A couple of days ago I posted on here that my first book, This One Will Hurt You, was five years old. Then Facebook reminded me later that evening. I had already forgotten again and was thinking about work and bills and everything else, and then I logged on and there were all these pictures from five years ago of people with my book. They were smiling and saying “I can’t wait to read this,” and “MY FRIEND PUBLISHED THIS BOOK!”
I remember wanting that book so badly. I wanted to join the ranks of book writers. To see my name alongside other writers I admired. Believing so badly that there are keys to the kingdom, if you can just get your foot in the door.
“Just one book,” I remember saying. “Just one fucking book.”
At the time I was under the impression publishing a book would change my life. I would finally get a tenure-track teaching job. I would be invited to universities to read and teach, my name on the marquee, or whatever passes for a marquee at a university bookstore.
But such is the way of life none of that happened. I got some good reviews and did some interviews and now, five years later, only Facebook remembers my first book, because it is run by a computer, and computers don’t forget.
I never did get a tenure-track job. I never got invited to any universities (for my books—I was invited to a university for a short story, which is weird, but cool). I quit teaching recently after close to 20 years of adjuncting. I have no desire to teach anymore, not even a little, not even an online writing class. (Lest this sound too sad, I really like my new job!)
The truth is I believe writing is a solitary sport. I believe we are always alone, even when a book is published. Even when all our friends are reading it. I believe a writer never feels worse than right before their book comes out, unless it is right after their book comes out.
I believe I am a small and neurotic creature, like most other writers I know. I have come to understand most of us are not happy with what we have, always wanting more. If 10 people read this Substack, I wish it would have been 20. If 1000 people read my book, I want another 1000, and another 1000 after that.
When one book comes out, I want to publish another. If that essay didn’t find the right readers, I want to write another one.
The only time I am truly happy with writing is when I am doing it. Maybe happy isn’t the right word. Content to crawl through the muck to find something worth sharing is maybe a better way to say it. I like the struggle. I like the fight. I like the feeling of finding the right words to convey meaning across time and space, from my computer in the morning when I write it to yours wherever you are when you read it at whatever time you are reading it.
When I am writing I am not worried about publishing. I am not thinking about jobs, bills, all the bad decisions I have made in my life, unless I am writing about those bad decisions. I am not wondering who is going to read it.
I’m just trying to find the right words. To tell stories that matter to me, and might matter to you. It’s the only part I can control.
Modern publishing would have us be marketers. Promoters. Make little videos for our books! and I just want to scream that I wrote the frog-fucking book, I don’t want to make videos for it.
Anyway, this is all to say that writing is hard. That I have a new book out and sales are pretty shitty, so I’m back in the same doldrums again, wondering if I’m any good, knowing that in the end it doesn’t matter. The writing is what matters, the sitting down and doing it, even if we aren’t quite able to let go of that need for recognition and, perhaps, respect.
Paul, this one resonates. I'm thinking a lot about mortality lately and this makes me think that when I die, I won't be thinking about how many people read my work, but the time I spent creating it. The burrowing through the muck to come out on the other side of creation. Birth and re-birth, again and again.
Tacked over my writing desk is Patanjali’s sutra 1.12: “Yoga [yoking of body, mind, spirit] is achieved by practice without attachment.” I have realized, after a period of rebuilding from the ashes of cancer, that writing is part of my yoga, so all I can do is show up, show up, show up.