Coping With Publishing Heartbreak: Brownie Bites and Bad Poetry
Author R.L. Maizes discusses the various forms of publishing heartbreak and counts all the ways to cope with them.
Eight years ago, when three high-powered agents requested the full manuscript of my story collection, I was sure I was on my way. I pictured myself hosting literary soirées in my Chelsea loft, Ann Patchett and Margaret Atwood included among the guests. But then a month passed without word, followed by another. It’s possible I stalked those agents’ Twitter accounts. On the very same Friday, all three rejected it.
The only balm for that kind of heartbreak is chocolate.
A few years later, a publisher bought the collection. Good news, right? But bookstores outside of my adopted state of Colorado declined to host readings. Furious, I fantasized about visiting The Strand and not buying a single book. Two weeks after the collection came out, I recklessly glanced at sales figures and burst out crying, my poor husband wondering who’d died.
Chocolate cake, ideally, but in a pinch a Little Debbie.
Recently, an editor said he wanted to publish my second novel. There was just the little matter of presenting it to the editorial board. It was the end of the pandemic. Members of the board got sick. The meeting was bumped once, twice. When they finally assembled, a second editor asked to read the book. I waited, aging as fast as a corpse flower, which coincidentally also only blooms every two or three years. While driving home one day—still waiting—I saw a great blue heron overhead. It was a sign! The offer would come that day. I was sure of it. Except neither my agent nor I ever heard from the acquiring editor again. He ghosted us.
Old Halloween candy, anyone?
Despite those and many other setbacks, my writing career has brought me joy and satisfaction. My story collection and debut novel were praised by reviewers, and fans sent kind letters and emails. After reading the novel, two friends and a bookseller passed it along to their mothers. Is there a greater compliment? Probably.
Many aspiring writers have the wrong idea about what publishing success looks like. Most authors aren’t plucked out of obscurity by Reese Witherspoon. Most books aren’t reviewed in The Times. Few writers can quit their day jobs. According to the Authors Guild, “The median author income for full-time authors from their books was $10,000 in 2022, and their total median earnings from their book and other author-related income combined was $20,000.” [Bold in original.] That’s less than some people spend on a gym membership and comes without towels.
Every writer must develop callouses on their heart and endure bruises to their ego not to mention—in the case of this writer—hemorrhoids from all that sitting. TMI? To sustain their career, a writer must cultivate strategies for continuing to create in the face of heartbreak. Here are a few of mine, tested recently when my second novel was rejected by more than 20 editors.
I start by wallowing (see cake, above). Feeling all the feelings, as any one of my therapists might have said, therapy being another tool many writers would benefit from. After decades of confessing my neuroses from chairs made variously of leather, velvet, and remotely from whatever this Office Depot chair is, I’d thought I was done. Graduated. Finito! But when my second novel went on submission, I began to check my email obsessively, the distraction hijacking my work, meals, exercise, sanity, and even my ability to follow the TV romance series Virgin River. (What did bad boy Brady just say to troubled Brie? I’ll never know. I was looking at my phone.) My new therapist reminded me that when you suffer from anxiety, as I do, uncertainty can be harder to deal with than bad news. Great! Something worse than rejection. Surprisingly, naming the problem helped.
Although I wallow, I never lash out at editors. In the moment, it might seem like it would help. (Like giving a driver who cut me off the finger, also a bad idea, since where I live people keep rifles in their trucks.) Editors have it hard enough wading through oceans of manuscripts and sponsoring legislation to protect the Oxford comma, without authors sending cranky missives. They talk to each other, and their memories are long. My agent might want to send them my next book.
As I mourn a rejection, I tell myself the writing itself is an accomplishment. What a crock. No one spends years on a novel or memoir, or months on a story, hoping it will live forever in a computer file named BestSellerV32SuperFinalIWonderIfThePostOfficeIsHiring. Of course, the truth lies somewhere in between. An unpublished work is an achievement and a disaster. The writing is meaningful for its own sake, though the goal is to publish it. I’m the first reader of my work. If it’s any good, I’ll have laughed, possibly snorted. I’ll have made myself sad and horny, not necessarily at the same time. I’ll have gotten to know myself better.
While still too tender to begin another book, I turn to something completely different. After my first novel came out, I enrolled in poetry classes. I published a few poems that would have been better off forgotten in my notebook. I’m sure no one will ever find them on the Internet. When passes on my second novel piled up, I embraced a hobby that didn’t involve words at all—knitting. No one in the history of handicrafts has ever rejected a hand-knit gift. Trust me. It doesn’t matter how lopsided those fingerless gloves are or that you might find their particular shade of green growing on an old loaf of bread, the recipient is sure to gush over them.
To comfort myself, I sometimes read old emails expressing love for my work. It’s best if the sender is a publisher or an editor. They love me! They really love me!
When I’m ready, I return to fiction writing. How quickly I become invested in a new project always surprises me. My agent may email with news about my last book to which I’ll respond, “Who did you say you were again?” The truth is anytime I get an email from my agent, I feel as if I just jammed my finger into a socket. I’m convinced my life is about to change. But though I continue to hope for success on an old project, beginning a new one reminds me how much I enjoy the process of writing and how much I look forward to time at my desk. How fortunate I am to do work that’s meaningful to me and to have published anything, because it takes not only sweat and perseverance but luck and catching an editor on the right day, rather than the day they reject your essay about an aging dog because they just bought an essay about an aging dog (true story) or the day they decide ChatGPT will do all their writing. (AI, a new form of heartbreak for writers. Thanks, tech bros!)
Check out R.L. Maizes' A Complete Fiction here:
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Throughout my writing process, I make a point of celebrating milestones: a completed draft deserves a cake, submitting to journals or contests bonbons, signing with an agent a bottle of champagne. This might seem similar to how I wallow. What can I say? If making it to 62 has taught me anything, it’s this: Don’t wait for others to celebrate you—and that cake won’t eat itself.
After enough time has passed, I try to understand why a particular work was rejected. My agent had been submitting my second novel to editors for a year and a half without success when I happened to read a brilliant and hilarious story a friend had published.* It made me realize, in the way the best kind of artistic envy can, that my book could be improved. Years before, after I’d shown him a grim story I’d written, my father had said, "You’re funny. Write something funny.” I was angry at the time and wondered if I was adopted. But it’s advice I’ve returned to again and again. I spent six months revising the novel, adding elements of humor, rewriting the end, tightening scenes and sentences, then sold it to a small press.
Sometimes there isn’t a flaw. Editors simply aren’t looking for my particular story or voice on that particular day. There’s no cure for that kind of publishing heartbreak. There’s only time and creating new work which provides its own measure of comfort, its own measure of satisfaction, enough to remind me why I keep at it. Before you know it, I’m imagining the new work as a grand success. If not, there are always brownie bites.
*The brilliant and hilarious story that inspired me, by Louise Marburg: https://missourireview.com/article/semicolon-people/
