Rediscovering Writing After Publication

As a child, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never said firefighter or ballerina or astronaut. I wanted to be a writer. In college, and when I first started writing seriously in my twenties, I loved the world that writing created. When I was writing, or thinking about writing, I was transported to a rich and private inner world, one that seemed as real and vivid as the actual one.

However, despite my early plans, I had no idea how long and twisty that road would be. It took me eight years and four manuscripts to finally sign with an agent, and once I did, I felt like I’d hit the lottery. During that time, I developed a thick skin and ability to push through it, but surely this was the end of rejection and the start of my career? 

My agent quickly landed me a two-book contract and suddenly, my dreams were coming true. After all that time and hard work, I was finally going to be a published writer. The books released within a year of each other and the time leading up to each launch and in between was a flurry of revision, copy-editing, cover options, blog posts, and promo. And then…silence. 

It’s not that the books were a flop, but most books these days have a pretty short shelf-life. Six months after publication and the book is old news. What had I expected? Did I think my women’s fiction novels were about to enter the canon of American Literature, squeezed between The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird? No. However, in my mind I’d somehow equated publishing a book to the peak of success, not realizing that this is the first step, not the last. The next step is publishing another book. And another one. Turns out that might not be as easy as I’d imagined. 

Soon after my second novel released, a third manuscript went on submission. This was a novel very close to my heart, one I was certain publishers would snatch up. It was a leap for me as a writer as well, crossing over into the suspense genre, something I’d never attempted before, and I was excited about this new direction in my writing. Yet the response from publishers was not what I’d expected. It fell between genres, not totally a thriller but not enough women’s fiction either, difficult to place in the crowded suspense market where readers like their books to be like potato chips, easy to eat and hard to put down. I kept hearing that the manuscript was too quiet.

I went back to the drawing board and started a new manuscript, another thriller, certain that this would be the one that would launch my career. However, it didn’t even make it out of the gate, and I was left reeling. But more than licking my wounds, I was confused. Would I ever publish again? Where did my books fit into the current market? Was there a market for the kind of fiction I wrote, “quiet” books about ordinary people, without a twist or other marketing hook? 

I had a long conversation with my agent, during which I tried to get her to tell me what I should write. She was the expert, with many more years of experience in this business than I had. Surely, she knew how to move me in the right direction. Instead of giving me a directive or assignment, she told me something else. Something along the lines of, “I can tell you what’s popular in the market right now, but by the time you write a manuscript and it goes out on submission, the market will have changed. The real question is, what do you want to write? What kind of a writer are you?” 

So began my writerly existential crisis.

I took a step back. What did I want to write? At the time, the women’s thriller genre had exploded, and I’d gotten caught up in it, both as a reader and a writer. But was that where my strength lay as a writer? Was that where my heart was? I wasn’t so sure anymore. I looked over my agent’s notes about my manuscript. I thought about the books I enjoyed reading, current favorites but also the ones that had stayed with me over the years. The ones I most admired were the ones that focused on character development and depth more than a page-turning plot with a sudden twist at the end. 

Rather than diving straight into a new manuscript, I took a little break. I revised an older manuscript and did more reading, but not in the thriller genre. I’d lost my tastes for those books, at least temporarily, and instead was drawn back toward my first love, women’s fiction, book-club books that straddled the line between literary and commercial. At least for now, this was where I wanted to be. 

Since signing that first publishing contract, I’d been driven to write, disciplined about a daily word count, always thinking about the next book. Yet getting published changed my relationship with writing. Now I was writing to fill a quota, always aware of how many words were in the manuscript, how close to the finish line I was, how close to submitting to my agent. In that discipline and rush to get words on the page, I’d lost some of the pleasure that came with writing.

I’d lost the feeling of being completely immersed in a work in progress, the way it was possible to become absorbed into the world of my characters, because now I was viewing them through the eyes of a prospective reader or publisher. I was preoccupied by marketability and comp titles. I’d misplaced the reason I started writing in the first place, all those years ago when publishing was just a distant dream and I kept writing anyway.

Last spring I started a new manuscript. It’s women’s fiction, a messy work in progress, and I’m not sure when it will be done. I don’t know if I like it, if it’s any good, or if it will ever see the light of day. And I’m okay with all of that because I’ve enjoyed writing again. I’ve felt the out of body experience I get when absorbed in the world of my characters, not unlike the feeling I get when totally engrossed in a great book. The characters are with me when I’m not writing, a little niggling in the back of my mind, beckoning, reminding me that I’ve left them untended, and filling me with the hopeful anticipation of what will happen next, not in my career but in the lives of these characters I created. I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of not knowing the future, for my characters or my career. After all, the road is long, and it’s okay to slow down and take in the sights. 

—

Emily Cavanagh is a writer and teacher. She is the author of THE BLOOM GIRLS and THIS BRIGHT BEAUTY. Her work has been published in Grain Magazine, Transfer, The Vineyard Gazette, and Martha’s Vineyard Arts and Ideas among other online and print publications. Emily lives on the island of Martha’s Vineyard with her husband and two daughters.
http://www.emilycavanaghauthor.com

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THIS BRIGHT BEAUTY

A long-buried secret changes everything two sisters thought they knew about each other.

Franci and Lottie may be identical twins, but that’s where the similarities end. Franci has always been the stable one, while Lottie has bipolar disorder, constantly battling depression and mania. After years of taking care of her sister, Franci moves across the country to build a life for herself. Now, all the two share is distance.

But when Lottie gets in an accident, Franci reluctantly steps back into her familiar role as protector. She returns to find her sister’s life in complete disarray and makes a shocking discovery: Lottie has an infant daughter she never told Franci about. Although Franci swore she wouldn’t get sucked back in, she can’t leave the baby alone in Lottie’s care.

As Lottie further unravels, a secret is revealed that she has kept since childhood—one that has the power to reframe the sisters’ entire relationship, forcing Franci to ask herself if the secret was too much for Lottie to bear. Was the accident really an accident, and who has been protecting whom all these years?

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips