The Jaded Quietude...
...that only a midlister can possess
Yesterday a writer friend reached out to me just to see how I’m doing and what I’m up to. No doubt, this was because I have been radar silent for months now and that can sometimes be alarming for the people who care about me. Occasionally, my long silences are because I’m in a down swing with the ol’ bipolar disorder and I’m having a hard time with my mental health. (And I really appreciate the care and concern from my friends and family who do reach out during my silences.) This time, however, my almost total lack of presence on the internet has just been because I’ve been really, really, insanely, incredibly, overwhelmingly busy for the past six months or so and it’s only getting crazier, now that I suddenly have a major surgery with a long recovery period to look forward to, and I am trying to get all my ducks in a row before my surgery date (taxes filed, etc.) so I can coast through my weeks of being hopped up on pain pills without having to make any major decisions about my finances or my career.
Anyway. Friend reached out. “How are you?” he said.
I said I was good, explained about a convergence of deadlines which I am managing to stay on top of, but just barely.
I said, “I’ve got a book going on sub Thursday or Friday. That’s something. No longer exciting after 10 years in the business, but it’s something.”
Tomorrow or the day after, the best book I’ve written so far is going out to three of the biggest publishers in literary fiction. Merely to have my work read by these people who have the power to make authors’ immortality… this is a goal I have worked toward with an access of determination, grit, and fury for decades now. I’ve bent the arc of my entire life toward this opportunity despite the fact that, as a self-taught outsider to this art form, every deck is stacked conspicuously against me. I have consistently had worse luck than most writers for as long as I’ve been pursuing this goal in any serious way, which has been for nearly all of my adult life, but now I finally have a shot at potentially impressing a big editor enough to maybe open a few doors for me and the sum total of my reaction is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Chalk that up to more than a decade of writing full-time and yet being unable to fight my way beyond the midlist despite having written several bestsellers (one of which has earned a place on Dolly Parton’s shelf of personal favorites! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!) For those who have never heard the term before, “midlist” is industry-polite jargon for “nobody knows who you are.”
Yes, I have been earning a good living from my writing for more than a decade, which is more than many writers can say, and I’m grateful for it. But “just earn a living from my writing” was never my original goal. The goal for me was always to write at a caliber that earns me a little respect from my peers. I have been doing everything in my power to cultivate that kind of career since well before I was writing full-time. I’ve just had shit luck overall, which has left me shut out of most of the opportunities that get other writers off the midlist and bring them some respect and recognition for their hard work and talent.
Nobody ever wants to admit that LUCK has much more to do with your fate in the publishing world than any other factor—skill, raw talent, originality. None of it matters like luck matters. It’s the ugly secret everybody in this industry knows but no one wants to talk about.
So will my luck be good this time? Will it continue to be distinctly “meh”? There is no way to tell. My agent (my fourth agent) is both thoroughly experienced with the industry and is new at agenting, so she has something to prove. I think those factors could work in my favor. But who really knows? I know she’ll work hard for me, because I have worked with her in other professional roles in the past and I admire and respect her. That could nudge things in a more lucky direction. But ultimately, everything about this process is a gamble, and I know from long, long, LONG experience that there’s no point in getting my hopes up. That typically just leads to disappointment and needless self-recrimination.
I’ve been talking recently with another writer friend, one who’s at the start of her experience with this industry. She feels that she’s having a very hard time getting her career to the point where she’d like it to be. She’s actually doing way better than most debut novelists, but I understand and respect her frustration. I felt the same way when I stood where she is now standing.
You see the big announcements of huge advances for other debuts. You see publishers pouring support into these major acquisitions, and the prophecy fulfills itself. The books become hits because they actually get a little marketing from the publisher, and the pattern of that author’s career is set. And then you read that debut novel that somebody paid seven figures for and you think, “What the fuck?? How is THIS getting insane money and support from publishers while I have to practically knife-fight my publisher to get a 10% bump in my already low advances? Even after writing back-to-back bestsellers for them???”
I told my friend that the big, splashy debut is often more a curse than a blessing. That there is serious benefit, even power in the forced hunger of the unseen midlister. When you have to work harder just to be kind-of-barely seen, I told her, you develop much stronger and more original craft, which makes your work stand out from the pack later on. Those big, splashy debuts might not have the skillset to write a second novel that lives up to the hype of their first, and if they can’t repeat that success, their career is over as quickly as it began.
When you have to fight hard for every tiny toehold, you also get to know the ins and outs of the industry really, really well. This becomes a huge benefit in negotiating contracts and in targeting your writing to maximize its commercial potential. These are distinctly unsexy things to say about one’s career, yet they are major strengths for any author. The “business skill” side of a writing career doesn’t have a chance to develop in those who get mega support right out of the gate. And the inability to view the industry from a bird’s-eye perspective—and to predict which direction trends are likely to move in next—can be critical in building the foundation of your career and advancing it toward your larger goals.
“So,” I said to this friend, “if you want to get picked up by a major imprint, you need to be writing the kinds of books they want to buy, which might not be the kinds of books you want to write right now. Or at least, you have to find creative ways of overlapping what you want to write with what the publishers want to buy. What you have to decide is which goal is more important to you right now—break out, or write authentically. There is no wrong answer. There’s only an honest answer. And I won’t judge you if your goal is to break out and get money and recognition. That has always been my goal, too.”
“I do want to break out,” she said.
“Great. Then let’s talk about how to write strategically so you have a little more control over how your work is received on the business end.”
Another thing I’m grateful for amid the endless frustrations of being a midlister: knowledge and experience, which I’m able to pass along to my friends. I really like helping other writers, mainly because nobody helped me. I had to figure all of this out on my own, which made it ten times harder and lonelier than it needed to be. I enjoy having the opportunity to be the change I’d like to see in this world.
For the past four years, I’ve been working on a manuscript about Van Gogh. I really like it. I feel a great affinity with Vincent, probably due to that whole “bipolar and working in the arts” thing. But also because my lifetime of involvement in arts-as-industry has made me keenly aware that there are way more artists like Vincent, who was brilliant and original and passionate and driven and utterly, completely dedicated to his art and yet it got him nowhere, than artists like Monet or Gérôme, who achieved financial success and recognition in their own lives.
Vincent became such a superstar that even now, nearly a century and a half after his death, he’s still THE artist. Modern people have no appreciation for how revolutionary his work was, because he became so famous that the very departures in style that made his work too strange and off-putting to sell during his lifetime have influenced all of western art. Now, Van Gogh’s paintings don’t seem all that startling because every other artist who has lived since 1890 has been shaped by his work. In his own day, he was too outré to be taken seriously, so he died believing that he would be a nobody forever.
Art of one kind or another has been my family’s business for generations. I am all too aware that, as a midlister, the likeliest scenario for me is that I will live like Vincent did. Pouring everything I’ve got into each new piece I make, and receiving indifference at best from the gatekeepers who hold the power to grant immortality and success to the deserving and the undeserving alike. Only gaining recognition when I’m dead and gone, and no longer capable of enjoying the fruits of a lifetime of passionate and focused work.
Of course, Vincent was lucky. He actually gained recognition, albeit posthumously. Innumerable other artists, every bit as brilliant and dedicated and deserving, were never recognized at all. It’s entirely possible that I could end up like them.
I choose to believe that, even if my poor luck continues and I remain a midlister forever, I will at least be recognized as a writer of quality after I’m dead. After more than a decade of doing this full-time—and many more years prior to that, while I worked multiple day jobs and wrote in my very limited free time—the hope that I might break out of the midlist posthumously is what keeps me putting my best effort into every piece I write. Someday, I’ll be recognized as a unique talent who made a real contribution to my art form. I want everything I write to live up to that potential.
So. Going on sub at the end of this week to some of the biggest editors in literary fiction. And feeling distinctly unruffled about it. Maybe one of these editors will see the merit in my work. Maybe they won’t. That’s out of my hands, at this point. I did the best work I knew how to do, and I did a damn good edit on that manuscript, too, under my agent’s guidance. Now, whatever will be will be.
This weekend will be one like any other for me. I will write. I will put my most sincere and focused effort into my work, even knowing that it may never get me off the midlist in my lifetime. And I’ll wait until the cards fall to see whether I have finally, after decades of struggling to be seen, hit my lucky streak. Or whether I’ve just run into another brick wall in a long, long series of them.
(One of the things I’ll be working on this weekend is an episode for my poor, neglected podcast about how I got my fourth agent. It’s a story that spans an entire year and it’s both wrenching and hilarious, so I can’t wait to share it. Stay tyned.)