Today is World Book Day and Shakespeare Day, so I’m dedicating this week’s post to my journey into book publishing and writing. It’s also day 37 of self-isolation, and I haven’t been feeling very creative these past few days. I took advantage of last week’s inspiration boost to get ahead on my new writing project and to get last week’s personal essay out of me, but this week I feel drained. I know I’m not the only person feeling drained for a variety of reasons, but I also know I’m not the only one in need of a distraction, of something else to focus on however briefly from this chaotic new normal.
It’s also good to reflect, though, and that’s the approach I’m taking here: self-reflection on where I’ve been to figure out where I’m going.
Stay sane and happy reading!
I hope that one day I stop feeling ashamed that my journey with writing started with Twilight. I was endlessly teased for it in high school, but I can promise you I never wore the t-shirts (to school) and only stuck to bracelets, necklaces or keychains. I never had a Twilight-dedicated blog, YouTube channel or fan account, and my Facebook updates at the time were only about how excited I was to go to a midnight showing of the new movies (yes, I did do that but I never, never adopted the Twihard title).
For all the teasing, Twilight the book had an effect on me, because it was the first author I looked into beyond the backflap of the book jacket. I’d spend an hour or two on the family computer researching Stephenie Meyer and her own journey into authorship, and it struck me that she fell into the job. Granted, Twilight came during the YA boom of the late 2000s early 2010s, when heroines with book sagas and movie deals came out every month, and it could be argued that Meyer was lucky enough to send her book proposal to an editor who read it through dollar-sign-colored glasses. She loved books, is what she said in many an interview, and I distinctly remember her saying she studied English literature in college because she could read books and get a grade for it. That sounded perfect, except that simplistic view of majoring in English Literature lasted me only until my second semester of freshman year.
I mostly enjoyed my literature classes, but my creative writing classes didn’t always feel like work, and I always did the reading for those (I was supposed to read Far From the Maddening Crowd once and I couldn’t even bring myself to use Spark Notes). Workshopping my stories didn’t always feel daunting, and editing and providing feedback on my classmates’ work was enjoyable and a one of my strengths. I’d always feel confident on an edit and prided myself on my instincts, and while that made me the ideal candidate for a book editor career, I had a few turns to my story left.
After graduating college and spending a year in an awful job that at least allowed me to save up, I started graduate school. That decision was the main plot point in my story, and it came about accidentally, too. The novel-writing program that accepted me effectively rescinded their offer but offered me a place in their hybrid creative writing and publishing program, which was shorter and (they promised) just as valuable as the two-year course I initially applied for. I figured that if I was going to write a book someday, I might as well learn about the actual process of getting a book published.
Like my undergrad degree, I enjoyed my creative writing classes more, but that’s as far my creative writing career has gotten for me (until the start of this blog). Like the best stories, mine took a turn from the most unexpected place: the publishing part of my degree.
I interned at a publisher while I was wrapping up my degree, a publisher I still work for today (three job titles up from intern, thankfully). It’s not a fiction publisher and I don’t read all day every day and get paid for it, but I do have an understanding of how books work. More than that, I enjoy it. I’m not an editor, but I never saw that career path for myself anyway and never worked toward it. I don’t blame anyone who thinks that’s all there is to book publishers, though, just authors and editors. It’s more complicated than those two roles, but I think learning the in and outs would ruin the magic for a reader. Lifting the curtain. It’s not always a glamorous industry, and I haven’t met anyone famous yet or have connections that will make publishing my own as-yet-unfinished book easier than it would be otherwise.
I somehow ended up right in the middle of the industry, working with books every day and seeing the work behind the scenes. I’ve learned heaps, from how I’d like to be as an author, what I’d like to have in a publisher and (reluctantly but realistically) that there isn’t a lot of money in books unless you’re J.K. Rowling, Stephen King or Suzanne Collins, or you put in double the amount of work it took to write the book to promote it and yourself as a brand.
I didn’t know when I signed up for my master’s that this is where I’d end up, and mostly saw myself writing every day, and I very much didn’t see myself here when I started reading Twilight or watching author interviews on a family PC. What hasn’t changed is the fact that I love books, reading, the written word and storytelling, but now I know that’s not enough to “make it” or make a living out of it, but it’s a start.
From Doodle to Bestseller 