The Sad Authors Club

P.S. I don't want you to join.

Earlier this month, I made a few shadow boxes for friends. It’s a great way to reuse old boxes, scraps of paper, and the odd objects you might have around your house.

I’m writing to you today from the hammock fort in my back yard, enjoying the last day of sun before rain sweeps through again. I’m bundled in my bathrobe and using an oversize dog-walking coat like a blanket so my toes don’t freeze. Cars purr and whiz on the other side of the fence, all the people heading all the places.

It feels good to sit still. To stay home on a sunny Saturday, rocking gently with the breeze and the furiousness of my typing.

I became obsessed with hammocks early in the pandemic, and today’s is my newest one: a turquoise TreePod, hanging from the stand I splurged on. I wanted to set it up in the basement for year-round hammock joy.

Alas, even though the TreePod website said the stand is adjustable, it’s still too high for our ceiling, so I can only use it outside. To add to the frustration, despite the exorbitant price tag, the stand was missing 24 crucial nut caps. When four emails to customer service were ignored, I spent another $46 getting the parts I needed to actually put my new stand together.

But at least I’m not in the Sad Authors Club. (At least not today.)

It’s one of those clubs I wish didn’t exist. One I’d like to keep all creative people out of. And yet. It’s right there, all the time, waiting for us if we don’t guard against it—and sometimes even if we do. Because whenever we try to measure art by economic terms, we’re bound to want more sales, attention, and reviews. Isn’t that inherent in capitalism: wanting more?

Besides, there are so many parts of the publishing process that can trip a person up. A rejection can trigger despair—and I’ve had hundreds. There are plenty of other less-obvious pitfalls too. Looking online for your name and finding no new coverage—which may feel like your decade-in-the-making book is over three months after pub date.

Or getting a royalty statement full of returns, even though returns are part of the business.

Or seeing a friend’s book on a buzzworthy list that you’re not on.

Note I have chosen not to make Authors possessive, rather arbitrarily, but because us authors don’t really own the club. We just land there, even when we’re trying not to.

Often the distance between what you expected and what actually happens in publishing triggers Sad Authors Club membership. Over my ten years as a publisher, I’ve learned to anticipate some of these sadnesses and inoculate against them with pep talks, reality checks, and reminding my authors that every reader matters more than sales figures or lists or other external and often arbitrary measurement systems.

With my debut novel, Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, landing in April, I might be better prepared to walk out of the Sad Authors Club and return to the I’m Published Café, which is a much happier place to hang out, believe me. I’ve always wanted to be invited to the café, and now I belong. I just need to keep basking in that. But I also know there will be sad days coming. As heady as landing a dream is, there are countless disappointments where the imagined experience far surpasses the actuality.

I’ve been keeping up with other 2022 debut authors and many are starting to report their first three-star reviews and how deflating those can feel. Not everybody loves every book. I tell my authors how it’s great to get so-so responses because that means publicity has worked. Lower scores mean we’ve reached beyond friends and family, the five-star staples. I also encourage my authors who get stuck on this to look up reviews for some of their favorite books, and see how unfair, arbitrary, or even bizarre consumer reviews can be.

Reviews are a big one, but there are a million other pitfalls around book publishing that can derail even the most practical, laid-back author. I’m making a list right now, in a Word doc.

I feel good in my hammock, as the day cools off and even my giant dog-walking coat doesn’t keep my feet from freezing, safe and happy, lounging at the I’m Published Café. Which means maybe this hammock stand wasn’t my biggest flop purchase of the pandemic. Despite the new hole in our ceiling from the first failed setup attempt and the extra cost and hassle of getting nut caps that were supposed to be included and the fact that I have to unhook the hammock up and bring it indoors before the rain tomorrow—despite all that, just maybe, I will be able to sit with myself here, surrounded by turquoise, swinging gently, even when I see my first one-star review. Or maybe I’ll find the willpower not to look at Goodreads at all.

In neighborhood news, a friend’s healthy but unvaccinated father just died of COVID. I heard the ambulance take him away from our street. He never came back to his family. My neighbor is sharing this story widely, especially as people continue to refer to Omicron as mild. It was not mild for him, an unvaccinated person.

Yesterday, I found out that the person who ran my latest printer quote died of COVID. My printer rep called to tell me personally, because I had asked for a quote adjustment and the woman didn’t write back. She was vaccinated and boosted but she had underlying health conditions. My printer rep has my sympathies—they were friends in addition to being coworkers—and of course my business for our fall 2022 title. We’ve been through something together, even if it was him just giving me tragic news over the phone, not wanting to send a cold, faceless email to share why she hadn’t gotten back to me. He said she was not a cold person. She wouldn’t have wanted a customer to find out by an impersonal email.

Being part of the Sad Authors Club is pretty minor in comparison to trying to survive a deadly pandemic.

To end on some good news:

Buzzfeed has recommended my novel, thanks to author Wendy J. Fox!  

Pre-orders of Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary are now open. I made a list of some places you can buy my debut on the front page of my newly refurbished website. If you’re a bookseller who plans to stock my novel, let me know and I’ll add your store to the list!

Cannon Beach Book Company just shared a stack of ARCs on its social media account, and my book was in the stack! It’s fun to see it circulating.

Tune in to The Neverending Bookshop’s Dispatches from Anarres event on Feb. 5 if you want to hear some amazing authors talk about Ursula K. Le Guin and the craft of writing. It’s free to attend on Zoom! Annie Carl, the owner of the store, is also the editor of Forest Avenue’s disabled authors anthology, which is open for submissions now.

This month, besides writing and thinking about sad authors, I visited Jyoti Roy’s Intro to Publishing class at Portland State and began an informal writer-in-residence program at my daughter’s elementary school classroom. (Both by Zoom, these being the kinds of days they are.) The conversations were sweet and real and inspiring.

Here’s one of the priceless elementary school thank-you notes I received:

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Your Bright Side Invitation: Think about some of the literary or creative pitfalls that have stopped you from celebrating your achievements, or paused you from working on your art. Has your perspective changed with time? Have you been part of the Sad Authors Club in the past—or are you a member now?

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. 

For those of you who are new: Thanks for joining my newsletter community! I publish new pieces once or twice a month. Being transparent about publishing is my jam—as a publisher and now as an author—and I’m equally passionate about building creativity into everyday life and acknowledging grief. If you have any questions or topics you’d like me to address in future issues, feel free to drop me a note. I’d love to make this space as interactive as possible.