Please note: I'm happy for people to discuss the content of this essay, but any comments directing vitriol toward the subject of the original article will not be tolerated.
Thank you for articulating this. I do wish there was not such a focus on the "debut" work of an author these days. Maybe it is different for fiction writers, I don't know, but as a nonfiction author, it is so incredibly hard to just write the thing. To figure out how to do it at all, let alone to be able to do it well. I'm grateful that I waited to work on my "big" project (big according to how it sits in my heart anyway; big for now) until after I had already published a few books. I wish the art and craft of book-writing could be seen differently, maybe more akin to something like acting: we all have our starts, some of them unformed and embarrassing, and many will work for a long time before making something where the circumstances align in just the right way to produce something incredible.
This is a brilliant essay on so many realities writers face in that tenuous & liminal “emerging” space. I “finished” a book last year & sent it out to query agents & got some really great feedback & requests but zero takers & while I thought that would devastate me, instead, I feel grateful that it worked out the way it did because I can see now that I was obsessed with the race to publish, as opposed to being obsessed with making the best possible, most interesting book I could. This essay is filled with so much good advice & encouragement & perspective. Thank you.
I'm an author in Australia and really struggle with this tension when young/emerging writers ask me for advice about 'getting published'. On the one hand, I am absolutely committed to knowledge-sharing and making the industry less opaque; we've got a terrible problem of media concentration here and we need to share contacts and resources to better open up opportunities for more new voices. On the other hand, so many people are asking me for publishing advice without even knowing why this story of theirs is important, why it's especially theirs, why now. And sometimes I ask them what other books they think are similar or different to theirs, and they reply saying they don't read that much... I just... it's impossible! Helen Garner once wrote about the 'innocent' time in the writer's life before their debut comes out. You can never go back. It's hard to articulate without sounding patronising. Anyways, thank you for this essay. You've articulate the awkwardness I feel every time I think about these tensions.
Thank you for this essay, which so perfectly explains why the writing matters more than anything, yet does not dismiss writerly ambition. I feel like we often hear you can care about craft or getting published but not both. The reality is, many writers do want to both write beautifully and sell books; I love how you say that as much as you want to publish, the writing should never be rushed for the sake of it.
I’d wanted to be a writer since I was eight and very much had the idea that one had to publish by 30 or it would never happen. Picture the greyhound, chasing the rabbit. I finished a novel when I was 22 and another when I was 33. Both were agented and neither sold. On my 40th birthday, I finished the first draft of the novel that would become my debut, published by HMH. Again, thank you!
thank you for this. the pressures articulated often in mfa’s around publishing are heightened, like in my institution’s case, around several intersecting burdens: namely 6-figure debts and an insatiable competitive environment. I wanted the mystery of the publishing industry to be solved by the working artists who taught us but as time went on in the program it became more and more apparent that the mystery was: to write. I agree w/ summer that what genre one “debuts” in as an author may signal a trajectory, and I echo your thoughts about how nonetheless it is a beginning. capitalistic preoccupations varied amongst students depending on varying degrees of privilege and access, and i can say that as someone who’s not struggling to keep her lights on and stomach full that the urgency to write better superseded the urgency to get on an make a name. this was a great essay to read.
Thank you for this. What strikes me is how these capitalist pressures and expectations also threaten to mute and sully even the most generous and lucky literary outcomes, simply because those outcomes are smaller than the biggest possible. My first book, nonfiction, came out four years ago. Several "big house" agents (I hadn't even known what that meant) were interested, liked the book a lot but didn't think they could sell it, etc. etc. A lovely editor at a university press appreciated the book as it was and brought it into this world beautifully. I felt the book had the perfect home...and then, I heard that my great good fortune wasn't, or was at least insufficient. I still "had to have an agent." But no worries, once it was published, those agents would be knocking on my door. Well, it was and they didn't. To my mind, I had hit the jackpot: kind and observant Amazon reviews; appreciative emails from the readers most important to me; even a finalist for some awards. But not the biggest awards, and was my publicist really doing all she should, because what about a Kirkus? Something must be amiss that no one had yet reached out to ask me to do a second book - and so on. You only debut once" was followed by "and it wasn't big enough for a 'real career.'" Look: If anyone thinks enough of our art to spend precious time with it, isn't that enough? Is it not enough that a very small city's worth of people (several thousand, say) might read what we wrote?
"I can’t tell you how many books I pick up and think, “Man, I wish the author had been able to spend another year or two or five with this project.”"
I found this post because another newsletter referred to this bit, and I'm so glad I'm here -- for the other posts too. But this section in particular is such a relief. I've heard so much over the past few years about books written quickly, during the pandemic. The way I see it, these can fall into two categories. 1. the writer had been marinating the material for years, and they finally reached the moment where it was ready to come out; and 2. the writer drafted something quickly from scratch, and then it was published as is.
Books under #1 can be upsettingly good. But books under #2 often lack a coherent structure, and they seem to dance around the kind of vulnerability or pain it takes time (and courage) to access. Sometimes they ride on voice, on a mood. They're forgettable, but they shouldn't be -- the core material might have led to something transformative.
But noticing this does feel a bit like pointing out that the emperor's naked. Our culture likes youth, speed, productivity. (She writes, pointing out the obvious.) There's something acrobatic about writing a book in one year, or in a few months -- it makes for a good story. And then it becomes one more whip for the many, many writers whose work takes much longer to flagellate themselves with.
Many authors should also prioritize making their books really good before worrying about "getting on Oprah" or making the bestsellers lists. Do the work, show up for your readers, and keep doing the work - let the rest happen when it's supposed to happen. Publishing is a marathon, not a sprint. This is one of the most important, yet hardest to accept, lessons for new authors. Thank you for this article!
Thank you for mentioning that too many books are getting served without being “Fully cooked” whether it is debut authors or midlist authors forced onto the book-a-year schedule, so their new output looks weak compared to the breakout hit that took years of work. It does happen too often, and we know why, because writers can rarely survive on writing.
I have nothing to say here but to simply offer gratitude: thank you for writing this. I needed this reminder, and I know many, many other people do too.
Totally feel this, and I really feel for Jumi. My story collection came out a year ago and debuting can be so exciting and so anticlimactic at the same time. All of publishing is. Once you see behind the curtain and actually witness the "business" side, it can be shocking. It can make us so thirsty though, too, especially with the competition of social media. That inverting of our priorities. Commercial viability. Marketing. You think you have to play that game when what you really need to do is write your shit. Through trying to get a novel accepted after debuting and failing, and now with another collection on submission, and publishers not wanting collections, I've sort of reached zen mode. I do my thing on the page. I get it done and then get it out there and hope for the best. I don't write for attention. I actually prefer anonymity. I write to say what I have to say at a particular moment. Hopefully, it'll be good. Hopefully, someone will publish it. Either way, I'm already on to the next idea. Thanks, Carmen.
This was a wonderful read and very well put. I loved reading it and I feel like it was something I needed to read. It made me think about my work, why I write what I write, and how I should take my time with projects. Thank you!
Please note: I'm happy for people to discuss the content of this essay, but any comments directing vitriol toward the subject of the original article will not be tolerated.
Thank you for articulating this. I do wish there was not such a focus on the "debut" work of an author these days. Maybe it is different for fiction writers, I don't know, but as a nonfiction author, it is so incredibly hard to just write the thing. To figure out how to do it at all, let alone to be able to do it well. I'm grateful that I waited to work on my "big" project (big according to how it sits in my heart anyway; big for now) until after I had already published a few books. I wish the art and craft of book-writing could be seen differently, maybe more akin to something like acting: we all have our starts, some of them unformed and embarrassing, and many will work for a long time before making something where the circumstances align in just the right way to produce something incredible.
This is a brilliant essay on so many realities writers face in that tenuous & liminal “emerging” space. I “finished” a book last year & sent it out to query agents & got some really great feedback & requests but zero takers & while I thought that would devastate me, instead, I feel grateful that it worked out the way it did because I can see now that I was obsessed with the race to publish, as opposed to being obsessed with making the best possible, most interesting book I could. This essay is filled with so much good advice & encouragement & perspective. Thank you.
I'm an author in Australia and really struggle with this tension when young/emerging writers ask me for advice about 'getting published'. On the one hand, I am absolutely committed to knowledge-sharing and making the industry less opaque; we've got a terrible problem of media concentration here and we need to share contacts and resources to better open up opportunities for more new voices. On the other hand, so many people are asking me for publishing advice without even knowing why this story of theirs is important, why it's especially theirs, why now. And sometimes I ask them what other books they think are similar or different to theirs, and they reply saying they don't read that much... I just... it's impossible! Helen Garner once wrote about the 'innocent' time in the writer's life before their debut comes out. You can never go back. It's hard to articulate without sounding patronising. Anyways, thank you for this essay. You've articulate the awkwardness I feel every time I think about these tensions.
Thank you for this essay, which so perfectly explains why the writing matters more than anything, yet does not dismiss writerly ambition. I feel like we often hear you can care about craft or getting published but not both. The reality is, many writers do want to both write beautifully and sell books; I love how you say that as much as you want to publish, the writing should never be rushed for the sake of it.
I’d wanted to be a writer since I was eight and very much had the idea that one had to publish by 30 or it would never happen. Picture the greyhound, chasing the rabbit. I finished a novel when I was 22 and another when I was 33. Both were agented and neither sold. On my 40th birthday, I finished the first draft of the novel that would become my debut, published by HMH. Again, thank you!
thank you for this. the pressures articulated often in mfa’s around publishing are heightened, like in my institution’s case, around several intersecting burdens: namely 6-figure debts and an insatiable competitive environment. I wanted the mystery of the publishing industry to be solved by the working artists who taught us but as time went on in the program it became more and more apparent that the mystery was: to write. I agree w/ summer that what genre one “debuts” in as an author may signal a trajectory, and I echo your thoughts about how nonetheless it is a beginning. capitalistic preoccupations varied amongst students depending on varying degrees of privilege and access, and i can say that as someone who’s not struggling to keep her lights on and stomach full that the urgency to write better superseded the urgency to get on an make a name. this was a great essay to read.
Thank you for this. What strikes me is how these capitalist pressures and expectations also threaten to mute and sully even the most generous and lucky literary outcomes, simply because those outcomes are smaller than the biggest possible. My first book, nonfiction, came out four years ago. Several "big house" agents (I hadn't even known what that meant) were interested, liked the book a lot but didn't think they could sell it, etc. etc. A lovely editor at a university press appreciated the book as it was and brought it into this world beautifully. I felt the book had the perfect home...and then, I heard that my great good fortune wasn't, or was at least insufficient. I still "had to have an agent." But no worries, once it was published, those agents would be knocking on my door. Well, it was and they didn't. To my mind, I had hit the jackpot: kind and observant Amazon reviews; appreciative emails from the readers most important to me; even a finalist for some awards. But not the biggest awards, and was my publicist really doing all she should, because what about a Kirkus? Something must be amiss that no one had yet reached out to ask me to do a second book - and so on. You only debut once" was followed by "and it wasn't big enough for a 'real career.'" Look: If anyone thinks enough of our art to spend precious time with it, isn't that enough? Is it not enough that a very small city's worth of people (several thousand, say) might read what we wrote?
I really desperately needed to read this today. Thank you 💗
"I can’t tell you how many books I pick up and think, “Man, I wish the author had been able to spend another year or two or five with this project.”"
I found this post because another newsletter referred to this bit, and I'm so glad I'm here -- for the other posts too. But this section in particular is such a relief. I've heard so much over the past few years about books written quickly, during the pandemic. The way I see it, these can fall into two categories. 1. the writer had been marinating the material for years, and they finally reached the moment where it was ready to come out; and 2. the writer drafted something quickly from scratch, and then it was published as is.
Books under #1 can be upsettingly good. But books under #2 often lack a coherent structure, and they seem to dance around the kind of vulnerability or pain it takes time (and courage) to access. Sometimes they ride on voice, on a mood. They're forgettable, but they shouldn't be -- the core material might have led to something transformative.
But noticing this does feel a bit like pointing out that the emperor's naked. Our culture likes youth, speed, productivity. (She writes, pointing out the obvious.) There's something acrobatic about writing a book in one year, or in a few months -- it makes for a good story. And then it becomes one more whip for the many, many writers whose work takes much longer to flagellate themselves with.
Many authors should also prioritize making their books really good before worrying about "getting on Oprah" or making the bestsellers lists. Do the work, show up for your readers, and keep doing the work - let the rest happen when it's supposed to happen. Publishing is a marathon, not a sprint. This is one of the most important, yet hardest to accept, lessons for new authors. Thank you for this article!
Thank you for mentioning that too many books are getting served without being “Fully cooked” whether it is debut authors or midlist authors forced onto the book-a-year schedule, so their new output looks weak compared to the breakout hit that took years of work. It does happen too often, and we know why, because writers can rarely survive on writing.
I have nothing to say here but to simply offer gratitude: thank you for writing this. I needed this reminder, and I know many, many other people do too.
So much to think about and revisit the next time (now) I have writer's block. This is a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Thank you.
an enormously comforting and uplifting read as a v early career writer with much food for thought, thank you for sharing
Totally feel this, and I really feel for Jumi. My story collection came out a year ago and debuting can be so exciting and so anticlimactic at the same time. All of publishing is. Once you see behind the curtain and actually witness the "business" side, it can be shocking. It can make us so thirsty though, too, especially with the competition of social media. That inverting of our priorities. Commercial viability. Marketing. You think you have to play that game when what you really need to do is write your shit. Through trying to get a novel accepted after debuting and failing, and now with another collection on submission, and publishers not wanting collections, I've sort of reached zen mode. I do my thing on the page. I get it done and then get it out there and hope for the best. I don't write for attention. I actually prefer anonymity. I write to say what I have to say at a particular moment. Hopefully, it'll be good. Hopefully, someone will publish it. Either way, I'm already on to the next idea. Thanks, Carmen.
This was a wonderful read and very well put. I loved reading it and I feel like it was something I needed to read. It made me think about my work, why I write what I write, and how I should take my time with projects. Thank you!