The Ten-Year View: a Not-So-Tiny Letter
[tl;dr version: I am old; success isn't love]
Recently I got a comment on my Facebook page from someone who had read my first book, Story of a Girl, when she was in high school. She now has three children. I had to re-read the message a few times. She now has three children? She now has three children. One marker of a decade passing.
Story of a Girl was published ten years ago this month. Ten years ago I was 36, having failed to meet my self-imposed deadline of being published by 30 (it seemed old at the time). In that ten years, I've worked with four editors and two publishers, and written six and a half novels. I've been through LiveJournal and MySpace and Blogger and Facebook and, for about two seconds, Ello and Google +. I've seen my confidence--in myself as a writer and a person and a contributing member of my industry--build and soar, and I've seen it crumble and collapse. I've had a medical crisis and a midlife crisis, been very well and very sick and very well again. I've come close to quitting and as close to despair as I ever have, then seen my hope return as fast and reliable as a boomerang. I'm glad I'm here to catch it.
Ten years ago, everything now behind me was ahead, little of which I could foresee at the time. It has not been what I expected. It's been both more and less. The more part is that I've had a better career than I ever hoped for, and have met more great people than I knew existed, and gotten to travel places I never otherwise would have. The less part is that I did not become a fundamentally different, better person after having my name on a printed book. For awhile I found this utterly shocking.
This goes to some of the best, most clear wisdom I've read, from Rebecca Solnit's 10 Tips for how to be a writer:
What we call success is very nice and comes with useful byproducts, but success is not love, or at least it is at best the result of love of the work and not of you, so don’t confuse the two. Cultivating love for others and maybe receiving some for yourself is another job and an important one.
As I'm not writing this from my beach house in California, I would not say I've been as wildly successful as I've sometimes secretly dreamed. (Yet?) But, I have experienced a degree of success far more than I realistically dreamed. And Solnit is right, it isn't love. In fact, I think some of my times of deepest despair over the last five years have come when my success seemed to be fading and, with it, the love I mistook it for.
I imagine this can happen to anyone who strongly identifies with her or his work, but careers that come with a kind of public persona seem particularly subject to it. This Author Sara Zarr person had a lot to live up to and prove and keep proving and frankly she was kind of high maintenance from the perspective of the me that had to maintain her. Thankfully, I somehow grasped that's what was happening and was able to do an emotional course correction. I see it happening to others, to young writers in particular, and want to say, Oh no, sweetheart, no. That isn't love.
Though I will admit that it's a nice thing to have in your hip pocket at high school reunions and other encounters with people who once dismissed you, and there is a certain amount of legitimate pride to be gleaned from career success, it doesn't fix our mommy- and daddy- and self-approval issues. I mean, I can say that, and people may have said it to me early on, but I think that's something you have to learn by going through it or it doesn't stick.
Solnit continues this piece of advice with:
The process of making art is the process of becoming a person with agency, with independent thought, a producer of meaning rather than a consumer of meanings that may be at odds with your soul, your destiny, your humanity, so there’s another kind of success in becoming conscious that matters and that is up to you and nobody else and within your reach.
Those are some powerful ideas--thrilling, bracing, really--and good ones to hold side by side with the temptations of likes and hearts and retweets and faves and mentions and whatever other flimsy thing seems desperately important in the day to day grind of trying to be Author You, of trying to acquire love, of trying to store up some approval to comfort yourself with when the writing isn't there.
As far as the more mundane things I've learned in the last ten years, here:
"Comparison is the thief of joy" - a quote mostly attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. In ten years, I've seen this again and again, that no matter what level you reach and what kind of success or attention you get, there is always someone with more. Always. Get used to it and figure out how to not let it ruin your day/week/year/life.
No one publishing with any consistency for ten years has done it solely on their own talent and power. Not even men! It's true.
Never, ever forget to pack your migraine meds when traveling. And get an extra pair of glasses. No one tells you you'll spend 38% of your middle age looking for your glasses.
Here's a classic, something like, "be nice to people you meet on your way up because you'll meet them again on your way down." Kindness and goodwill is a kind of investment account that never fails to pay off. I've seen some dramatic falls over the years, and it's not pretty for people who were jerks on the way up.
That said, there's not much of a payoff in playing the part of good little soldier in terms of trying to never offend, never break unwritten rules, never push back, never be the squeaky wheel. Sometimes to advocate for yourself and your work you must do these things. (But you don't have to be an asshole about it.)
Time spent trying to get in with the cool kids of the moment is time wasted. Find your people, those you respect and trust regardless of where they are on the ladder of success. (Also, fame-whoring is really obvious and feels gross--I know because I've done it.)
Stop trying to read the books of every writer you know. You'll never be able to do it and you'll begin to hate reading, and hating reading is a bad state for a writer to be in.
This one is for women especially: if giving gifts to publishing people, baking cookies for events, handwriting thank-you notes to every person you meet, offering support to everyone who asks, providing blurbs and references and advice and nurturing to the world does not come naturally to you and is not fun for you and you don't have time, don't do it. Don't do it! Repeat after me: I don't have to.
Relatedly: if you're lucky, you'll build up a certain amount of career capital as you go. Manage it well. Don't give it away to just anything or anyone, or through checking out of career decisions.
Speaking of managing capital: whenever I get book money, I don't think so much about the dollars as the time those dollars will buy. Dollars represent how many more months can I write without worrying about how I will pay the bills. Spending that money too loosely means I'm giving away future writing time to Apple, Delta Airlines, ModCloth, manicures, cocktails, etc. Treat yoself is great in moderation, but Laurie Halse Anderson once advised a group of us, it's easier to control your expenses than your income. Save up for the lean times, for when you're going to need more time to write a hard book, need to make a life change, or for when the marketplace just doesn't want what you've got.
There, ten things for ten years, in no particular order. I could probably come up with a bunch more, but this has gone on far too long already. I wonder what new things I'll learn during decade number two. Meanwhile, more babies will be born, more hopes will be exceeded and dashed, more social networks will come and go, books will be written and scrapped, expectations will be thwarted and eclipsed, despair will rise and fall, glasses will be lost and found.
And there will be more TinyLetters in your inbox! This one wasn't so tiny, I know. I intend to be tinier in the future, if that gives you hope.
Sara