Escapism or the lack thereof
Just some rambles!
Hey, friends. How are you?
I feel like I’m barely hanging in there, some days. Like the news is so overwhelming that I can feel it pushing on my chest at almost all times unless I really consciously try to shove it away (put away my phone, pick up a book, make myself a meal) and even then I’m only, like, 28% effective. I try to use these trying times to remind myself of my privilege—that pressure-on-my-chest is likely what anyone who isn’t white in America feels all the time; what undocumented people feel all the time; what queer and trans people in hostile-to-them places feel all the time. They have survived. I can survive.
Still, it’s a hard time to be a person who cares about other people.
One thing I haven’t doubted at all is that being creative still matters. Like, I feel no guilt about still wanting to sit at my kitchen table and write romance novels; I feel no guilt about reading romance novels instead of my twentieth news article of the day. (If anything, I am reading too many news articles.) And honestly, anyone who spends their time making other people feel bad about promoting their art instead of protesting every hour of the day is just engaging in performative activism. One, because there are so many more important things to yell about, and two, because art is protest. Yes, even romance novels. (I would say especially romance novels, but if you’re reading this newsletter you probably don’t need my high horse about this.)
When it comes to my own art, though, I’m in this kind of strange refraction period. I’ve been spending a lot of time of reflecting on my work and why I haven’t sold any new projects; I can barely read a paragraph of anything these days without thinking about my own writing. Because I know that publishing is all about luck and the whims of the business and it doesn’t reflect on the quality of my work yadda yadda yadda, but also, it kind of does. I am not a bestseller but I like to think my sales have been decent. I’ve gotten a bunch of starred reviews; gotten into a book box; it feels like I have done all the things I was supposed to do. So there has to be something I’m not doing well enough with my new projects, and they’re likely the things I have always not done well enough, but somehow got away with up until this point. I’m not good at concocting hooky hooks, at writing big exciting plots; I increasingly want to write quieter and quieter but I know there’s some way I can insert big into my quiet, too. Somehow. Maybe.
And then sometimes, of course, I get frustrated with myself: there’s thinking about craft, and then there’s just ignoring my own gut of what I want to create. One deserves more space than the other.
I’ve realized a few things, though, in all these reflections about my work, and one of them is this: romance is primarily seen as a form of escapism. I stand behind this 100% as a reader. But I don’t write to escape: I write to process. And I’m not sure this is something I’ll ever be able to change about myself. (See: being unable to start this newsletter without talking about the news.)
I laughed when I realized this truth, because suddenly I was back in my undergrad writing program all over again, sitting in my first (and only) fiction writing course, in a total panic almost every class. I just…wasn’t good at it. I eventually focused on more non-fiction based classes, where I felt at home; my final concentration was creative non-fiction, i.e., writing a lot of essays about my dramatic feelings. I thought, over a decade later, that publishing several novels had healed this sense of failure I still carry from this class. It wasn’t that I was bad at writing fiction; it was just that the set-up of the class that didn’t work with my brain. I will never be able to write a short story on the spot and then be ready to have others critique it twenty minutes later, sorry. Not my jam!
But here I am again, wondering if creative non-fiction is, in fact, all I’ve ever really been good at, or that I have the capacity for. And maybe that’s okay!! This isn’t meant to be self-deprecating. I know there are readers for whom my work really resonates. I just don’t know if it’s work that resonates with Big 5 editors looking for rom-coms with a snappy pitch.
I’m going to keep writing my probably-not-escapist-enough romances, of course; I do believe I’ll sell something again. (Maybe. lol) I’ll keep working on my craft, on trying to insert more big into my quiet. But I think at this turning point of my career, knowing who I am is important, too.
Official Authorly Business
I finished up copyedits on Donut Summer last week—I had a tight deadline on them and some snow days really leant me a hand; I went into a hyper-focus of working on them nonstop for three days, including making up a little song about how I lived at the kitchen table now and no longer spent time with my family, do do dooooo—and guess what! Even with all that shit I just said above, I really love this book! I even said this out loud to my wife, something along the lines of “I think this is a good book,” which is something so out of the ordinary for me to say about my work that it visibly shocked her lol. She was so proud of me! I was proud of me, too!
Anyway, finishing up copyedits is exciting because it’s almost the final stage—pass pages/final proofs come next, which is also typically the stage that advanced reader copies go out into the world for reviewers. I did learn that there won’t be any physical ARCs/galleys of this one, which I was kind of expecting but also slightly sad to learn because I’d planned a whole taking-an-ARC-to-various-donut-shops tour, but now I’ll just have to do that later with a finished copy! But hopefully digital copies will still be available one day on Netgalley and all the regular places; I’ll let you know when that happens.
For now, you can add it on Goodreads and pre-order from your preferred book retailer! I don’t have an official pre-order campaign yet, but these are all local shops that I am always available to go in and sign copies at:
Other Official Authorly Things
It was How You Get the Girl’s birthday last week! Happy birthday, Julie & Elle!
To celebrate, I posted a short piece on my website highlighting some of my favorite tracks from my writing playlist for this book.
I also recently learned that How You Get the Girl found a spot on the New York Public Library’s Best New Romance list. I also happened to listen to the Fated Mates podcast about how the list is crafted, and these librarians work on this list all fucking year. I fucking love librarians! Anyway, the whole list is truly wonderful if you’re looking for some stellar recommendations.
Okay, I fear this newsletter is already too long so I’m gonna cut myself off now. Take care of yourselves and each other, please please please.
<3
anita
Please don't start second-guessing your skills as a fiction writer! I know it's so tempting, because we want to believe that our careers are under our own control rather than subject to external forces, but the truth is, you are a fantastic novelist (and you've had tons of external evidence for that fact - those starred reviews! the book box!) regardless of whether the projects you're interested in writing next happen to align with the current publishing landscape or not. Honestly, I've had books not get even *close* to selling in trad publishing when I first wrote and pitched them, only for them to sell well 10 years later when the landscape had shifted! Your skill isn't in question at this point.
I don't do escapism the way I think most people want escapism in romance, and it's made me question a lot of things lately too. But honestly, I love it when authors grapple with real issues in a genre devoted to hope and joy because real life feels so hopeless right now; pure fairy tales make me even more depressed. The ability to find love in a cruel world is the only thing that inspires me lately.