So You Want to Write

by Marge Piercy

  So What Do I Do If No One Will Publish My Book?

  There are as many answers to this question as there are people willing to answer it. Here are some of ours:

  1. If you’re serious about your writing, that is, if you genuinely enjoy writing and are not under the illusion that it is an activity that will make you rich and famous, you’ll forget about the book that did not sell and write another. And if necessary, another. With each book you’ll become a better writer and you may come back to that book someday with more insight and skill. You may bastardize parts of it for other novels. If you happen to succeed with another book, you may even sell it later, once you have a reputation. You’d be surprised how many writers’ second books were actually their first. You have to look at your first book as apprentice work no matter the disappointment of not seeing it get published. Like any professional, you have to view those first few years of writing as time put in to learn your craft. It is disappointing, for some writers even heartbreaking, to give up on a project that has taken up two years of your life, but you wouldn’t expect to be a doctor or a lawyer after your first two years college. Why underestimate the apprenticeship of a writer?

  2. If you have taken a few years to write a book and have been paying attention to the literary world, then presumably you’ve learned a number of things along the way. You’ve learned that fewer people are buying books but that there are more books than ever being published. You’ve learned most writers are disappointed in their careers and only a very few can be considered “successful” by the standards of the business world. This should help dispel the notion that there is something wrong with you; that because your book did not get published, you are some kind of failure. You’ve learned that writing can be a very isolated life so that if you’re going to continue, you need to fortify yourself. Some people get a writer’s group together; some attend writer’s conferences. Both will put you in touch with a community of other writers. Poets are always sending their work out to magazines (or should be). Smart fiction writers attempt to get excerpts published as short stories. Publications in little magazines give you credentials. Credentials give you confidence. Some writers perform their work wherever and whenever possible, which enables them to understand that what your audience enjoys and what editors want to buy can be two different things. Whatever works for you. What’s important is that you retain the pleasure you take in the writing, that you do not hang your selfworth on someone’s decision to publish you, which in real terms boils down to investing many thousands of dollars and at least a year of time and resources in your book.

  3. It’s also important to scrutinize your battle plan for getting published. Have you been submitting to the right agents? Has your agent been submitting to editors who are best for your type of book? Are you beginning to accumulate rejection letters that are saying the same things? If so, do you see any merit in rewriting ? Is it time to start sending your book to small presses? Are you researching what these small presses actually publish so that you are not wasting time on pointless submissions? Is your book dated? Editors can smell a book that’s been kicking around for years. Are you still attempting to place a book that takes place in 1997 when the story might seem fresher if updated to the present? Are you yourself getting tired of the process and would you like to get to work on a new project that you’re excited about? Do you really want to keep writing or are you putting off a career change?

  4. Under certain circumstances, it may make sense to publish yourself. Here are some examples:

  The first is a very regional book, a book of interviews of famous and successful residents of a suburban town outside Boston. The author was a retired attorney who had a hunch that readers might be curious about all the entrepreneurs, sports figures, movers and shakers, ex-politicians, many with national reputations, who lived in his town. He interviewed many of these personalities on his local cable show and then wrote an essay based on each interview. Publishers thought his book a risk because the interest was too local, and yet the author believed that there might be a market among residents who were both proud of and curious about their neighbors. Some people might define the success of this venture (for it is a business venture) as selling enough books to cover the cost of his print run; others might define success as turning a profit. If he produced an attractive and well written book and was careful about the costs of production, and if he marketed the book well—setting up events in bookstores and other venues, advertising in and getting himself covered by the local newspapers, perhaps selling bulk copies of the book at large discounts to local charities who might sell it at cover price—he might well make his investment back. And yet he considered the project a success because he felt that he had met some astounding people he otherwise would not have had the opportunity to meet, and that he was giving something back to his community, a historical record. Couple this with the fact that he had become a local celebrity himself and, certainly on his own terms, the project can be termed successful.

  The second instance of a good decision to self publish is one involving a novel. Rejected numerous times, the author simply believed in her vision and didn’t care whether a publisher saw its merits. In her case it was easy to understand why the book was not attractive to a mainstream press. The story was about a stripper in Hollywood who went off the deep end and ended up committed to a mental hospital. The style was like that of Charles Bukowski, raw, honest, cynical and shocking. The author engaged in a collaboration with a local visual artist who illustrated the book with erotic drawings and paintings. Together they financed the printing of about 200 copies, publicized a local event, and managed to get coverage in the arts sections of the regional newspapers. Thus she assured herself a small readership. When word got out that the local librarian couldn’t keep the book on the shelves, that it was continually being stolen by local teenagers, Leapfrog Press got interested, sought out a copy of the book and decided to publish it. It needed a thorough editing job; it needed many scenes added and the time line of events straightened out, but the writing had energy and humor, and, in spite of the dark subject matter, told a fascinating story.

  What is the percentage of self-published books that get discovered by publishers? Very small, but it happens. The Christmas Box and The Celestine Prophecy are the poster children for the phenomenon of self-published books that make it to the bestseller lists. But the number of famous authors who originally self published is surprising. A recent phenomenon is the success of a self-published genre dubbed “urban lit”—the new incarnation of the “street-fiction” popular in the 1970s that told stories about the lives of junkies, prostitutes, pimps, and drug dealers.

  Teri Woods was a former paralegal and office cleaner who wrote True to the Game, a hip-hop novel about a drug dealer and his hustler girlfriend that was rejected by twenty publishers. With some backing by family and friends, she had 500 copies of the book printed and sold them from the trunk of her car in Harlem—according the New York Post “the same car she sometimes had to sleep in because she was homeless.” Woods sold thousands of copies and started her own publishing company. Ghetto realism was eventually “discovered” by the mainstream presses but small and self-publishers continue to drive the momentum with many new authors telling their stories about life in prison and on the street.

  It’s well to ask yourself what you want out of self publishing. Before you make the commitment, try to realistically define success. Are you looking for a few hundred copies to sell at readings? Will you be using the book to complement another project, such as a seminar you give or a class you teach? Are you hoping it will be a springboard for publicity? Do you feel there is something special about the book, such as the inclusion of illustrations, that will add value and thus enable you to sell it? Are you attempting to build a reputation? Does the book have strong regional significance ? Would the book be of value to a specific niche of readers? Realistic expectations may result in surprising success.

  So what should you do if
no one will publish you? Try to judge the responses of the people who have experienced your work. If they’re truly moved, it may be a sign that, like “urban lit” it’s too original for publishers who are looking for a safe investment, and that others will be moved enough to want to buy it.

  Appendix I

  Excerpted from The Kitchen Man, as referred to in Chapter 15

  A SCANDAL IN THE FAMILY

  I am a soldier in the service of the appetites of the rich, a waiter at Les Nieges d’Antan. The Snows of Yesterday, the finest restaurant north of New York City, a number one choice in the haute cuisine category of every magazine in which we advertise.

  I assume a position of parade rest amid the commingling aromas of pipe smoke and fresh cut flowers. Vowels of contentment ... aahhhhh ... announce the presentation of a meal; bedroom groans, Ooh, no! I can’t stand it, stop! greet the squeaking wheels of the dessert cart. Saturday evening, we have been fully booked since Tuesday, and all goes according to meticulous plan.

  Until I am called to the telephone.

  “It’s your mother.” She announces herself like the finance company, to get the bad news over with, as if she’s a burden.

  “Mom, how are you?”

  “What do you care?”

  “I do care. I love you.”

  “No, you don’t.” Understand, this can go on for half an hour. I do, you don’t. I do, you don’t. My mother’s keenest pleasure is the affirmation of other people. To that end she demeans herself to everyone. The dentist. The dry cleaning man. The plumber. Lady, you need a new hot water heater. It’s my fault. No, Lady, it’s not. It is. It’s not. It is. What does he care at sixty dollars an hour? The only way to stop it is to wait, pause; you don’t disagree with her, she can’t disagree with you. “So,” finally she goes on, “how do you like your new apartment?”

  “We love it, as soon as we’re settled you’ll have to come over.”

  “You wish I never called, don’t you?”

  “Why do you say that? Of course I don’t.”

  “You do.”

  “I don’t.”

  Pause.

  “So, Gabriel, when are we going to see you, the parents who love you so much?”

  “Tell you what, call me at my new number. Tomorrow, in the afternoon and we’ll make a date.”

  “I’d rather call you at the restaurant.”

  At this moment thirty customers are staring at my back, squirming, yawning, dying for another cup of coffee. Some raise one finger to get my attention—very continental. Some smile, the friendly approach. Some brood, Wait until you see your check, Jerk. “It’s not good to call me here, Mom.”

  “You call me back then, Darling.”

  “Why, what’s the matter? Why can’t you call me at home?”

  “I’d rather not, that’s all. You know me. What if she answers ?”

  She is an Obie Award winning playwright, a professor of theater. She is the person I live with, the person I love.

  “The woman, Gabriel.”

  “Her name is Cynthia.”

  “Very nice. But I’d feel funny. So you call me, okay?”

  “Mom, what’s the matter with you?”

  “I don’t know if you want me to be honest or not?” Honest, in my family, is synonymous with vicious. To be open with each other is to attack, to unload every unkind, sordid impression. To protect yourself in my family you have to say, “please don’t be honest,” which undermines the very notion of family and makes you feel like a coward. “To be honest,” my mother continues, “She’s practically my age.”

  This is not true. Cynthia is ten years older than me. “And she’s practically my wife.”

  “Gabriel, I don’t expect you to understand. You will when you get older.”

  My mother is a sixty-seven year old size-five petite, an anorexic Madame Bovary, in love with romance, at war with aging. My mother starved and drugged me until I was twelve years old. Philip Roth had nothing to complain about.

  I read about Sophie Portnoy. I dreamed about Sophie Portnoy, balabusta, matriarch, kitchen witch. Arms soft as overripe honeydew folded over a flower print dress, standing above her ungrateful Alex begging him to eat, rooting for his appetite like a ticket holder at a horse race. Please, Darling, the crisp roast potatoes and the warm apple sauce. The sweet nutty tsimmis and the flanken. The way you like it. Try, Precious. Honeycake for dessert. Raspberry sherbet, too, for my hungry boy.

  My mother weighed every item she served me on a plastic scale. She had a local handyman drill a padlock on the refrigerator door. She emptied my pockets for loose change before I left the house and cruised the shopping plaza because a neighbor kid told her I sometimes bought a knish and devoured it by the dumpster in back of the deli. She ran her fingers around the waist band of my pants to make sure they were not tightening (to this day I opt to drip rather than tumble dry, having more than once been the innocent victim of shrinkage). She clicked her tongue in disgust when the clothing salesman led us past the regular sizes to the elephant tent of the children’s wear department: the table marked Huskies.

  I was weighed four times a week, always showing far above the Metropolitan Life Average Weight for Children (of India? I wondered) and driven bi-monthly to a diet doctor whose lunch clung to his mustache, who pinched my flesh blue and prescribed amphetamines. Before every meal I chocked down a black pill whose street value today is six dollars. My hands shook. My stomach was an express elevator. I was a chronic insomniac at ten years old. Alex Portnoy locked himself in the bathroom and wacked himself silly. With so much speed in me I couldn’t even get it up.

  But I couldn’t blame her, not then, not now. I was grown before my time—tall and broad, the kids called me Haystacks, after a TV wrestler who was buried in a piano crate—and she never grew up. A bobby soxer at thirty, adulthood took her by surprise. Lost in some Andrews Sisters movie, she hummed “Mares eat oats and lambs eat oats” as she primped in her bedroom for hours, discarding blouses, trying lipsticks, just to walk down to Shirley Avenue for milk and cold cuts. She batted her eyes at every man on every corner and giggled every time the greasy butcher rolled his toothpick on his tongue and said, “You want some meat today ?” But I blew it for her. A baby boomer stuffed with the seven basic food groups, I exceeded all genetic expectations. I was my grandfather’s pride, a brick shit house, second generation grown weed-wild. But she couldn’t be the neighborhood flirt with an enormous son in tow.

  She was my confidant; I, her only friend. Pals, we shopped together, sipped lemon Tabs, practiced the fox trot and the lindy my father was always too tired to learn. At ten years old I knew all about Howard, the man she could have married, who had acne pimples big as candy corn, but who would have made us rich. I knew she hated her big nose, that it kept her from being beautiful, that she saved quarters and nickels in ajar to have it fixed. Together we sang the song she once wrote that was as good as any on the radio. Silently we wished that one day the car would not turn into the driveway at six o’clock, that one day my father would not clop up the stairs and throw his business problems on the couch with the evening Post. Silently we wished to go off, mother and son, the bobby soxer and the brick shit house, in search of a contract for her song, in search of Howard, and a nose job.

  “Mom, I want you to meet Cynthia. I want us all to have supper together, I want—”

  “Your father and I want to see our son, Gabriel. You don’t have to drag along some stranger just because we’re too boring to take up your precious time.”

  “Who said that? I didn’t say you were too boring.”

  “But we are.”

  “You’re not.”

  “ We are.”

  Tonight we’re meeting my parents at a Chinese restaurant: their choice. Then we’re all four going to a performance of Cynthia’s play: my choice. They were scared. They’ve never been to the theater. They tried to beg out but I held firm. If we’re ever going to be close again we have to bust out of our tired ol
d patterns.

  “Jesus Christ.” Wearing black pants and a black shirt I am sucking in my stomach in front of the hallway mirror. “I look as fat as a pig.”

  “Fat?” Cynthia is applying her makeup in the bedroom. “You’ve been starving yourself for two days and I’m warning you, Gabriel, Chinese food is full of MSG and you’re going to get sick.”

  This brings me to the door. “Promise me. Promise me you’re not going to start in front of my parents with the MSG in the food.”

  “What, start? You don’t have a body like everybody else? MSG on an empty stomach doesn’t make you sick?”

  “Please?” I am not above getting down on my knees. “For me. Just this once. Don’t haggle about the chemicals in the food. My parents will not understand. They simply will not understand.”

  “Then why in the world are we eating Chinese food when you knew you were going to starve yourself beforehand?”

  “Because my father won’t eat anything else.” This is a fact. At Gettysburg, at Fort Ticonderoga, at Valley Forge, wherever we went on vacation, my father would never eat supper anywhere but at a Chinese restaurant. In Williamsburg, Virginia, my baby sister yowling with hunger, we drove two hours to find a place staffed by blond William and Mary students in magenta luau shirts. Ditto Amish country. Red checker table cloths. Soy sauce in cellophane packets. You know you’re in trouble when the waiter comes to your table with bread and butter in a wicker basket. “And just ignore it when my father starts to speak Chinese.”

  Cynthia is suddenly impressed. “You never told me your father speaks Chinese.”

  “He doesn’t. So I beg you. Please. Ignore it.”

  Jimmy Lee’s Happy Talk Lounge, Dad’s favorite restaurant, is two-thirds empty. My parents are sitting in a corner booth, under a canopy of bamboo and thatch, next to a plastic Mugo pine. The ashtray is overfull. There are two highballs in front of Mom, two Cokes in front of Dad. He never drinks. When mom sees us she pops the pill she’s been clutching, bolts down whatever is left in her glass, and waves. Toodle—oo. Dad stands.