It's the Story, Stupid! (Trying Hard Not To Think About Publishing While Writing)
About a year ago, my son, who was seven at the time, announced, "Mommy! I'm going to write a book!" This wasn't surprising given what I do for a living, and considering that he is a New York kid.
I suppose I also should not have been surprised by what came next.
"This is so cool!" he said excitedly, "I'm going to write a book! I'm just a kid, and I'm going to be published!"
"What?" I asked. "What did you say?"
The boy had yet to write a word, and he was talking about publication. Not only that, he was talking about publication with the kind of gusty relish and naked desire he generally reserves for trips to Chuck E. Cheese. And did I mention: he had yet to write a word?
"Max," I said, as calmly as I could. "You should not be thinking about publication right now. You should be thinking about your story! I don't want to hear another word about publication until you have written it all down. You understand me?"
He nodded solemnly, quick to react to the tone of my voice. Then he did a series of things that made me proud. He sharpened his favorite pencil. He found his favorite, hard-backed journal. He climbed up into his top bunk and, while I read a story to his younger brother, began to work. He asked me how to spell "series." He asked me how to spell "field." He asked me how to spell "Girardi," the last name of the Yankee's manager. (It was clearly time for his first dictionary.)
After a good fifteen minutes of concentrated labor, he sat bolt upright in bed. "I finished!" he pronounced.
"Read it to us!" I said, and my little guy snuggled up closer to me as Max relayed his masterpiece. A story called "The Kids," it went something like this (I don't want to plagarize, so he won't lose first serial rights): a Little League baseball team attends a world series game, Yankees versus Mets. By the fifth inning all the Yankees are injured (how this happened was not explained), and the Yankees manager, Joe Girardi, is forced to call on "the kids" to take the field. The kids beat the Mets. The end.
"Wow!" I said. "That is a great first draft!"
"So do you think I can get it published?" he asked me.
"Max! You are writing this because you have a great idea. An idea that is so fun and interesting to you that you just have to write it down, and have fun while you do it. Right?"
"Yeah," he said. "Aren't I also writing it so other people will read it, though?" he asked.
He had me there.
And now, as I am slogging through a difficult moment in writing my novel (the middle), wondering if it's any good, I find myself thinking of this conversation again. I need to focus entirely on my story, I know it. But I am having trouble getting the "will anyone ever read this?" and "will it ever get published?" demons out of my head.
As to the first question, one of the things I'm most excited about with the launch of She Writes Press is the fact that, for the first time as an author, I have a lot more control over the "will this ever get published?" question. I don't have to go around begging marketing departments at big publishing houses to bet on me and my book--and then hand over most of the potential upside in the process. But the whole idea of She Writes Press is that we will only publish books that meet a high editorial standard. So while I might feel less anxiety about finding myself with a publishable book that nobody will publish...I still have to make it publishable. I still have to make it good. Which right now is making me very anxious indeed.
And then there's the second question--the question, to my mind, that is really at the heart of the matter. Even if I write a good, "publishable" book...will anyone want to read it? How will I make it sell? If I can't, will I have failed? Aren't I writing it, as Max said, so other people will read it? Or am I writing it, as I exhorted him, because I have a story I want to tell, and even if it only gets read by family and friends it's ok, because it was always about telling a story, not about selling one?
While I'm writing, if I think too much about selling and not telling, will my book suffer? Will the story (and my writing) get worse?
Part of me is sure the answer is yes. Part of me knows that to think about the public life of the book before I have gotten a third of the way through the private, solitary life of its creation is bad for my process, my creativity, and even my confidence. It's dangerous to think too much about publishing while writing. The best books, I believe, the books I love the most, came into being because their authors simply had to write them, not because they were looking for a book deal.
Part of me, however, can't stop putting the cart before the horse. Part of me feels enormously impatient, in a hurry to get through a draft, and through the inevitable multiple rounds of revision--god writing a book takes a long time!--because I do have hopes this book will sell, and I can't help indulging in that fantasy and even feeling driven by it.
Am I alone in struggling with this balance? Have others here done the same? Please share your experiences. I need to hear from other writers on this one, asap!
...oh and in case you are wondering, there will be more on Max's adventures in writing in a post to come...
Comment
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Comment by Doreen Pendgracs on August 21, 2012 at 10:07am -
I can relate to your post, Kamy. We're brainwashed by today's world of publishing into thinking that we have to begin marketing our books before they are published. So we wear our marketing hats simultaneously while wearing our writers' chapeaus.
I'm having this same difficulty right now with my current project. MJy editor wants me to focus to a very targeted audience. I'm wearing my marketing hat while writing, thinking I want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. It is quite a conundrum to be in.
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Comment by Jean Ellen Whatley on August 21, 2012 at 10:06am -
Kamy, I think this is a very honest topic to remind us of. How often I've wandered off to stardom land, thinking about the accolades I'd receive once the book was done, when really I was putting off the hard work of wrestling the latest calf to the ground --- or to be more literal, deciding which adjective to delete. For the last year, as I was closing the university library at midnight by zipping up my backpack after another night of writing, the thing that kept me going was the integrity of the story. I had written in my journal and highlighted it in yellow: "if I tell my story the people I have lost will live on." It was my truth. It was the only thing that really mattered. Three days ago, my memoir,Off the Leash: A Woman, Her Dog and the Road Trip of a Lifetime was published as an ebook on Amazon and I am fortunate to have a real, live publisher for the print edition. I'm grateful to SheWrites for being a very supportive forum which encouraged me to keep going. The voices of the wonderful people I met on my 8,600 mile odyssey,the Greek chorus made up of commenters on my blog and the duty to my two brothers who've past away is what kept it real for me. It was their story as much as it was mine and it deserved to be written. That's what success feels like to me.
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Comment by Beverly Wolf on August 21, 2012 at 9:49am -
The people who are supposed to read it....will read it! That's why you are writing...or telling...your story. So that it will help them. It can't/won't help everyone, cause everyone is in a different place right now. It WILL help some though....and that's why your writing it. (PLUS to help YOU :0)
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Comment by Robin Aisha Landsong on August 21, 2012 at 9:42am -
If I start to make up stories about what people will or won't do with my book in progress I tell myself it is none of my business. It is just my business to write it to honor the charachters and tell the truth as I know it.
I had a vision once of the many faces of my readers eager and waiting. Sometimes I go back to that vision and ask them for encouragement.
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Comment by Carol Hedges on August 21, 2012 at 9:42am
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I think we all struggle with this dichotomy. We write because the process excites us, because we love living in the plot and through the characters. But... we suffer from that ' is it good enough' thing. I have just read a FB post from a very well established, best selling writer here in GB saying she's finished her 80,00- word 6th novel, but worries that it is a load of rubbish that nobody will want to read. No, I don't know how we deal with this. I guess the knowledge that we all go through it, and every writer before has also gone through it must be our consolation. I'm sure though, that if we try to 'write for the market', we will not give of our true best. That's why all the lookalike fiction produced in the wake of a best selling novel is so trashy. And, yes please, let's hear lots more about Max!!!
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Comment by Frieda Gates on August 21, 2012 at 9:36am -
I never expected to be an author. I started out illustrating other author's books and it was only when an editor I was working with encouraged me to write as well, that I became an author. Now, after writing many books for children including a text book on how it is done, I have begun writing novels and my first novel has been optioned for film. My second novel (a sequel) is due out in November and I am working on a third (making it a trilogy. Once I started writing I couldn't stop. My mind keeps spinning and I can't say that I am really concerned with getting published. I just love the process.
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Comment by Mary Hutchings Reed on August 21, 2012 at 9:30am
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Signing on with She Writes Press recently put me the publication-panic mode. I blogged about it at http://maryhutchingsreed.com/archives/224 ("Perfectly Good Enough") and your comments above remind me how paralyzing it can be to think too much about publication while writing. What I try to worry about in the writing phase is whether the reader is getting what I'm trying to say: those little "publications" in the course of workshops of first drafts are immensely useful, and, I think, feed rather than inhibit the creative process. We need readers in order to write well, and focusing on them instead of the elusive "publication" serves a nice middle ground for me while I keep my eye on the prize as well as the process.
All the best, Kamy. I, for one, will look forward to reading your book, and your son's!
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Comment by Anne E. Johnson on August 21, 2012 at 9:27am -
You are NOT alone in this struggle. More than once I have stopped working on a novel I convinced myself I couldn't sell. Maybe it was prudent, but probably it was cowardly.
Thanks for sharing this essay. (And, as a Yankees fan, I hope none of the players were seriously injured in Max's story!)
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Comment by Julia Kyle on August 17, 2012 at 7:48pm -
You can't publish a blank page
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Comment by Yejide Kilanko on August 17, 2012 at 6:19pm -
My debut novel was published earlier this year and I found the process of writing entirely different from my recently completely second manuscript.
With the first, I wrote because I had to and didn't think that I would get a book deal. While writing the second manuscript, I went through the same emotions you're going through. It's hard not to think about publishing while writing. Particularly, if what you want is a wider audience for your work.
What I did, was give myself permission to dream, at different intervals during the process, about all the possibilities and then I went back to work. At the end of the day, all we have to do is give our best shot. Happy writing :)
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