I'm a Writer Because

When I first started writing, I was absolutely convinced that I would become a NYT Bestseller. I had spent my life being successful at goals I set for myself, and I didn’t see why this one would be any different. I had been very successful in academia, getting a PhD at age 24 at Princeton, and I figured I would continue to experience the same thing. I was going to win awards and make money because I was smart and I worked harder than anyone I knew.
Then reality struck. I wrote 20 really bad novels in the next five years. I sent them to every editor possibly on the planet. I got humiliating rejection letters and a few mildly tepid encouraging ones. This was not the same as anything else I’d ever done. You couldn’t just expect hard work to do the job for you. There were a bunch of other factors at play here.
Luck in meeting the right person at the right time. Luck in hitting the market at the right time. Luck in having a voice that connected to other people. And also, writing is an art. There is skill involved, but there is also something that isn’t quantifiable, that can’t be duplicated. It really can’t.
Yes, I eventually sold a first novel for a small advance to a small company. Yes, I got a good agent. Yes, I got decent reviews and some minor awards for that first book. But it took me five years to get that one deal, and I’m sure I spent more money on postage sending books out and going to conferences than I earned from that first check. And it took three more years to sell another book. And two more years to sell the book after that.
But then I finally wrote a book that sold well, and I had a publishing company that seemed to be behind me. I had a fabulous editor and I had a contract for books I hadn’t even written yet. This was the dream, right?
Only my editor was laid off from the publishing house and I was assigned a new editor. Things didn’t go so well from there. My big contract was canceled and when I sold a new book, it absolutely tanked for reasons that are still not clear to me. And I began to talk about pseudonyms in order to save my career.
I also began to think about how much time I had spent doing this and whether I had reached the point where I should be considering a “real” career. I had skills, didn’t I? I had once had many employment offers from big companies because I was smart and hard-working and generally considered to be socially acceptable. In the business world, these assets would be well compensated.
But the reality was, I wasn’t finished. I had books I still wanted to write. I had things I still had to say to the world. I had things I needed to figure out how to say to myself, forms I needed put to experiences I had had. I needed the shape of writing books in my life. I loved writing too much to let it go.
And you know, I think this may have been a really good thing that happened to me. Because I stopped caring about bestseller status. I stopped worrying about money because I figured I basically wasn’t going to get any for my writing. I began to read books because I wanted to read them again, instead of because I thought they would be valuable for learning about the market.
Sometimes, the only way to realize what matters to you most is when everything else gets taken away. And writing really matters to me. I’m not a writer because it’s my job. I’m not a writer because it’s the way I hope to make money. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with making money at writing or at seeing writing as a job. It just wasn’t what ultimately mattered to me. And this was the way that I found that out.
I am a writer because it’s the way I live in the world. It’s the way that I see television shows, the way I listen to bits and pieces of conversation in the mall, the way that I talk to friends and warn them that they are going to end up in a book. It’s the way I think about putting words to the food I just ate, and to talking about the workout I just finished, and explaining to people why the book I read was fabulous—or terrible.
If you had told me fifteen years ago that this is how things would turn out, I would have thought it was a tragic story, but it isn’t. I’m so glad to be where I am today. I’m glad to be the person I am. Because what I learned was that I am far tougher and more resilient that I ever knew. And I am deep down to a part of my soul I didn’t know existed a writer and creator and thinker and shaker. I feel and I connect and I argue. I am a writer still, and that can’t be taken away.