Three Years Ago In My Career...

It's the TFC Three-Year Blog Anniversary Party! Every day through March 13th we'll be posting about the last three years, giving away prizes (winners announced here March 15), and celebrating in style. I'm kicking it off with a somewhat lengthy reflection. Please now make the Wayne's World Garth Doo-Doo-Doo Wavy Hands of Time Travel...

March 2007. It was the best of times, it was...okay, it was simply the best of times. STORY OF A GIRL (my first published novel, but the fourth novel I'd written) had just come out that January. The publication of that book was the fruition of at least ten years of dreaming, working, rejection, near successes, periods of giving up, the high of finding an agent, the low of parting ways with her, writing writing writing and waiting waiting waiting. When would it be MY TURN? Eventually it all lined up: right agent, right book, right editor, right time.

What was I thinking about and feeling in terms of my life as a writer back then, when things were just taking off? I bet getting great critical and reader response to STORY gave me all kinds of confidence as I wrote my second book for Little, Brown. I bet I exhaled a little and said to myself, See, you can write, just keep doing what you know how to do and you'll be okay. I bet I was totally sane. Um, let's go to the archives...

From email to writer friend during 07 while in the midst of revising SWEETHEARTS:

It's weird - it's TOTALLY psychological. Something very different about the process from all the other times I've written books. There was one week I cried every day, seriously, and was ready to call of my whole career.

Probably that was just a fleeting feeling, though. A bad day, you know? We all have them. Oh, wait...from email to agent several weeks later:

SWEETHEARTS is the never-ending book. It may kill me yet.

Oh, well. I'm sure I was enjoying the good buzz and reviews around STORY and feeling proud of my work, thus making the whole Second Book Psychosis thing easier to deal with. Let's see...oh, here's a nice email from my mom, asking me how I keep myself from "lifting off like a rocket" when I hear good things about myself. I probably replied with something like, "I don't know! It's awesome!" Or maybe it was...

How do I keep from lifting off like a rocket? Because I'm never satisfied with the quality of my work. I always want to do better and work harder. That isn't to say I don't enjoy the recognition, but it's all in balance. I mean, if you lift off like a rocket at the good stuff, that means you crash like one at anything negative. Good thing I had all that therapy before I got published.

Doesn't sound like being published magically cured me of anything other than the fear that I would never get a single book published.

But don't worry, it wasn't all nervous breakdowns and crying myself to sleep. There were also many incredible, joyful, humbling, moving, profound experiences for me during these past three yeas. Such as:

- Sharing the 2007 National Book Award experience with my agent, Michael Bourret, and my editor, and the other finalists: Sherman Alexie (winner!), Kathleen Duey, M. Sindy Felin, and Brian Selznick. Getting screamed for by teenagers at NBA press conference. I blogged all about it here, and yes, I do still periodically re-read the post, and I do still wear my medal on occasion.

- Movie option for STORY!

- When SWEETHEARTS ARCs first came out and I was utterly convinced the book would be a total flop and I'd be exposed for the fraud I was, and I sat down to a dinner with librarians and one of them told me she'd been up all night in her hotel bathroom reading SWEETHEARTS, and loved it, and I thought (very quietly, in my inside voice), "Maybe I will have a career after all."

- When the emails started to come in from readers telling me stories of their Camerons.

- Speaking at schools and wondering if anyone even cares or is listening, then having that one conversation afterwards with the girl or boy who comes up to me to tell me something personal about what one of my books means to them.

- Getting the "It is finished" from my editor as we wrapped up ONCE WAS LOST, a book I was sure I could not pull off and thought would be the end of me. (Hmm, I'm sensing a pattern here.)

- Having the chance to blurb books I wished I'd written. Like Jandy Nelson's THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE (coming this year).

- There are so many other things, but maybe most of all is the deeply personal, almost inexpressible satisfaction I get knowing what I went through and overcame and have been blessed with in this writing life.

So, in case this post isn't already long enough, here is what I've learned by trial and error in the three years since becoming a published author:

- It's not about you. How you feel about your book or certain aspects of it or what was arduous vs. what flowed usually has little bearing on reader response. There can be things about your book you wish you'd done better, or different, but if a reader loves it you don't grimace and say "Thanks, but...", you honor that. Once it's out, in a way it's not yours any more, it's theirs.

- In another way, it's totally about you. I believe you have to write for yourself. Not critics, not a faceless demographic, not your mother, not the market. All of those things are fickle, ever-shifting (okay maybe not your mother). You will go insane if you let them dictate what you write. You have to find the thing that inspires, scares, ignites, excites something in YOU and write from that.

- Treasure your comrades. No one but another writer knows what it means to be one. When I started out, I got into all the name-dropping and the gossip, but quickly realized that this was my community, and the only people on earth who fully understand what it is to be a writer of YA fiction. I have found my trusted circle, and I would go to the mat for these people. Keep your complaints off the grid, don't spread gossip, and save the snark.

- Know who your readers are. (Hint: they are not critics.) Positive critical response is great, don't get me wrong. Having starred reviews to blog about feels good to our friend The Ego and can be handy when selling the next book. But when it comes down to it, would you rather connect with an awards committee or with the fifteen-year-old in her bedroom who feels alone until she picks up your book (multiplied by thousands)?

- The job of the writer is to write. Seems like a no-brainer, but it's one of those totally obvious things I have to consciously remember. Every day there are choices: publishing-related Twitter debates to get into, self-Googling to do, blogs to update, Facebook friends to appease, inboxes to tame, colleagues to envy, publishing deals to lust for, sales to fret over, reviews to be annoyed with/buoyed by, industry news to worry about...IT NEVER STOPS. Many of these things are an important part of career management, but you will have no career worth having if you don't eventually turn it all off and show up to the page to do the best work you are capable of.

- Don't take it too seriously. Sometimes when I'm moping around feeling like a failure, or consumed with anxiety, or wringing my hands over industry news, I remind myself, "Sara, did you work this hard and come all this way to have this career you've always wanted only to constantly feel anxious about it?" The first half of this post may make you think, Yes, apparently, but the correct answer is No! Granted, there are plenty of things to feel anxious about, but I'm learning little by little to celebrate all the little and big good things, to let go of what hurts but isn't useful, to find humor in what humbles (and possibly humiliates), and to generally lighten up and enjoy the whole process. If I wanted to be miserable in my job, I'd go back to being an administrative assistant.

I'm so looking forward to this month of celebrating three years of TFC, and hearing more perspectives here on the blog and in the comments!

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