A Deeper, Subtler, Type Of Satisfaction

Thirty-five years ago, in 1984, I was making my living running a one-man carpentry business in Williamstown, Massachusetts. A few years earlier, my father had found me an old Sears van at auction and had it fixed up and repainted. In that van I carried around a modest collection of tools from six months working with a carpenter on Martha's Vineyard during the one awful winter we lived there, and four years of intermittent odd jobs and small projects, after each one of which I'd try to buy a new tool. I had a regular ad in the local newspaper that brought in enough work to let me pay my share of the bills (Amanda was bartending then at a restaurant that no longer exists, The River House, in Williamstown. We'd just bought our first house - for $40,000 - a four-room cape two miles down a dirt road, just over the border in southwestern Vermont). I took whatever offers came along: painting, decks, steps, shingling, simple repairs, easy tile jobs, even a bit of masonry and roofing.



One evening that summer I had a call from a woman who told me her name was Nancy Doherty. She said she lived in a big house on South Street that needed work. Could I come over and take a look and maybe give an estimate?

It turned out that Nancy was married to Joe McGinniss, the famous author of, among other books, THE SELLING OF THE PRESIDENT. The house they lived in, a gracious and rambling old creature, had carpenter ants in the raised back deck and a lot of structural rot there. It was a fairly big job, by my standards, and I was glad to have the work.



By then I had been writing seriously for about seven years and desperately wanted to make a career as a writer. But, I never used that word in describing myself; the dream of the writing life meant too much to me.

One of my rules was that I would never say I was a writer until, or unless, I published a novel. And another of my rules was that I would try not to 'use' people, that I'd avoid making the acquaintance of well known writers just for the purpose of cultivating contacts in the publishing world.

So, though Joe and I had a number of conversations during the weeks I spent fixing up his house, I never mentioned my secret passion. He was working hard on the book that would become FATAL VISION, a tragic story that became a big bestseller and ended up making him and Nancy some real money. But he was worried about money then, and worried, I think, about his career, and on breaks from his desk, he'd come outside and talk to me about the book, and I could tell it was a very difficult time for him, a very difficult book to get right under that kind of pressure.



I finished the job late that summer and, in October, got word that I'd been invited to the Edna St. Vincent Millay artists' colony in Austerlitz, New York. One full month of lodging, food, and a place to write, all expenses paid. It was the first piece of news I'd had that made me think I might actually have a shot at becoming a published writer. Before that, with one or two exceptions, I'd had nothing but a long list of rejections and many hours of doubt.



The residency was scheduled for February. I wrote longhand in those days, then typed up the manuscripts on an electric typewriter. The day I left for the Millay Colony I went down to the stationery store in Williamstown and bought some supplies. As I was leaving I happened to bump into Joe. He asked me what I was doing. I told him about the Millay invitation and he seemed both surprised and sincerely pleased for me. "When you finish the novel, let me take a look," he said.

I did send him an early draft of the novel and he did read part of it, but I didn't hear much beyond a short, encouraging note.

Thirty years ago, in June of 1989, that same novel, LEAVING LOSAPAS, was finally accepted. I'd been working on it for five years by then, and been working at writing - mostly at night and on weekends - for eleven years. The editor at Houghton Mifflin asked if I knew any writers who might provide a blurb. I mentioned Joe's name, and Joe was generous enough to read the finished book and give me a beautiful quote for the jacket. From that point on we stayed in touch fairly regularly. In January of 1993 he turned down a teaching job at Bennington College, but recommended me for the position, and I ended up teaching Literature and Writing there, meeting some very fine students and fellow teachers, before resigning in protest of faculty firings at the end of 1999.



Joe was a complicated guy, as the saying goes, and he made some mistakes in his life and career. (Who among us, upon honest reflection, has not?) But he was also a superb writer, a big-hearted guy, a fan of the underdog, a doer of many favors, and I was certainly one of the beneficiaries of his kindness. He died a few years ago and Nancy asked me to be one of the people who spoke at the memorial service in New York. I was honored, naturally, and I hold onto a lot of good memories connected to that day, and to Joe and Nancy.

I remember certain things he said over the course of our acquaintance. One comment in particular sticks in my mind, because my novel, ONCE NIGHT FALLS, was released yesterday by Lake Union Publishing.



"On the day your book gets published," Joe said, "You expect a parade to go by your house. Fire engines, marching bands, the whole show. But that doesn't happen."

These days, after twenty plus publications, I understand what he meant by that remark. It's not that I take a new publication for granted. I don't. Just the opposite, in fact: you've put months or years into the book, you've gone through all the various stages: the agent sends it out, you wait for news, you get bad news, and terrible news, and then no news, and then maybe good news, you sign a contract, meet the editor, you discuss changes, you make changes, you go through the tedious work of re-reading various copyedits and galleys, you fill out the publicity questionnaire, you may receive pre-publication reviews, and if they're good you're happy, and if they're bad you're depressed.

You wait.

And then the big day arrives and you can't help but feel a strange mixture of pride, fear, and hope. Usually, though, nothing happens on that day. Often, the success or failure of the book has been determined long in advance, and has at least as much to do with the publisher's commitment as with the quality of your own work. You can't help hoping the phone will ring, though, or an email will show up, and something magical and life-changing will fall into your lap. You can't help peeking out the window, wondering if, just this once, there might be a parade.

But there is no parade, as Joe counseled.

There are, though, subtler satisfactions: the feeling of having finished something that required a large degree of self-discipline and self-belief, of seeing your book published; then maybe some positive reviews, or wonderful notes from readers, or you get invited to speak someplace and earn a little money that way, or the book gets optioned for film. Sometimes the sales are good and you end up receiving royalty checks for years and years.

It's an odd business, much less straightforward than carpentry, where, if you do a good job the customer pays you and mentions you to others. There are no agents and publicists and editors and critics and sales and marketing people standing between you and the bank. It's just your work, with usually one or two people to please.

This is certainly not a complaint. Carpentry is much harder on the body, and it, too, can involve waiting for the phone to ring - along with other woes like cranky customers and tricky jobs. I feel blessed and fortunate, and I am grateful to the agents, editors, publicists, and copyeditors and all the other people at the publishing houses that have helped put my work into the world. I feel especially grateful to people like Joe, to friends who introduced me to agents, read my pages, lent me a computer, bought my books, invited me to read someplace for pay, provided a blurb, mentioned a book to someone else or proposed it to a book club.

On publication day there's a feeling of accomplishment, sure: the writer knows better than anyone how much work and sacrifice and frustration and worry went into those pages. At the same time, though, while someone might write a book alone, no one makes a book alone. I always thank Amanda first, for her patience and support, but, really, there are countless other people to thank, too.

The friendship of those people, their efforts, their generosity and good wishes - that's what writers have instead of a parade. I'm at peace with that. I imagine Joe McGinniss was, too.