Tracy Guzeman guest posted here when her debut novel, The Gravity of Birds, released last summer. It releases in paperback the same day The Wednesday Daughters does – next Tuesday! – so I’m rerunning her post to celebrate. When you visit your favorite bookstore next week, please look for us both! – Meg
People have asked me what I was doing when I found out my novel was going to be published. I have to confess, that moment has become a pleasant blur. Most likely I was trying to get up from the floor, since I promptly fell out of my chair once I got off the phone with my agent. Quite honestly, I hadn’t expected it to happen.
When it comes to the fortunes, outcomes and successes of friends, I am an absolute optimist. I’m convinced the best things will happen for them, and I’m thrilled when I’m right. It’s only when it comes to myself that my attitude becomes more pragmatic. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Midwest, where the threat of tornadoes required families to have disaster plans at the ready. Maybe I took the Girl Scout motto a little too seriously: “Be prepared.” But no one ever fills in the obvious blank. You aren’t instructed to be prepared for the best; instead, you’re meant to anticipate the worst. That’s the outcome you need to prepare for.
For a long time, that was how I approached my writing. Realistically, getting anything published is difficult. There was no shortage of people anxious to share why it almost never happens: publishing is in a state of flux; it’s difficult to find an agent; bookstores are closing their doors; people don’t take the time to read anymore—they’re too busy catching up on all those television shows they didn’t have time to watch during the week. I had to admit this all sounded logical.
And besides that, the odds were not in my favor. I’d been writing for as long as I could remember. There was nothing I enjoyed doing more. You might think someone with such strong feelings would decide to major in English, get an MFA, intern at a literary magazine, start to publish short stories, gather accolades, move on to a novel. But right out of the gate, I headed in the opposite direction. Fiction writing was wonderful as a creative outlet, but as a vocation? Things didn’t look promising. After an honest self-assessment, I was forced to eliminate even those related occupations that might have helped augment a likely meager writing income. Lacking the quality of patience (and more patience), I couldn’t envision myself as an English teacher. I didn’t have the impartiality, the discipline, or the stomach for journalism, unable to make it through even a standard Hallmark commercial without tearing up. And technical writing seemed to require an affinity for left-brain thinking, a hemisphere I wasn’t sure I possessed. So I majored in landscape architecture. (See previous comment re: “left-brain thinking” and ask, “What were you…?”) All of which meant I was lacking in connections, experience, and training.
But strangely enough, optimism muscled its way into the room. In spite of all the reasons I probably should have, I never abandoned writing, because all the logic in the world doesn’t count for much when you’re doing something you love. I accepted the idea that getting published was unlikely, and found that removing it from the equation was incredibly freeing. Since I was only writing to please myself, I could experiment wildly with structure and form and voice. I created characters I liked, who were sometimes unlikeable, and did despicable things. I knew, that if nothing else, the stories I was weaving together were the stories I wanted to tell. And adhering still to that familiar motto, I focused my energies on working to become a better writer. Be prepared.
I sent stories out sporadically; I entered some contests. I was mentally ready to receive rejections, so when form emails arrived in my inbox, I scanned them, deleted them, then sent the same story out to the next several magazines on my list. I received some positive feedback. My focus remained on working to get better, on finding ways to spend more time doing what I loved. Be prepared. Some of my short fiction found a home. And then, it happened. An agent wanted to represent me. An editor wanted to buy my novel.
So it’s a Cinderella story. Only it’s not. (No slippers involved, unless the bedroom variety count.) It’s tenacity, kismet, serendipity, dumb luck, good timing, a blessing, a fluke, a fortunate confluence of the fates. I’m practically Seabiscuit. Regardless of what you attribute it to, it’s not supposed to happen. But it did. Somehow, my novel got published.
Maybe there is no missing end to that instruction. Maybe the best advice really is “be prepared.” Period. Perhaps that makes me an optimist after all. – Tracy
