Bah.
I’m so sick of myself tonight.
I’ve still got the crash proofreading job on my plate–I need to ship it back to my client on Friday morning–so I haven’t touched Cold Black Stars in days. Working on the new book is what helps me keep my shit mostly together while Revolution makes the rounds with publishers. I’ve been here before, when Gail was shopping Drowning Practice around. It was easier then, because I didn’t yet know that good books go unpublished all the time. Or, I knew it on some level but didn’t believe for a second that my book would be one of them. This time, I go in without the protective layers of my obnoxious MFA ego. This time I go in with hope, but also the knowledge that it very well might not happen for this book either.
I spent too much energy today thinking about other writers, writers who are having the career I thought was my due when I barreled out of my MFA program in 2005. I graduated with a finished first novel, a top-tier agent, a much-sought-after residency at an artists’ colony… Followed by my first lit mag publication, my first Pushcart Prize nomination… I was on my way, you know? And from that point in 2005, when everything seemed to be opening up for me, the possibilities in fact started to narrow, little by little while I watched other people get their books published, get nominated for prizes, give readings… They get these things by their hard work, but damnit I’ve done the work too. I continue to do the work.
Maybe there are just as many possibilities as ever. Maybe they just aren’t the specific possibilities I’d thought I deserved. I don’t know.
Here I am, Drowning Practice in the drawer since 2008 but, hey, that’s okay because I took everything I learned from writing that novel and poured it into Revolution and I am so in love with that book. I truly am. But I no longer believe that means a damn thing in the marketplace. This book belongs with a small independent press, and luckily you don’t need an agent to approach these presses, because as I mentioned a few posts ago, Gail and I parted ways. I’m on my own now. That scares me. I didn’t realize how much comfort I’d drawn from having representation until I no longer had it. My first book might not have sold, but I had this powerful person in my corner who believed in me. And as her client I was among the chosen and obviously in a better position than the rest of the struggling writers out there who didn’t have an agent and…yeah… It got ugly around here for a while. I had a lot of reconsidering to do. That played a big part in my blog silence.
I’m submitting The Revolution of Every Day to small presses on my own. I don’t know what’s going to happen with it. I don’t know if those of you who’ve been so kind to me over the years here, who keep saying how you hope one day to read one of my published novels, will ever get to read it. And it’s that awfully self-centered doubt that’s got me so fucking sick of myself tonight. I’m one of hundreds of thousands of writers laboring in obscurity (how fucking grandiose). Some of them are better writers than me. Some of them are worse. It’s exhausting, this jealousy, this wondering if it will ever happen for me.
That’s it… I don’t have any solutions… No charges to myself to remember that it’s the work that matters, that publishing is something entirely separate, that it shouldn’t be important. It is important. And I want it So. Damn. Hard.
I kept this all to myself for so long. I was so ashamed to come here and tell you that I no longer had an agent. That I’m–GASP!–without representation.
Fuck it. I AM AN UNAGENTED WRITER! THE NOVEL I LABORED OVER FOR SIX YEARS IS NOW BEING SENT TO SLUSH PILES!
There. I said it.
Did you read what I posted yesterday?
It probably assuages nothing to say what I am sure you at some level already know: It is not you! It is them! It is the crushing weight of things change.
Writers of a certain age became writers (beyond the usual and necessary compulsion) because they grew up as readers with an idea in mind of what it would be like being among their corps.
I was lucky (if being really old is some kind of luck) to have come of literary age just before “things changed.” So I had a taste — 8 of my novels were published. Writers a decade or two or three or four younger than I am — and the younger the more powerful this change — are simply not going to have that world … because it is disappearing so fast you can barely see it going by. It is the blur that leaves one confused and angry. Were it clearer it would be more acceptable. One day soon it will be clear — this is not your father’s publishing world, dear.
The commercial element that has always been naturally present in publishing now dominates and rules it. Entirely. If you want to at least improve your chances of holding your own book in your hands, then you are going to have to set aside any literary hopes and abilities you possess and instead study the market and follow it as closely as you can. At the moment, if you can get into blood-sucking fucking teenagers you might have a shot.
Now, writing high quality literary fiction is like trying to sell champagne to tee-totalers.
You will, like I and many others do, continue to write because you would have already given up a long time ago if you weren’t compelled to think and act as writer. Writing is, of course, something one does, but it is more than that: it is something one is. So you will write.
That you have had and are having this commercial wall thrown up against you at every turn is not you … it is them.
And there is nothing you can do about it.
Donigan, I did read your blog post. I’m a lazy commenter. I need to get better about that. I do believe it’s them, not me, and I do know I’ll always write. It’s the nothing I can do about it part that’s hardest to accept. Self-publishing isn’t a road I want to go down. It made sense for you, with all of your traditionally published novels already behind you. Having novels in the drawer doesn’t feel like I’ve failed–I write the best books I can and do everything in my power (short of self-publishing) to get them out there. Giving up on publishing via the traditional route? THAT would feel like failure. As a reader, I find I automatically view a self-pubbed book as being of lower quality. Unfair, probably, but the prejudice is there in my own mind. Also, the (desperate, clumsy, spammish) way so many self-published writers are promoting themselves right now on Twitter etc makes me want to run in the other direction as fast as I can. I don’t want to swim in their pool.
I work for a scholarly press affiliated with a major university. Honestly, who reads our books is changing daily, how we make a book changes seemingly hourly, cost, marketing changes minute by minute. The industry is changing as a whole. There is serious talk of if books will all become electronic period.
You are better off than most and here is why. You can get across ideas, you are clear, and funny and your aren’t way out there. You are building (whether or not you realize this) a core following, people want to hear what you have to say. That mean you are further along in developing an audience of readers. You REALLY should look into electronic publishing your novels yourself. Good reads don’t necessarily use publishers anymore, because they truly have no idea what is a good book and what isn’t. To them it is money, numbers, and returns. That is how the business works. Sadly.
Hi, Patty, Thanks so much for your comment and encouragement. Self-publishing doesn’t feel like the right path for me (please see my reply to Donigan). I’m holding out hope for the independent presses.
Cari,
This is a fantastically honest blog. I can def relate to that place of, where you thought you should have been versus where you are. I don’t know if this is helpful but, I once heard it said, that let-downs are the bi-product of a striving life- that most people who ever succeeded had years of let downs- they are part of the path to success. I know that some people rise to success easier, but oftentimes they are latching on to an established trend of some kind, and/or ground has already been established for them by others, or they know all the right people.
When I got into program, I was so full of regret, and so full of a sense of failure I was immobile. One night my sponsor told me that my fear of failure, and my identity which was wrapped up in failure, was grounding me in the past, and that, if I was grounded in the past, I could never truly recover. He said that seeing myself as a failure was about should-a-beens, and self-criticizm and recovery is about self-care and forgiveness: one is antithetical to the other. Somehow this made a great deal of sense to me, and it was on that very night, I first reached out to you.
Regardless of whether you get published or not, the path that has taken you this far, has allowed so much self-growth, and that is obvious to me. I’m proud of the person you are. I am proud that I could write you years out of the blue and get such a graceful and loving response. You are an amazing person.
And you are right. Many great works of art and writing are completely overlooked, because they are too intelligent and too good, so no longer fit the mainstream. Sometimes only a pocket of really smart people “get it”- but that does not detract from the fact that something amazing was created.
Best of luck whatever happens. I’ll be praying my agnostic prayers for you.
Liza, Thank you, love. I’m so glad to be back in touch with you.
I agree with Patty (above) about giving more consideration to stopping the self-abuse that is involved with trying to break down the bean-counter walls that have led to publishers being hardly more than cover designers and printers for guaranteed sales.
Since even if you get a “traditional” book publishing contract, in the end you are going to do almost everything yourself anyway. That’s just how it goes in contemporary publishing.
So just cut them out of the loop from the start, like hundreds of fine literary authors have done, and if you’re going to do almost all of it yourself anyway, then you might as well take 80 or 90% of the income, rather than the 10% begrudged to you by most traditional publishers. (That seems a bit excessive for cover designing and printing.)
Patty is right. Spend more time learning how to electronically publish and market your work. Isn’t that better than leaving it in a drawer for your grandkids to come across one day and marvel that Granny wrote a bunch of books and stuffed them in this drawer?
Aren’t you really too good a writer not to share your work?
Re. the “varying quality” of self-published work, it’s hardly any different from the astonishing crap that clutters the shelves in airports and drug stores, surrounding and sometimes annihilating the one or two fine literary works that sneaks in. One difference, crap or not, one of those writers is going to get 10% of virtually nothing, while the self-published is going to get 90% of whatever comes.
Getting some publisher of varying legitimacy, veracity, and ability to put your pages between covers, which are going to be shredded anyway for returns, has nothing at all to do with the quality of those pages.
It’s not about the money, exactly, but then, we are Americans, and without dollar signs how does one justify his existence?
That was a joke, more or less.
You can keep banging your head against that wall, it’s not my business, but if the alternative is your grandkids coming across the yellowing paper in a box and going Gee, Grandma sure liked to write a lot, before tossing them in the trash, or finding readers of some number and worth … I vote for readers.
I’m with you re self-publishing, and our stories (personal, not written) are astonishingly similar. It’s funny how when I’m doing the work none of it matters, which I think is hugely important, and it’s when I lift my head up to take a breath and look around that I get so disheartened. Every one of my stories in my collection have been published in decent journals. But the collection (not even a novel, with a novel’s potential for $$) will never see the light of day. The novel I’m working on? Who knows. But I too will likely never see a self-published book as worth reading, for the reasons you mention. I’d like to be otherwise, but there it is. Keep going, though. You do indeed have a readership, which is not a small deal. 🙂
Stefani, THANK YOU! It helps to hear that I’m in good company. Fingers crossed for both of us.
In a time when the market for literary fiction has become vanishingly small, those who get published will be more as lucky as they are talented, and those who receive actual acclaim and money are likely to be very much more so. Look at Franzen, for chrissakes.
In the last year or so, I have also been checking the waters, and they’re not very warm, at least for me. The novel I’m working on now, and the stories I’m writing the side – straight genre. (NOt that “literary” isn’t a genre.) Oh, there’s a few literary twists thrown in here and there, but I’m like Donigan. I want readers. Readers read genre.
So I’ve swallowed my pride and now I write just story stories, I have to tell you- among other things, it’s been a hell of a lot more fun, and I think my writing’s actually gotten better.
Gah. Franzen is so much of what’s wrong with literary publishing today. Though I suppose there have always been the Franzens…
I’m definitely a novelist. Every once in a blue moon a short story will come tumbling out, but for the most part I don’t enjoy writing them (and don’t write them particularly well).
Cari – I am not as eloquent as the writers above but I have followed your career from afar via your blog since you were in NYC. You are an amazing writer and artist. I wish I could wave a magic wand and open up this ridiculous world of commerical publishing to give you the audience you deserve.
Never give up. Continue to write. It is your passion and the world needs it. Juliette
Thank you, Juliette! You’ve been a great voice of support here over the years.
I will buy your book when it comes out–whether traditionally or self published. I am waiting.
Thank you, Maxly!
Hi – I just wanted to pop in and encourage you not to let go of your dream, AS YOU DREAM IT. I wrote nine novels before getting one published. I cried a lot, cussed a lot, went for a lot of soul-searching walks…and always came back to my desk and asked myself how i could my next book better. Only after answering this first difficult question did I ask the other important ones: how could I be a more commercial writer? How could I be more attractive to publishers?
I am traditionally published and all of my novels (13 contracted to date – 8 of them out now) have benefitted from the attention of professionals: my agent, editors, copy editors, production editors, cover artists, publicity and marketing departments. I have also been immeasurably helped by kind critics and reviewers who, having decided my work had merit, spread the word. I am confident that all of my publishers want me to succeed. I am also confident that, if I cease to make money for them, we will part ways.
I’m comfortable with this deal, as it stands. I spend very little time promoting, formatting, submitting, or any of the thousands of tasks attended to by my team. I love to read literary and genre fiction, and I write both, as well. I’m a writer when I get up in the morning and a writer when I go to bed at night, and I’m as proud of the years I spent working on my craft before being published as I am of all my accomplishments to date.
And the best part? I *still* get better with every book. You do too. I’m going to keep you in my thoughts today when I go to the gym. It may sound strange, but before I was published I used to get on that fucking stairmaster and chant under my breath “No one can stop me, no one can stop me, no one can stop me.” It made me *believe* I would accomplish all my dreams. And I did – so much so that I had to invent new ones.
Oh, and if I may add one more thing, I made a living wage last year and I will again this year. Nope, not enough to get rich. But I get paid to do the best job in the world. I am no one’s house slave. I support the literary world as a reader, writer, and a promoter of the books I discover and like. You do all these things too! So you are my colleague.
Hi, Sophie! Thanks for stopping by. NINE before one got published? That’s both comforting and terrifying. I give you tremendous credit for writing that tenth book. Did any of those first nine go on to be published later?
So much of what you wrote here rings true for me – the dream, the accomplishments, feeling like it’s going to happen, and then learning about the marketplace and how it operates, and how that is so very different from what we had hoped for ourselves. So many layers of ego shed to get to some kind of reality that is STILL largely defined by others and their approval (at least with the stamp of “sold”). Approving of ourselves is another story…
I completely respect that you don’t want to try self-publishing and also respect that you’re going out on your own with the small presses. There are many out there who would be lucky to publish your work. Most importantly you are doing what feels right to you and I’m not here to argue otherwise; what I think I like most about this day and age is that there are more choices and avenues. But I confess that it sucks, frankly, to hear you and so many others say that they’ll likely never read a self-pubbed book. I get where the perceptions are coming from, and I understand firsthand about the crazy ass marketing. I’m doing it right now. But you know what? If you want any success in this publishing world, you have to do that anyway! As a self-pubbed writer who has a pretty damn good book out there, I wish more literary folks would jump in. There could be so many ways to work together to get our work to readers that could look different from the Twitter nuttiness. Dear God, I would LOVE that.
One thing to always keep in mind, no matter what your path: ultimately it’s the readers who matter most. Not an editor telling you yes or no, but readers. Somewhere along the line I think publishing forgot that. It helps lessen the sting of rejection.
(By the way, I don’t take your statements personally, and this blog post is about your honesty and path, not my ego. All this to say is that I hear you. I know that feeling. I hope you arrive at a wonderful place with your novel in hand.)
Hi, Tina. I’m glad you haven’t taken my statements about self-publishing personally. I bought your book, after all, because I know you from the blogs and know your story and trusted the quality would be there. I bought Donigan’s self-pubbed title for the same reason. But I’m unlikely to pick up a self-pubbed novel by a stranger, it’s true.
Did you like it? Was reading it worth whatever you paid? Was Blossom better or worse or neutral compared with my other “normally” published novels?
Donigan: Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to start it yet. Soon.
Black Lawrence Press has an open reading period in the fall, but their contests are pretty decent, too. And any of Dzanc collective might be a good home for your work. Or maybe Melville House Press? They’re a lovely little indie based in Brooklyn.
You’ll get there. You will. I have great faith in you.
Cari,
I’ve never met you, but I’ve followed your blog since well before your move (and you live in my favorite city ever that I had to leave…sigh). When you announce on this blog that one of your novels has been published, that is the day I will buy it.
Your voice on your blog is so engaging, critical, and smart. I can’t wait to read a story of your own making.
I think it’s super that you’re giving the small presses a chance. You like indie bookstores–you will love the indie presses. And some of them can be a gateway to a bigger opportunity.
I can’t wait to buy your books!
Thank you! I can’t believe how long some of you have stuck with this blog. I appreciate your support so much.