So much of the real joy of being a writer lives inside experiences we never share with anyone—it’s the writing in the wee hours with only the first chirping birds (or the hush of night), or the thrill of an idea that strikes on your lunch break, or the intimacy of revision, noodling over a sentence until its rhythms hit. Writing can be such a privately joyful experience.
Other than gaining access to readers, I don’t know too many writers who love when the private must become public—whether that’s the challenges of publishing, or the business and marketing.
Yet if you listen to the dominant expectations of publishing at almost any writing conference or in many ‘how to’ guides, you’ll hear a set of guidelines for “how” you should and can be a “successfully” published author, which often has very little to do with the joyful, quiet parts. It took me a long time to see how much those expectations are steeped in capitalism—and that’s only gotten worse since authors have been pushed to become media personalities and influencers.
If I say that the traditional demands of writing and publishing have always left a bad taste in my mouth, you might hear sour grapes because I never quite made the Great Big American Book Deal Dream. But oh, I came close. My first novel scored me Gillian Flynn (of Gone, Girl fame)’s agent. One of the publishers we submitted to told me she “stayed up all night to finish it!” but that ultimately she “didn’t know how we’d sell it”-- I was genre-straddling long before it was popular. Another of my novels was direct-delivered to an editor at Counterpoint Press who loved it and felt it deserved publishing but his team didn’t all agree. Editors who told me, “almost” and “next time” and agents who “loved” my voice but felt the market couldn’t bear what I was selling. I’ve stood on the precipice of “traditional Big Five” success many times and not quite tipped over.
Rethinking Failure
Unfortunately, close equals “failure” in the marketplace, but I find it’s a common theme among artists, because art rarely fits neatly into prescribed boxes. That doesn’t make rejection feel better in the moment, and I won’t lie—even having published books on the craft of writing with a small but mighty traditional publisher, and as someone who teaches writing and edits manuscripts, I felt like a fraud for a long time. Those who can’t publish, teach, eh? used to run through my brain.
Unsurprising that I started to experience “writer’s block,” I’m sure.
It’s really only in this past year, when I turned 50, that something bound up has begun to unlock. The ravages of midlife and hormone changes has scoured away what has been scabbed over— I stopped trying to chase a dream that has never come to fruition, to bang my head against doors that will only just crack open. I would make my own path. I will be my own path.
My own path has led me to sweet collaborations with groundbreaking small presses, like Sibylline Press, satisfying writing community, and to meaningful work that allows me to focus on what I most want to write (and just yesterday, to my publisher at Running Wild Press submitting Fallout for a National Book Award—with a lightning-strikes-a-lottery-winner’s chance in hell, but it really is the thought that counts).
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of success looking only one way. I’m exhausted by letting rejection discourage me from the thing I love to do most. I am just done trying to monetize my creativity.
Which brings me to YOU.
A Third Path
My path isn’t your path, either. But is there a third path, something carved and sculpted by you? I know people who’ve run the gamut in their creative “third things”—writers and filmmakers and visual artists and dancers who stepped off the expected path and stumbled into a wilder, or more honest, or truer little side alley that became a portal to something much greater. What would it look like if you didn’t wait for someone else to approve your art, your words, your practice?
What would it look like if you connected to your own purposeful engine first? I know writers who’ve sidestepped rejections to start their own publishing houses; artists who put on their own art shows outside of gallery approval; academics who left behind the institution to teach in truer ways.
If you aren’t sure you have one, look to what hungers at the edges of your life—sometimes it’s a sneaky little minnow you can’t see by looking at it directly. Sometimes you can only catch it when you’re doing other things—work and bill-paying and carpool driving. If you have a sense of what your third “thing” is… tell me in the comments.
If these turbulent times tell us anything, it’s that “usual” ways often, inevitably, fail us. Make a new path. BE that new path.
GET ON THE LIST FOR A VIRTUAL LAUNCH PARTY, Sunday May 26, 11 am PT/ 1 pm CT/ 2 pm ET. For anyone who can’t make my in-person book events, please join me for a Virtual Launch party via Zoom. You can attend by sending me your email address via this form.
What I’m Reading
Reading with eyes: Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor
Reading with audio: The Dryad Storm, by Laurie Forest
Otherwise, latest news:
You can pre-order Women in Red’s e-book, and the paperback will follow soon! It releases from Sibylline Press on May 2nd!
New Events Added On the Fallout Book Tour…
APRIL
FALLOUT LAUNCH PARTY!! Saturday, April 26, 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Fallout book launch party at Margarita’s restaurant in Morgan Hill, CA, sponsored by BookSmart of Morgan Hill.
MAY
Lit Crawl Sebastopol: May 17, 12-6. Very excited to be part of this event with dozens of other authors in my old stomping grounds!
Book Passage: Saturday, May 31, Jordan in conversation with author Nina Schuyler (author of In This Ravishing World): Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA. 1-2:30 p.m. PT.
GET ON THE LIST FOR A VIRTUAL LAUNCH PARTY: For anyone who can’t make my in-person book events, please join me for a Virtual Launch party via Zoom. You can attend by sending me your email address via this form.
JUNE
Bay Area Book Festival: Sun June 1. Bay Area Book Festival, signing at the Sibylline Books Booth
Annie Bloom’s Books: Thursday, June 12, 7pm PT. Jordan in conversation with Michael Keefe, author of All Her Loved Ones, Encoded. Annie Bloom’s Books, Portland, OR.
Gallery Books. Thursday June 26, 7 pm. Gallery Books, Mendocino.
JULY
Trident Booksellers: Tuesday July 29, 6:30 p.m. Trident Booksellers, Boulder, CO. In conversation with Steven Dunn, author of Tannery Bay (with Katie Jean Shinkle), Potted Meat and Water + Power.
SEPTEMBER
Readers Books: Weds, September 10, 6pm. Readers’ Books, Sonoma, CA. Writing at the Root. In conversation with Rebecca Lawton, author of What I Never Told You.
Central Coast Writers Conference, September 26-27.
OCTOBER
Elk Grove Writers Conference. 9am. October 25. Elk Grove, California.
LitQuake. October 25. More details to come!
i can relate--a lot! my goal since childhood was to be a (fiction) writer. After college i taught adult literacy. Went back yo school. Moved to LA & did proofreading & copy editing. Taught adult ESL. Started teaching college writing to nonnative speakers during grad school. Moved to CO & taught college comp & business writing & freelance copy editing. Started writing again, a little. Moved back East & started grad program 3 (didn't complete #2) --an MFA in creative writing--yay! Goal? to teach creative writing fulltime instead of comp! (where did that other dream go?) Graduated at 40.
Immediately took a weekend training for leading a specific type of writing workshops totally mot like those in grad school, which i swore never to run... tried to continue my poetry but bad at sending thjngs out more than once... Ran writing workshops for 11 of 13 years while working in a psych hospital (?! an unexpected direction change!) Trained further to run stress management & resilience trainings. Never did. Did a few more workshops until both my job ended finally & my parents began to die off... Finally writing! Memoir. Id like to finish things but learned im ADD (explains my life even more than the trauma crap!🤪) so i dont beat myself up about it. What i will NOT do, is run writing workshops or teach college writing again! I am in my sixties & its now or never! 😂😂
Love you, Jordan. I'm sure your new book will be fantastic. You have a special place in my heart as my first writing teacher. ❤️