Miss Demeanors

It’s early on Saturday. I’m snuggled in bed with a book:Y is for Yesterday, to be exact. I’m still in my pajamas with the covers pulled up over my knees. My first foray out of bed this morning was to the three-foot stack of TBR (“to be read”) books in the corner of my room.  With some difficulty, I managed to pull Sue Grafton’s last book from somewhere in the middle without causing the entire wobbly tower to collapse. I don’t know how I managed to have not read Y is for Yesterday yet, but I’ll admit my failure and begin to remedy the situation. The only reason I put the book down is because it’s my turn to post for Miss Demeanors this week. I hoped I’d have a brilliant idea for a theme by now, but I don’t.  I looked through my calendar, desperate for something to spark an idea.  Nothing. Then I realized that the next time it’s my turn to post, Blessed be the Wicked will be out. I will be “a published author.”  I looked back at the book I didn’t want to put down and decided that was the theme: getting from A to Y in writing. I can’t offer perspective on what it looks like when you’ve written enough books that you’ve nearly run out of the alphabet for your novels’ titles, but I can give one person’s view from A. So this week I’m going to post about what it’s like at the beginning of the alphabet, just before your first book is published.  The good, the bad, and the ugly . . . and then some more good. I would love to hear from others, so please share your own stories from wherever you are in the alphabet.   

  Yesterday on Miss Demeanors, I tackled the question posed in Edwin Hill’s touching and candid blog post on Career Authors.  https://careerauthors.com/how-to-call-yourself-a-writer/  “Was there a moment when you decided you could call yourself a writer?” I think it’s a pivotal moment in a writer’s career because it really means you are standing naked before the world daring to say what you care most about , knowing you could fail. I didn’t want to stand naked alone, so I invited my fellow Miss Demeanors to answer the same question.     Tracee: I don’t remember the moment exactly, but I remember how strange it felt. When I had a day job it was typical to say that’s what I did…. once I left I was forced to say the other words…. However, once said, they were easy. And once I had a book in stores to promote it was very easy. Maybe that’s when I switched to ‘eager’ to say I was a writer!           Alison: Tough question. Last August, I flew to Scotland with my daughter and was faced with a form that required me to put down my profession. I wrote in “writer” instead of “attorney.” I felt a rush of adrenaline followed by feeling like I was posing. I had written in ink, so there was no changing the word on the paper. I still feel a little like I’m playing dress up. I’ll let you know if I feel like a writer on August 7th, when Blessed be the Wicked is actually out.        Alexia: I’m in a bit of a different boat since I’m still actively practicing medicine. Physician is my primary profession. I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. I’d much rather write to someone than speak to them and the difference between my math and verbal scores on standardized tests is freaky. I first felt like an author when someone not related to me and not a close friend bought a copy of Murder in G Major. And it hits me that I’m an “Author with a capital A” every April at tax time when I’m declaring income earned from royalties and deciding whether it’s to my tax advantage or not to list author as a second profession.      Susan: My first job out of college was as a reporter for Fortune Magazine, so I’ve been calling myself a writer for as long as I’ve been an adult. However, one of my most exciting moments came after signing the contract for my first book, which was The Fiction Class, and then I immediately joined the Author’s Guild. I can’t define the difference between being an author versus a writer, but it felt different to me. Tracee:  Susan, I think that’s says it perfectly. The difference between being a writer and an author.       Robin:  Agreed. I freelanced as a journalist, and that’s when I started calling myself a writer, but it wasn’t until I held my first book in my hands that I called myself an author out loud. It still felt weird, though, because my lifelong goal has been “novelist.” I’m thinking of getting myself a t-shirt that says “Author” to help me own it.  

 Debut author Edwin Hill’s recent post https://careerauthors.com/how-to-call-yourself-a-writer/ on Career Authors about his 39-year excursion before he could finally say, “I’m a writer” touched me. What writer hasn’t felt trepidation when saying those words for fear she might be challenged. “Really? How dare you say you’re a writer?”             Those three little words, “I’m a writer,” are as terrifying as crossing the line from, “I like you,” to “I love you” in a relationship. Both connote declaration and commitment and put the declarant at risk for rejection. That’s why knowing when you were ready to say to the world, “I’m a writer” is pivotal to being a writer.             When I was a child, I wondered about the people who put the magical words on the books I read over and over, but it didn’t occur to me I could become one of them until I had already joined two other professions. After a contentious term on my local planning board, where I witnessed greed, anger, and exploitation, I decided to purge the toxicity I had experienced by penning my first mystery. I sent Who Killed the Board of Selectmen to five agents and editors in the early nineties. I had a kind letter from editor Michael Seidman, who said it was promising but he wasn’t accepting mysteries at the time. When the other four rejected or ignored me, I put the manuscript in a drawer for the next decade.             But it gnawed at me, this urge to write and tell stories. When my son gave me a special gift for Mother’s Day one year after I had allowed the rotating door at our home to rotate once more, I caught fire. He gave me a catalogue for Kripalu, the world-renowned yoga center in western Massachusetts, which offered weekend programs in various creative areas while doing yoga. Bliss. I chose to attend Nancy Aronie’s Writing from the Heart on the weekend when my birthday occurred. There, I met a woman who lived in a town near me who was starting a writing group. I was on fire.           I wrote three novels over the next several years. But was I a writer yet? I didn’t dare say so. Even when I got my first agent, who shopped one of the books unsuccessfully, I was uncomfortable saying I was a writer. Perhaps it was because I still had a busy law/mediation practice, which seemed more legitimate. I had a license to practice law, but what did I have to show I was a writer?            Even when I began hanging around other writers, I held back. I was an attorney with a creative pastime, writing, not a writer. The truth is I was terrified to fail. I wanted to write more than I ever wanted to be in a courtroom. I felt a kinship with my fellow writers I never experienced with my legal colleagues.            What did I have to do to be able to call myself a writer? I think I had to have some external sign that I was a competent writer. When I brought down the house the year I attended a Book Passage conference after reading a humorous contest entry I’d written, I felt a little bit like a writer.            When I was a finalist, not once, but three times in St. Martin’s Malice Domestic contest, I was encourage to believe I was a writer. But being a runner-up three times conversely made me wonder, was I good enough to call myself a writer?            While on vacation in St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, my husband bought license plates for me in the National Park Store that said “Writer.” I almost made him put them back. They sat on my desk for the next several years, partly as inspiration for No Virgin Island. Now, was I a writer?            Getting the right agent made me feel like I was on the road to being a writer. The day I signed my first publishing contract for No Virgin Island, I knew I was a writer. I had a contract that said so. But did I feel like a writer?              When readers began telling me what they thought about No Virgin Island, how bonded they felt with Sabrina, how they loved Neil Perry, I realized people were actually reading the words I had written.            That’s when I knew I could say without equivocation, “I’m a writer.”I felt like a writer.            Thanks to Edwin Hill for the inspiration for this blog and the question of the week tomorrow to my fellow Miss Demeanors. Edwin’s book, Little Comfort comes out August 28, 2018