I persisted

Despite obtaining my master’s degree in creative writing, and early encouragement from the professors I respected most, my route to becoming a novelist has been a circuitous one. When I was ten-years-old, at sleep away camp, I composed my first tome between archery and swimming lessons. In letters to my parents, I complained about having to participate in sports because it took away from my writing schedule. The 150 page “manuscript” involved a time-travelling bus.

Years later, discovering Miss Frizzle and her magic school bus, I felt plagiarized! Like so many girls, I adored fantasy, in particular Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which I greedily reread, and then followed up reading the four other books in the series.

In high school and college, I pivoted to reading mostly male authors, as the curriculum dictated, while producing my own short stories inspired by Anne Beattie and Alice Monroe. I gobbled up Edna O’Brien’s fiction for her passion and lyricism, Barbara Pym for gentle humor and the sense of an orderly, if ordinary, world.

I wrote constantly but, upon graduation, needed to find a viable way to make a living. Book publishing seemed a logical choice, but the job I actually landed was a coveted one: assistant editor at Ladies Home Journal. I loved the buzz in the office, all the ambitious, Type A women in one building. Plus, there was the kitchen which served their baked goods to the staff. Yet, I seemed unequipped to give tips on gardening or makeup. Encouraged to come up with service pieces for the “mainstream woman,” I fell short. After a few months, I’d accepted a position at a “teen” magazine where I was assigned articles to write on Michael Jackson and soap opera stars. I tried to write fiction on the side. But. . . 

Back to grad school for me and a career path as an English Professor. The plan was to combine serious scholarship with creative work. At twenty-five, I adored teaching college, although I was running on fumes, getting four hours of sleep a night. One semester, I foolishly took a course on the Victorian novel along with another that included the work of James Joyce and ended up simultaneously reading Bleakhouse and Ulysses, remembering little of either masterpiece. Obviously, my own compositions fell by the wayside.

Over a summer, I needed four root canals while taking one of those compressed classes where we read an impossibly long list of books. Rattled, I hopped a bus to my grandparents’ place in woodsy Connecticut in order to finish my paper on F. Scott Fitzgerald. My grandmother, a retired teacher, pumped me up with freshly squeezed orange juice, toast and eggs (no coffee allowed), while I knocked back Tylenol with Codeine. 

Even in a haze of drugs and dental pain, I finished the assignment. Maybe I could transform myself into the scholar my grandmother saw me as, after all. I was never going to be Virginia Woolf or Jane Austen, so why not critique instead of create?

I believed I’d switched from wannabe fiction writer to academic when my first dissertation advisor complained that a draft of my thesis was beautifully written yet had nothing substantial to say. “It is reductive,” she declared. “You should write novels.” For a moment, I felt buoyed by what was meant as an insult. Still, after seven long years, I wasn’t going to toss aside my degree. Determined to finish my doctorate, I contacted another professor on his sabbatical in Italy; and he took on my project, which became a plot point in my first, semi-autobiographical novel, Redeeming Eve. 

It took a year for my first, hardworking agent to place RE with a well-established, small press. My future looked bright.

Who’s to say if I would have achieved the “big career,” juggling a tenured professorship with knocking out novels?

Motherhood was one ball in the air too many—although not at first. I finished a magazine piece on natural childbirth on deadline after an emergency c-section, from my hospital bed. I taught a class on Jane Austen with breast milk dampening my shirt. I was determined, driven but bone-tired. We settled into a suburb in New Jersey close to New York City; yet despite my husband’s willingness to uproot our young family to any college town that would have me, I proved to not be as adaptable.

After a couple of years on the academic job market—calculating the endless hours each position demanded, the childcare options, and the salaries offered— I gave up dreams of relocating. I figured: publish rather than perish and maybe a full-time job at a local college would appear. It was not to be. For two decades, I continued part-time as a college instructor while trying to improve my craft. This decision caused financial stress but afforded me more hours with my children while honing my writing.

When my second novel sold to a big house, my new agent envisioned me as the next Anita Shreve. Crouching on my bed, listening to her declaration, I felt a heady mixture of excitement and disbelief. 

My sense of imposter syndrome proved prescient. Through a series of events—lack of sales; taking the wrong advice; a changing marketplace, including a consolidation of the big houses—my rocket sputtered and died before leaving the ground.

Then, came the barren years—fifteen to be exact. Mid-list authors had vanished before I’d even secured my place among them. I published a handful of essays, but no manuscripts. My self-esteem suffered. What had happened to that plucky girl who went after her dreams with grit and grind?

Eventually, I transitioned from instructor to freelance editor and continued to create new narratives. I went through as many agents as Joan Collins did husbands: five. My latest agent tried valiantly to place my new novel, The Happiness Thief, with a big house for big money.

But, despite some “fabulous” rejections, it didn’t sell to a top place and she suggested trying small presses. I’d been eyeing She Writes Press for a while, impressed by the way the books looked, the praise they were getting and the fact that I could find copies at the B&N in Union Square in NYC. I decided to try them next. I was on a much-needed vacation to celebrate and avoid a dreaded birthday when I opened the email.  She Writes accepted my submission, without asking for any changes.

It was the best birthday gift this writer ever received.

—

NICOLE BOKAT is the author of the novels The Happiness Thief (She Writes Press, May 2021), Redeeming Eve and What Matters Most. Redeeming Eve was nominated for both the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction. She’s also published The Novels of Margaret Drabble: This Freudian Family Nexus. She received her Ph.D. from New York University and has taught at NYU, Hunter College, and The New School. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, Parents magazine, The Forward and at More.com. She lives with her husband in New Jersey and has two grown sons. Find her online at www.nicolebokat.com

https://www.nicolebokat.com/

THE HAPPINESS THIEF

Forty-one year-old Natalie Greene still believes she might have caused the car crash that killed her mother decades ago. But did she? Her memories are buried beneath a deep trauma, which still ripples through her life and recently ruined her marriage. Now, haunted and weary, she’s a single parent struggling to support herself as a freelance food photographer.

Once again, Natalie’s beloved stepsister, Isabel, comes to the rescue, suggesting that Natalie join her on a business trip to the Cayman Islands. Isabel, who has a thriving business as a happiness guru, will lecture at an annual industry conference; Natalie will unwind—and maybe discover a nugget of healing wisdom.

But one evening during their visit, Natalie is spooked when she strikes something—or someone—on a desolate street while driving Isabel back to their hotel. Why is there blood on the bumper? They find nothing on the road, but it triggers Natalie’s PTSD and revives her old fears. When she later receives an anonymous email hinting at foul play, Natalie decides to investigate on her own, with help from an attractive Boston Globe journalist. But looking into the island accident also sparks a trip down a foggy, frightening memory lane, exposing dark secrets and chilling revelations.

Reviews/Praise:
“Bokat is an evocative wordsmith . . . she has crafted a sympathetic heroine as her main character . . . . A compulsively readable mystery and character study.” The verdict: Get it.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips