Writers on Writing: When Bad Stuff Happens

I was on a panel at LTUE last month and I think we all ended up being surprised to discover the recent bad stories that people had to share. Three of the five of us were Egmont authors, and we talked about what it meant to have books canceled by the closing of Egmont USA. But everyone had a story to tell about being treated badly by publishers (and I don’t mean to say publishers are always evil—just that sometimes a business decision can feel very personal).

It could have been a really negative part of the day, but instead it turned out to be really inspiring. One author talked about how she had spent the year before really figuring out how to love writing again. And because of that, she had already made a lot of the changes that she needed to have made before she moved forward with changing houses and re-branding herself.

I talked about moving from YA to adult, and how being in a place where I had started to send out job applications made me cherish what I thought were my last few months of writing. I decided to write a couple of books that I had never dared to write before. They were books I didn’t intend to send to anyone because I was sure they wouldn’t be any good. But The Bishop’s Wife was one of those books. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in such a weird little book. I wrote it purely for myself, and that taught me a lot about the difference between writing a good story you think other people will enjoy and writing a story that you need to write. If you’re not writing the book that only you can write, then why are you writing?

Another author talked about working full-time as a lawyer, being fired, and then realizing that his severance package gave him a couple of years to figure out if he could finally get down that novel that had been in his brain for a while.

And then there was an author who talked about figuring out how to market herself after being dropped by her publisher.

Basically, these were all stories about people triumphing over a terrible setback. I suppose we were lucky to have gotten us all at the right point, so that we could talk about the past moment with a bit of perspective. But I also think that writers are often plucky people. We don’t get a lot of outside feedback or cheering for our work, so we have learned how to give ourselves what we need to keep going. That’s an important part of being a writer, I think.