The Unbearable Loneliness of Publishing (Patreon)

Greetings, everyone!

Here in Maine it’s the stupid part of technically-spring, where everything is cold and dumb and half frozen and half milkshake like a crappy slushee and everyone just wants the whole thing over with and what’s with the super late Easters in recent years? GOD I HAVE TO WAIT SO LONG FOR BUNNYEGGS. AND WARMTHS.

So, given the SERIOUS AND POSSIBLY LIFE-THREATENING DEARTH of bunnyeggs, let’s just get right into it.

An aspiring writer friend of mine asked me a question last week and it’s been haunting me. I meant to do an essay on dialogue this month but I just can’t stop thinking about what she said. It was complicated, and long, and heartfelt, but what it boiled down to was this:

“When I’m published, will I still be lonely?”

Aw, fuck.

Insert well, yes, but actually no meme. Strike that. Reverse it.

I want to Yes, Virginia this but I am running a little short on candy canes. Lemme roll up on this like an old torch song showgirl, sprawled across a piano with a jaded cigarett clamped between poorly-lipsticked teeth, slurring through the memories that made me what I am today, making all the ingenues uncomfortable and all the veterans wince.

Listen, kittens, I’ve been “published” most of my adult life. My first book sold when I was 24. (And as far as lonely publishing goes, being a wunderkind is one of the loneliest. The old timers don’t take you seriously, the people your age think you’re living the high life and can’t relate to your problems, and your youth will be brought up as a modifying factor to any critical praise you receive IT’S A REAL PARTY) I was blogging for three years before that—and to be perfectly honest, at every point along the line, blogging and the dreaded social media has made me feel less lonely than writing fiction. I’ve also felt lonely almost all my life, during good times and bad, when I have been surrounded by people and when I literally had only my dog to notice if I lived or died on any given day. FEELINGS CAN BE FUN. OR EMPHATICALLY NOT. So, you know, some of this may just be my ALL SINGING ALL DANCING CLINICAL DEPRESSION talking, but on the other hand, kind of a lot of us writerly types are somewhat, shall we say, uniquely spiced in the brain meat department, so your mileage may not vary so much as all that.

The unfortunate fact of writing is that its most simple unit—human plus textual recording device of slowly advancing technological capabilities—is an essentially and unavoidably lonely act. It’s just you and the stuff in your head, for hours upon hours upon hours, even for a short story. Living inside your head, with people who don’t exist, worlds that will never be, not interacting with other human beings that you didn’t create out of whole cloth. IT IS SERVING LONESOME REALNESS. And unlike performance arts, where there is some semblance of immediate feedback from the audience, even if that audience is just a film crew, the distance between the creative act and anyone giving the smallest of hipstery shits about it can often be measured in months at best, but far more likely, years. 

From conception to publication, Space Opera was considered to have moved at breakneck, almost reckless speed, and it took twenty-two months, just shy of two years. And I nearly had a nervous breakdown writing that book. I was so afraid it was terrible, so afraid I couldn’t do it, that I’d made all the wrong choices—we’ll come back to choices in a moment—that no one would love it because it was neither a delicate fairy tale nor a SRS BSNS science fictional treatise, that I’d be called a cut-rate Douglas Adams and much worse, that I’d never finish it, that my editor hated me—and we’ll get to editors in a minute—that I was terrible, just well and truly terrible at writing full stop. All of that happened fourteen months before the book came out. Fourteen months between the agony and the ecstacy and someone on Twitter saying it was a little over the top and I got a tube stop wrong. You work and you work and you bleed and sweat and neglect yourself and then there is nothing to answer you but a howling void full of copyedits for a year or two. It felt like the fight of my artistic life and by the time it came out I barely remembered the ins and outs of the plot. I was already well on to the next book and the one after. That goes quadruple for something like The Orphan’s Tales, which took five years from start to finish to write, challenged every skill I had at the time, and now feels so far distant from me as to have bene written by someone else. I literally do not remember most of what happens in The Orphan’s Tales. There was a goose, I think. (Kidding.) It’s not because I wasn’t so fucking passionate about the project at the time. It’s because I had to empty my head for th enext entire goddamned universe to inhabit it. And now those stories live outside me. They are part of me but not part of me. They are mine but belong more properly to everyone else. And in some sense, it was written by someone else. I started that book when I was 22. The last volume came out when I was 27. I’m 39 now. It was a lifetime ago, two marriages, a child, world tours and awards and grief and joy and like three whole generations of video game consoles ago. A different person did write those books.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I’m even lonely because she is gone. 

But I think, I think what my friend meant is this. Isn’t it less lonely because other people have seen inside you, and liked what they found there, and taken something you made to heart and made it part of their heart, and doesn’t it stand against the ragged shrieking winds of existential oblivation and postmodern anxiety that you have made something with three acts and a clever pun, that people walk and talk all over the world having heard at least briefly your voice above that wind, and maybe sometimes something yo wrote helped them not hear the storm for a minute?

And yes, yes, Virginia, it is good. If you can do it and you want to, it is better than not doing it. It does stand, mostly strong, in the breath of the big bad wolf which is time and death and carnality. 

But it’s still lonely. It’s just a different kind of alone.

But don’t you get to be part of this amazing writerly community, a modern Algonquin Round Table, who talk about books all the time and live the life of the mind, don’t you get to meet your heroes and don’t you all make each other feel valued and included, drinking at conventions and going on cruises and being a big eccentric family?

Well, yes, but actually no, but sort of?

Conventions are very much optional and they can be wonderful. I have met some of my dearest friends through the science fiction and fantasy community. There are moments when I do feel like I finally found the clever-kids salon I always dreamed of as the bookish nerdy girl no one liked because she wanted to talk about Bronte instead of boys. But…there are also times when I find that we are all talking about publishing far more than we are talking about books. Times when people look at my name tag, don’t know me, and just blank me like I am nothing and no one because they’re there looking for an agent or a leg up or an editor or just plain someone cooler, and kids, that shit happened to me LIKE A MONTH AGO, so belly up to THAT bar, and it never feels anything but HOT GARBAGE.

And of couse, any community has drama and falling outs and gossip and people who will dislike you for reasons both valid and invalid. It is so, so easy to feel like everyone else is part of this Cool Kids clique and you’re still holding your tray looking for a place to sit in the cafeteria. I feel like that all the time. I remember, in the old Livejournal days, a writer named Jay Lake put up a poll about whether or not other writers felt that a. There was a Cool Kids clique and b. They were themselves a Cool Kid.

Virtually everyone felt there was a clique. Almost no one thought they were personally a part of it. Including a lot of writers I would have said were undeniably Cool Kids. We’re all geeks. We can’t ever seem to feel like we belong, even among other geeks. We are all holding the lunch tray in the cafeteria, no matter how confident and in-the-know and successful or cool we might seem to other people. And you learn this over and over again as you, yes, meet your heroes. Sometimes they disappoint you. I have had my head absolutely bitten off and trod upon by people whose books I worshipped. I have been hugged tight and made to feel special and worthy and real by others. I have been stunned to find out that some authors I consider legends still have these moments of imposter syndrome, of social anxiety, still have trouble making ends meet, still have all the self-doubt and terror of the next book being rubbish that a beginning writer does concerning their first manuscript. Being a writer means living in the trenches of your own insecurity 24/7, setting up a nice lounge room there, picking out curtains, dusting the tea set, and serving supper far too late every day. Almost no one is exempt from that. Not even people we grow up thinking of as nearly literal gods. 

But then there are moments, fleeting hours, up late drinking at a con, far past time to be in bed for that early panel or that truly unfortunate 9 am Sunday reading slot that told you just exactly where you and your career stood in the eyes of the con committee (and don’t think I am not still, every single time, absolutely goddamned terrified that no one is going to show up for my reading. It’s only happened once, and what’s worse it was a dual reading for another author, neither of us could summon one single reader, and even our significant others didn’t show up so we just went to the bar and ordered doubles and I WILL NEVER FORGET IT THOSE EMPTY SEATS ARE SEARED INTO MY HEART FOREVER), there are moments that shine so. When someone becomes a friend because you are both just pouring out your heart about everything in this godforsaken industry, or someone you idolize looked at you like you were a person and not a punter, and you’ve been talking about art for four hours in rural France or Melbourne, Australia, or Madison Wisconsin, or goddamned Cheyenne, Wyoming when a writer with whom you never thought you’d be allowed in the same building says who’s doing shots with me and you say I AM because bloody well right I wasn’t missing that and everything sparkles and life is what you always wanted it to be. When somebody pulls out a chair for you at a crowded table and you gratefully slide your lunch tray down next to your friends, past, present, and future. When random fans tell you stories that make you laugh till your ribs hurt. We basically go to conventions in hope of those nights, those drinks, those sparkles, and maybe one time out of ten we find them. But that doesn’t get you out of the other nine conventions where you get blanked or no one turns up to your reading or they give guests different color coded lanyards that offere different levels of perks based on your levels of fame (OH YES THAT SHIT IS REAL HOW DYSTOPIAN IS THAT) and you didn’t even know that until the second day because your color wasn’t particularly perky or you try to talk to the guest of honor and they psychologically cold cock you right there in the hotel bar. (Happened to me at my first convention. FUN.)

Incidentally, publishing and writing is extremely bubbled. As in, there is the science fiction and fantasy bubble, there is the crime bubble, there is the middle grade and YA bubble, there is the lit fic bubble, there is the non-fiction bubble, there is the bestseller bubble and so on and so forth and very rarely do they collide and pop. I spent seven years in the adult SFF bubble getting to know just about everybody before I had a middle grade book hit the bestseller list and suddenly I had to go to a whole host of conventions and conferences I’d never even heard of before, because children’s publishing has different sales vectors and success systems. And all of the sudden, I didn’t know anyone all over again. I was all alone and young and terrified and felt like such a joke, such an imposter, having to start from scratch, as uncool as it was possible to be. If I were to write a crime novel or a realist novel this would definitely happen again. THERE ARE ALWAYS NEW CHANCES TO FEEL THE WORST YOU EVER FELT IN HIGH SCHOOL ONLY NOW IT’S FRESH AND REAL SHARP BECAUSE YOU’RE A GROWN ADULT WITH A FULL RANGE OF TERRIBLE EMOTIONS.

But the fans. But the fans, right? I mean, to even have fans. That must fix loneliness. To have people who give even the smallest of dusty shits about something you made up in your brain. Kids who dress up in Halloween costumes of your characters. Artists who paint your imaginary cities just because they love them. People who DO show up to your readings, who tell you some stupid line you wrote meant something, who got a tattoo or named their kid or changed their major because of those lonely days you spent staring into a blank page. Doesn’t that fix it. Doesn’t that make it okay.

Jesus Christ, that these things are even possible, that they even happen at all, that any little thing I ever write matters to one solitary person on this lonely, lonely planet is a miracle beyond relating.

So, yes. Yes, Virginia. In the moment when those things happen. It does. It fills you up and makes going on with life remotely possible. It connects you to the world, the real world that gets very far away when you live in your head. It makes you feel real and bright and good and relieved that you did something not completely shit with your life. It makes you feel like you are capable of writing something else that might matter to someone, a feeling that is NOT ALWAYS PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR I TELL YOU WHAT. It makes you feel big and small all at once. And you treasure those moments. Those moments are little embers you can blow on later to keep yourself warm in the cold of your next blank page. I mattered to someone. I did. I know because they told me. I know because they dressed up. I know because they tweeted to me. I know because they waited in line. I know because they knew my name at all.

And that is everything.

But.

But there is loneliness there, too. Because, yes, you made this party and you made it so pretty with so many balloons and streamers and glittery lights and just the biggest cake with a different flavor for every layer and you chose the music and the cheese plates and you made everything as nice as you could for the people you hoped would come—and they did come! At least some! And they had kind of a good time! But you didn’t go to the party. You were the host. And the host can’t get drunk on the punch or swing from the chandelier. This was your party. You are responsible for everyone else there. You are responsible for their good time. For their getting home safely. For how they feel afterward. For how they remember their time with you. 

And the party is your book but it is also every interaction you have with people who read your book. Online and in person. That’s what I learned from getting cold cocked by a legend in a Boston hotel when I was just starting out. Every time I see one of his/her books I get excited, but I also remember the shame and hurt I felt when they were rude to me, even though they didn’t really mean anything by it, they were just tired and looking for something better to do than talk to me. I wasn’t their kind of party in that moment, and that’s okay. But the sting fucking lasts, my loves. And I know that. You are always responsible for the party you threw, and you are always that party, wherever you go. So there is a distance , between you and the people you have brought near and dear with the streamers and the balloons and the cheese plates and the heartbreaking denouements. They know you, on some level, at least, they know the story-heart of you, which is a pretty damn big part, but you don’t know them, until one of those magical late night moments that comes alone one time in ten. 

There is still a loneliness in being the host, even among the glitter and the champagne you’ve so painstakingly provided, on purpose, for as many people as possible. You are responsible for everyone, but they are not responsible for you, and if you do a bad job, or the cake is stale, or the balloons are a stupid color, or you responded to your reviews online, or posted a real bad take on something you probably should have just kept mum about, or didn’t get the next book in the series out in short order, just wrote a shitty novel, they’ll let you know and they’ve every right to. IT’S THAT WHOLE VULNERABILITY THING. No one, not even strong female protagonists, is as vulnerable as an author who just wants people to like her book.

For everything about publishing that heals your loneliness, there is something to open that wound again. 

When I am published, will I still be lonely? 

Maybe not. But you will still be alone. It’s not exactly the same, but almost. 

Because eventually you are always back at that blank page. It is the smallest and most basic unit of the writing life. The atom. The quark. Everyone, even the most ardent fan, sooner or later goes away back to their own lives and you are just your dumb difficult self again, not very different than before being published. Still struggling with how to balance character and plot and language and worldbuilding. Still feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing, even if you’ve done it before. Maybe especially if you’ve done it before. Shit, I was SO CONFIDENT I knew everything before I had written a dozen books or so. Nowadays making choices for my characters is precisely exactly as difficult as making choices in my own life. FUCK.

Publishing, like becoming a parent, does not better you or elevate you in and of itself. It makes you see yourself more clearly, and it gives you something infinitely precious to be responsible for. I think we’re always looking for The Thing that will fix us, that will make everything all right, and it is always the Next Thing, the next goal, next step, next relationship, next job, next milestone, next child. I am no different. I always thing just one thing more will make me whole. I think that’s what’s claled being a human being. But when you want to be a writer, when you want it so fucking badly, publication feels like it actually CAN heal your life. It is The Only Thing. It stands between you and the person you want to be. But publishing, like everything else, is still only the Next Thing like the others, and will not fix all. There is so much more work to be done once you clear the chasm of getting a book contract. It won’t fix your life. But the beautiful, terrible world you will make for everyone who reads you to enjoy might fix your heart a bit. For awhile.

For awhile.

But doesn’t it, doesn’t it stand against those ragged shrieking existential winds? Doesn’t it, doesn’t it make one tiny blow against mortality, doesn’t it make you live longer than your life will ever allow? 

Yes, Virginia, it does. That it does. And do you know how I know?

Because I’m still talking about Jay Lake, in this very essay. And Jay, who was a beautiful writer, who was my friend, with whom I once squished toes into the surf and cold sand of the Indian Ocean, has been dead for a number of years now, and many of us still remember that one Livejournal post of his was worth half of what gets posted to Twitter every day. When I have hard days, and I don’t want to write, and I hate myself and my work and think I should give up, I try to remind myself that Jay would have given anything to be able to write a couple of thousand words today, and stop my whining. His books, and they are all good books, Brent, are still here when he is not. We can go visit him, and remember him, and spend a day with him still. He is still there for us, still throwing that party, even though he is gone. 

And that’s the thing. Being a writer doesn’t really stop a writer’s loneliness. For a few moments, every once in while, on a good day when the light slants through the window just right, it stops the reader’s.