How Getting a Book Deal Made Me Quit Writing

I remember the day I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was in second grade. My teacher had—stop right there, you’re thinking. I didn’t come here to read about how your love of words developed; I want to know how getting a book deal (the end goal, the mia culpa!) could destroy your spirit. Please explain.

Yes, okay.

Here’s the condensed version: I wrote a book, it was bad. I wrote another book and it was better. I read the articles, did the pitch events, sent my manuscript to oh-so-many beta readers. After a year in the querying trenches, I signed with an agent. That book failed on sub. I wrote another book. It failed, too. I parted way with my agent, started sending my book to publishers accepting unagented submissions and I FINALLY GOT IT. The offer. The advance was modest but I didn’t care, I wasn’t doing this for the money. (Side note, if you’re doing this for the money, I have some bad news.) I went out to the far end of my country acreage—so no one would see me looking like a lunatic—and screamed “YES!” to the spring sky.

I’d done it. The thing I’d always wanted. I wasn’t “just” a stay-at-home mom, I was an author. My kids—who were now teenagers, who had grown up watching me draft furiously during naptimes and scribble notes on napkins in the car—were going to see that reaching your dreams was possible. My husband—a brilliant engineer, a rising-star in his field, a holder of multiple U.S. patents­—was going to be so proud of me.

It was such an exciting flurry of months. My editor was amazing. We discussed what she thought were weak points in my novel, and the ways to address them, and it was so GOOD. I loved having someone whose goal was the same as mine—make it better make it better make it better.

I had author photos taken. I shopped for book swag to give out at events. I gave opinions on book cover design. I commented on X posts with a hundred reiterations of “Don’t give up! It’s so worth it!”

Because it was, wasn’t it? Wasn’t I so happy?

Advance copies were scheduled. In a few short weeks, after years, decades—after my whole life—I was going to hold a book in my hands…with my name on the cover. With my words inside.

I made a list of fellow authors to contact for blurbs. Fellow authors. I’m one of you now, my letters almost screamed.

And then the email.

Anyone querying or on sub for any length of time learns to expect bad news. Every email chime makes your heart skip because you hope it’s a “yes” but you expect it to be a “no.” I had steeled myself against it for so long. Honestly, I thought I was impervious.

But I’d made a mistake. I’d let my guard down because I thought the war was over. I’d climbed my way out of the foxhole and I was sitting on the front porch of my house drinking coffee and listening to the birds and thinking the worst of it was behind me.

You don’t expect war to show up at your home. I wasn’t ready.

Baker and Taylor, the distributor giant who had only recently acquired my sweet little publisher, was closing down. No notice. Effective immediately.

There was chaos in the ranks. Panic. What did that mean for us? What would happen to our books? Our rights? Harried emails were sent. Lawyers were contacted.

I cried.

That was two months ago.

Only two months? It feels like years have gone by. Details are scarce and what little information is available is having to be gleaned from press releases and whispered reddit threads from former employees who aren’t supposed to be talking about it. No one knows anything. And there’s no one to ask.

Publishing is HARD. That isn’t a new revelation. But up until this point, I thought I was strong enough for it, I really did. For every rejection, for every “I just didn’t connect with your writing,” I clenched my fists and I thought, “This is okay. It doesn’t hurt too much yet; not so much that I can’t keep going.”

But it’s different this time; it’s a death blow more than a war wound. I don’t know that I can staunch the flow of blood before it drains me dry. And would anyone even notice? Just one more failed writer.

When I saw other authors announce they were packing it in, giving it up, I thought —stupidly, pridefully—that they just didn’t want it enough. They didn’t want it as much as I wanted it. After all, the worst thing you can do is give up. Everyone said it. I said it.

But maybe it isn’t true.

Maybe the worst thing you can do is to keep going on until you don’t love it anymore. Until you don’t remember why you loved it to begin with.

You aren’t obligated to love something that doesn’t love you back.

So I’m looking at this blank page that was supposed to have been a book, and asking myself: Do I love it still?