J. T.Dutton is the author of the novels Freaked and Stranded, both published through HarperTeen. I met Dutton a few years ago when she came as a visiting writer to my MFA alma-mater, the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Dutton’s books are quirky and funny and daring—I highly recommend them. I was excited to get a chance to pick her brain about the process of publishing them through such a major publishing house.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of writing and revising your first book, Freaked? You began working on it as an MFA student, right?

Yes, I submitted Freaked to my MFA workshop as a short story, then expanded it to a novella, then expanded it again to a draft of a novel for my thesis project. After I left Alaska, I dropped it into a drawer. Certain scenes continued to grow and become more mentally realized in my imagination and when I had time, I worked on them. Five years later, I finally stuffed the whole project into an envelope.

For those of us who have an unpublished novel languishing on our hard drives, landing an agent seems like the impossible dream sometimes. How did you hook up with your agent? How long did it take you to sign with your agent after you had begun shopping the book around?

I sent simultaneous blind queries to agents in A Writer’s Guide. (I did not think of Freaked as a Young Adult novel so I chose agents based on their interest in literary fiction.) Jodie Rhodes was maybe number 32 on the list. She asked to see the full manuscript, signed me a few days later, and sold the book in a matter of hours. I was still getting rejections from other agents even as news of the sale was going public in Publishers Weekly.

The seesaw effect of loving my manuscript one day and hating it the next is what kept me from submitting it sooner. Fear of rejection is what often stops me from taking important leaps of faith.

I’ve read that most agents don’t find many clients through the slush pile, preferring instead to meet clients through referrals. Do you have any advice for writers trying to brave the query letter process? What do you think makes a query letter stand out?

I was invited to teach at the Midwest Writers Workshop last summer alongside four agents who presented a panel on the best methods for pitching work. At the end of the conference, all of the agents had requested several full manuscripts and one stated that she’d had some of the best face to face meetings with authors ever. I walked away impressed by how much a one-on-one meeting with an agent can made a difference for aspiring writers. The road to publication requires a lot of collaboration between agent and writer, editor and writer, agent and editor and it makes sense that agents want a sense of who somebody is before they consider signing them.

The typical agent receives nearly 200 blind manuscript queries a week. In lieu of a face to face meeting, a blind query should probably deliver as much of the writer’s personality as possible. Some agents want writers who are market sensitive, others prefer an author who tells a good joke, others are more brass tacks and down to business. Finding the “one” should probably take a while in order for the match to be a success, and query letters should probably not be formula-written, but instead, come from some deep individual and original place.

I have yet to meet Jodie Rhodes face to face though we have exchanged hundreds of e-mails. She recently published a memoir entitled Confessions which describes why she has dedicated herself to the promotion of new authors. If every agent had a manual, figuring out a “personality match” would be a lot easier. Certainly “getting to know” Jodie has deepened my respect for her as a human being and for the work she does.

Tell us about the process of signing the contract with HarperTeen. They loved Freaked so much, they signed you to a two-book deal, right? How much freedom did you have on your second book, Stranded?

Publishers of YA novels frequently sign new authors for more than one book because the bigger contract allows them to plan releases so that the momentum and marketing of the first sells the second. It’s a good deal for writers because having an advance provides a little financial security while they are working. Having the second contract looming over me though managed to stress me out astronomically. I couldn’t dawdle or wait to feel inspired to write. I also had to show my editor a lot of garbage that I hadn’t yet recognized was garbage. I worried every day that she was going to boot me to the curb. I definitely felt like I was “faking it” a good percentage of the time.

Despite time constraints, I received quite a bit of creative freedom to take my second book in the directions I wanted. One of the things I like best about Freaked and Stranded now that they are out in the world is that they don’t fit into a clear YA mold and that they truly represent my take on the genre.

How hands-on has your agent been with your books? And your editor(s)?

I think we put equal parts love into each project.  Author love is different than agent and editor love. I did the writing, Jodie did the selling, and my editor did a truckload of patient reading and recommending.  One of the things I have learned since being published is writing professionally is very collaborative—a lot of thought goes into the finished product. 

Now that both books are out, what’s the next step? Will you continue publishing through HarperTeen?

I have no new projects with HarperTeen in the works though I would lay down my life to publish another book with them. I learned a mountain of useful information under my editor’s tutelage. I can’t even begin to express how much I grew as a writer. Whether my next book will be something she wants is really more her decision than mine. I get the sense that she would potentially read anything new I finished, but her business is an art too and she has to make very judicious decisions about what is the best use of her time.

What’s your relationship with your agent like now that you’ve published both books in your two-book deal? What role does your agent play as you take the next steps in your career?

I keep Jodie apprised of my projects and I get the sense she hopes to see work from me soon. Hopefully, I will oblige. I am in “creative mode” at the moment, where really it’s a time just to shut the door and write.

What are you working on now? Is a third book already in the works?

I have written two half-novels and a quarter of a third since I finished Stranded which have potential but not the full-on magic that I think is going to make them interesting to a perspective publisher yet. I’m not about to give up on them, though. If I’ve learned anything these last few years, it’s that big ideas pull together in mysterious ways. I just have to keep the words flowing, sit down every day and work, and more than likely, something interesting will come from it.

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of the poetry collection Rag & Bone, which was awarded the Elixir Press Antivenom Prize. Her poetry, which is raw and real and exceptionally well crafted, has appeared in numerous literary journals. She teaches full-time now at Central Missouri University and is the Poetry Editor for Pleiades, but when I met Nuernberger, she was finishing up her PhD in Poetry at Ohio University, where she worked as the Assistant Editor of New Ohio Review and, later, the Editor of Quarter After Eight. In spite of her busy schedule as a professor, editor, and mother of an adorable one-and-a-half year old, Nuernberger found the time to answer some questions about her experience winning a book publication contest.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of writing and revising Rag & Bone? You hold an MFA and a PhD, right? Were any of the poems in this book included in your thesis or dissertation?

I never had the idea that I was writing a book – that task is so monumental I don’t think I could have written a line if that had been the goal. Instead I spent years writing poems, occasionally pausing to spread all of the ones I liked out on the floor and see if they could be grouped in an elegant and meaningful way. Then I’d submit the result to publishers and go back to writing new poems. I repeated this process every six months or so, taking out weaker poems and putting in newer, better ones. I can remember at least six different titles and arrangements, but there were probably more. There are a few poems from the time when I was working on my MFA that made it into Rag & Bone, and many more from my PhD time.

How did you know when the manuscript was ready to begin sending out?

I definitely began sending out the manuscript before it was ready. But I’m not sure how to avoid that. If I found myself thinking older work was as good as it possibly could be, that would be a sign I’d stopped growing as a writer. Alternatively, if I never had those moments of confidence that I had just written something really great, I’d have to give up writing altogether. This is why I love and am grateful for editors – without them I’d be alone in my attic accepting and rejecting myself willy nilly.

How much research was involved in selecting which contests to enter with this book? There are so many poetry manuscript contests out there—how did you learn about the Antivenom Prize?

I used The Writer’s Chronicle and Poets and Writers to keep track of the upcoming contests. If there were presses I wasn’t already familiar with, I’d check out their catalogue to see if they published the kind of books I want to read.  

What made you decide to enter the Antivenom contest in particular? How did you know your book would be a good fit for Elixir Press?

Elixir seemed like a good fit, because many of the poets they published share my interests in quirky history, scientific factoids, and mythic memory.

Can you talk a little about the editorial process for your book? How closely did your editor work with you once the book had been selected as the winner?

Dana Curtis was a very patient and helpful editor. I’d just finished one of those big overhauls of the manuscript about a month before I found out I’d won the prize, so I sent her a manuscript that had a completely different title, a different ordering of poems, and in some cases, some pretty dramatic revisions of the poems themselves. She shared the revisions with Jane Satterfield, who judged the contest, and they accepted these changes. She also had the manuscript carefully copy edited, which was a great help, since there are a million ways to bungle a comma. And she worked with a designer who did four versions of the cover that I was invited to choose from. I’ve heard horror stories about presses that claim artistic control of the manuscript once it’s been accepted for publication, but I was always included in the decision-making process and my requests were always respected… all the way down to my preference for a serif-font.

What has the press done to get the book in the hands of readers? What have you done personally to market the book?

The press sent out many review copies of the book and also has submitted it to some prizes. I’ve scheduled readings in any city where I can find a couch to crash on.

I’ve long been interested in the difference between an MFA and a PhD—both are considered terminal degrees, though more and more programs these days are looking to hire people with PhD’s. As someone who has been through both types of programs, what do you see as the major differences? Would you encourage writers to get one degree over the other?

I thought of getting an MFA as the secular equivalent to spending two years in a monastery or asherim. I was checking out of the work force for a time to focus my attention on poetry because I thought I would be a happier and more fulfilled person at the end of that process. In the back of my mind there was also the thought that I might be able to work in academia someday, which can be a really supportive environment for writers.  

Because those two MFA years were the first time I had devoted myself so completely to the study and practice of writing, the learning curve was shockingly steep. I did not experience that same degree of explosive growth during the time I worked on my PhD. Instead, the four years I spent in a PhD program were a time of steady growth and more methodical revision. It was also a great time to work with accomplished writers and study alongside talented young writers. One great benefit of getting a PhD for me was that I was sheltered during that period from the financial insecurities of the job market – I didn’t have to worry about whether I would be able to find work as an adjunct from one semester to the next, nor did I have to return to my old job as a high school teacher, which can be very time-consuming and emotionally-draining.  

I would advise creative writers to choose programs that emphasize craft over literary theory -- but that balance varies from program to program and the MA/MFA/PhD distinctions aren’t necessarily the key factor. I would also advise writers to pursue these degrees because they find pleasure in the educational process itself. If the MFA or PhD is only a means to a tenure-track end, the risk of squandering 6-7 years of your life in pursuit of uninsured, low-wage adjunct work is very high.

I know you teach full-time now at the University of Central Missouri, where you also work as the Poetry Editor of Pleiades. Do you still find the time to write? What are you working on now?

Because I’m a mom to a young child, I find that this new job actually allows me more time to write. Greater financial security = more child care. I like to joke that I work 9-5 at the poetry factory. I write from 9-11 every morning, then spend the rest of the day on my teaching and editing responsibilities. For me that steady rhythm is good for the creative process. I just finished up a new manuscript earlier this week. It’s a series of poems based on fragments of an Old Kingdom Egyptian cosmology. But if my experience with my first book was any indicator, I’ll be rewriting the whole thing again in six months.

Kelly Kathleen Ferguson is one of the most accomplished early-career writers I know. Her memoir, My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself, was published by Press 53 last fall. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including The Gettysburg Review and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Kelly, who’s been extremely busy lately doing interviews and readings to promote My Life as Laura, agreed to answer a few questions for us about the process of publishing her book through a small press. For more details, I recommend you read My Life as Laura—she talks about some of her experiences trying to publish the book at the end.

You talk about it a little bit in your book, but could you describe the process of getting this book published. You were originally being represented by an agent, right?

I was! I had what most writers would call a dream agent, who represented exactly my kind of book (narrative nonfiction), who worked for one of the most established agencies in New York. MFA dream come true!

Then a friend of mine told me about an author who had just signed a book deal with a major NYC publisher about a humorous, narrative nonfiction travelogue where the author planned to retrace the pioneer journey of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

That, by the way, was my book idea.

I tortured myself for a week about whether to tell the agent or not. Part of me wondered how she hadn’t heard about the deal, since my agent was supposed to be the one in the know—not me. In the end I decided to email, which was as much fun as telling your fiancé you had herpes this entire time the night before the wedding. I spent all night tossing and turning and sweating until the phone rang at 9 a.m.

New York city area code.

Her first words were, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

What made you decide to go with a small press rather than seeking representation from another agent?

At the time I believed the agent, that after the NYC publisher had signed Wendy McClure (the “other” author), that no other major publisher would touch my book, because they couldn’t compete with the publicity budget. Probably she was right.

How did you decide which presses to submit to? Did you send out to several, or did you only submit to Press 53? What about Press 53 appealed to you for this project?

I submitted to presses I had heard of: Algonquin, Greywolf, Milkweed, and Press 53.  I owned a book from each of these presses, so I knew they looked professional and represented writers I admire.

I had a personal connection with Kevin Morgan Watson of Press 53, in that he was from North Carolina where I lived for twenty years and he was a friend of a friend of mine. I had first heard of him a few years back when I was first starting to write and I was pleased to see he had been so successful.

What was the editorial process like for this book? Did you work closely with an editor to revise the manuscript?

I’d had many chapters workshopped over the years. I’m grateful for all the advice—from content suggestions to line edits.  One advantage of being in a PhD program, or rather mine in particular, is that I had my adviser Dinty W. Moore read my rough draft. He gave me great big picture feedback. I cut the introduction in half and trimmed 100 pages from the book.

My press editor was Robin Muira. She also worked with me closely, helping me fix the ending, working with copy edits, sharpening language choices, etc. She’s an experienced editor who knew how to shape my book into a professional manuscript.

Most of the bottom line choices, though, were my own. That’s the benefit and the nerve-wracking aspect of working with a small press. I was allowed final say on pretty much all decisions, large and small. But I spent hours, weeks and months pouring over sentences, making sure the book was the best it could be.

One of the main reasons (aside from having an in with the major New York publishers) authors talk about the value of having an agent is to have a professional negotiate a fair contract. This was definitely something that made me nervous when I signed my book contract—I didn’t know what was standard, so I didn’t know whether certain things were just part of the game. Did you feel like you could have used help when it came time to decipher and sign your book contract?

My contract was easy to understand, so not really. I suppose I decided that someone in the small press business probably isn’t in the money racket. I do think a NYC contract would have scared me. Kevin and I from the beginning had what would be called in the Old South “a gentlemen’s agreement” (although technically this would be a gentlemen/lady agreement). I hadn’t even finished the book when he promised to publish it based on a few chapters and an outline. But we hadn’t signed anything.

How is the book being promoted? Has the press been able to market the book at all? What steps have you taken to promote the book?

To avoid repeating myself, I will refer to two blog posts I’ve written on how to be your own book publicist. One I wrote a month after publication and another a bit later. 

I returned recently from a little Alabama tour, which reinforces my advice to use your personal contacts. I have family in Tuscaloosa and friends in Mobile (the Mobile friends build on a Montana MFA friend). The tour confirmed for me that it’s best to read in libraries or small colleges or whatever nice venue you can find. The bookstore has been a pretty big bust for me as a small press author. I had one bookstore employee shut the door in my face. You’d have thought I was hawking copies of The Watchtower. I’ll be honest. I cried.

At most, bookstores agree to carry a few copies. At my last library reading I had a woman come up and want a signed copy for each of her grandchildren—seven!  And with the bookstore cut out of the picture, I made more money. (Press 53 will sell me books at cost). That extra money, combined with places to stay with family and friends, helped me actually clear a little  money on the tour. Crazytalk! I’d still love to work with bookstores, but that hasn’t been the way so far.

For the next book, do you think you’ll go directly to a small press, or will you probably try to sign with an agent?

It will depend on the book I write and what sort of audience I seek. If I write a mainstream book, I would still try for the agent and sign with a big press. I want the publicity budget and the connections. I want distribution to Barnes & Noble, the chance to get on National Public Radio, the opportunity to be reviewed in major newspapers, nominated for major book awards, etc.  That being said, I’ve had a positive experience working with a small press, and it’s great to see small presses doing so well. Small presses are receiving more and more attention and winning more awards.  The difference between "small" and "large" presses shortens every year. So, let's see what I write next and what's happening then.

What are you working on now? I know you write fiction as well. Will your next book project be another memoir, or do you think you’ll go a different route?

So far I’ve been working on a book about Jack, as in Jack Squat and Jack Daniels. Finishing the book and promoting the book has drained me. But on my trip to Alabama I began feeling that spark again, writing notes and taking pictures. I might feel another travelogue/memoir coming on. That’s kind of a bummer because I was looking forward to writing fiction again. Perhaps a Young Adult mystery. We’ll see.

Ken Brosky is the author of the books The King of Blades, The Unauthorized Biography of Michele Bachman (and other stories), and, most recently, Desolation: Stories, and his work has appeared in multiple literary journals of note. You can get the Kindle version of Michele Bachman on Amazon for 99 cents for the next two weeks, so head on over. I first learned about Brosky and his work through his blog, in which he details the process of self-publishing and promoting his Michele Bachman short story collection. Brosky agreed to let me interview him via email to learn more about his experience as a self-published author.

      The stories in your book have been published separately in literary journals, and “I Can’t Just Turn It Off” was a finalist in a Glimmer Train Contest. I have no doubt that you could have published the collection through a small press. What led you to the decision to self-publish?

I just didn’t want to go through the long, long wait for this project. First, you gotta find an agent. Then, you gotta find the publisher. Please wait 6-8 months before sending the manuscript out to another agent/publisher. Then once you find someone, you wait another year or two for it to come out. I just don’t have that kind of time! It’s bad enough the dog needs to go out twice a day … on top of that I’m sending out so many new short stories to magazines that I’m getting like, a rejection a day.

There was another more serious reason, too: I really, really wanted to publish a Kindle version for an affordable price. I think $2.99 is a good price for 100-or-so pages of short stories, no? I’m not a big fan of buying a 150-page short story collection in hardcover for $20. That’s just too much. It’s not a good business model, and I have no idea why New York publishers are so obsessed with keeping this going in an age where the newest generation of readers are used to getting everything—music, magazine articles, news—for free. And where is the cost coming from? Paper and whatever the heck hard covers are made out of.

So I put this out on my own, with the help of a lot of great people. And I think I’d like to keep it going. I think Brew City Press could help a couple published authors a year and we’d do the exact same thing: put together a collection of published stories or poems. We’d format for the Kindle, design a cover, set up the account, and then let the writer have it. Writing all this down, it sounds expensive. This would definitely be a vanity project.

      Several things about the book strike me as very innovative, the introductory notes about each story and the intermissions, for example. I can’t imagine coming across these elements in a short story collection published by a small press. Do you feel self-publishing gave you more freedom than you would have had if you had published through a small press?

Oh sure. You get to do whatever you want with your book. Neil Gaiman did a little set of introductory notes for one of his short story collections, so I guess there’s some history for it. I really liked it, though. I enjoyed hearing him talk about the stories and give a little behind-the-scenes for each one.

It’s not for everyone, though. Some people don’t like it, and they can skip it. That’s OK. But I’ve always enjoyed getting inside a writer’s head and hearing the story behind the story.  

      Have you come across any drawbacks of self-publishing?

      Well, for starters you’re not taken too seriously. That’s not surprising, though, given how much complete crap ends up being self-published. That isn’t to say it’s all crap, but there’s plenty of it. So I’m trying to earn some respect here. It’s a slow process. I still can’t convince my hometown newspaper—The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel—to review my book. It’s “tainted” because it’s self-published. But all the stories were previously published, I argue. Sometimes that works. I contacted Madison’s Cap Times on a whim and they were amazing to me. Interview and everything. Great write-up. A lot of fun. Really supportive of the local arts. When I realized the article was in the printed paper, too, I went to the local supermarket and grabbed like, 20 copies or something. I got a few strange looks from shoppers.

Reviews help, for sure.

      Of course, you need to find reviewers. No publicist here. So I’ve been going out and slogging through dozens and dozens of book blogs and Web sites with some success and some failure and then I blog about it for fun. The big reviewers are so inundated that they almost never take review copies anymore unless they come from the publisher. The Book Slut definitely won’t. I more or less begged without success.

The trick is to find reviewers who might actually like to read your kind of book. My book is a collection of short stories. A web site that reviews only Half-Naked-Scottish-Vampire-Man-Beast books probably isn’t a good fit. There’s a lot of those types of books, by the way. If you’re going to search for book reviewers, expect to end up on lots of sites featuring book covers with half-naked men. Depending on your sexual preference, I suppose this could be an enjoyable process.

      Then of course there are the web sites who charge a small fee for a review. It’s a business and sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Kirkus will review self-published books, but for a hefty price. Some other smaller review sites will do it for a much more affordable price, like the Self-Publishing Review.

      What really gets tricky are the sites that are clearly taking advantage of writers. Outskirts Press is a great example. For just $299 (holy crap!) they’ll submit your book to 10 reviewers. Wow! That’s an amazing deal, Outskirts Press! Thank you so much!

      Guess what? I contacted those very same reviewers and sent each one of them a copy of my book. It took two hours. The cost: $20 for printing and shipping.

      So it’s been a lot of work. I’d be lying if I said maintaining the blog and checking the book sales hasn’t been fun, though. I’m learning a lot and I hope others can learn from my mistakes, too.

      After my book was accepted for publication through a small press, I spent the next several months revising according to feedback from the press’s fiction editor. What was the process of preparing your book for publication like? How did you make up for not being able to work with an editor?

      I never would have done this if I hadn’t already received feedback. Since 10 of the 11 short stories are previously published, they were already looked at by editors. Feedback was accepted and implemented.

      Still, it needed a good look-through. So I gave a few copies away to former classmates in my MFA program to see what they could spot. They found a few things, mostly grammar and the such. It passed muster, though.

      But this is one of the downsides of self-publishing. Worst of all, a lot of writers don’t bother getting editing help or, worse, they find an editor and pay way, way too much. I run an editing business on the side and I’m amazed by the number of writers who come to me after having spent 2 or 3 thousand dollars(!) for editing help, only to be greatly disappointed by the service. They’re disappointed enough that they want to spend more money getting more editorial help.

Getting free editing help is one of the cool things about finding an actual publisher. Man, to have an editor who actually likes your work enough to stick with you? That’s the dream right there.

I wouldn’t know. The first book I sold was dropped before it was published by Harbor House Books, so clearly that publisher didn’t believe in me. I don’t even think I had an assigned editor. My blog rants against the Bush administration probably didn’t endear me to the good ol’ boys running the press, though. I remember their editor-in-chief once wrote a book about slaves fighting for the South during the Civil War. That’s how ridiculous he was. That should have been a red flag.

Live and learn, I guess … oh look: they’re out of business. Well, maybe there’s some justice in this world after all.

      You initially put the book out as an e-book, which sells on Amazon for only $2.99. A month later, you put the book out in hard copy form. Was your plan always to make the book available in both formats? How have the sales of the e-book compared to the hard copy?

      I only added a print version because my friend and classmate, Chris Smith, designed such an amazing cover for it. Like, seriously, it’s beautiful. It looks better than most of the stuff you see at Barnes and Noble. The moment I saw it, I said (to the dog, ironically) “This needs to be in a book store.” The dog looked at me curiously, but I think she understood too.

So now the book is in stores. It’s available in two bookstores in Madison and one bookstore in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I’m happy to ship a few copies anywhere else, too. I’ll try and get it in a couple more stores. I might try and leave one in a Barnes and Noble and then try and buy it and then go: “Oh, it doesn’t scan? That’s weird. This guy’s getting pretty popular.” It might make for a good blog entry.

      Sure, the price is a little higher. But, again, that’s just the cost of printing.

      These days, publishers rarely spend very much money marketing their books, so from a marketing perspective, self-publishing isn’t much different from publishing with a press. What have you done to get the word out about your book? Have there been specific things that have worked especially well?

      Besides reviews? I’m up for anything. The blog has gotten pretty popular, which is cool. Maybe I could sell copies of the book at Madison’s farmer’s market. We have a pretty unpopular governor so maybe I could stop by the protests and sell some copies. Cold selling would take a lot of guts. I could barely work up the courage to walk into the local bookstore and ask them to sell my book.

      There are a couple little sites that let you post a blurb. It’s a neat idea that lets interested readers get a feel for the story. Other than that, you just gotta be creative. I’ve found what works best is desperation and a little self-flagellation. Brainstorm an idea, then procrastinate until you’re in a cold sweat. Then stand in front of the mirror and berate yourself until you finally put on your coat, go out and give it a shot.

      There’s always standing on a corner asking people to buy your book.

      I had one other idea that I might try: what if I just sat in a Barnes and Noble all day and tried to sell 50 books? It sounds doable, especially if I brought some kind of snack to lure people in. If it’s a failure, it’ll make for a great blog entry.

      Then again, you could always do nothing. I put my fantasy novel, The King of Blades, on Kindle, too. That was the novel that was going to be published by Harbor House before they changed their minds after two years of foot-dragging. That freaking book is outselling the short story collection by a mile. What the heck? I mean, I like the book and all, but it’s still a little depressing. I’m really, really working my butt off promoting this short story collection. I have an intense desire to see its Amazon ranking climb a bit.

      In the second intermission to the book, you list ten things you learned while writing the book. I couldn’t help but relate to number five: “Nobody wants to publish my atheism-tinged novel.” If I were to make a list of ten things I learned while writing the stories in my book, I would say the same exact thing. Any plans for the atheism-tinged novel? Are you shopping it around? Do you think you might self-publish it?

      I would kill to publish that book. It’s funny. It’s smart. It’s got the most colorful characters I’ve ever come up with. In the first ten pages, an English professor shouts at students legally crossing the street and I can’t stop laughing every time I read it. I’ve sent it out from time to time, but no dice. Isn’t there some kind of anti-press out there? Like, who’s publishing the antithesis of Eat, Pray Love? My whole book is about evolution and the fact that Creationism is idiotic. It’s gold, subjectively speaking. It could be complete crap too, I suppose.

      You get to a point, sometimes, where you just want the story out there, and I think that’s when self-publishing is at its best. Especially if you have a network of writer-friends who can help you with the process. I have another book written that I worked on for my MFA degree. It’s called The Occupation of Emerald City and it’s about three people living in a city that’s being occupied by a foreign country. The entire book is based on research of occupations, especially Iraq. It’s two years old now but I still think it’s pretty special. Couldn’t find a publisher for it, though, so now it just sits on my computer. Every month, I go back to it and I read through part of it and the temptation to just put it out there is just getting stronger and stronger. 

       What are you working on now? Is the next book in the works yet?

I’m writing the second draft of a book that I think is probably one of the best things I’ve written yet. I’m using first-person narration, just the natural voice that I’ve been so successful with in my published short stories. I’ve never tried that in novel form before, and I have no idea why. I’ve always written in third-person even though that’s not my strong suit. It’s like I had a choice between chocolate cake and carrots, and for some reason I kept picking the carrots.

The story’s about a psychologist treating schizophrenics and it’s based on true events. I actually met someone involved in the original project at a local Starbucks and I would pick his brain every time I bumped into him. Lots of research. Lots of good things happening there. Big Pharma’s not gonna like it, so I suspect they’ll probably kill me soon.

Sometimes, a story really sucks. I’ll go back to it after I’ve finished it and I’ll delude myself into thinking it’s OK so I’ll keep working on it and then I’ll send it out and get a bunch of rejections. Then I’ll look at it again, and I’ll fight the urge to vomit on my keyboard. “What are you thinking?” I’ll ask myself. “Seriously? A story about pirates who find unusual gems filled with the souls of other pirates? That doesn’t make a lick of sense!” Delete.

Sometimes, a story just tingles. I had that with “I Can’t Just Turn It Off,” which is in the book. That story … I sent out the first draft to Glimmer Train and it won a Finalist award. Everything came out almost perfect. Except the ending. The ending needed work. I was lucky enough to find an editor, Richard Peabody, who believed in the story and let me re-submit it three times before it was finally accepted. That’s unprecedented in the world of literary journals. It’s the coolest experience I’ve had so far with a publisher.

So yeah, what I’m trying to say is … this new book? This new book has a tingle.

A friend of mine out here in Ohio, Kelly Kathleen Ferguson, published her first book a few months ago: My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself. Kelly has agreed to let me interview her regarding her experience publishing the book, which I plan to post sometime in March. (She also talks a little bit about the process at the end of the book, if you’re interested.) 

In the meantime, I wanted to talk a little about how much I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the book. It’s funny and poignant, sad at parts, but that plucky, you-can-get-through-this sort of sad. The book details Kelly’s exploits retracing the Ingalls family’s journey west, at the same time exploring Kelly’s relationship with a man she refers to as “My Manly” and her desire to figure out what it is she wants out of life.

Part of the reason I was so pleased that this book was so good was because I remember, a couple of years ago, talking to Kelly about the book while she was writing it. This was not long after I had met Kelly, not long after I found out that Kelly’s first fiction publication—that’s right, her very first—had appeared in no less than the Gettysburg Review. (That same story ended up being nominated for a Pushcart, and it got her noticed by an agent!)

I remember it very clearly: a small group of us were having lunch at Casa Nueva—a highly overrated restaurant in my town, which serves food that kind of, sort of, if you really squint your eyes and hold your nose, resembles Mexican food—and Kelly was talking about working on the book. She really should be home writing, she said, but she knew the second she got home she would probably just curl up on the couch with the cats and take a nap. She was joking around, of course, but the sentiment behind the joke rang true: sometimes she just didn’t feel like writing. She had to get this thing done, she told me, because she’d already lined up a publisher for it. Still, there were definitely days when she had to force herself to get to work.

Cut to a little over two years later: the book is out and it’s fabulous. The work she did definitely paid off, and based on the number of Amazon book reviews it’s already garnered (my book’s been out more than a year and only three people have reviewed it on Amazon), I think it’s selling pretty well. And as I was reading it, I couldn’t stop thinking about that day at Casa, how she hadn’t felt like writing. She hadn’t felt like writing, and yet when she sat down and forced herself to do it anyway, this lovely book is what resulted.

I find it all very reassuring, don’t you? ALL writers have to force it sometimes, even the really, really good ones like Kelly. Nobody walks around in a constant state of inspiration. Some days we stare at the blank screen for what feels like hours, willing the words to come. Others, we have trouble even getting that far. But it’s the writers who sit in front of that computer anyway who eventually produce excellent books like My Life as Laura. We should all take a page out of Kelly’s book.

Sorry, kitty, no nap for me today. I’ve got work to do.

Damien and I watched a documentary about Raymond Carver the other day. The documentary itself wasn’t very good, but Raymond Carver said something that’s been slowly building to a boil in my mind ever since. I don’t have the exact quote (we already returned the DVD to the library), but it was something along the lines of how every story he ever wrote was, while he was working on it, his favorite story. The excitement of watching the story become truly good was, I couldn’t help but assume, what helped Carver develop that famed revision ethic that, in my opinion, all would-be writers should (but don’t always) emulate.

It’s finally hit me, just now, what it was about that quote that seemed so significant to me. It’s the fact that I once felt that way, too. Once. But I haven’t felt that way in a while, not since I got the phone call telling me my first book was about to be published.

Even though I have been writing lately, which sometimes feels like an accomplishment in and of itself considering how distracted I’ve been with my thoughts of the little girl who is growing and growing inside me right now, I haven’t really been producing anything particularly worthwhile. Writing and producing something worthwhile, of course, are not always the same thing. While I can say I’ve definitely spent some time in front of the computer for the past year, I don’t really have much to show for that time, just a bunch of hollow drafts and half-assed revisions. Nothing feels like it’s coming together the way it should, and I don’t, really, feel all that excited about any of my current projects.

Nothing that I’m writing now feels important. On top of that, I feel discouraged by the fact that very few people will likely ever read the book I’ve already published. I realize that’s not supposed to be the point, that we should write for ourselves, but it is a difficult realization, when you discover that this thing you’ve been dreaming about for so long—publishing a book!—is so anticlimactic, is of so little consequence in the end.

It’s strange, but actually winning a fiction prize and publishing my first book has made me ever more cynical about my career as a writer. About writing in general, as a serious endeavor. It’s different when you dabble in writing for fun, but when you reach a point where you’re really invested in it, where your writing is one of the most important things in your life, it can be a hard reality check when you publish a book. Once that short-lived excitement about having “made it” passes, you realize that readers don’t know who you are, that most of them will never even hear about your book, and of the ones who do, few will buy it, and even fewer will actually read it. The thrill of the accomplishment wears off fast, and what you’re left with is the realization that you’ve been so very naïve all these years, when you told yourself that publishing a book actually mattered.

And so, I guess, what it comes down to is that I’m having trouble rekindling that flame that was sort of snuffed out by the harsh reality of actually publishing a book. Where once I felt so excited about each new project, now I find myself wondering, sure, but what’s the point? Who cares about this stupid story? Even if I publish it, who cares? The excitement that Raymond Carver spoke of has left me, and I’m not sure whether it will ever come back.

But I did speak last time of how this shift in perspective is a strange sort of relief. It’s depressing sometimes—I feel it as an acute loss—but at the same time, it’s kind of liberating, too. It used to feel essential that I wrote and wrote a lot, that I produced and published, that I pushed myself to be the writer I wanted to believe I was. Suddenly, now, those things don’t seem to matter. So what if I don’t write today? So what if this story ends up going nowhere and I give up on it? It doesn’t matter in any real sort of way.

The things that really matter, I see now, are my baby, my marriage, my ability to extend, in whatever way I can, the few moments of true happiness that ever come my way. Sometimes writing brings me that kind of happiness, but thinking about my baby delights me in a way that no story and no publication ever has. There’s something reassuring about that. It’s reassuring to be reminded that writing isn’t all there is, that whether I publish something or not doesn’t really matter, that there is more to life than ambition and drive. That sometimes, just sitting back and living is enough.

Success as a creative writer, like most (or perhaps all) artistic endeavors, requires many things: a small amount of inspiration; a small amount of talent; a large amount of determination (bred, perhaps, of naiveté and self-confidence); a large amount of plain, old fashioned, roll-your-sleeves-up-and-get-dirty hard work; and, more important than anything else, a very, very, very large amount of luck. And the truth is, while I wouldn’t urge anyone who didn’t possess all the first four qualities to get their hopes up, that last one is really the make-or-break you one, and you can, in fact, reach a ridiculously high level of success with luck alone (but you’d have to be really, really lucky . . .).

This, of course, is disheartening for those of us who don’t see ourselves as particularly lucky people. It’s frustrating to think that I can get inspired with a great idea, I can combine talent and hard work to get the idea down, and I can be determined, can plow through rejections and keep at it and keep at it, and still end up nowhere if I don’t happen to get lucky somewhere along the way. Can you imagine if other things in life were like this?

What if, for example, you were invited to a friend’s house, but in giving you directions to her house, she warned you that even if you follow all of these directions exactly, her house is under a Brigadoon style curse and is only visible to outsiders at random times; you’ll have to just hope that when you arrive, you’ll be able to see it and can come in. Let’s assume, also, that her house is very far away. To make the trip at all will entail several days on the road. Would you make the trip anyway?

Your answer to that question surely relies on your answer to another question: how badly do you want to see your friend? Like with writing, your answer to that question will at least decide whether or not you even stand a chance of making it. If she’s just an acquaintance, you probably won’t care to make the trip. If she, however, is someone very important to you, you might be willing to risk it, even if your chances of actually seeing her at the end are slim. At least there is a chance, and if you didn’t go at all, there wouldn’t be.

Perhaps the key difference between this analogy and writing is that many would-be writers don’t realize how much luck has to go into their success, so it’s a little bit like if your friend forgot to mention to you the curse. Many would-be writers, actually, believe that it all comes down to talent. I’m sorry, but there are far more writers with talent in this world than there are writers who will ever reach any notable level of success. Writers with talent are everywhere you look. Inspired writers are, too. Writers with enough determination (which is linked to wanting it bad enough) and writers who are willing to put the work in are less abundant, and the writers who have all of those qualities and will also get lucky are even scarcer.

For those of us who fully understand this and have, for whatever reason, chosen to stick to it, anyway, there is a glimmer of light at the end of it all, although to see it, you might have to adjust your glasses (read: expectations) a bit. If you are in this for fame, fortune, and validation, you might be heading down a long, dark road, at the end of which you may or may not be rewarded for your efforts. If you’re in it, though, because you love writing, because (to extend the previous metaphor to the breaking point) you’ve decided that it’s okay if you don’t get to see your friend—you’d like to get out and see a bit more of the world, and the journey will be your reward—then you might find that it was all worth it in the end, even if when you arrive, your friend’s house is nowhere to be found.

It’s baseball season again, a fact which really wouldn’t affect my life in any way except that I’m married to someone for whom baseball makes the world go ‘round. Even though in general, I still really don’t care about baseball (or any sport, to be honest, although sometimes certain events at the Olympics can be kind of exciting), I do like that baseball makes my husband so happy—almost giddy, sometimes—and when he really gets caught up in the heat of it, he tends to share with me all kinds of anecdotes about the game and its players, which I enjoy hearing.

He told me a story this morning that I think is the perfect metaphor for what it takes to be a writer (or to be good at any kind of artistic or sporty endeavor). It came up because we were talking about him playing catch with a friend of his; it’s an activity he loves to do, but it always leaves his body sore. “I’m no pro,” he said. “I can’t do anything athletic without getting sore.” But then we realized that probably pro players get sore too; they just power through it. They do it anyway because they love the game so much (I’m sure the fact that they make tons of money off of doing it doesn’t hurt their motivation, either).

Then he told me the story of Andre Dawson, a professional baseball player who had to have his trainers break his scar tissue before every game so that he could play. He said Dawson would excuse himself into a private room and close the door, but the other players still saw the tears streaming down his cheeks when he would come back out again. Breaking that tissue before every game must have caused incredible pain, but he had to do it if he wanted to be flexible enough to play. 

I’m sure if you want to go pro, some genetic issues have to line up just right, but I imagine there are a lot of people who genetically have what it takes to play. The real difference, I think, between the people who go pro and the people who play catch once or twice a week with a friend comes down to much more than just genetics. Part of it, obviously, is that you have to want to be a baseball player to begin with (my husband, and many others like him, don’t really want that—they want to watch and sometimes throw the ball around with friends, but they don’t really want it to be their careers). But even wanting to play is not enough; you have to want it bad. You have to want it so bad you’re willing to do it even when it hurts. You have to want it so bad you give up other things you’d rather be doing because you have to practice. You have to want it so bad that you intentionally inflict pain on yourself if it means you’ll be able to play.

Okay, maybe writing doesn’t require physical pain to get good. We writers don’t have to break our fingers every morning in order to be able to type fast enough or anything like that. But we do have to sacrifice. We do have to write even when we don’t feel like it, or even when there is something else going on that we feel like doing instead. We have to pick apart our own abilities, recognize our flaws and learn to overcome them. We have to understand that being sufficiently intelligent and wanting to be a writer are not enough. What it really takes is that extra effort, that drive to power through the pain, that will to get up an hour earlier than you have to in order to make sure you get at least an hour of writing time in every single day.

One of my husband’s peers in his MA program out here—a lit student, not creative writing—once told us that he used to want to be a writer, but then he realized that being a real writer took more than just writing a first draft of a story when he felt inspired. If he really wanted to be a writer, he would have to dedicate his life to it; he would have to push himself hard at it and make real sacrifices. So he decided not to pursue it. “I like the idea of being a writer,” he said, “but I don’t actually want to do the things it would take to be a writer, so I think I’ll stick to lit.” Not many would-be writers are that cool, I have to tell you. Not many hobbyists really understand that they are not putting in the same effort as the writers who are having consistent publication success.

This all doesn’t mean that people who don’t have that drive can’t dabble. There’s nothing wrong with being a now-and-then sort of writer, a hobbyist, and in fact, I think it’s a healthy way to get in touch with your creative side and explore the world around you, and it can be very rewarding. I think everybody who wants to write should do it, even if nobody but they themselves will ever read what they’ve written. But if you really want a shot at the big game, or even just consistent success in the minor leagues (since after all, let’s be honest, the big game takes more than genetics and wanting it bad enough; the big game takes a heavy dose of pure, unadulterated luck), I think you need to be pushing yourself harder than just writing when you feel like it or when you feel inspired.

In a recent Salon.com article, Laura Miller discusses the increasing importance of self-promotion for writers. Miller compares the current state of the literary world to times gone by, when authors like J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee (just to name a few of Miller’s examples) were able to have their writerly cake and eat it too, being both reclusive and successful at once. In the contemporary literary market, Miller points out, “someone like [Harper] Lee might as well not bother; however good her book is, it won't find an audience unless she's willing and able to make hawking it at least a part-time job.”

This is so true. So depressing and yet so true. As someone who has recently published my own first book, I have to admit that I’m a bit discouraged by how much of a published writer’s job is just getting out there and trying to sell his or her book. I have to admit that, while I’m still excited about having a book published, I’ve also found the entire experience anti-climactic in that writing the book, it seems, was just one small step in the being a published writer process. Now that the book is out there, I have to become a salesman, which is something I’m not particularly good at, nor is it something that I really want to do. I hate selling. I’m like Lloyd Dobler (from Say Anything) in that way: “I don’t want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything as a career.”  

But unfortunately, it turns out that a good deal of a writer’s job is spent in PR and sales. I’m introverted and socially awkward—that’s why I got to be so good at writing to begin with. Instead of spending time outside, interacting with other kids my age, I stayed inside and wrote. At the time, of course, I wasn’t thinking about one day trying to publish the things I wrote, but if I had been, it surely wouldn’t have occurred to me that if I did publish them, I would have to then get out there and try to make those other kids, who I was afraid of to begin with and didn’t know how to talk to, like me enough to want to buy my book.

And what I find the most discouraging is not even that I have to get out there and push my wares, but the fact that even if I do, my book is still unlikely to reach a very wide audience. I can set up readings and book signings galore, but I’ll be lucky if very many people show up, never having heard of me, and even luckier if I actually sell more than a copy or two per event. It feels, sometimes, fairly futile. And all of the time and energy I put into those events take away, as Miller says, from the time I could spend writing.

So yes, I think the true state of the publishing world is a bit depressing. It’s depressing for the writers who will never reach much of an audience because they don’t know how to sell themselves, and it’s depressing for readers, who end up only hearing about a small fraction of the great stuff out there, and who, even then, are most likely to only hear about the writers who A) Spend more time marketing themselves than writing, and as a result are not great writers, or B) Have been deemed marketable enough by the gods that be at a major publishing house that the publisher is willing to spend time and money on promoting their book(s). While certainly the latter group includes some good writers, both groups, I’m afraid, include a lot of hacks and otherwise lousy writers. In other words, I don’t think it actually is that far-fetched to suggest that most of the really good writers aren’t even on the radars of most readers.

This all sounds like a rant, perhaps, or at least a whole lot of complaining. I don’t mean to complain. I’m a cynic, certainly, but I don’t see myself as a pessimist. I guess to some extent I think it’s interesting, as both a reader and writer, to be aware of how these things really work. I don’t know that there’s a solution to the problem. I suppose as readers, we have to be diligent about seeking out new work, and as writers, we have to be willing to put the time and effort in to selling a book or two here, a book or two there. But even then, there’s going to be a whole lot of great writers that I’ll never hear of as a reader, and there’s going to be a whole lot of potential readers that I’ll never reach as a writer. And I suppose that’s just the way it goes.

So I’ve been trying a sort of experiment for the last couple of months, where I haven’t been setting myself any kind of strict writing goals. Ever since I started taking writing really seriously, back when I was in my first year of my MFA program, I’ve been setting monthly writing goals—which I sometimes don’t meet, I admit, but which always seem to push me to spend more time actually writing than I probably would without the goals.

This past December, I decided that I had reached a kind of writing slump and needed to try to push myself out of it with some new type of goal setting. I posted here, asking for other people to talk about what works for them personally. The response was unexpected and made me completely rethink the idea of goal setting—many writers, it seems, don’t set goals at all. In fact, many people mentioned that they feel strict goals would have the opposite of the desired effect, making them want to rage against the “have to” of writing.

After reading and thinking about all the responses I received, I decided to switch my goal system from concrete hours per month spent writing—a system that had actually worked quite well for me in the past, having seen me through my first publications and even the publication of my first book—to more general project goals. I wanted to finish the millionth revision of my thesis novel (which I did) and to finish the current draft of my new novel (which I haven’t hardly touched at all in the past few months). I also wanted to work on some new stories, if the ideas came—the ideas did come, and I have been working on some stories.

But I have to say, the amount of work I’ve put into my writing ever since I chucked the idea of concrete time goals out the window has dramatically decreased. I mean dramatically. In November of last year, I spent roughly an hour a day writing. This was less than I would have liked, which is why I felt I needed to change my goal system—to see if I could spice things up and push that number higher. At my most productive, I average somewhere around three hours a day, and I’ve always held that number as my golden ideal. But instead of writing more, what happened is that in December, the number of hours I spent writing dropped to about half an hour a day, and it’s remained there ever since.

It’s time to accept the fact that this was a failed experiment. I’m glad to hear that other people don’t need to set such concrete goals to keep writing, but I do. If I don’t keep track of how much I’m writing, and keep an overall goal number in mind, I just don’t write anywhere near as much as I want to. Then I feel depressed. Then I feel like I’m a fraud—I’m trying to convince people to buy my book, and yet deep down inside, I don’t even believe I should be calling myself a writer.

The fact is, I’m not happy if I’m not writing a lot. I need to write, or else the weight of the world starts pressing down on me. The only way I know how to make life feel meaningful is through creating meaning where there wasn’t any before. And the only way I know how to do that is by writing. So I’m giving up on this idea of expecting myself to just automatically do what’s good for me. It’s like eating healthy, exercising, or even taking anti-depressants. It’s not something that most of us would really do if we didn’t decide we needed to, but it’s something that we do, indeed, need to do.

I recently watched George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead, which is an awful, awful movie, in case you haven’t seen it yet. I kind of figured it wasn’t going to be any good because Diary of the Dead was so lousy, but I make sure to give all of Romero’s “of the dead” movies a chance. This movie was awful not just because the plot was boring and uninspired (much like Diary of the Dead), but also, it just used a lot of cheap gimmicks and amateurish writing stunts—the sort of thing I would expect to see being submitted to an introductory creative writing workshop.

How is it that the person who co-wrote Night of the Living Dead, and single-handedly wrote Dawn of the Dead, could go on to write crap like this? In my opinion, since Dawn, Romero’s “of the dead” movies have gotten progressively worse: Day had some good things about it, but overall, it’s kind of boring; ditto Land, which was a little worse than Day, and then Diary and Survival are just so bad they’re really not worth watching unless you’re a hardcore fan.

It calls into question my entire view of how people become good writers: that if you practice, you’ll get good, and eventually you’ll theoretically get good enough that readers (or in this case, viewers) will be able to consistently count on you to always put out good stuff. Romero’s first feature length film, his very first, was the one that has gone down in history as the movie that defines zombie movies (prior to Night, let’s not forget, the word “zombie” meant a body—living or dead—whose mind is being controlled by a master). We could have perhaps assumed that John Russo (co-writer of Night) was the one that made Night so brilliant, except for the fact that Romero went on to write Dawn, which is, in my opinion, even better than Night (and is waaaaaay better than Russo’s version of follow-up to Night, the Return of the Living Dead movies, although some of them are fun and definitely worth a watch).

So the practice makes perfect idea did seem to apply to Romero’s career early on, but how do I make sense of the gradual decline of the series since Dawn? If it were true that you get better and better as you write more and that eventually you should reach a point where you can be counted on to always write good stuff, then Survival should be the best of them all. It just doesn’t add up.

And Romero here isn’t the exception that proves the rule. Many writers, if you look at their progression from early career forward, do not consistently put out good stuff, or perhaps it’s that they’re not able to always recognize whether something they’ve written is good enough to publish. Either way, there are many more besides Romero who do this (and I would also point out that there is a difference between the subjective nature of work—where I might think something is lousy but another, equally discerning reader might disagree—and the fairly universal state of “badness.” I’ve never met anyone who thought Diary of the Dead was good, and in fact, even though many of my friends are avid horror movie fanatics, I don’t know anyone besides myself and my husband who even gave Survival a chance; many people have simply given up on Romero’s zombie movies by now).

So it seems that my theory of practice getting you where you want to be is flawed, or at least, I think it’s partially true but is too limited. Something more is needed to explain how some people (usually the writers who only put out one book every several years) do seem consistently brilliant (and I wonder if those writers are writing other things inbetween, things that are not brilliant, things that we readers never see), while others can put out something amazing one year and something absolutely terrible the next.

The truth, I think, is far more complicated than that if you just keep at it, you’ll eventually get really good. I think even the best writers are still capable of writing crap, and maybe even very bad writers are capable of hitting on something amazing, by chance. Which means that writing will never get easy. There’ll be times where you have a great idea and it comes together perfectly, and times where, after several drafts, you just have to junk a piece because it will never work. But hopefully, knowing that will help staunch the pain of those failed pieces, and it might help us make sense of why sometimes the words seem to come so easily, and other times, inexplicably, we feel like we don’t really know what we’re doing all over again.

Years ago, someone told me (and I haven’t been able to verify the quote, so this is very word-of-mouth, my friends) that in an interview, Kurt Cobain was asked to explain the lyrics to “Smells like Teen Spirit.” Cobain refused, and said that he makes music that people like him will understand. My friend was offering this up to me in an “Isn’t that cool?” sort of way, but my reaction at the time was that it was a lame way of getting around the fact that the lyrics didn’t mean anything. I thought, Shouldn’t good art be comprehensible? If you create a work of art but nobody knows what it means, you failed as an artist. Right???

Thinking back on it now, after years of advanced education in literature and creative writing, it’s an interesting idea to revisit. Do I still feel that way? As a writer myself, what audience am I trying to reach? Can I picture myself telling somebody who doesn’t understand one of my stories that I write stories that people like me will understand?

For the past few years, I feel like I’ve been constantly going back and forth on the question of whether “good” art is art that is appreciated by a lot of people or whether it is art that people educated in that particular artistic genre will be able to appreciate. I think there are strong arguments for both sides. Since there can be no set-in-stone standard for what makes a work of art “good,” or what the word “good” even means, it makes sense to say that a work of art’s quality can only fairly be judged by how popular it is. If people like it, it’s “good.”

However, if I pick up a book by, say, Nicholas Sparks (who is my go-to example of a terrible writer who is nonetheless hugely popular), I’m going to be so utterly outraged by how awful the writing is, how contrived the plot is, how one-dimensional the characters are, that there’s no way that I would be able to enjoy it. If you give me a Nicholas Sparks book and ask me, “Is this good art,” I will assume the question is sarcastic because the answer, to me, is so obviously, “No.”

But. If you must have an advanced education in literature to access a particular writer’s work, does that actually mean that the writer is “better” than a popular writer, whose work is accessible to ordinary people? Some days I think that “good” writers should try to bridge the gap between the educated folks and the masses. Other days I think that “good” writers should just accept that ordinary, everyday people will never be able to appreciate “good” art, that we have to decide between writing something that is actually artistically worthwhile and writing something that the average Joe will be able to understand.

Other days, though, I think it’s just not as cut-and-dry as that. There are some brilliant writers who are very successful (the top of my list includes Rick Moody, Bret Easton Ellis, J. D. Salinger, Zadie Smith, and there are many more). Yet for every one popular writer who I would say is “good,” there are many more popular writers who, in my opinion, are writing stuff that my seven-year-old nephew could have written. Of course, “good” art is in the eye of the beholder. If a reader—many millions of readers, actually—likes Nicholas Sparks, then to that reader, Sparks is “good.”

The question, though, remains, what should I be aiming for as a writer? Do I want to reach as wide an audience as possible, or do I want to write stuff that people with MFA's and PhD's will like? Back before I had a book published, I admit I had an idealistic image of somehow bridging that gap between the two, of being one of those lucky few writers who has managed to write accessible stuff that actually becomes popular while also pleasing those of us who look for subtlety, craft techniques, unique plots, etc. I certainly like to believe that the stories in my book would be accessible to most readers while also being able to withstand the critical magnifying glasses of my peers, but I’ll probably never know, because my book will not reach a very wide audience no matter what. Ordinary people don’t read literary short story collections written by unknown writers and published by small presses, and so I guess I made my decision without even realizing it when I wrote the book and decided to try to publish it.

And the truth is, now that the book is out, I’m glad that I wrote something that I don’t feel ashamed to share with my friends, who are mostly English instructors and writers themselves. I’m not so deluded that I don’t know that some people will read the book and feel that it does not line up with their image of “good” writing, but I do believe that an educated, literary person could read and appreciate what I’ve written. And even though I would have made way more money and be considered, by more people, a “good” writer if I had written, say, a cheesy romance novel, I’m still glad that I wrote the book that I did. Even though I can’t seem to find an agent for the novel that was my thesis, I’m still glad that it’s the novel that it is. I’m fine with being published in small journals that nobody but other writers read and putting out books through small presses that don’t have the funds to market their catalogue to a wide audience.

Because really, even though the much younger, more naïve version of myself would have said this older me is just a bad artist justifying bad art, I’ve decided that I really don’t mind only writing stuff that people like me will understand.

It’s time now for the inevitable year in review post. In 2010 I made a lot of what felt like great strides in my writing career: I was nominated for a Pushcart, I was named a finalist for a couple of writing contests, I was solicited by an agent as well as by a literary journal, and I won Autumn House Press’s Fiction Prize, which resulted in the publication of my first book. If ever there was a year to look back and be proud of my accomplishments, this year was it.

Yet I feel strangely dissatisfied with all of that, and dissatisfied with the work I put in as a writer this year. Most of these accomplishments, it’s important to note, are a result of work I did in previous years. In 2010, although I had some success, I didn’t write anywhere near as much as I have in past years. During much of the year, I was distracted with my career as a teacher or I was working under editorial deadlines for writing projects that didn’t really engage me the way I would have liked.

In some ways, I feel that all the hard work I’ve been putting in the past several years is really starting to pay off, and that’s a nice feeling. It’s nice to know that it wasn’t for naught. At the same time, though, I’m beginning to have some of my dreams come true (I know that’s a cliché, but it’s literally accurate), and the experience is exactly as anticlimactic as many published authors say it is. Signing my first book contract, although exciting at first, didn’t really change my life in any meaningful way. I went from being an author with several published stories that hardly anybody will ever read to an author with a short story collection that hardly anybody will ever read. All the book pub really gets me is a better chance at landing a full time job as an English instructor, and even then, a second book might be necessary.

Let me just say, I’m not taking publishing a book for granted. I’m very lucky that my book is getting published, and I’m lucky that it’s being published by such an excellent small press. I’m lucky that the physical book itself is so astonishingly beautiful and that somebody read what I had written and wanted to pay me money for it.

But even if this book wasn’t getting published, the experience of writing it would still have been worthwhile. I enjoyed writing these stories, and even if nobody were ever to read them but me, my workshop peers and instructors, and my friends and loved ones, it really wouldn’t matter. The experience of writing them gave my life meaning, and I think that’s the reason why the publication of the book itself feels anticlimactic. Because prior to getting the book published, I had already gained something major from having written it, something far more important than the physical book itself.

The whole experience raises the question: what it is that I’m really working towards? I’ve been putting a lot of effort into building my CV and furthering my career as a teacher, and writing has unfortunately become inextricably linked with that in my mind. I have to write, because I have to publish, because I have to try to find a better job. A job that gives me health insurance and a reasonable salary and that I can rely on from one quarter to the next.

I don’t like the idea of writing being part of my work life. I don’t like the publish-or-die mentality of academia, where the question isn’t even what have you published, but what have you published lately; what will you publish next?  I don’t want my writing life to be based on publication; I don’t want to boil it down to notches on my CV. I want to write because it makes life fun, because it’s exciting, getting sucked into another world for a while. I want to write for myself. Publishing what I’ve written is nice, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to have to. I want publishing to be a secondary goal, only once I’ve gotten my own  pleasure from the experience of writing. And I don’t want to let my career interests get in the way of the writing itself.

Which brings me to my goals for 2011. The truth is, this year I just want to be happy. I want to spend as few hours as possible this year being stressed or doing things I don’t want to do. How do I intend to accomplish that? Well, I want to work on my new novel, because I like these characters and want to spend more time in their world, and I’m tired of pushing it off to the side because there are other, more immediately publishable things I “should” be working on. I’d love it if I end up getting sucked into some new stories, too, but you know what I absolutely am not including in my goals? Publication.

Ever since I started getting published, I’ve had at least two things come out a year. The beauty of 2011 is that I already have two things scheduled to come out: my book, and a creative nonfiction essay I was solicited to write. If I go the entire year without publishing anything else, it still won’t feel like a step backwards, so I’m just not going to worry about publishing at all this year. I'll probably still submit things, but only if/when I want to, and I won't write for the purpose of submitting. All I really want right now is to write, not to have written, not to be a Writer, not to have an increasingly more impressive CV. I just want to write because I enjoy writing. None of the rest of it matters, really, at all.