Some Notions and Two (Cautionary) Anecdotes

& This Sunday: a Publishing How-To Zoom

Sunday, February 25, 2 PM PT - I’m hosting a one-hour Zoom for monthly and annual subscribers on agent query letters, submitting to journals, and I’ll also answer your submission-related questions. Drop me a note or post a comment if you’d like to attend. Bookish subscriptions are currently 25% off.

Today’s photo non sequitur - dogs in hats! (Source: NorthShore Animal League)

*

Over the last couple of months, a few recurring subjects related to the writing life have come up in conversations with friends and students, among them, success, competition, and bad writer behavior.

1. Owning it - jealousy and other hazards of the profession (and life)

Sometimes when I hear someone – friend, stranger, or acquaintance – effusively praising a book I didn’t especially like or maybe I liked it all right but was not a particularly big fan – and perhaps I also know the author who I might not be a big fan of either – I have to stymie the impulse to pull out a pin and burst the expanding praise balloon. (That was quite a…rattling freight train of a sentence. 😳)  

I’ve written about friends, frenemies, and nemeses elsewhere here, but this topic, jealousy and literary competition, is one that’s evergreen for a lot of writers and for me too. Not a week passes where I don’t find myself thinking, Okay, I am not going to say that.

Two anecdotes:

1. Years ago, I did an event with a writer, X, who had just won a major award. We were having dinner that night with a third person, Y, who was book-world adjacent, and each time Y mentioned a writer who X knew well, and had in fact taught, X said something derogatory about these writers/former students. During the course of that dinner, I remember thinking, Whhaaa?

I did not know why it was so difficult for X to say at least a few kind words about these former students who had managed, despite the odds, to publish well received books, but X didn’t appear to have the ability to do it—in spite of having recently been recognized by one of the most prestigious award committees in the land (and subsequently by the readers who rushed out to buy the prize-winning book).

And I thought, listening to X, Okay, no, I do not want to be like this—whether I’m ever in X’s now-lofty position or not.

2. A former student was accepted into a prestigious MFA program where during his first semester, he was taught by another major book prize winner who spent part of one of their workshops denigrating the new novel of another major book prize winner – who apparently was also this professor’s good friend. 

A few thoughts rushed immediately to mind when I heard this story:

a) Why did this professor, celebrated far and wide and very well paid by the university where they were teaching, throw the friend and the new novel under the proverbial bus in front of students?

b) Is there really no limit to a writer’s desire for the spotlight?

c) Note to self: save this kind of thing for a therapist or at least for a conversation with a confidante who is not your student. 

I know none of us is blameless. I’m certainly prone to bad moods, to envy and occasional rudeness and missteps. As time passes, I understand more and more how poorly served I am by public cattiness, especially about other writers or creators. I do love a good dishy story, and any writer worth the ink on the page is partial to gossip, but it’s doubtless best to save expressions of acid-tinged disdain and howling jealousy for our intimates (if we haven’t yet reached our weekly unloading quota), and of course for our journals (to be destroyed on the occasion of our deaths, probably!)  

Having spent three days in Kansas City a week and a half ago at the AWP conference – more than 10,000 writers landing in the city for readings, panels, and other literary events – I had to stop myself at least a few times from airing bitchy thoughts I knew were best kept to myself in order not to send friends and acquaintances scattering in the other direction the next time they saw me coming.

As others more in the know than I am about these matters have said, what’s at the source of unkind thoughts is often fear. We fear someone else’s success negates our own, or perhaps it’s anger that’s spurring us to air our less decorous opinions - the person in the spotlight was unkind to us in the past and/or remains someone we don’t trust, and therefore it’s difficult to feel neutral about or happy for their success.

Some days, naturally, are harder than others.

The mind tends to focus on the negative – the one bad review instead of the eighteen good ones. The one jerk among the many good people.

2. Expectations - Realistic and Otherwise

Some years ago, a colleague and I were talking with MFA students about publishing, why we write, and what success means for authors.

My colleague said something that will seem obvious to some, but for many of us, I suspect her take will be fresh (and refreshing): success for some writers means writing and self-publishing a book solely to share it with friends and family. She acknowledged that most writers want more, but some do only hope for these outcomes.

For the majority of writers, of course, success means a solid (if not enormous) advance, a splashy publicity campaign paid for and orchestrated by the writer’s publisher, many glowing reviews in mainstream periodicals, a place on the New York Times bestseller list, and perhaps a major award or two, and why not also a Reese’s or Oprah’s or Read with Jenna’s book club selection.

What most writers will experience after publishing a book, however, is somewhere in between these two extremes. It’s usually impossible to know, unfortunately, where one’s expectations lie until after a new book has been published too.

It’s hard to sit in a room in front of your computer or canvas or piano or notebook day after day, hoping what you’re doing will matter to someone other than yourself. It is lonely, and we’re naturally social creatures, the anthropologists and sociologists tell us. It’s hard to spend so much time alone with our thoughts.

I’ve said this in other Bookish posts (I say it to myself often too - in case that’s any consolation): you have to love writing because it’s the only reliable reward.

Okay - enough for today! Below are two favorite photos I found in my files this past week.

Owl resident at Lucky Platter in Evanston, IL

Chicken tea cozy (as seen on Etsy)!