At one of my recent events, the conversation turned to Harper Lee, mysterious author of To Kill A Mockingbird and subject of the Compassion chapter in The Heroine’s Bookshelf.  What’s behind her mystery?  Why, nothing more than the fact that she decided to drop off the face of the earth a few years after her first and only novel became one of the greatest sensations in American letters.

Nelle isn’t the only one of “my” authors who didn’t exactly savor the literary limelight.  Charlotte Brontë didn’t care much for her role as famous author; Louisa May Alcott actively skewered the expectations that came along with her fame in Little Women and its sequels, and Margaret Mitchell claimed to hate being recognized wherever she went.

Now that I have entered a very public phase of my own author-ness, I have to ask…what do they owe us?

Harper Lee faced something a tad more onerous than obligations as a debut author…she was expected to be a literary celebrity, a female writer in a time of male ones, a Southern writer in a slew of New York voices and one whose book was a challenged to established norms of American racism and complacency.  And it shocks me again and again how possessive her readers still are of her, a living writer who has chosen to step out of the limelight.  Is it as bad as it would have been if she hadn’t given us those tantalizing interviews?  Maybe not.  But can we really expect to know everything about her life and her emotions?

Being an author in 2010 is obviously a tad different from being one in 1960 or 1847.  Instead of fan letters and inquisitive callers, there are e-mails to be answered, tweets to attend to, and librarians and indie booksellers to get to know.  I am expected to help promote my own book to the best of my ability, to give of my time as generously as possible and to cultivate relationships with the people I am fortunate enough to connect with through this process.  But I also have the liberty at this phase of my career to decide what I want to reveal and what I don’t. Simply put, I’m lucky enough not to be Harper Lee (as if there could be more than one!).  And this entire process has given me increased respect for the information my favorite authors did choose to reveal…the precious time they chose to give to me, a young woman from the twenty-first century with the chutzpah to read their words in the bathtub, on the bus and on blinky devices.

It may be the classic historian’s question, but next time you think about your favorite author, ask yourself what expectations you are bringing to the table.  We are exceptionally lucky to know what we do about our favorite literary heroines.  I think it’s good to acknowledge that…every once in a while.

*Please don’t construe this post as a complaint about the public nature of my work…it’s a pleasure and a joy! It’s just made me think about these issues from a slightly different perspective.

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?

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.