Posts Tagged ‘publication’

I got a stack of galleys of my book in the mail.  A stack!

They are perfect for holding atop one’s head in celebration.  My new chapeau.

Apparently I have written and published a book.

And that thrills/excites/scares/thrills/scares/thrills me.  I guess I wasn’t prepared for the tactile quality of the books (cheap paperbacks, of course, in their galley form, but they’ll come out in hardcover so there are still surprises in store).  I wasn’t prepared to feel like maybe, just maybe, I have something in common with the heroines and authors I spent several wild months with last year.

I also wasn’t prepared to have five whole copies, so get ready for some giveaways….

Be patient, Jo, don’t get despondent or do rash things, write to me often, and be my brave girl, ready to help and cheer all.

- Marmee’s last words as she leaves to take care of Father in Washington, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

When I update my friends and (gulp) fans about book progress, there always seem to be a million unanswered questions.  Is there a cover yet?  Have you seen it in print?  When will it be in stores?  Have any of the foreign rights sold?  How will you possibly wait until October to hold your book in your hands?  Believe me, these are questions I share, too.

From sale (May 1, 2009) to publication (October 19, 2010) will have been just about a year and six months.  But before that came an even longer wait…three years of having an agent and no book to sell, years before that writing books that will (thank God) never see the light of day, waiting, working, and more waiting.  And I’m one of the lucky ones.  So many writers wait what seems like eons before finding the right publisher or agent for their work, before honing their craft or moving on or finding their perfect project.

Like Jo March, patience has never exactly been my strong suit.  I am quick to solidify an impression and even quicker to get flustered when things don’t go my way.  So this entire process has been an exercise in self-control.  Now that the years seem to speed by like unruly comets, I know that October will be here before I know it.  My challenge is to fill the wait with both enjoyment (this is my only time to enjoy being a first-time author, to experience the mystery of seeing my debut come into the world) and productivity (it’s time to get cracking on other projects so there is some kind of literary future ahead of me).  When people used to ask me about being a writer, my first question would be “how hard are you willing to work?”  Now I add “how are you at the whole waiting thing?” to the mix.  A heroine might not always be patient, but she can learn to love the wait, right?

When I read the word “perseverance,” it’s in a self-conscious Jane Eyre type of voice, but that tongue-in-cheek delivery doesn’t really do justice to the concept.  All of the plucky heroines and authors of The Heroine’s Bookshelf have one thing in common:  they’re not easily swayed by fate’s slings, arrows, and twists in plot.  I’ve done my best to emulate them…but damn, it’s been difficult.

No, I’m not comparing the road to publication to the bitter moors or the rocky terrain of a broken heart.  But it has its own bumps.

I won’t bore you with all of the gory details on how an earlier, different incarnation of this book made it onto publishers’ desks and into editorial meetings…and died in marketing.  Repeatedly.

I’ll decline to elaborate on three years spent wringing my hands over the prospect of never having earned my trusty agent a cent and my seeming inability to come up with anything saleable.

I will gloss over the many years of false starts, trunked novels, and sore wrists.

I’ll simply throw out the truism I’ve come to after several years of ass-in-chair, I’m-doing-this-professionally “discipline” (punctuated with much gnashing of teeth and ripping of paper):  Publication, slow and ponderous and mysterious as it is, is the fun part.  But you can’t publish until you’ve edited, ruthlessly.  And you can’t even get that gutsy thrill until you’ve written, pitifully and in your socks and ratty headband, just you and the headphones and the blank screen, willing something out of your fingertips so that the editing and the publishing can happen.

If it sounds like I’m revving myself up for the work of actually writing the book, it’s because I am.  Accompanied, of course, by some of my best friends:  Louis May Alcott, Charlotte Brontë, Betty Smith.