Letting Go, Opening Up
On going to press and opening for submissions
I have one simple email to write in this in-between quiet time, a blink away from 2025.
And when do you need those files?
I’ve signed the printer contract for copies of Imagine a Door, my new writing book, and I have a finished PDF on my laptop. With its pretty index! I’ve done the math about when books need to be in the warehouse, leaving some slush time for delays and shipping, so all I need is a magic date.
A due-by date.
I obviously need to know so I can submit my project in time to make all my deadlines, but as 2024 bleeds into 2025—and by bleed I mean the printer terms, ink spilling over the edge of the page—I’m happy to perch in the in-between, cradling my work in my house, keeping the finished files safe in a folder, savoring the last few days of my book’s privacy.
What’s in Imagine a Door is my voice. My story. My mistakes and lost hopes and a publishing journey that didn’t take me where I thought I wanted to go. There’s vulnerability in what I’ve put on the page. There’s even more in imagining what readers will see in my story. How they will react to what I give with love. With openness. With hope that I can ease their writing journeys by providing information wrapped in kindness.
Advance copies of Imagine a Door are already out there—with trade reviewers, blurbers who have kindly responded and some who may still respond, booksellers who attended the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association conference this fall, and Edelweiss users who have chosen to request the book for review. I have two more cases of ARCs set to be mailed out in the next few months.
But getting the finished files to press is like setting everything in stone. My project will really, fully be done at that moment. Cooked. When I attach the PDF, and hear the whoosh of sending, my book will be out of my hands. In the printing queue. Becoming.
I will get one last chance to proof files. To signal my approval.
And then it will be. Not mine—readers’. I won’t be sitting next to anyone explaining or confirming that I started these interviews back in 2016, but it’s been a lifelong project, learning about publishing and then putting what I learned into print.
Imagine a Door has had many other titles and names, and whole swaths of content that got cut along the way. I never expected to write my own definitions—to define terms from scratch!—and yet that’s what the manuscript required of me.
I know there’s a lot in here. Looking through the index reminds me: I covered this, and this, and this.
Actually, at this time, I can’t add anything or the whole index will shift, and that’d be terribly unfair to Alyssa Graybeal, my indexer, so hold on. Even though I haven’t asked for a due-by date, even though I haven’t released the file to the printer, it’s done. Finished. I can do one more pass, just making sure I don’t have any hyphen stacks or extra spaces, messed-up sidebar borders, that kind of detailed stuff. But as a book, it’s in its final form.
Now I just need to let it go.
To the printer and also to the audiobook producer, Tantor Media.
Maybe I’ll light a candle after I hit send. Or maybe I’ll bake a vegan treat. Or maybe I’ll write something new. That moment will be deserving of a small ceremony of sorts.
In other news, on Jan. 6, we open for novel submissions at Forest Avenue Press. Do you have a literary novel that might be a good fit for us? Please consider sending it our way between Monday, Jan. 6 and Sunday, Feb. 9.
We’re accepting novels via Submittable and you can read more about what we’re seeking, our word count guidelines, and what types of projects might be right for us on the Forest Avenue website. We’re looking for two or three more novels for the 2026-27 catalog.
Feel free to pass our call to submissions along to writer friends, your social media audiences, and your critique groups. We’re so excited to read everyone’s work!
It’s always so hard to winnow down great projects to the final few, but there’s always that sense of opening, of possibility, and I’m thrilled to start 2025 that way. Reading. Thinking. Appreciating the hard work of so many writers who are seeking homes for their manuscripts. Every submission that matches our guidelines feels like a gift.
Every submission that ignores our guidelines is another reason I wrote Imagine a Door. To bring writers inside the process of publishing and to center the act of creation, of being focused on the page with your words, because that’s the part we can control.
Your turn: How are you spending these last days of 2024? Where are you with your writing projects? Please let me know by responding to this email or leaving a note in the comments. I want this to be an interactive space for all of us.
Love the title and look forward to reading this book. Thank you for your lovely substack, and for posting the link on fb (for those of us trying to reduce emails). Best wishes for much continued success.
"There’s vulnerability in what I’ve put on the page. There’s even more in imagining what readers will see in my story. How they will react to what I give with love."
A lit candle. The baking of a vegan treat. Then ... celebration!