I feel a sense of time passing. An urgency. With my debut novel forthcoming in April, I’d love to place some essays for spring. Better to start now, to submit and wait and hope, than to wish I had been proactive two weeks after my pub date.
To track my progress, I made myself a chart in Notion, matching nascent ideas with potential publications. I’ve even started writing a few pieces. And I’ve pitched two. But I’ve been wrangling a sense of dread.
What if I get a yes for last week’s email pitch? Do I really want to write that? If I don’t follow up, it’ll probably disappear and I won’t have to write it. But if I let it slide, what will I mark on my chart?
Never mind.
Ignore this one.
Giving up!
Those aren’t exactly words I want to apply to myself, especially at a time when my writer confidence should be at a peak. (Post-deal, pre-publication!)
I wonder if my current essay reticence is because I’m afraid to use content, especially stories that relate to my book, because then I’ll have fewer “fresh” ideas for future essays. Except that’s not really how it works. Essays can build on each other; the ideas in them, how we relate to the content of our lives, changes as we grow. We each get one life; we can write about it with countless frames. Writing about my music-box upbringing, as a way to talk about the themes in Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, doesn’t mean I have used the content up. It’s still my childhood. I can keep claiming it.
So maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s the pressure. To show my publicist I’m working hard. To write essays with a purpose, not just because I want to write. (Also, this whisper: what if I write an essay, find it a journal, and it doesn’t translate to book sales? Essays can help sell memoirs, but they don’t always move the sales needle, and the reader making an essay-to-novel leap is even more of a stretch.)
Maybe I just don’t really want to write essays now. Maybe I’d rather wrap holiday gifts. Or make art. I have a completed novel that needs a polish before I send it to my agent. But also, a new novel is brewing. Historical with music and a dash of magic, just like the finished manuscript (which may someday be known as my second novel) and Singing Lessons. I am peering into these rich imaginative clouds—considering the characters on my daily dog walks, even starting the research process—but it seems too soon to dive into a new fictional world. I’m mid-yearning for this new world, but also restraining myself until I can picture more of the story. Figure out the conflicts. Read some more books about the particular time and place I’ve identified.
All of this combined probably means I should be gentle with myself. Go where the energy is. Let essays go if the form is not singing to me at the moment.
There’s this other idea, though. Maybe a good one. I feel like I have something to say about the writing life and how we measure ourselves based on flawed metrics. I imagine this project as a way to help writers—and myself—center the work. To honor the process, instead of fixating on the outcome. What better time to work on this idea than in the run-up to my debut novel? I am already wrangling emotions, worrying over reviews that may be bad (or may not come at all), reminding my friends that any good news for my book might be because I’ve built connections in the industry for twenty years.
I’m worried about how my book will do, in other words, but I’m also worried that other authors will judge their books’ trajectories against mine. In comparing with a better / worse lens, whether looking at sales numbers or covers or who’s a finalist in which award, we flatten what the work represents. We ignore our commitment to it, how we felt when we landed an extra-great sentence or a plot twist, in exchange for someone else’s measuring tools.
I don’t, really, honestly, want to be judged at all. But that’s part of the process, isn’t it? We ask for reviews and recommendations as a way to spread the word that the work exists. And this is what we sign up for as writers. This systemic valuation of our creative spark. Even in submitting an essay to a journal, writers are asking, “Is this good enough?”
Which often feels like: “Am I good enough?”
Even though so many factors go into an acceptance or a rejection—the other pieces being chosen in the same submissions period, the editors’ tastes, the clarity of the journal’s equity lens—we tend to take the responses personally. No is hard to hear; yes can make our worthiness or self-value spike in potentially artificial ways.
Whether yes or no or keep in drawer, the words are the work you’ve done. The way you’ve chosen to put a theme, an experience, a character, or a place on the page.
I founded Forest Avenue Press in 2012 as a way to take care of my authors in the way that I someday wanted to be cared for by a publisher. Also with the hopes of mending a few hearts the industry had broken.
Now, nearing our tenth anniversary, I’ve published more titles than I ever imagined, am engaging in equity work in a more deliberate (and effective) way, and I’ve seen countless authors struggle with criticism, sales numbers, and awards, sometimes to the point of giving up on writing.
Over and over, I’ve coached my novelists and memoirists to appreciate each step of the journey, to marvel at their own risk taking at the sentence level, to claim success when a reader sends a kind letter or a bookstore turns their cover face out. To say, This is enough. And then This, too, is enough. To take what’s offered and hold on, instead of leaning forward into what might (or might not) come next.
As I’m trying to figure out how to take my own advice, to count what’s here and be grateful, instead of worrying about a future milestone, sales goal, or award submission, I’m thinking maybe I can package this experience into a manuscript. A helpful one. A healing one, maybe. Part transparency about the industry, part memoir. A book that reminds writers to celebrate what they put on the page, and to hold that celebration as essential, and separate, from publication.
Or… well, maybe I should just get back to those essays.
YOUR BRIGHT SIDE INVITATION: What are you working on? Are you feeling like you should be working on X, but you want to work on Y? If you’ve felt despair as a writer, what kinds of content or stories would help you feel less alone? Would you read a book that’s about the industry from a self-preservation perspective?
Feel free to leave a comment! I started this newsletter to create an intimate but accessible conversation space about creativity, grief, and the societal reset that the pandemic has offered creatives like us. I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can reply to this email to have a conversation just with me, or you can comment on the post to connect with other readers. You’re also welcome to forward this to any friends who might like it.
Dear Laura…such thoughts you share. And I can relate to all of them: yes, I think you are on to something about helping authors address that question about how much is enough? What matters most for me? Must I compare myself to others, especially when I least think I will? Happy to chat further. So many times I remind myself of why I began writing and what it has done for me and the beautiful surprises along the way that have been most unexpected. As if to remind me that books last forever, I received an email from a colleague this week who had read the book my mother wrote following her dissertation on women at mid-life, all about the myths we grow up with. It was a little known book, few copies sold though still sits on Amazon. This friend of mine told me it meant the world to her. Mom is here no longer but her words still touched one. Thinking of you.
Dear Laura…you have such wonderful instincts and energy. I like your idea of a work to help writers celebrate the process, to not worry so much about the outcomes, the judgements etc. At age 78, I will soon see my first book published. My age helps me not worry so about the next one,though I, too, have one in the wings. I will be happy to at least see at least one that might outlast me. I try to be satisfied at that and the joy the project gave me but I have to admit the very uneasiness you mention at having what was once so private, so intimate soon be shared with the world.