Migraine is bad today, and I'm feeling vulnerable and foggy but also have the desire to create.
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I've been thinking a lot about how my "career" as a writer has developed in the last three years, since Ceremonials was published. Part of this thought was inspired by the Cait Corrain fiasco, which I feel really sad about but have no useful opinions on. Well, no, my sole opinion is that Goodreads has too much influence on major publishing and editors need to stop using it to make decisions, but that leads me back to the main thing I've been thinking for the past eight months: I'm really glad I haven't landed a deal with a major publisher.
It was all I wanted for a dozen years, all I was writing toward. I perceived a book deal with a real advance and lawyers and a publicity team and all that as a bunch of things at once: a stamp of approval from people who know what they're doing; access to a whole solar system of opportunities that I could never get on my own; and an invitation onto a specific monorail car. That car would take me up the same track as a jillion other writers and all I'd have to do would be to ride, rather than - as indie authors must - be the train conductor, the architect, the security officer, the repairman, the ticket-taker, and the rider, all at once. I wanted to be at ease on the journey rather than be Vishnu.
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| Yes, Vishnu on a monorail, just work with me here |
I want to emphasize that I wanted this, a Big Five book deal, very badly. I cried about it. I screamed about it. I felt jealousy so hot it left ash in my mouth. Then I hung around the edges of the book world for a few years, with the intent of learning more about how to get what I wanted, and what I observed changed my mind almost completely.
Watching (from distances ranging from very close up to very far away) dozens of other people take this ride, I am so glad I'm on a different train. By riding passively, they have learned a lot less about where they're going and how the monorail works. They are locked into one experience; changing trains is almost impossible. Whoever is conducting the train takes riders into whatever neighborhoods the conductor needs to go, rather than what the rider wants to see. Sometimes you're riding in comfort and you get booted off the monorail for no discernable reason, and you have to walk all the way home.
I didn't know any of this when I was yearning for that agent-contract-advance cha-cha. I learned a lot about the publishing industry and how it grinds up debut authors while I was a freelance critic, but I also watched a number of colleagues from my debut year go from hopeful and lucky to stuck and lost. Or just disappear. Because the rewards of publishing are great, but the disappointments can be greater, especially if you aren't emotionally prepared.
Putting something into the world that you have created, but not healthily disconnected from, can be wrenching rather than joyful. (Ask any parent.) It can make you never want to do it again. If you can't maintain reasonable expectations, if you don't have someone telling you to calm down it's just a book there are hundreds every year, the process can turn you into a monster. I watched it happen in slow motion over Facebook with an acquaintance a couple of years ago. She forgot that it was about the writing. It's gotta always be about the writing. She hasn't published anything since.
All that said, I wouldn't mind getting a big advance and a splashy marketing campaign for which I only have to show up, rather than create my own graphics, print my own postcards, arrange my own interviews, etc. One of my books that's out on submission, I'd like a large deal, please and thanks. But the cost of such money and idyll is significant, and I can never lose sight of that.
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On the book I've been researching and working on for about two years (not counting when I actually started it, which was 6+ years ago), I've now written 60,000 words, most of them in the past six weeks. I think I'm about 2/3 through the draft, but it might be closer to 5/8. The book uses Casablanca as a jumping-off point (forgive me if you're hearing this for the 80th time). That movie takes place in December 1941 and I started the story in 1935. Now it's 1939, and although I've seeded in many aspects of the movie, I've finally gotten to a place where I need to weave the movie's story more directly into the book's story. That's exciting, but it's also briefly stalled me out with how.
I keep thinking about Wide Sargasso Sea and how angled and obscure it is, and how little I liked that quality when I read the book. (One of my secrets is how confusing I find Jean Rhys, because she's a writer's writer that a lot of folks speak of in reverent tones. I read two of her books and floundered through both.) I keep thinking about Alexandra Ripley's Scarlett and how much I enjoyed it despite it being critically trounced. I keep thinking about all the Pride & Prejudice Universe books (Mr. Darcy's Daughters et al) and how yes I like them, but stylistically they stick to the script.
Among these choices, I'm not sure what kind of book I'm writing. I had a big dramatic conversation with Matt about this a few weeks ago, because I'm afraid I'm writing a commercial novel with transparent prose (Scarlett) rather than a literary novel with lyrical sentences (Sargasso). The former wouldn't be bad (and I've written work like it that I'm proud of), but it doesn't last beyond a few years. Then I get to thinking about whether I care if I have a legacy as a writer, whether it matters to me to be read after I'm gone or whether I want to be a perfectly fine contemporary writer who's suitably forgotten, and I don't know the answer to that. Not that I can really control it, who can control their legacy?, but I can decide what kind of book I want to write now, and that choice will ripple into the future.
Ultimately the answer to this dramatic conversation was predictable: write the book the way the book comes out of your head and don't worry about your future. That's the advice I give to everybody and I'm usually able to give it to myself. This book has been so immersive and so challenging, and I've been so full of anxiety about whether I'm writing a book that belongs to me or not, that I forgot it temporarily.
Anyway, now that Ilsa has moved to Paris and she's about to meet Rick, after I established so much about who she is and how she acts and what she wants, do I go impressionistic on the parts that were already laid down by Warner Bros in 1942? Or do I tell it from her POV as meticulously as I've told the story up to now? I started with the latter, but I'm pretty sure that day's work is bad for other reasons so I want to throw it out and start over anyway.
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We announced officially that I'm leaving XRAY in February. I learned a lot there, but it's time for me to go. Among a bunch of reasons, it was too much to promote Junk Film, write steadily, and also keep up with XRAY responsibilities. In fact it's still too much, right now, to do everything on my plate as a writer and still do XRAY, and I'm behind on stuff for it and Barrelhouse and my regular fucking life. Next year I've got at least one book coming out and possibly two (the Poltergeist anthology is the other) and I had to give myself more room.
I know it's the migraine talking, but I really hope 2024 is better than 2023. I had a good year in a number of visible ways, blessings I do definitely count, but emotionally, internally, it was an extraordinarily difficult period. I'd like to spend less money and be in less pain, all around. And I didn't do a lot to uplift other writers this year compared to previous years, so I'd like to do better at that.
