My Baby Gets a New Face: From Hardcover to Paperback

by Melanie Thorne

This box of paperbacks showed up at my house the other day:

I don’t have human children, but I imagine it would be a shock to wake up one day and find that the face of your child had been replaced. Her personality, her insides, her soul all remained the same, but outside, she had a brand new look. It’d be pretty strange, right?

I suppose the comparison isn’t exactly the same, but getting a new paperback cover---quite literally a new face in this case---for my novel, Hand Me Down, took some getting used to.

Hardcover

I fell in love with my original hardcover image. It was the first one the publisher presented to me, and my agent and editor and I all loved it. And suddenly, it was like my book was real. This image was the first face of my faceless word document, the first visual representation of my labor of love, and very quickly, it was the image I pictured when I thought of my book. Especially after I held a physical copy with its bound pages and felt the thick matte texture of the jacket, the weight of it in my hands, it was hard to imagine a new face for my baby. But I knew it was coming.

I hated the first proposed paperback design. It felt so wrong for the book—pink and flowery and fluffy and so very, very wrong. Luckily my agent agreed and we asked to see another design. For a while nothing came, and I grew even more attached to the girls on my cover since we spent so much time on the road together, but after a few months I got a new design. It didn’t grab me right away, but I didn't hate it, and I was mulling over its pros and cons when another new design showed up with a note that encouraged me to decide between these two covers relatively quickly. I burst into tears. Neither seemed right, neither seemed like it held a candle to the original cover, and I wished we could just keep it. Why did my beautiful baby need a new look anyway? She looked great the way she was.

I felt pressured by time, was emotionally and physically drained from months of book tour traveling, and was so used to my hardcover that I’m not sure anything would have looked good enough to me in that moment and in that mind set, but my agent LOVED the last image. She thought it was perfect, and even through my pouting I had the good sense to listen to her advice. 

She said that this girl on the new cover was watching, just like Liz does, and then I noticed the moon in her eye, the dusting of downy blonde hair at the top, and I thought maybe my agent was right: that this could be the perfect cover for the book’s new form. And boy, was she right.

Paperback

I now think this close-up black and white face is a striking image that also really represents Liz’s story. The colors pop and the composition makes you want to pick it up and investigate. If Hand Me Down had to get a new face, this a pretty good replacement. And it’s not like the other image will disappear, at least not from my mind. It’s more like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, a metamorphosis, and the two images live together in my head, both faces equally special.

The hardcover image really focused on two girls: Liz and Jaime, the sisters in the book, who are definitely the core relationship of the story. But I have to admit how much I like that in the long term, in the life that she will live forever, Hand Me Down’s main image is a single girl, who is tough but vulnerable, watching, cautious, but still with the moon in her eyes.

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Melanie Thorne is the author of Hand Me Down, a debut novel in the tradition of Dorothy Allison and Janet Fitch. A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2012 and a 2013 YALSA Alex Award nominee, Hand Me Down has been widely praised by media, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Daily Candy, and received a “compelling” 3.5/4 stars from People. Melanie earned her MA in Creative Writing from the University of CA, Davis, where she was awarded the Alva Englund Fellowship and the Maurice Prize in Fiction. She lives in Northern California.

Find out more at www.melaniethorne.com, and connect with Melanie on Twitter and Facebook.

Nine New Year’s Not-Resolutions for Writers

by Melanie Thorne

I don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions. It’s too formal—a pledge, a declaration of something you’ll do more of or stop doing altogether, and I always fail. While there are no real consequences for failing this personal oath, I still feel guilty for not living up to the impossible standard I’ve set myself on this sort of arbitrary “new start” each year. Writers already have enough tools to beat ourselves up; we don’t need New Year’s resolutions as an extra dose of feel-bad-about-yourself.

So screw it. This year I’ve decided to make not-resolutions. Not decrees or vows, but rather, goals and hopes for the new year ahead, gentle guidelines that I will do my best to meet but not beat myself up over when I don’t. Who actually keeps 100% of their New Year’s resolutions anyway? Oh? You do? Shut up, I hate you. I mean, good for you. For the rest of us, let’s make 2013 about doing the things we can do, not the things we think we should—in life, and in our writing careers—and also about easing up on ripping out our own throats every time we feel we’ve fallen short.

1. Stop Comparing Yourself to Other Writers  

I had a conversation with a writer friend recently about nemesis books. You know, the book that is like yours, but maybe, you think or have been told, isn’t quite as good, or at least isn’t that much better than yours, and yet that other book has sold more copies, or been on more lists, or received more critical acclaim, more praise from big-name authors, more media attention, more reviews from important publications, or more of whatever it is you had hoped for your own novel that this other book got and you didn’t. I could write a whole post on this topic but my point here is that I think all of us have our own go-to comparison book that makes that evil parasite of jealousy squirm in our brains.

But here’s the thing: almost every single author out there wishes their book had gotten more ________, and no two books get the same amount of ________ because no two books are exactly the same. Isn’t that part of why we love to read? We can’t compare our books to others tit-for-tat because we will drive ourselves crazy. How do you measure subjectivity? In reality, the act of comparison is much less about the success of the “nemesis” book(s) and more about our own insecurities setting traps to make us feel worse about the success of our own book.

So this is my number one goal for 2013: stop comparing my book and my career as an author to other books and their authors. My book is mine and no matter how much more attention or praise or sales another book got, it does not in any way diminish the praise and attention and sales my book—and yours—received.

And really, the truth is, every single one of us has something someone else is jealous of. Why not enjoy what we have?

Which brings me to #2:

2. Enjoy Your Successes

My book was published last year. MY BOOK was PUBLISHED last year. I got money for it. From a NY publishing house. My book is in bookstores. Thousands of people have read it. Holy f---ing crap! Isn’t that the dream?

All year people kept saying, “You must be so excited!” And I was. I was, and yet...I was so worried about everything that it was hard to enjoy it as much as I’d wanted. Waiting for the trade reviews before the release was agony, and then when Hand Me Down was out in the public each new review that appeared online made my heart stop for a second. I stewed over the bad reviews for longer than I’ll admit here and I didn’t let all the praise sink in as deeply. I felt like there was so much to be done and so much to stress over that I didn’t stop to savor each glowing review, each heartfelt email from readers, each time I saw my book in a bookstore as much as I now wish I had.

This year, I want to slow down and enjoy each little hilltop of success, appreciate the view from each new peak before moving forward, and you should, too. Celebrate your accomplishments! I’m not sure why this is so hard for so many of us writers, but if you’re like me and find this difficult, I hope this year we can make progress.

3. Write More

I’m leaving this vague because this will mean different things for each writer. Maybe you need to set a word count goal each day. Maybe it means sitting down for five hours while your kids are at school. Maybe you want to revise a shitty first draft you have sitting on your hard drive. Figure out what it means for you, what specific goal you want to reach or specific habit you want to nurture, and make it happen.

For me, it means parking my butt in a chair and forcing myself to sit in front of the computer for at least three eight-hour days each week until I have a finished draft of my second novel. I need to set a schedule, block out that time, and stick to it. Write crap, write lots and lots of crap at first, yes, that’s fine, but write more.

4. Leave the House More, Too 

This may seem contradictory to the last goal, but it isn’t. I find that when I go out in the world—lunch with friends, grocery shopping, a walk in my neighborhood—I notice things that later make it into my writing. The color of the sky, an overheard conversation, the muffled sound of a bad band practicing in their garage=material stored for later. Writers are observers. We take the world into our heads and reproduce pieces of it on the page. If you’re not out in the world, how can you possibly write about it?

5. Limit Your Social Media Time 

An author friend of mine spends a half hour on Twitter in the morning and another half hour in the evening and that’s it. She has more self-discipline that I do, but I’m going to try this year, even during the paperback release of Hand Me Down, to limit my social media time.

But what about promoting? What about interactions with other writers? What if I miss something?!

Promoting via social media is an important part of being an author, but how long does it take to write a post, respond to Tweets, catch up on your feeds? For me, a hell of lot less time than I actually spend online. Do I really need to click through fifty vacation photos of someone I hardly know? Do I really need to read every single article about the business or craft of writing that shows up on Twitter?

No. No, I don’t.

So my goal is to set a limit for how long I can be online. Writing can be lonely, and interacting with my writer friends scattered across the country is an important part of my day, but I can do this in intervals. I might miss something, sure, but is it even possible to not miss things on Twitter? We can’t feasibly soak in all available information.

So I think the key will be only reading the articles that speak to me; engage in the conversations that are fun or beneficial. I’m not going to force myself to read an article that bores me or doesn’t resonate. Maybe it will later, and when I read it at the right time, it will have a much greater impact. Don’t feel obligated and don’t let the clickable distractions suck you in and hold you hostage. Time limits and increased self-discipline. I will beat you, social media!

6. Find a Community

If you don’t yet have a network of writing friends—find one. If you can’t find one you like, create one. The important part is to have a group of writer friends to commiserate with, complain to, celebrate with. You need to be able to share the good and bad news that “civilians” just don’t get with people who will. Plus, talking shop with people who live for stories and words that way we do is food for our solitary writer souls.

Since I’m lucky enough to belong to this great group of debut authors here on Book Pregnant, my hope for the year is to find a real-life, in-person community as well.

7. Separate Yourself and Self-Worth from Your Book 

You are not your book. I know it often feels like you are, but say it with me: I am not my book. I’ve noticed a lot of authors—myself included—refer to our books as ourselves. As in, “I got reviewed,” when, really, it was the book that got reviewed. You’ve poured your heart and soul and blood and sweat and tears and time and energy into this project, and it feels like an actual piece of you is out in the world, but it is still not the entirety of you.

You have life goals and you have career goals and your book is probably a place those desires overlap, but that doesn’t mean that the success or failure of your whole life is equal to the level of success that this, your first (of many) book, achieves. There is no failure here—if your book is being published, you’ve already sailed past the exit for failure, and regardless of how far this book takes you, you have a family and friends and hobbies, a life, outside your writing. Your book is only one part of you; one aspect of your life. Don’t let it become your definition.

8. Remember Why You Do This

Why did you start writing? Did you have story burning inside of you that just had to be told? Did you fall in love with language? Were stories your escape, your friends, your window into lives beyond yourself? All of those are true for me, and I bet you have several reasons you started writing, too. Rediscover those. Remind yourself why writing is important; why you push through the never-ending obstacles. Know what you’re fighting for, and you can win.

And, finally:

9. Give Yourself a Break

Writing is hard.


Melanie Thorne is the author of Hand Me Down, a debut novel in the tradition of Dorothy Allison and Janet Fitch that tells the unforgettable story of a girl who has never been loved best of all and her fight to protect her sister, and was recently named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012. Melanie earned her MA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, where she was awarded the Alva Englund Fellowship and the Maurice Prize in fiction. She lives in Northern California. Connect with her at www.melaniethorne.com, on Facebook and Twitter.

Three Ways Non-Writer Job Skills Can Help as You Publish Your Novel

By MelanieThorne

I’ve had a lot of shitty jobs.

I haven’t been unemployed for more than a month since I was fifteen. Combine that with a low tolerance for moron supervisors, a tendency to get bored quickly, and, as I grew up, the knowledge that I wanted a career as a writer and the refusal to work any job that would interfere with that goal, and I have a long, long list of workplaces. I’ve been a Subway sandwich artist, a busser, a hostess; an accounts payable specialist, a payroll specialist, an HR director. I’ve managed educational programs, offices, a Blockbuster. I’ve been a test scorer, essay grader, copywriter. I’ve taught pretty much everything related to English or writing at pretty much every level.

Sure, I was good at most of those jobs, some I even really enjoyed, but in my head I always believed they were simply a means to an end—a way to feed, house, and clothe myself while I was chipping away at my manuscript, on my way to my dream career as a published author.

I considered my writing classes and programs much more important than those lowly day jobs because in my naïveté, I thought I’d use my craft training and skills to, you know, write. But as it turns out, that’s only the first step. Now that Hand Me Down has been out in the world for four months I know that being an author—which is definitely different from being a writer—means a hell of a lot more than simply writing. You play the roles of publicist, copywriter, website developer, travel planner, thank you card sender, Vista print designer, social media manager, and anything else necessary. You basically become your own executive assistant to your author self. But you only work on commission.

If you’re a writer, you probably have your own list of “day jobs” (unless you are independently wealthy, and then I might hate you) during which you probably spent many hours nurturing fantasies of selling your book. What nobody tells you is that the reality of publishing a book is dramatically different than those work-day dreams in which you sell for a huge advance and sit back with a drink as it becomes a bestseller and then a movie and your royalties come pouring in like gold coins in cartoons and you can make a living as a writer simply by writing.

But the skills you gained while you whiled away the hours in your non-book-writer jobs can still come in handy. Here are three ways they did for me.

Teaching=Poker Face 

You never know what kind of bizarre questions or off the wall comments are going to come out of students’ mouths. “Recycling is stupid.” “Wait, women can’t actually have, um, climaxes…can they?” Not to mention all the bozo things they say in relation to writing—“why does it matter if I use their or they’re? It’s the same word.” Grr.

As a teacher, you get used to camouflaging your face so your true reactions don’t flitter across your features and give away your shock or frustration. This comes in handy when your readers, who will feel like they know you, ask you strange and personal questions, or tell you random bits of information, like the woman who told me she worked with homeless teens and sometimes did meth with them. “Just so I can connect with them.” Um…what do you say to that?

Weird things will happen to you, too. I guarantee it. With a proper poker face, you can just nod and smile and say thank you and move on. I recommend practicing this whether you are a teacher or not, because readers are people, and people are unpredictable.

Administrative=Organization

You will be asked to do a book reading and a book club on the same day, maybe in different cities, and, not wanting to disappoint anyone (debut authors will do everything we can to help readers connect with our books, so I guess, we’re whores…or is it just me?) you will agree to both and have to figure out how to make the travel work. You’ll want to get postcards, bookmarks, business cards, posters, mugs, T-shirts, book bags, and maybe even a cake with your beautiful book cover on it. You’ll want to send thank you cards and postcards to bookstores, book sellers, book clubs, libraries, your aunt who told everyone she knows about your book. You’ll have interview questions and guest blog posts and website updates and reader emails to keep up with. It’s a lot.

I’m naturally a pretty organized and efficient person, but I was overwhelmed with all the administrative details pretty quickly. Luckily, I had done payroll for an Excel genius and learned some of his tricks for spreadsheets. I managed travel and a ridiculously busy calendar for the CEO/president of a fancy-pants mortgage brokerage firm in Palo Alto, which made me better equipped to handle my suddenly very busy schedule. I've had more than a half-dozen office jobs over the years and all the organizational tools I picked up, I used. Anything that can help you gain some control over the chaotic first few months after your pub date will go a long way in preventing mistakes or missed opportunities and maintaining your sanity. 

Professional Writing=Deadlines 

Even if you had deadlines before you sold your book, publishing deadlines are different. It’s not just your agent or your critique group you let down if you fail to deliver, not just your editor, but a whole team of people who get paid to make your book baby a product. Waiting. Talk about pressure.

If you’re writing articles for magazines or journals or any type of professional writing they don’t care if you’re feeling creatively blocked. These are businesses. You must produce the commodity they hired you to create by the date you agreed upon, and if you don’t, they won’t ask you to write for them again. Experience with this kind of high-stakes writing deadlines helped me cope with looming publishing deadlines, and made me a little better at writing under pressure. If you can think of your book deadlines as another piece of regular work, it might help curb your nerves.

Despite my frequent frustration by the jobs that were not part of my ultimate career goals, I’m thankful for each position I’ve worked as each of them taught me something valuable, even the jobs that mainly taught me I didn’t want to do that job anymore because that often fueled my writing drive. Nothing is wasted, as they say, and if you’re like me, you’ll need all the help you can get from any applicable skill as you launch your author career.

What have you learned in a “day job” that has helped (or could help) your publishing process?

Melanie Thorne is the author of Hand Me Down, a debut novel that is the story of a girl who has never been loved best of all. Find out more about why People gave it a "compelling" 3.5/4 stars on her website, follow her on Twitter, or say hello on Facebook.

How Can I Write Naked When Everyone’s Watching?

by Melanie Thorne

Writing used to be easy.

Are you laughing yet? If you’re a writer, you know that’s a load of crap. Writing is not easy; it never has been. What’s that Hemingway quote? There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed. It’s funny because it’s true, and most of us are familiar with the pain, the gutting open of ourselves, the pouring of our hearts and stories onto the page. I’m a writer; I can take the abuse. I bled onto my keyboard for years. But it seems that ever since I sold my novel, writing has gotten even harder.

When I wrote Hand Me Down, it was just me at my computer, alone in my office. Just my voice—and, Liz, my narrator’s, of course—in my head shaping the language, telling the story for an anonymous, would-be, someday, maybe-in-my-wildest-dreams-will-someone-else-actually-read-this-whole-thing potential reader. I wrote for me. I wrote because I had to tell my story, had to understand the hard truths of my childhood by twisting them inside out and rearranging them in an order that made sense. I could write like I was naked—bare my soul completely with words—because no one was watching.

I knew people would read my stories, sure, but they were my professors, my classmates in workshops, strangers at a conference, a very limited, very supportive audience. Back then I felt free enough to write honestly. No one knew the things I called fiction were true. No one cared if my work was good enough to publish—in fact, it was expected not to be. We were all learning; criticism came with the intention of improving the work rather than with the judgment that comes once a piece is finished.

Years later, after I sold the book, my editor had very few suggested changes, but we all agreed that the ending could be improved. I needed to write an entirely new climax scene. And I choked.

I couldn’t write anything for weeks. The pressure of creating something brand new that was going to go into the finished book was overwhelming. I had spent the better part of the previous five years reading and rereading and revising every word of my manuscript over and over and now I had mere monthsuntil a deadline that carried the weight of a paid, binding contract for an editor who represented a big NY publishing house. It was enough to strike me dumb, and I became paralyzed by these new real-life demands on my creative process. My bare-soul writing had gained a VIP audience and I felt fully exposed. I froze in the spotlight and it was like I was five again, running offstage to puke in the wings during our church play, incapable of performing.  

Near tears, I finally had to call my editor and tell her I was stuck. I couldn’t admit that I was a fraud, but I knew I was. These people had invested in a lost cause; the whole sale had been a mistake. I had managed to fool us all by pretending to be a writer and my house of cards was about to crash.

I'm so lucky I have a fantastic editor. She talked me off the ledge, said we had a little bit more time. She said the words I most needed to hear: give yourself a break. She made me feel safe enough to risk being uncovered again, like I was back in workshop, writing for myself, writing to tell the best story I could tell, to understand, to discover truths. I convinced myself no one important was watching and I took off my writing clothes, spilled more blood onto my keyboard.

But my relationship with writing has changed even more dramatically since then. Not only did my editor read my book, but then the marketing and sales teams, my publicist, my family, booksellers, industry reviewers, media reviewers, bloggers, and then, the general public. Now, anyone who wants to can pick up my book, read my blood on the page, read the product of my emotional sweat and literal tears. Not only that, but they can respond to me directly, tell me how much they loved Hand Me Down and can’t wait for the next book. It’s so wonderful and gratifying to hear that, to hear that people are responding to my words and my story, but it also reminds me that there are now people waiting for me to write. I feel like everyone is watching, and I don’t want to let them down.

I’m trying to work on my second book, but I’ve found that it’s not me alone at my computer anymore. It’s not just my voice in my head, but also the negative comments from readers (even though they are few), the positive comments from readers and reviewers (what if I don’t live up to the praise?), statistics about sales figures and sophomore flops, the VIP audience of my agent and editor that are now among my earliest readers instead of the last, the knowledge that this book needs to be written more quickly than HMD, that it needs to be saleable, publishable, in order to keep my career moving, the nagging doubt that I'm capable of writing a second book.

If I can’t even be alone in my own head, how can I possibly get to that place where I can gut myself open?

There is no simple answer, or not one I know of. (If you’ve found one, please share!) I’m doing my best to work my way back to that safe space I started out in, the frame of mind that I’m only writing for me. I need to learn to protect myself from those outside voices, pretend that I’m invisible. This book does need to be publishable, eventually, and I can only get to publishable by writing those shitty first drafts, so that’s the place to start. The public doesn’t exist for this second book yet, and though my agent and editor are supportive readers, I need to kick them out of my brain for the beginning stages as well. I’ll put blinders on and earplugs in and focus on the writing, the storytelling, the characters’ voices, not the ones beyond my office. I’ll hang dark curtains over all my windows, and while I know the world is still out there, at least they won’t be able to see me.

It’s like that saying: Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one can hear. I also love Jennifer Weiner’s addition from her BEA speech: “Tweet like your mother’s not online.”

Write like you’re naked. It’s not easy, but we knew that already. We wouldn’t have made it this far if we couldn’t take the pain.

Melanie Thorne is the author of Hand Me Down, a debut novel that is the story of a girl who has never been loved best of all. Find out more on her website, follow her on Twitter, or say hello on Facebook.

Cover Story: How My Book Got Its Face

by Melanie Thorne

I'm a sucker for pretty book covers. I always have been. As a kid in libraries, I’d scan the shelves for anything that caught my eye. I picked up Twilight in a bookstore knowing nothing about it other than it was a vampire story—I fell in love with vampires in 6th grade—and that the cover was beautiful. The striking red of the apple against the stark white of the cupped hands and angled forearms, the black background and silver title sold me in about two seconds. I didn’t love the book and didn’t read any of the sequels, but every time I pull Twilight out to get rid of it, I end up admiring the cover like a work of art and put it back on my shelf. 

My bookcases are filled with pretty books. I mean, all books are beautiful, but those with pretty faces as well as words are likely to go far in our visual culture. It may not be fair, but it’s true: people judge books by their covers all the time. So we authors cross our fingers that we’ll get a good one, because the thing is, we don’t have much control over the cover.

When I sold my novel, it was a Word document on my computer; a manuscript I hadn’t printed out in its entirety for years. It wasn’t yet a physical object, or rather its physicality was blank. When I pictured my book as a thing, it looked like a pile of papers, a faceless body of words.

Then one day, an image magically appeared in my email inbox. No one had told me exactly when I’d see my cover, or what it might look like. No one had asked me for any ideas or input, though I suppose, if I’d had strong opinions about my vision, I would have said so. I know other authors who sent photos or drawings, or other covers they loved. I did none of that and yet there it was as an attachment from my editor. I held my breath as I waited for it to load. Suddenly, my book was looking back at me.

I didn’t immediately fall in love. At first, I didn’t know what I thought. How do you react to finally seeing the face of a being you know so intimately? My book and I were like one of those couples who meet online or through the paper and write to each other and talk on the phone for months, revealing every detail about themselves without having seen any photos, the internal so familiar and the external only imagined. A face-to-face encounter changes the whole relationship in a second.

Generally, an author is shown a cover from the designer. She then has three options: reject, accept, or request changes. Of course, there are always those horror stories of authors who had no say at all and hated their covers, but I have also heard of authors going through three or five versions to find one that’s exactly right. For good reason—a book’s cover is how it presents itself to the world. It’s important. Like you’d choose an outfit based on your activity, your cover should fit your audience, should give a sense of the book’s mood, should make people want to pick it up and hold it in their hands.

It’s a partnership, working with a publisher, so you may not get exactly what you envisioned all those years as you built a relationship with your book. And some authors have told me that was a good thing: that the design their publisher presented was so much better that what they’d asked for; better than they’d imagined. The designers are, after all, designers. Try to be open-minded.

When you do see her face for the first time, it’s less complicated than meeting your internet boyfriend in person because, unlike his, the book's face isn't permanent. You can change it. If you hate your cover or you really feel that something isn’t working, speak up! Be polite and respectful, but say something. Your cover is what everyone will see, what your book will wear out in the world, her shining face. It should be something that feels right for her, and for you.

Isn't she pretty?

I know I was lucky with my cover. After the initial shock wore off, I decided I liked it. I really liked it. I asked for a few changes—small adjustments to colors, lightening the girls’ hair which was originally black and my characters are blond—and now I’m head over heels in love with it. I love the colors and the font and the ragged edges. I love the interesting composition, eye-catching photo, the feeling of protectiveness between the two girls, and their vulnerability. It captures the "tough and tender" tone of Hand Me Down perfectly. Now, I can’t imagine my book without this beautiful face.

Find out more about Hand Me Down at www.melaniethorne.com

A Case of the Whatifs: Pre-Publication Jitters

By Melanie Thorne

I’m going to tell you a secret. I’m scared.

It feels like there is some unspoken rule that I’m not supposed to admit this. As a soon-to-be-published author I should be over the moon with happiness. My book is being published! That’s amazing! Everyone keeps telling me how excited I must be, and I am, of course. It is unbelievably amazing to have sold this thing I started years ago, this thing that went from thoughts to words on a screen to a physical object in people’s hands. But selling a book is not the end of fear or worry or doubt that I think many writers, myself included, imagine it will be. It’s an accomplishment, a huge, wonderful, happily satisfying one for sure, but it’s not an eraser for insecurities. (Wouldn’t it be cool if that existed?)

Please don’t misunderstand my admission of fear to mean that I wish this wasn’t happening or that I don’t appreciate where I am. I’m thrilled—beyond thrilled—that this collection of my words, my story, will be an actual book in actual bookstores next to other real live books. I can’t wait to see what happens when she steps out into the world, how she’s treated, how far she travels, if people understand her. I also worry about what people will say about her behind her back, if she’ll make a good enough first impression, if readers will make promises they don’t keep and leave her alone on cold shelves.

You know that Shel Silverstein poem, “Whatif,” from A Light in the Attic? "Last night, while I lay thinking here,/Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear/And pranced and partied all night long/And sang their same old Whatif song.” I read it in first grade and was relieved to find it wasn’t just me who lay awake at night pondering both practical and ridiculous concerns. Some of the questions in the poem apply directly to my current book launch fears: “Whatif I start to cry? Whatif the fish don’t bite? Whatif nobody likes me?” Of course, my nighttime Whatifs have a million more hypotheticals with varying degrees of terrible-ness for me to mull over, and I bet yours do, too.

Hand Me Down is two weeks from publication. In two weeks this thing that I have slaved over, loved and hated (and loved and hated again), doubted, sacrificed for, and stressed about for years, this thing I invested time and energy and soul into, this thing that has so much of myself in its pages will be available for public consumption. I will be available for public consumption. Exposed. My life is going to change in ways I can’t even imagine, and along with being excited and hopeful, I’m also frightened.

I know some of you want to punch me in the face right now. Some writers out there who have not yet sold their books are thinking, Oh, boo-hoo, poor published author, and I get it. Two years ago I would have thought the same thing. When you’re in the throes of writing, your doubts and fears are about the project itself, about how it’s working, how the words fit together, how the story flows, and also about whether this project will ever make it out into the world the way you hope it will. The goal is to get published, and you’re convinced that if you can just reach that goal, everything will be okay. I am so thankful to have gotten to this point, and I would certainly not want to go back, but my fears and doubts didn’t suddenly disappear when I signed my contract, as much as I wished they would.

There are struggles at every level, but maybe that’s a good thing. Each hurdle is a chance to learn. Richard Bausch says, “Your doubt is your gift.” It’s what keeps us striving to improve our craft, tightening our language, studying the masters. When you think you have nothing left to learn—when you completely stop doubting your work—you stop getting better. Not that you shouldn’t be proud. You should. We should. I am. But as writers, we know how to persist. Our fears of inadequacy push us to work harder; the world’s skepticism strengthens our resolve, which is something I need to remember as I head into publication mode. My doubts will force me to study, to practice, to improve each step of the way. My fears will motivate me to prepare. I will come up with an answer for every single one of those nighttime Whatifs, and I’ll be as ready as I can possibly be when my book baby leaves the nest.

In two weeks my life is going to change in ways I can’t even imagine. Am I nervous? Yes. Can I handle it? Yes. And you never know, Whatif everything turns out better than I could dream?

My First Agent Crush

by Melanie Thorne

My first and only agent crush hit me during the summer of 2008 at the Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s Conference. My dream agent had bangs and cool nerd glasses and walked in wearing hot-pink, strappy, heeled sandals and sat next to me. She led our workshop with friendly authority and insightful comments; she was encouraging but critical. I got to talk to her during the break. I said I liked her shoes and managed not to drool. She was smart and sarcastic and funny and I decided right then she was going to be my agent.

That afternoon she was on an agent panel—that was why she’d worn the fancy shoes—and I wrote down nearly everything she said in my notebook. The three other agents had good information to share, too, so I took pages of notes about how advances work, what percentages to expect for royalties and commission, what to say in a query letter, what to ask an agent before signing, but most of all their message was clear: make the writing shine before you submit and find an agent who loves your work. Or, as my dream agent said, “If you’re not physically nauseous at the sight of your book, you’re not done,” and, “If your agent loves your writing, she’ll fight for it and for you.” 

I wanted her to fight for me. When I gave her my pitch after class—palms sweaty and my pulse in my temples—she said what every agent-struck author wants to hear: “That sounds interesting. When you’re ready, send me your query and the first two chapters.” OMG! I practically twirled. She was interested!

So I left that conference all flutter-hearted and ready to make my work shine, to make it sing from the rooftops that it was good enough, that it was ready to be represented. I revised for months. I won the Maurice Prize in fiction that fall but I kept revising. All my friends said I was waiting too long, that I should send it to the agent I’d met, but I wasn’t nauseous at the sight of my book yet. I had to follow her advice to the letter or hate myself for rushing and ruining my chances.

I revised for a few more months and finally, finally, I sent my query and the first two chapters just like we’d discussed. I was sure she’d love it. She was perfect for me. She had to see we were a match made in heaven, right?

She rejected me. Very nicely, but still, I was deflated. I’d put myself out there, poured my heart into this relationship only to get dumped with a line that sounded like a bad TV break up: “it just isn’t right for my list at this time.” It’s not you, it’s me. What a cop-out, and a lie, too, because even in teen movies the kid knows that phrase really means something is wrong with you. If this were a real camp crush story, now would be the part where I ran into the bathroom and locked myself into a stall to cry in gasping hiccoughs.

In real life, I mourned for a few days, then I stewed in the bitterness of being scorned, and then I got over it. I emailed my no-longer-dream-agent and asked for more specific criticism. She was kind enough to write back with more feedback, and though she thought the writing was strong and the book had potential and promise, it was just not a “perfect fit” for her.

What I realized is that it wasn’t a clichéd break-up line or a cop-out; it was the truth. I had been so sure she was the one, but she didn’t love my work, and we were, therefore, not a match made in heaven. I didn’t know that the right agent who was the perfect fit for me, who would fight for Hand Me Down in a way ex-dream-agent couldn’t have, was just around the corner, but she was. Just like people say when you get dumped, there are indeed other fish in the sea.

Our first crushes are rarely the relationships that last, but if we’re lucky, we learn from them. I will forever be grateful to the cool agent with the hot-pink heels for her valuable advice and for motivating me to get my manuscript in gear for submission. It was this heavily revised, nausea-inducing manuscript that my actual agent fell in love with just a few weeks later. If I hadn’t been rejected first, I might not have met my true agent-mate, the one who really got my book and my writing, the agent who responded to my first email in a day and believed in me from the start.

We are still happily working together today.