the collection of authors and writers we don't get that type of attention, and part of that, I think, is authors do tend to be more introverted. But I think that's a small part of it. I think the other part of it is just we have.
Kern Carter:I don't think popular culture appreciates authors in the same way. I think there was a time when authors were stars and were the ones that you know people really looked to and said, oh my gosh, like I want to be. That, that's who I want to be, you know, and I think we're losing that and I don't think that's good. I think it's important. I think superstars you said this earlier, I actually do think superstars are important. They play a role. They play a role in culture and society that allows us to dream and allows us to look at something and say, yes, that's how I want to be, maybe not who I want to be. That that's how I want to be. Maybe not who I want to be, but that's how I want to be.
Kern Carter:And I think if we don't have that, then what is that? Like who's eight-year-old current dreaming about? You know what I mean? Like, if we don't have that, that, that notoriety, that attention in popular culture. Who am I dreaming about? And I think it's if more, if more young people were as enthusiastic about becoming YouTubers, about becoming authors, as they are about becoming YouTubers, I think we'd have a different world. I genuinely, in my heart, believe that, and I also, in my heart, believe that we need more storytellers, period. I think we just need stories, the way that we see ourselves and the way that we understand the world. You know, yeah, period, that's storytelling, and I love that you actually, just a while ago, brought it back to the oral tradition like that. How do you, how do you not want that tradition to continue? Like we are the carriers of that torch authors, writers we carry that, torch, you, you cannot remove storytelling from humanity and have humans.
Kern Carter:It's not even possible.
Kern Carter:We story told ourselves into where we are right now ourselves. These stories, none of it is actually true. You know it's only true because we said it's true and so that that's powerful and you want to, you want to like, remove that or or diminish that. I think it's the opposite. I think you need to lift that up and and really show us a little bit more praise for, for storytelling and storytellers in general. So yeah, especially writers, because there's nothing more pure than if it's oral, but coming oral is the most pure, but if you come from the mind and onto the page, I think it's the most unfiltered type of thought and imagination that you can possibly come up with and it's the most accessible. So I just I think it's important. Besides, I try to put my love and my bias aside and really just think of, sometimes I do and really just think of the value of it and I, I genuinely do think, like from a pragmatic standpoint, it writing is actually essential and really valuable and I don't think people, people realize that.
Kern Carter:So writers are superstars. That's, that's why. That's why it's framed like this. You know, this is like we are. We matter, you know, and and our, our stories, the way we tell our stories matters the most. I think the most more than anything. So I'm always going to believe that until something proves me different. It's the reason. It's sorry, I know I'm rambling, but I just want to make this last point too.
Kern Carter:It's. It's the reason, I think, why physical books still dominate, despite this digital world that we live in, there's no reason for physical books to exist anymore. None, technically, there are zero reasons we should have zero physical books. We don't need them, right, technically we don't need them. But physical books still outsell e-books by like five to one. It's not even close. Audiobooks are starting to get up, there for sure, they're rising, but even audiobooks are not even in the market yet. They don't even compare.
Kern Carter:Physical books are by far the most important, the most valuable part of the publishing industry. Still, and I think, over COVID, that proved itself over, because, again, people bought more physical books than 2022. Was the most books ever bought in history in history, ever physical books, right, why? Why is that? We were at home, we could have listened to our audiobooks, we could have read our ebooks, but people said no, no, no, I want this, I want to hold it, yeah, and there's there's something unexplainable in that.
Kern Carter:Unexplainable, unless you go back to what we spoke about before, like this is this is a tradition of what makes us human, what makes us who we are, and we are the carriers of that torch and we need to be respected like that and we need to understand that who we are and we're contributing something essential to the world essential. So, yeah, I get a little frustrated with that. So that's kind of why you know, like, I want to make sure like our place is solidified, like we're not, we shouldn't be, we're not going anywhere. We need to be, we need to make sure that we understand our place in this, in popular culture and in the world.
D. Firth Griffith:So, yeah, yeah, and, at the same time, understanding the true value of what we are creating exists in some sort of timeless universe. You know, like what, if tony morrison was just writing for the people around her for that moment and then it was forgotten, it would have had effect, of course, but it would not have had as great as an effect as it had on people like you, people like me and others if it wasn't bigger than that. Yeah, you know, and so it's like this really cool way for us. I say this phrase a lot because I feel like writing to some very large degree, especially the writing that I'm involved with, at least in my view of the thing is like a two-way dream walking, where we're walking backward and we're walking forward, and it's both dreams. Of course, you know, we're paving new pathways, we're telling stories about to exist in troubled times, because maybe we live in troubled times, but it's not the troubled times that we live in. It's something like it's expansive, it's contractive. We're looking back and we're writing about you know, ancestors, that we never met, like all of these things. It's two way dreamwalking, but as long as we're going in both directions, it's both. Like you're saying, we're carrying this torch, but we're also like handing the torch and it's like the pressure of, of, of being the torch holder, you know, like at the olympics, and not falling like it's.
D. Firth Griffith:It's a very true paralyzing reality where it just seems implicit in the art, like good art needs sweat, and and I'm not necessarily saying work sweat, I'm saying nervous sweat. That's a very good thing, I think, to be exposed in that way as a human telling the story, to think about these generations, to think about your books living long beyond you. It seems implicit within the art, um, to feel this way and and and and. Obviously you're saying that you agree with, you know this as a, as a philosophy or writing, you know, on Substack obviously agrees, um, and it's, it's so needed, yeah, you know, and it feels so weird, I guess did. Yeah, you know, and it feels so weird, I guess. I guess the, the feeling that I'm trying to convey, that I'm feel like I'm stumbling over, is simply this the world around us is turbulent and then you see the lastingness of the written word.
Kern Carter:You know, carrying that legacy, it is man. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I feel the same, I, yes yes, how, um how can people so?
D. Firth Griffith:obviously we've mentioned your substack many times For the people driving to this episode. They want to learn more, read your books, et cetera. How can they find you? What's the best place to interact?
Kern Carter:Currencartercom. That's it and you'll see. All my books are there, the links to my sub stack is there and other things that you may need if you want to reach out to me. So yeah, definitely, kerncartercom, beautiful.
D. Firth Griffith:Well, I appreciate you, Kern. This has been fun. I didn't expect to talk for an hour and 45 minutes, but I feel like every moment was like savored very well.
Kern Carter:So I appreciate you. I loved it. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you.