Four things I can do

Writing makes people nuts. Well, actually, I think both writing and publishing make people nuts. So much of it is out of your control.

A friend just called me, almost in tears. She is about to sign with an agent - supposedly a happy moment - but she isn't sure if she's going with the right person. There are some big red flags. She said "This is the only person in fifteen years of trying to get an agent who's ever wanted to represent me so the only person has to be the right person, wouldn't you say?" I'm not sure how I feel about that, but we tried to talk it through and come up with a list of questions she might ask this agent before she signed with her but the conversation was disjointed and probably not helpful. She was too nervous to process options or to weight out the pluses and minues of different deals.

So....in this topsy-turvy industry where missteps are inevitable and disappointments are numerous what can we do to stay sane and reasonably focused? It's different for each writer, I suspect, but here's what I do.

1. I focus on what's working. In my case, right now, a lot of that has to do with the foreign sales for the novel and the people I'm in contact with at the various presses. Hell, it's exciting and rewarding to be able to even say "my German editor" and even more so if the person who holds that title seems helpful and nice. The foreign rights sales have been sort of a balm for the apsects of publishing in the US which are more brutal. This isn't anyone fault, it's just a result of New York being such a big, bad world with so many books coming out that it's hard for a first time writer to feel valued and acknowledged. So, I like focusing on the foreign publishing houses which are, frankly, more like I thought the whole thing was going to be.

2. I try to get into writing colonies, conferences, groups - anything where I don't feel so alone and stranded. I would have run off the rails a long time ago if so many of my friends weren't writers.

3. I begin new projects while existing ones are in the pipeline of sales and publications. Otherwise you get to intently involved in how the publishing process is going, what you're being paid, how much rejection there is out there, all those yucky things you can't control.... Having a new project underway makes the one currently being published less important to you and that's a good thing.

4. I read. It reminds me that I love books. Reminds me why I'm doing this.

I won't lie. It's still hard. But these four things do help.

Oy

This has been a rough week. Not only did I get this bizarre attack (dutifully described in the "ouch" entry) on a scene from the second novel, but I have also been getting a lot of feedback on the first novel as well. The finished one. The whole thing is making me feel horribly exposed.

It started like this. My publisher sent me four sets of galleys to have when I visit workshops and conferences this summer, in case I meet someone artsy who might want to blurb the book. (Well...no one wants to blurb the book. Maybe I should say someone I can persuade to blurb it.) Since it was two weeks before the Queens session I decided this was a good chance to give some friends and family members a preview. They'll have to read it at some point and I suspected it would be upsetting for some of them. I figured this way we'd have ten months for them to read it, digest it, and get used to it before the book actually came out in print. So I start sending these four sets of galley copies around.

Some people were fine. A couple of friends/family members were very supportive and complimentary. A couple were lukewarm. A few struggled, clearly bogging down in attempts to figure out who the people in the book were based on, what was true and what was fiction, etc. A couple of people were hostile in a passive-aggressive way, either opting not to read it or claiming they couldn't finish it, based on the fact it was "chick lit." I found this last response the most insulting. ...I think when men use the term "chick lit" they almost always mean it in the most dismissive way possible. Some people offered suggestions for revisions as if they didn't realize that the book has been sold and this is the version that's actually coming out in print. In short it was pretty much what writing has taught me to expect, i.e., you can't predict how people are going to react to material. Some people who you consider to be experienced readers respond in a very simplistic way, people who you think might get upset are fine, people who you never thought about reacting in a thousand years get completely ripped out of the saddle.

But the aggregate of so much feedback over the course of ten days has laid me low and made me remember why I have a policy of not showing work in process to anyone who isn't a writer. Last night I went over and watching the Dancing With the Stars finale with my writing buddy Ed and his wife, my dancing buddy Schelley. He said that she is his first reader and Dawn says Steve is her first reader, but I can't imagine using a spouse as a first reader. I'm glad it works for them but I find this mystifying and wonder if I'm doing something wrong....if I show work to non-writers it seems that have trouble seeing it as a) a story and not either a confession or some secret message to them and b) my story and not theirs. I dread the moment people who know me read my work, dread the discussions which inevitably follow....so why do I have so much trouble doing what other writers seem to do easily?

Maybe it's just a matter of the material I work with, which tends to be about suburban life in Charlotte and thus easy for people to read me or themselves into. Maybe it's the fact I seem to know a lot of blocked creatives and they can't resist hijacking any story in progress and trying to turn it into the story they'd like to write. Maybe I present things in a defensive way, unconsciously looking for trouble and ergo I find it.

I honestly don't know. I just know this has been a tough week. Dawn and I have been talking a lot and it's got me thinking that feedback comes in three forms. There are the people you don't know at all - the anonymous readers who buy or don't buy the book, the critics, the reviewers, the people who rate your book on Amazon. There are the people you know slightly - the people in the community who take offense for reasons you never could have seen coming, the friends of friends who want to be writers and who thrust their manuscripts into your hands, the people you read for at workshops or conferences. And then there is that inner circle of friends and family, the twenty or so people whose reaction could have a huge impact on your life. That's the circle where you think you'd find your most support but it's where I seem to find a strange mixture of support and trouble.

At least it's almost past me. Three people have the galleys in hand right now. After I get it back from them, I'm not going to hand it out any more. I guess I'm glad I did it, and I'm definitely glad it's over.