It feels weird to celebrate nice things right now. Not like I feel guilty and am actively trying not to celebrate, it's just that the nice things don't feel like they matter very much. It's like my house is on fire and I'm sitting on the front lawn watching it burn down and my neighbor calls across the street, "Hey! You've done such a nice job with that flower garden!" And I look at the flower garden and think, yeah, I'm happy with how that turned out...but how long before it's on fire too?
(This analogy is a little bit absurd for me to use because I don't exactly do flower gardens. It's like when I was hoisting my grocery bags into the shopping cart yesterday at the grocery store and I said to the cashier, "Well, the gym may be closed but there's my workout for today!" The gym may be closed. My workout for today. As though I am a person who has actually noticed that the gym is closed. As though I am a person who lifts things just so I will later be able to lift heavier things. And, anyway, since when do I make jokes like this to cashiers? It's only been a month of isolation! Do social skills really deteriorate that fast?)
Anyway. I'm thinking about this stuff because Sorry I Missed You is coming out in about a month and a half and I'm trying to figure out how to feel about it and how to celebrate it and how to promote it and all that. I saw someone on the internet the other day—on Twitter or Reddit or someplace—talking about an author whose book had gotten cancelled when their publishing house folded (due to, obviously, the Current Situation). They said, "It's so tacky to be complaining about losing your book deal when people around you are losing actual jobs."
I wanted to fight them, honestly. But I couldn't figure out if I was mad because I thought they were wrong or if I was mad because I thought they were right. I've had fleeting worries about my pub date getting pushed back or about the paperbacks sitting unopened in a warehouse until 2022, and I've wondered if it was wrong for me to feel anxious about my books in light of EVERYTHING.
(Why yes, I am going out of my way not to refer to What's Going On by its actual name.)
Is it tacky to worry about decreased sales? Is it tacky to tell people your book is discounted or up for preorder or available now for curb-side pickup at your local indie?
I mean, it feels tacky, just because I'm not a person who, at the best of times, would stand up on a picnic bench in the middle of a crowded park (aw, remember crowded parks?) and yell at people to look at me and buy my stuff.
But also, this...is my actual job. And the people who've worked so hard on the production of this book, from my agent to my editors to the designers (etc, etc, etc; there are so many people involved here)—it's their job too. And we've all been working on this thing for a while now with the hopes that it will pay off in the end and I guess where I come out on it is that writing books can, from the outside, seem like a pure vanity project but it's...literally how we put food on the table? So maybe the tacky thing, right now, is telling people their job isn't a job? PERHAPS.
(Even as I type that I cringe at myself. I don't want to sound whiny. I have it really good: I'm safe, I'm home, I can do my work here, and when I'm not working I have endless entertainment at my fingertips. I get that there are levels of trauma and that I'm nowhere near the top. Or the bottom. Or wherever the worst one is. I'm not trying to complain, I'm really not.)
Anyway. It's a weird time. I think we all get that. It's a weird, hard time and it's hard for different people in different ways and one of the things that's hard about it is knowing how to talk about it to other people who are experiencing the same event through even a slightly different lens. How and when to express disappointment or excitement. How to carry on, business as usual, when business isn't usual.
I guess we just do what we can with the best of intentions?
My editor emailed me last week to let me know that we got a really nice Kirkus review for Sorry I Missed You, and I guess that's what kind of sparked this whole thought eruption. I read it and smiled and told Barclay what a Kirkus review was and why it was a big deal to me and then I just kind of sat there. Last year, when I got my first trade review for V&V, I celebrated. I cried from relief and excitement. It was a milestone! It felt big and magical and important! But this year isn't last year.
That's an understatement.
I think this is pretty indicative of what this book's whole launch is going to be—anticlimactic, tentative and unreal, coated in layers of guilt and nervousness and thankfulness and distraction. Occasional spurts of excitement followed by days where I don't think about it at all. Missteps of all kinds! Overthinking and under thinking! Coffee!
Actually, that just sums up the past 35 days, book launch or no book launch.
2 comments:
I'm excited for your book, and it's a good thing to feel excited about something. So YAY to you and your book. And don't worry about being tacky or celebrating victories, because we need that now more than ever. And remember, as I remind myself every day, don't worry about everyone else. "What you think about me isn't my problem, it's yours." Celebrate your successes, girl.
I'm excited for your book! I got an email last week saying it would arrive eleven days late because of lockdown and I immediately messaged Emma('s Picture Postcards) to tell her that ALL THIS was suddenly feeling serious.
I read that book sales in the UK have gone up by 300% during lockdown. Books matter. Culture matters. It's stories and beauty and flights of imagination which are our means of escape right now. Your work is important. It's not tacky to care about it.
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