We interrupt this
blog, which had been focusing on mental health and my own journey into
mindfulness and inner peace, to report:
Hell has frozen over
(literally, because it’s about -5 degrees here in Rhode Island) NOT ONLY is
Donald Trump still president, BUT ALSO I just signed a contract with a
publisher for one of my books!
2018, so far, has
exceed any expectations, which isn’t hard, since I, long ago, gave up on
believing in expectations, especially when it comes to writing and publishing.
My publishing story
is long and sad and funny. If I ever get it together enough to write a memoir
(terrified), I would call it Failing Forward.
It’s not that original or clever but, then again, titles are NOT my forte—see
all of my previously (self) published novels.
I’ve detailed my
story in various writing forms and across various blogs. A year ago, I tried to
cram it all into what I referred to as a “blogmoir”. Click here to
read.
I only reached
chapter four, but with this recent turn of events, let’s skip all the way to
chapter…let’s say, ten.
Failing Forward: Chapter
10
It’s the end of 2015,
and I break up with my agent, but we are still “seeing each other”, so-to-speak,
as we await to hear from some publishers we had submitted to prior to our
break-up.
By early 2016, I receive
the final rejection, and so begins a new journey in writing and publishing. One
of total and utter, delicious FREEDOM!!!!!
For the first time
in 10 years, I will be completely and totally free from obligation to someone
else about MY writing. From 2005 to 2009, I was signed with my first agent
(actually, she was my second, but like many “firsts” in life, that one didn’t actually
count), which resulted in countless misses and a few near-hits. From 2009 to
2011, I was at the Solstice MFA program
where I was (albeit happily) beholden to multiple mentors and deadlines. Then,
from 2011 to 2015, I was signed with this most recent agent, a relationship
that wasn’t right for me—though she was a funny and interesting woman—it wasn’t
a match. I knew this from the start, but back then, I was desperate for a book
deal…about as desperate as I was in high school for the attention of a certain
soccer player…so desperate I allowed him to drunkenly slobber all over me at the
homecoming dance my sophomore year, even though he already had a certain
cheerleader girlfriend…desperate was a theme for me for a long time.
[By the way, that
story was fictionalized and featured in volume three of Sucker
Literary—shameless plugs will begin now!]
Anyway, after the
break-up, I am lost but in a really good way. I go back into therapy (What else
do you do when you have failed at something for almost 20 years, that is your
passion for your entire life?) and together, my therapist and I come up with a
plan: instead of the goal being success, it would now be FAILURE.
My shrink, a total CBT
kind of guy, believes that I need to become desensitized to failure.
The objective of
this plan is to seek out as many publications as possible, big and small, and
submit…anything. Articles, manuscripts, whatever. Submit and get rejected. He
even advised for me to send out some really bad writing to increase the chances
of FAILURE.
So, I go NUTS with
my submissions…old blog posts, old short stories, new pieces, bad pieces and
good pieces. The rejections come flying in pretty quickly. Sometimes I don’t
even read past the first line of, “Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately…”
After about the
fifth rejection, the sinking sensation of failure in my stomach is gone. By the
tenth, I don’t even care. At some point, I start to write new pieces about
failure and mental health. I begin to realize that I actually don’t want to be
the next Judy Blume (somebody once referred to me this way). I just want to be
me, a woman who writes about whatever she wants.
By this point, my
success or failure to become a published writer no longer defines me. I devote
my time to my family and to finishing school for mental health counseling. Along
the way, I also encounter some major health issues in both 2016 (a colon
operation for a noncancerous yet sizeable tumor) and 2017 (a small bowel
blockage). Each moment in the hospital reminds me of what I really value, and
it isn’t a book deal with Random House.
In between hospital
stays, summer of 2016 and then summer of 2017, something amazing and unexpected
happens—success. One after another, over the span of about a year, I have some
first-person essays published by internationally read mental health sites (The
Mighty, MindBodyGreen,
and OC87
Recovery Diaries.) I even get a nice check for one of those essays. Every one
of those pieces had been previously rejected, multiple times by multiple
places.
Yet, suddenly, it is
my time.
And then, just this
week, the most significant success of all—a book contract from Black Rose Writing. Mind you,
this is a place that I previously received one of those rejections from, a
rejection that, for all intents and purposes, I sought out!
I want to take a
moment to underscore this story with the fact that I had EVERY reason to
believe that I would be successful as an author. Whether it was creating a
literary magazine that landed me in Publishers
Weekly or winning first place of a Writer’s Digest contest or simply that
both agents I had sought me out, rather than me seeking their representation. So,
my failure to launch as an author was all the more depressing because the
expectations were so very high. Everyone—from mentors to fellow writer friends
to agents—thought I would make it.
But I didn’t make it.
Yet, that failure
has been my greatest success.
Check out this piece from NPR about a man who sought out rejection after a break up.
