THE "PIVOT"

Or, what publishing does if you're not an overnight success, and other stuff.

There must be some astrological condition going on that I don’t know about, because there is some serious thematic shit happening in my life this winter, and it all keeps coming back to the word pivot.

First: sales of my first book were “soft,” which, in the current world of publishing, means, “This author’s first book didn’t explode or get picked by a celebrity, so we can be absolutely sure that none of the author’s future books will break out, and that she will never build an audience, and her brand is forever tainted, so even though we love her books and her as a person, we’re not going to sign her again, so long, good luck.” Which means it’s time for a pivot.

A pivot, in publishing, basically means that the author starts writing books that can plausibly be marketed as different so as to shake off the indelible stain of a debut with “soft” sales. (My best guess at what “soft” means is thousands, not tens of thousands.) Pivot may also mean a name change. Because that makes sense, right? Make the author unidentifiable to the thousands of people who bought her first and second books in order to hide that inconvenient “soft” sales record and make her seem new and tantalizing to bookstores. I think?

Anyway, this seems to be the way publishing works. And for a person (me) with enough persistence, resilience, and pride to refuse to fuck off and go home, pivot it is. I am not alone. Not many people talk about it in public, but a lot of authors go through it. An author is only as good as the sales of her last book. That’s verbatim from my agent.

Luckily, my actual, genuine creative mojo has taken a pivot too. I have been writing contemporary realism, and now I’m totally in love with this weird-ball, fantastical/realist, literary-ish idea that is kind of Spirited Away meets the Finnish archipelago, only adult. Every time I sit down to work on it, I’m like, Am I really allowed to do this? Can I really just make shit up? I know I made up my realist worlds, but at least they seemed real. There were rules. I followed them. Now I am making up my own rules, and people?—this is the wild, wild west for me. I definitely have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m hoping it’ll hang together enough to make a first draft that I can at least work with. (Respect to all y’all who write fantasy/magical-realist/sci-fi, etc. I’m like, wait, I have to figure out how time passes here…and what do they eat? Is the sky blue? Is water wet? It’s exhausting.)

Further on the pivot, last week I went back to my day job after a nine-month “sabbatical.” I put that word in quotes because I am a nurse, not an academic, and I took the sabbatical by essentially quitting then getting rehired. Anyway, back to work I go. It’s a good day job. I work in oncology, and I find meaning and fulfillment in the work, even if it’s not the central passion of my life. And along with this return to work comes a major pivot in my mindset. When I left for my “sabbatical,” nursing was my job and writing was my side hustle. Now writing is my job and nursing is my side-hustle. Nursing is the gig that allows me to weather the financial ups and downs of the writing life, and gives my pragmatic, earthy, Capricorn self some much needed structure.

And this all adds up to a pivot in this newsletter. When I started, I thought I had something to impart, some words of wisdom, some way to be useful to other authors and creatives trying to balance the creative work with money, family, health, self, etc. etc.

Truth: I do not know what the fuck I’m doing.

Another truth: I still think I might have some way to be of use to others.

One more truth: I am fifty-fucking-four years old. I am too old and life is too short to pretend to be someone I’m not or to try and do anything that doesn’t feel genuine. (Everything I’ve put out thus far has been genuine… the struggle to be genuine is why you haven’t heard anything from me in a month or so.)

So, thanks for being here, and I hope you’ll hang with me as I allow this newsletter to pivot. Where it will pivot to, I’m not sure. (I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you have thoughts.) But if you look at this all and are like, that is a giant trash-fire and I don’t need more of that in my life—I totally understand. Boundaries are good.

When I had my first job out of college at an environmental nonprofit, my boss had a handwritten sign taped to his door that said “Press on against the greedy vandals.” And for some reason, that’s what I always think about at times like this. I wish you all irascible determination and a large dose of chaos-muppet mayhem to press on against the greedy vandals.

More to come!