I check my email compulsively. If I let myself, I’d do it every five minutes to see if the small press that has said it would reconsider its rejection of my novel if I cut 100 pages has, having read my pared-down manuscript, decided, ‘Yes!
This is what it feels like to be an unpublished writer.
I tell myself that my life isn’t over if the press decides it is not interested.
I tell myself my self-worth does not depend on whether or not I get published.
I tell myself there are other presses.
True, my life may not be over, but it will be a dull, hum-drum life compared with the alternative. Imagine if I got published! In alumni journals, I’d finally have a counterweight to all those PhDs after all my classmates’ names! People who have thought of me as nice enough, but, would come to my readings and listen, stirred by my wit and original elaboration of human behavior! People would hear my story; they’d ask questions about it! They’d know what lay beneath the opaque package I present to the world.
It might be true that my self-worth does not depend on whether or not I get published. But I doubt it. If I take an accounting of my life so far, I can come up with stuff that adds up to something. But if I publish a novel, how can that not increase the value of the account, and in 2025 dollars no less?
I tell myself there are other presses. But the press in question seems like a particularly good fit. And its initial positive response is like finding a gold piece from a thought-to-be thoroughly scavenged buried treasure in the pitiless sea of would-be novelists. It is not likely to happen twice.
Meanwhile I tell myself not to compare myself with others. But who can help it? Specifically, there’s my college roommate, who has just announced she’s gotten a contract to have her third novel published. And my sister, who has just had her first published and is working on persuading that publisher to take a second one. Actually, I don’t know whether she’s still, “working on” it. She may already have succeeded. I am afraid to ask.
About that roommate: I read early drafts of her first book but stopped being one of her readers in later drafts. I was too jealous to be generous. She told me she worked night and day, weekends and holidays on her writing – every moment she had when she wasn’t working for pay. Which made me think I wasn’t a writer at all. I tried not to be a sourpuss at our coffee and muffin get togethers, but I’m a lousy fake.
I was late to her first book party. I took a seat in the back for fear I would need to dash out in a fit of despair. After her brilliant (I have to admit) reading – she is a natural actor – I managed to ask her for a signed copy and I slunk home.
When I read the book, I realized she actually had something, which made me feel better. To my surprise, admiration pushed aside some of my jealousy! I also decided, come hell or high water, that I would be like her, unwilling to take no for an answer, to try to have unshakeable confidence in what I had written. (I still don’t.)
As for my sister, I am trying to persuade myself that it doesn’t matter if she gets to tell her view of the characters in our family first. As long as I finally get to tell my version. But what if I don’t get to?