My writing career has actually been a 30-year apprenticeship, starting when I was six years old and saw a large, hard-bound book with unlined blank pages for sale in a bookstore. I was convinced that if only I had a book like that, if only I could fill one of those blank books with all of my stories and poems, then I would be a real author, someone who had written a real book. Last week – after a lifetime of submitting to magazines and contests, writing new features and ad copy to pay bills – I was standing in the middle of the Book Expo in New York when I finally got to hold my first published novel in my hands. What I understand now is that it’s all about persistence, about doing, not talking about “the work” or thinking about it or fantasizing about it, but crossing the bridge between planning and doing. I’m convinced that everyone spends about half of their lives secretly caressing at least one closeted idea for a book, film, business or invention, and it’s not actually the most gifted people who succeed, it’s the ones who follow through who make it. When it comes to writing, you find that in order to make it you have to do again and again – write, rewrite, send out tidal waves of submissions and queries - because it really is a subjective art, and the process of publication can seem glacially slow. It took less than six months to write the first draft of Open Me, eight months to construct the query letter I sent out to lure an agent to represent the manuscript, and about five years before I signed a contract with MacAdam/Cage Publishing.

It was definitely a shock when I discovered that the writing industry really is a business, an honest-to-goodness industry, populated with just as many self-absorbed and schmucky people as any other trade. Sadly, most folks who buy books today aren’t purchasing literature (doesn’t that sounds like an anachronistic word?) and the industry seems focused primarily on making money, not art. What becomes important is what will sell. This has been a real problem for me, because my work has been described as lyrical, poetic, gorgeous – but never marketable. I’m not a huge fan of linear storytelling – beginning-middle-end narrative – which caused some problems when it was time to shop Open Me. What I kept hearing from perspective agents and publishers was that the writing was brilliant and beautiful, that the story idea was incredibly original, but that the book wasn’t commercial enough. For people who are in the business primarily to make money, my novel was an obvious risk. I kept thinking about books like Sexing the Cherry, The Waves, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I became convinced that none of these works would be able to find representation or publication today. I also kept coming up against this assumption that readers don’t want to have to do any work while reading, that they need everything spelled out for them. I never thought I’d have to put so much energy into re-writing for the sake of the readers – or buyers - as opposed to the sake of the book.

Having said that, there are some amazing book-loving people still working in the industry, like my agent, Marianne Merola, and my editor at MacAdam/Cage Publishing, Kate Nitze. Both of these women have been fierce advocates for what they believe to be meaningful, beautiful, valuable work. A good writer needs great champions (and having a great spouse doesn’t hurt). Also, we’re talking about publishing a novel here, a lifelong dream come to fruition, so how bad could it really be? How could I possibly complain when my publishers ask for another rewrite? So what if I’m not in love with the cover? Is it really so bad that my Dutch translators have to change the title? In less than two weeks, I’ll be able to walk into major chain bookstores and independent bookstores and see my name on the spine of a book that I wrote. In July, Open Me will be featured as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, sitting in its own little display section in B & Ns all over the country. So, yes, this is a business, more than anything else it is a business, but for me, it’s still about the writing, and the book. My whole life it has been about the book.