Wow, No Thank You.
Page 26
Kent told me to write a detailed outline, and four fleshed-out sample essays that were good and funny enough to convince a person with a marketing budget to buy them. I wrote the outline, and the entire time I was thinking, “Who wants this? Who needs this? What can I do to make someone laugh?” I scraped all my insides out into a notebook and typed it up, then picked the four ideas I thought I could satisfactorily complete the fastest. Then I wrote and sent them to him, and I want to be very clear that I had zero expectations and also that this is the limit of my contribution to the sales process. I didn’t ask who he was sending the proposal to (how would I even know?) or what kind of money he thought we could get for it (how much is my pain worth??), I just waited for him to call me and tell me what our next steps were, because I am not interested in the nuts and bolts of anything. I do not want to see how the sausage is made. I just want to eat the sausage, while wearing earmuffs and a blindfold.
We sold my book for what sounded like the equivalent of a good yearly salary, which was an incredible dream. I had unfulfilling sex with a dude, more than once, who gave me a bag of cold tacos and a Pepsi one time, so when it comes to exchanging my goods and services for money, when Kent called me with that offer, I was overcome with joy. But I didn’t quit my job, because this is how that shakes out:
The book payment is divided into thirds. In my case, it was one-third when they bought it, the next third when it was turned in and edited and finished, and the last third upon publication.
Now subtract what my agent gets for his hard work and fierce advocacy, a debt I can never truly repay.
Please also keep in mind that I am taxed as a married person with no children, and I can’t claim my cats as dependents. I’m no mathematician, so just cut half off what you think I made and that’s it. Okay now shave off a little more.
I took a year to write the book. Maybe more, maybe less, but it was definitely late. It wasn’t exactly what I’d pitched, but it seemed like that was okay? I wish I had some kind of interesting process that makes it seem like I am doing deep, important work over here, but I mostly just wrote in my apartment and in various hotel rooms and at my cluttered desk in the corner after I moved to Michigan. I wrote a bunch of stuff that made me laugh and a handful of things that didn’t. Then I turned it in and crossed my fingers that my editor would like it. And by “editor” I mean “editorial staff, salespeople, marketing people, art directors, and publicists,” which I thankfully found out later otherwise I would have crumbled under the pressure. I was stressed out thinking about getting one person’s approval; if I had known there was a team of people assigned to my book about diarrhea, I would have gotten diarrhea.
After you turn a book in, your editor goes over it and does all the “Are you serious? This is stupid!” work, and then a copyeditor goes over it with a fine-toothed comb and does all the “Are you stupid? This is serious!” work, and you have to try not to be embarrassed to literal death while getting fact-checked about all the pop culture references you got wrong. On the one hand: murder me without anesthesia, please. But on the other? Thank God this person I will never meet knows that Lifetime movies did not exist in 1987, because I could not be bothered to research that casual reference my nostalgia made me toss in. Luckily, you get to go through all the humiliating shit you fucked up alone at your kitchen table while crying and dreaming about all the things you’re going to buy once you get your check, and not across the desk from a person who thinks you don’t know how to properly use an Oxford comma.
You fix your mistakes, you send it in again, you wait to get paid, you move a bunch of stuff off your Amazon wishlist and into the main cart like a real fucking baller, and eventually you get cover art and an on-sale date, and then the real work begins: telling everyone you’ve ever met or are connected to online to please order your book while also writing lots of tail-between-your-legs e-mails asking writers you admire if they please wouldn’t mind blurbing your book. “Ha-ha, I know you’re busy, and I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, but if you wouldn’t mind saying something flattering about this bowl of dog food I’m calling a memoir, I would be so very grateful!” Then there are the follow-up e-mails you have to send a month later, because they’re busyand they forgot or they hate your book! By the follow-up tothe follow-up, you just want to crawl in a hole and sleep forthe rest of your life, because, wow, this is incredibly humbling. Why don’t they just let regular people submit blurbs? It would be so much easier. Why did I ever sign up to do thisin the first place? I should have just written my dumb blogand worked my old job until I collapsed from old age andemotional exhaustion due to rich-people customer service. Anyway, hope you’re ready for my next book! Kenny at theSave A Lot on Elm Street says it’s “a layered and nuancedwork of simmering genius and unflinching beauty.” Just kidding, he said, “Stop trying to hit on me, Sam. I told you Ihave a wife!”
I wrote all this because I can’t figure out how to put an FAQ on my dumb website. You’re welcome!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all I would like to thank the many adopted families that allow me to call them my own, who let me stay with them and use up all their shit and call them in the middle of the night and put garbage on their credit cards when I need to, and I would also like to thank every single person I have ever met in my entire life. Even the assholes. I mean, fuck it: Why not? I had a weirdly hard time working on this dumb book (who even truly knows why—wait I got it, life is miserable!) and I could not have survived writing it without Jennifer Romolini, Lindy West, and Rainbow Rowell, who all gave me very good and useful notes on my very shitty early drafts.
My north stars: Jessie Martinson, Anna Galland, Cara Brigandi, Ted Beranis, Fernando Meza, Caitlin Pinsof, Melissa Fisher, Brooke Allen, Emily Kastner, Katy Maher, Lauren Hoffman, Megan Stielstra, Sarah Rose Etter, and John Sundholm.
I would like to thank my phone; Forest Whitaker; that one pizza place across town; whoever’s Starz subscription I continue to relentlessly abuse; those little cans of La Colombe coffee, but only when they’re on sale; Nike sweatshirts; Crissle West; those new blue light–filtering Warby Parker glasses; Ben Affleck in Gone Girl; a proper bagel; Roto-Rooter; Evanston, Illinois; quilted toilet paper; Ice Cube; Who? Weekly; all those Brené Brown books I read to become a better person when I should’ve just gone to therapy; Desus and/or Mero; our regular UPS guy; independent bookstores; the makers of Chuckles candy; Tom Cruise; and the entire cast and crew of Succession.
More people I owe a giant debt of gratitude: Abbi Jacobson, Mya Seals, Tisha Coats, Laura Munroe, Megan Reynolds, Sarah Hill, Greg Mania, Keila Miranda, Marina Hayes, Michael Arceneaux, Alissa Nutting, Laura Daener, Mary H. K. Choi, Mark de la Vergne, Dan Kastner, Kate Bittman, Anna DeVries, Jared Honn, Vanessa Robinson, Emily Barish, Fawzia Mirza, Jenny Greene, Amy Hagedorn, Joanna Parzakonis, Nick Kreiss, Corey Mifsud, and seriously I will just go on listing people until my fingers go numb so let me stop here and just text everybody else.
Endless thanks and love to Kent D. Wolf, my agent and friend and soulmate; everyone at Vintage Books/Anchor Books who let me continue to expose my private parts in public, especially Angelina Venezia and Maria Goldverg, the kindest editor a person could ask for; and all of the copy editors and fact checkers who make sure I don’t look like a fucking moron.
I would also like to thank memes; Wendy Williams clips on YouTube; books; Pat Mahomes; my computer; the bartenders at Principle; every hilarious person I follow on Twitter; James Blake’s music; hot water; our new cat, Carrots, who is perfect; slipper socks; Ben Affleck in The Town; the ResMed AirCurve 10; every writer alive; Luann de Lesseps; pimiento cheese from Zingerman’s; these extra-firm pillows I just got that are a lifesaver; Jia Tolentino; flannel sheets; Spotify playlists; the psychic I saw last summer who WAS NOT WRONG; Feline Pine; Eric and Brian at the Honda dealership; all of my inexpensive dental crowns that are still somehow holding on for dear life; Judge Mathis; librarians; Erik the mailman; my lady’s kids; and Paul Mooney
, Bernie Mac, Robin Harris, Mike Epps, and Tori Amos.
Bless James Hagedorn for spending a decade helping me to become who I am and being the best non-dad a person could ask for. And to Mel Winer for seeing me through some of my worst years.
Thank you to my sisters and their children.
Finally, thanks to my lady, who was patient enough to read all the way to the end of this bullshit just to see her name. Best for last, etc., etc. I love you, Kirsten.
About the Author
Samantha Irby is a writer whose work you can find on the Internet.
www.bitchesgottaeat.com
www.bitchesgottaeat.substack.com
ALSO BY SAMANTHA IRBY
Meaty
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.
Copyright
First published in 2020
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House,
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
First published in the USA in 2020
by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto
This ebook edition first published in 2020
All rights reserved
© Samantha Irby, 2020
Original design by Joan Wong
Cover image © Konstantin Yolshin / Alamy
“country crock” first published, in different form, in Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America (Macmillan Publishing Group, 2017), and “hysterical!” first published, in slightly different form, in Gay Mag on April 10, 2018.
The right of Samantha Irby to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–35928–8