Archive for the ‘First Time Writer Stuff’ Category
Next book — a massive effort
Was out around the Bay for a few days, thinking Book Thoughts. Am trying to get my second book off the ground, and–while I think I’ll ultimately write it–it’s feeling awfully sticky and unwilling right now.
Have you ever been in a change room, trying on pants, and nothing will fit? You try on pair after pair, and after a while you’re hot, and frustrated, and the changing room feels cramped and clingy. That’s sort of how it is with my second book right now. I think, if I just look at things this way it will work, or maybe that way, or I could try it like this.
And nothing really clicks. None of those pants, to torture the metaphor, really fit. I know this is part of the creative process, but it’s a part of the creative process I don’t like. I just want the next book to appear fully formed in my head. That’s childish, I know: Lonely was a long time in gestation. But I want the second book to fall into place now.
Am being a bit tight lipped re subject of next book, but it will be about loneliness. I just don’t feel finished with loneliness yet. And, yes, I will be asking for help and viewpoints and interviews — so I look forward to speaking with some of you who’ve been reading this blog. I’m just not at the interview stage yet. Am still kicking around with other people’s ideas, trying to find the story that’s mine to tell.
Offline for a bit
A quick note to say that I won’t have email or internet access for the next few days. Please feel free to write to me or post comments, but bear in mind that you won’t hear back (and nothing will appear on the site), until I have access again. It will be a short break. Keep well!
Another new (final) subtitle!
My US subtitle has changed again, and it’s final this time. The title will be Lonely: A Memoir on Learning to Live with Solitude. I think I like it.
It may sound strange that the title has changed so many times, but here’s a glimpse inside the world of publishing: young writers often don’t control their titles. A title and subtitle have to be approved by layers of people in editing and marketing. You have to be a very established writer to have the clout to go to a publishing house and say, “This is the title. And it’s not changing.” I actually don’t mind the process of revision: it’s interesting to see how other people think about the book.
Another publishing note: I don’t choose any of the headlines or “decks” (the few lines below the headline) for any articles that I’ve written. Again, editors write those. So, if you see something such as “Loneliness swallowed me up,” it’’s an editor at the Guardian writing that, not me.
US book news: a new sub-title for Lonely
It’s happened again, folks. Lonely seems to be a hard book to pin down. Since early 2009, I’ve had publishers on both sides of the border trying to come up with an appropriate subtitle.
In the US, my book is “Lonely: A Memoir,” while in Canada, it’s “Lonely: Learning to Live With Solitude.” This is the only difference between the two books.
My US publisher is now leaning towards my Canadian subtitle, because it has an educational aspect to it (and I do want the book to be educational). But they want to keep the memoir aspect as well. It’s tricky: the book is such a mish-mash of data, personal stories, and interviews, it’s really hard to know what to call it.
My new US title for the paperback will be Lonely: A Memoir on Learning How to Live With Solitude. It’s a mix of the original US and Canadian titles.
Confused? It’s a bit odd for a book to go through so many names, but since I just call it Lonely, I’m trying not to get too fussed about it (I won’t let them change the “Lonely” part.) You can write and share your two cents re the new subtitle, but the boat has pretty much sailed. Once it’s up on Amazon.com (and it is), it’s final. I hope people like it!
Finding Lonely in the UK
A very witty reader of this blog noted the 1 – 3 week wait time for Lonely on Amazon UK, and asked if my NY publisher was taping the books to the backs of seals, and sending them across the ocean that way.
I don’t think seals are involved (that would raise tricky animal welfare issues), but it is true that the books have to travel from the States. That being said, three weeks is the outside time limit: in my experience, people receive the books much more quickly than that.
Loneliness, writing, and Twitter
It’s odd. I just wrote a piece for a British newspaper about loneliness, and it was very personal — about the “voices” that overcame me when lonely, the jealousy I felt, the sense I had that I just might disappear. And I was fine with all this — largely because I didn’t know who was going to be reading the article, or when.
What’s interesting (to me at least) is that, when I try to Twitter about loneliness, I freeze up. And I think that’s because I know exactly who’s going to be reading the tweets. The audience is so clear — I have a list of “followers” — that I can imagine the reactions.
This may sound strange, given that I just published a book about loneliness, but I need a sense of privacy in order to confront and overcome the stigma attaching to loneliness. When I blog, or when I write an article, the audience is very broad. You, my readers, are important, but I don’t know when you’ll be reading the posts, or which posts you’ll read, or which ones you might come back to and read again.
I think that loneliness needs “space,” in a sense. I have that on this blog, but not on Twitter. It will be interesting to see if I can overcome stigma on Twitter and be as personal as I am in Lonely, or on this blog. You can follow my tweets if you wish — but if you do, you’ll see it’s a different me emerge, one that’s a lot less personal, and maybe a bit less honest about my loneliness.
Once again, thank you for writing
Many readers of this blog have written to me in the past few weeks to thank me for the book. This is my turn to thank you. This may sound trite, but it’s not: professional reviews are important, but what really matters is hearing from individual lonely people.
For a long time, when writing Lonely, I thought, “Maybe it is just me. Maybe I’ll write this book only to realize that I’m the only one who feels this way.” Every time I get a note from another lonely person, I realize that’s not the case.
I didn’t expect this to happen, but this blog is serving the “mirroring” function I wanted the book to serve. I wrote Lonely to help other lonely people feel less alone, and now other people are writing to tell me that my experiences aren’t at all unusual — meaning that my own experiences are being reflected back at me.
Thank you if you’ve written in. And I want to assure everyone that all emails sent directly to me stay with me, and go no further.
Still working on the UK issue
I’ve contacted my US publisher to try to get more books to the UK, but have been informed that it’s a ‘rights’ issue, and that they can’t ship more books ahead of time.
This leaves potential readers in the UK with a one to three week waiting period, if you buy the book online. My apologies! (In my limited experience, however, three weeks is the outside time limit, and you’ll probably receive the book more quickly than that.)
If it were up to me, I’d head to London, set up a little booth, and hand out books myself!
Oh no! Daphne Merkin doesn’t like my book
So, it’s happened. After a month of stellar reviews, I’ve gotten my first bad one—from a woman named Daphne Merkin, writing in this month’s Elle Magazine.
What bothers me about the review is not the criticism—I can handle that—but rather the fact that Merkin doesn’t seem to understand what I’m talking about. She says I write well, and that I’m funny, but that loneliness just isn’t worth talking about: I’ve made, essentially, a mountain out of a molehill.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine noted that loneliness is something everyone feels qualified to pronounce on. This seems to be what’s happened with Merkin. She doesn’t struggle with long-term loneliness, and—since she doesn’t have problems with it—she feels free to say that no one else does either.
At the beginning of Lonely, I note that I wrote the book against a constant chorus of “Why bother?” Why bother, in other words, writing about the state as though it mattered? Well, because it does matter. Merkin seems myopic: it’s her experience, and hers only, that seems to count. But what I’ve been hearing from people—through this blog, and on radio phone-ins—is that long-term loneliness is critical: it can distort and undermine a life.
Feel free to read the review if you wish. You can share your thoughts on it with me. After being really upset about it yesterday, I seem to have shrugged it off. Merkin has simply confirmed what I’ve known all along: some people won’t identify with what I’m writing about. That’s fine. But it doesn’t mean that loneliness isn’t a reality for many.
Going “outside my comfort zone”
One of my favorite book bloggers, George Murray at Bookninja, was recently on a local radio show, talking about phrases that drove him crazy. I didn’t phone in, but if I had, I would have mentioned “going outside your comfort zone.” I had someone say this to me recently, in relation to Lonely, as in, ‘Wow, publishing a book about loneliness–that’s really going outside your comfort zone, isn’t it?”
Now, for me, going outside my comfort zone involves wearing high heels, or having to host a dinner party for eight. Publishing a first-person account of a long-term, highly personal problem has nothing to do with my comfort zone. I’m so far “outside” of it, it might as well be on a different planet. It’s exceptionally strange to start seeing media about me, my life, and my family. I know that I invited a lot of this by writing the book, but it’s still discomfiting to see (and hear) strangers talking about me, and diagnosing me — telling me that I take things too seriously, or that everything is the result of divorce, or that I’m really just depressed.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d much rather have the media than not, but it’s not easy, and it’s not anything I’m used to. I can only hope it will get easier in time.