Failure: A Reflection

In which I consider where I'm at with this reading project, talk about querying my book, and take a moment to mention some of the beautiful things that happened along the way.

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

The beginning of December marks a full year since I began this newsletter. I had such a lofty goal, to read every single book ever longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction (more than four hundred and fifty), and—like with most things in my life—I’m a little bit behind. As of my writing this, I am on year 1965, which, if we’re calculating, is sixty-two award years behind schedule. Some of the longlists of the fifties featured up to seventeen books, with many books being absolute doorstoppers coming in at well over five hundred pages, and with my actual job and life getting in the way, I’ve had to adjust my expectations to be more realistic. Part of me is disappointed in myself, part of me is just glad that I’ve stuck with it.

As I sat down to write today’s letter, the 2009 film Julie and Julia was playing in the background, and it reminded me of what exactly it is I am doing here. In the film, partly based off of Julie Powell’s memoir of the same name, Julie decides that she needs something to give her life purpose, to lift herself out of the mundane, the depressive state she’s found herself in, and so she pursues this project to cook all five-hundred and twenty four recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking within the course of a year. I started this project in search of a similar feeling. While I haven’t been quite as successful as Julie Powell, it has been something that has grounded me in a year where I’ve felt close to drowning.

On October 31st, 2021—a month before starting this newsletter—I sent the query letter for my memoir, I Live At The End, to my dream agent. The following morning, she requested the full manuscript. I rushed to the DMs of multiple author friends to tell them the good news, and they said it seemed like a good sign, but gently reminded me that I should only get my hopes up so much until she finished the manuscript. Even still, I spun the story in my head that I would one day tell in author interviews—that I had only sent to my dream agent and that she had loved the book and it was some type of Cinderella story.

Two weeks went by and I heard nothing. I don’t know why I didn’t send to other agents in the mean time. I just refreshed my email every few minutes and tried to get my work done. It was also around this time that I first mentioned on Instagram how I wanted to start this reading project, and the ever kind and supportive Alexander Chee suggested I create a newsletter for people to follow this journey. I worried over if I was smart enough or a good enough reader to even share my thoughts on all of these books and this award, but I knew I had been wanting to do this project for a decade. I told myself that this would be a good project to work on as I went through the journey of trying to be published. I told myself that it would help me to establish an audience of readers, that reading the books would make me a better writer, that learning about the history of the award and American literature would help me to reconsider it for future projects. I told myself this was all how it was meant to be. Or at least, I’m telling myself that these were my thoughts then—I wish I had written down what I was actually thinking.

The first few months of this project were pretty easy. I was excited to be able to find commonalities between certain books (mostly World War II), writing about the historical aspects that informed each of these books, the ways certain classics clearly influenced an entire generations of writers. I found so much joy in this. One of my favorite parts about reading is finding the relationships and conversations between books, between writers. There’s an intimacy there that, once you’ve discovered it, makes you feel like you’re a part of it also. As a person who often finds myself lonely, this has always been a comfort.

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In April, one of my favorite writers, Kristen Arnett, came into town for a literary festival called Word of South. I messaged her on Instagram, telling her how excited I was to be able to meet her in person, and she asked if I would be interested in being her plus one for a little dinner thing with some other writers. Obviously, I said yes. I have no idea what it’s like, the life of a writer, but this was what I always imagined it would be. Getting to become friends with different writers and going to fun events with them and gushing about how much you loved their work.

When I met up with Kristen that evening, she was immediately charming and easy going and I was tipsy and sunburnt and sweaty, and no matter how many awkward jokes I tried to make or how much rambling I did, her kindness proved limitless. It only made me try harder to get her to like me. We got to the dinner—where there were several other major writers I was obsessed with—and we mingled and Kristen made me a cocktail and, as always, I overshared.

At first, I didn’t know what to say to anyone, because I just wanted people to think I belonged in the same place as them. I felt so inferior—no one made me feel that way but myself—and every time I brought up books I’d read, I realized I just sounded like a pretentious ass. I had spent the first few months of the year reading all of these old books in an attempt to fit in with a crowd who, it turned out, were just looking to have a good time.

[If this seems like an odd detour, I promise, it serves a purpose—kind of like in Legally Blonde, when Elle Woods talked about Tracy Marcinco getting a perm and it was only to prove that Chutney was actually the killer]

With a reasonable amount of bourbon coursing through me, I told the crowd this story about living with my Momma when I was sixteen. I’d been at the library, flipping through a copy of The First Wives Club when my Momma called and asked if I had any money on me. I did, $400 which she’d stolen from the gas station the night before. (it wasn’t a hold up, she just worked there) Then she told me to go behind the library and meet up with Buck, her drug dealer, because he was gonna drop off some Oxycontin. So I put my book back, walked behind the library and waited until I saw Buck’s truck pull up. When he turned in, I saw there was a guy in the truck next to him, but it wasn’t any of my business so I didn’t think about it. Well, when I walked up to do the exchange, a cop car turned the corner and the guy next to Buck pulled a gun from the waistband of his shorts and pointed it at me. I dropped the money, grabbed the pills, and heel-turned back to the Chevron. When I got there, I gave Momma the pills and I said, “you know Momma, when I went to pick up the pills, there was a guy in the truck next to Buck, and he pulled a gun on me.” and she looked up, full of concern, and said, “Oh my God. If something were to have happened…I’d have never gotten these pills.”

The crowd cackled, and I felt relief flood through me.

After telling a handful of other stories, rudely commandeering the entire room as I always do, one of the women asked if I had a book. I said I was sending it out to agents, and she said she was an agent. I laughed and said, “well my book’s not very good”, and Kristen said, “Don’t do that.” She told me it was important for me not to diminish myself, even for laughs, and that I basically needed to be a champion for my work. The woman gave me her card and told me to reach out to her. I said okay.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to become smarter, kinder, hotter, someone people would like and be happy to be around, always hiding parts of myself out of fear that it would turn people away—I realized in this moment, as I let myself be too talkative, share way too much, be honest about who I was and where I came from, that being me was enough to, at the very least, get an agents attention. It was enough to get some of my favorite writers to laugh. It didn’t matter that I had read all of these books, because being well-read wasn’t what won them over. It was just me being myself.

Kristen gave me a lot of advice that evening. She was so kind, I can’t reiterate that enough, but she was just so helpful to me. She told me to follow up with the agent that had the full manuscript, that it was okay to do that after a certain amount of time. She mentioned one of her projects and it sounded amazing. I also feel like I’m bragging about this encounter, but maybe I am. It still feels like such an honor and a dream come true.

Towards the end of the night, we eventually did talk about this book project. She knew I was doing it, and she and I spent a good bit of time talking about Flannery O’Connor and Kristen made me feel like my thoughts and ideas on O’Connor’s work were smart and valid. This experience with her not only soothed my agent anxieties, but it also nourished my creative soul, and made me feel like maybe I was on the right track with this reading project.

After this night, I ended up sending to another round of agents.

As I waited to hear back from the new round of people, I continued on with this project. It was still enjoyable, but my job became even more demanding, I felt my mental health crumbling, just a little, and it became harder to keep up with the amount of reading I was doing for the first few months of the project. I told myself I needed to make piece with the idea that I wouldn’t finish this project as quickly as I had planned.

As agent rejections came in, I noticed it impact my enjoyment of the newsletter. I’d get an email saying an agent was going to pass on my manuscript and then the newsletter would take hours longer to write, and I wouldn’t be nearly as articulate as I had been. My enjoyment of the books would take a hit as I fell into little slumps of depression.

Thankfully, right as things felt like they were getting to be too much, I ended up going on a trip to visit my friend Bernie, and I got to go to New York for the first time. The trip itself is of little importance to this story, but getting to meet Bernie in person and becoming closer friends eventually had a major impact on the newsletter. I have always wanted to have a friend who not only loved books as much as I did, but loved the same kinds of books, could speak about them just as passionately. He pointed out the gaps in my reading, showed me how my limitations were getting in the way of what I was sometimes trying to say. But he also valued my opinion on books and made me feel like what I was sharing was smart and thoughtful, and like I was accomplishing many of the things I feared I couldn’t. Our friendship made the newsletter much better, I think.

Soon after I got back from that trip, I submitted to the agent of my favorite writer, and the agent requested the full. I was thrilled—over the moon. Could you imagine sharing an agent with your favorite writer? I knew better than to get my hopes up, but still. Also, the agent was hot, and I love hot people, sue me.

I also sent to more agents, out of fear.

My favorite authors dream agent eventually wrote back. They said kind things—I will forever hold onto the line “we saw so much to admire in your poignant, deeply empathetic voice”—but that, at the end of the day, they weren’t the right agent for the book. I was devastated, but also glad to know that they had taken the time to read it, and also that they let me down so gently.

I have other agents who have the full, agents who I have come to love. I think having your eye on one dream agent isn’t really that healthy. It’s asking to have your feelings hurt.

I still don’t have an agent. Some agents still have the full, so it could happen. But I’ve gotten a bit better at not allowing myself to get my hopes up every time my phone buzzes with a new email.

I’m trying to make peace with the fact that nothing is where I thought it would be this time last year. I know it’s weird to be sharing a lot of this. I’m not even sure whether or not this is something that’s frowned upon—to share this early part of the journey. It’s hard to because it’s the most vulnerable I feel like I’ve been in a long time. But it’s also all that’s been on my mind. It’s been hard to read anything, and it’s been hard to write. I’m almost done working on my 1965 newsletter, but I didn’t want to just send out something that I wasn’t proud of. I’ve been writing out my thoughts and ideas for upcoming posts for the general newsletter, so hopefully things will be out soon. But I wanted to be honest because that’s just how I’ve always been with this community of people.

This reading project has been important to me because it’s proven to me that I do love writing, I do love literature, and even when my work isn’t for everyone, it’s still enough to bring me joy. While I don’t know what will come of the memoir or the agent journey, I do know that this newsletter has made me a better reader, and it’s made me a better writer, and that I have grown because of it. I am proud of that.

I think it’s easier to write about our failures after we’ve followed them up with success. I know that this letter would have had a better ending if I could have said that I actually did get an agent in the end. But that’s not the reality of things right now. I don’t have an agent, and my memoir may never get published. But in the mean time, I’m still submitting to people. I’m still writing other stories. I’m going to keep going with this newsletter, even though it’s taking me much longer than I had anticipated. Because I think it’s better to keep failing than to give up.

I guess that, in a way, today’s newsletter was just about finding peace with where I am in the many journeys I’m on. Apologies for this not really being the sort of thing y’all signed up for. Thanks for reading it anyway.

Stay tuned for more newsletters to come over the next few weeks.

Until next time,

XOXO

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